100-300 Panasonic not as Sharp as i wanted

rick in vegas wrote:

hence the cheap price. I sold mine.

To replace it with what? Oly 300 F4 ($$$), Panny 100-400 ($$)? Or superb Oly 75-300 ($) ?

Maybe if you had tried to use it correctly...

WhiteBeard wrote:

pannumon wrote:

If you have someone to give you good advice, you will get better results by using raw with a half day training, but that is very very positive thinking. Raw simplifies things, but developing your own workflow takes some time. Also, raw development won't do miracles, but saving the results of careful analysis of lens/shutter speed/ISO combinations makes it quick and easy in the future. In principle, but I think it's also good to understand what's going on with the processing.

I beg to differ. Since I crossed from the 36 exposure 35mm film era to the "all-you-can-eat" digital era, I found that the number of pics I took on any given trip was mind-boggling. Just the classifying and renaming of the pics takes days. If I were to shoot everything in RAW + JPEG, it would take me years of PP per month of travel. Even doing RAW on very specific venues is almost overwhelming and defeats the purpose of having fun with your photography. Now ideally, if I could get back to the time when every shot - out of 36 - counted, then, yeah, I'd be a RAW fan. With 3000 pics?

Good workflow means automatization of post-processing. It's a friend. Basically you select batch of photos and apply a preset. "Developing" the set of presets is somethong that takes time, but when done, it's quick (I am not there yet).

Wildlife photography is one of the few areas of photography where sufficient technical quality is difficult to achieve. I can assure that it won't happen that there would be too many excellent wildlife photos in the hard drive/SSD. But those who are saying that 100-300mm lens does not provide good results are either not trying hard enough, they lack the know-how, or they have a bad copy of the lens.

I find that with ISO 800 will destroy a lot of the detail, at least when using 10-bit electronic shutter. But sometimes it is necessary. With my G7 and electronic shutter, 1/300s shutter speed was the minimum I wanted to use, even if it meant that I had to use ISO 400 or 800. I was perfectly happy if I could shoot at 1/300s ISO 200.

AdamT wrote:

Wigelii wrote:

AdamT wrote:

Nothing wrong with those whatsoever for a lens which is a 1st generation design and can be bought for as little as just over £200 secondhand ......

I`ve seen worse examples from the expensive PanaLeica 100-400 (which has a very Polarised reputation)

Is the 100-400 not worth buying?

opinion on whether its worth the money is polarised also whether or not its sharp at 400mm wideopen given that it`s already 1/3 of a stop too slow at F6.3 (even F5,6 is starting into diffraction) and not exactly cheap at £1100

I have no personal opinion on it, I live in the UK where its dull 90% of the time, F2.8 rules here - LOL

the olympus pro lenses are a little more, but sharper, more expensive, and a little better built.

i really got some great shots with the PL 100-400 but these two new Oly lenses (40-150 f/2.8 and 300 f/4 pro) are amazing with and without the TC-20.

Great shot, that lens is a good one in your hands. Studying the subject the lower one must use a lot of left rudder to counteract the wear and tear to its wings. Fascinating creatures and masters of their flight. Glad you posted.

Well on my Pannys I set the shutter button to work on half press, but not to take an exposure until subject is in focus. This works better than I can, though if you don't have the focusing area over the subject chances are it will focus on something else, so a bit hit and miss though better than I can do any other way at present. And quick. I do use the Olympus RDS, expensive but far better than others I have tried. But due to this epidemical nightmare and my shelf life I'm not as active away from home as I would like.

;-)zwagner wrote:

Ken Yull wrote:

Great shot, that lens is a good one in your hands. Studying the subject the lower one must use a lot of left rudder to counteract the wear and tear to its wings. Fascinating creatures and masters of their flight. Glad you posted.

Thanks Ken!

Yeah dragonflies are completely alien, fascinating creatures. Love them. Here's one more, blue heron in flight. This one wasn't *quite* tack sharp... I'm still trying to figure out the best settings/way to capture birds in action, but overall I'm happy with it.

Oly 75-300 @300mm, E-M1 III, ISO200, 1/800

My - somewhat uneducated - guess is that for BIF that are close, i.e. cover a lot of frame space rapidly, 1/800 might not be fast enough. I personnaly set the default ISO at 800 on my GX8/100-300 MkII combo and I back off if the subject is so far I know I may need to crop heavily. The noise handling on the E-M1 III being excellent - for µ4/3 - you could have traded higher ISO for speed. Try settings between 400-800 ISO next time he flies around.  

Then again, better check with real BIF experts...

pannumon wrote:

I find that with ISO 800 will destroy a lot of the detail, at least when using 10-bit electronic shutter. But sometimes it is necessary. With my G7 and electronic shutter, 1/300s shutter speed was the minimum I wanted to use, even if it meant that I had to use ISO 400 or 800. I was perfectly happy if I could shoot at 1/300s ISO 200.

does the electronic shutter have less bits? I wasn't aware of that.  what happens with silent shutter if you use longer shutter speeds?  is it good for long exposure night time photography?  I thought thats what live composite mode uses.

thats excellent!  reassuring for those of us who are using the 75-300 with silent shutter on the EM10Mk2 in burst mode for BIF (like me lol)

this gives to me because I am using the silent shutter for birds (and dragonflies) in flight too, in burst mode (11 fps) with the 75-300 lens on the EM10Mk2.  Trying to find the right shutter speed to use.  I wonder if this combo can also be used for hummingbirds?

jalywol wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

pannumon wrote:

I find that with ISO 800 will destroy a lot of the detail, at least when using 10-bit electronic shutter. But sometimes it is necessary. With my G7 and electronic shutter, 1/300s shutter speed was the minimum I wanted to use, even if it meant that I had to use ISO 400 or 800. I was perfectly happy if I could shoot at 1/300s ISO 200.

does the electronic shutter have less bits? I wasn't aware of that. what happens with silent shutter if you use longer shutter speeds? is it good for long exposure night time photography? I thought thats what live composite mode uses.

Depends on the body. The GX8 electronic shutter is 12 bit, but the GX7, for instance, and GM5 were 10 bit. You'd have to look it up for the particular body you were interested in, to find out.

Can't help you with the long exposure questions though, as I don't know the answers.

-J

thanks I wonder where I would find the info for my camera- it's the EM10Mk2.  I'd like to see this info for all M43 cameras as well as read out speed!

Is the following correct:

all JPG is 8 bit

all M43 RAW is 12 bit

jalywol wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

pannumon wrote:

I find that with ISO 800 will destroy a lot of the detail, at least when using 10-bit electronic shutter. But sometimes it is necessary. With my G7 and electronic shutter, 1/300s shutter speed was the minimum I wanted to use, even if it meant that I had to use ISO 400 or 800. I was perfectly happy if I could shoot at 1/300s ISO 200.

does the electronic shutter have less bits? I wasn't aware of that. what happens with silent shutter if you use longer shutter speeds? is it good for long exposure night time photography? I thought thats what live composite mode uses.

Depends on the body. The GX8 electronic shutter is 12 bit, but the GX7, for instance, and GM5 were 10 bit. You'd have to look it up for the particular body you were interested in, to find out.

Nope. GX7 has delivers 12 bit with the silent/electronic shutter

AdamT wrote:

Nothing wrong with those whatsoever for a lens which is a 1st generation design and can be bought for as little as just over £200 secondhand ......

I`ve seen worse examples from the expensive PanaLeica 100-400 (which has a very Polarised reputation)

Can you please send me the link for that 200 second hand offer??? I have been looking for mk2 and can’t find it below 350-400!!