EP7/late night in suburbs in Monochrome 2 profile

With the Lumix 20mm F1.7.  These are all high contrast monochrome profile 2 of EP7/PenF JPEG engine. Other than resize down, out of camera. High ISO's

I just find there's a bit of an ethereal feel to most of these.

Raist3d wrote:

Brilliant photo. Please do more B/W starry skies. Looks ethereal.

kamerakiri wrote:

Raist3d wrote:

Brilliant photo. Please do more B/W starry skies. Looks ethereal.

Thanks for the look. I'll try this some more, need to also try live composite with long exposures.

What amazes me in this area where I took the photos is how the sky seems to have some light pollution yet many stars come through- probably just clean air.

Felice62 wrote:

Monochrome works real well with these high ISO settings.

Details are well managed and the noise is just fine.

All good !

I agree. Sometimes the noise can give a certain character for these, and some older film shots from the past sort of has a similar/analogous look.

Jeff wrote:

How did you get the focus on the stars? That's something I've always struggled with on mFT.

I focused on the electric wires. Given the distance, I think that was enough to get the stars reasonably in focus? I don't think the stars are completely 100% in focus.

But one thing I can say if I was doing this on the EP7:

- Set the live view boost to ON2 -> this will make dark scenes be bright enough

- Manual focus on the stars.

Note that you can set that setting on a PenF but the live view becomes a slideshow. ON the EP7/EM10MarkIV and higher class cameras the preview still refreshes while slower, reasonably fast.

I'll give it a try to a couple of shots and post back. It's a bit tricky but doable. If you are using a tripod (I was doing these shots hand held) then it's even easier.

Jeff wrote:

As you know from another thread where gave some advice, I've been looking at the E-PL10 vs E-P7. These shots make the case.

You would make similar shots with EP7, but these I think have more resolution.

Did you order yours from Japan or Europe? And were there any issues with import, etc?

Amazon Japan.  No issues with import. Selecting language is the first screen on first boot so no problem with reading Japanese (set to English on first boot, just like you do in USA models).

Warranty of course I think it's Japanese only, but I don't expect this camera to fail me for a while.

The camera was supposed to get to me in like 10-12 days, but got to me in like 4 days. I was surprised.

Same camera, same lens, same area, same JPEG engine/settings. Images resized down in DXO PhotoLab 5 but nothing done to them, just the bicubic sharper resize and watermark.

Except the last image which was also cropped in a square factor- but I could have done that on the EP7 in-camera also.

Felice62 wrote:

Indeed. I do some time add a bit of fine grained noise in certain low-key scenes.

I don't have the p7 but i sure love the monochrome output of my pen-f.

It's the same profile. It's the monochrome 2.  I think I have the defaults but I set the grain to low.

Felice

Raist3d wrote:

Beautiful click!

That flare in shadow adds character to this shot.

If I'm correct, those are stars in background, aren't they? Brilliant click! I like this concept of starry sky as bokeh. Very good composition. Bright sign against starry sky looks so beautiful!

MNE wrote:

Jeff wrote:

How did you get the focus on the stars? That's something I've always struggled with on mFT.

It's not hard at all. Just use magnify and focus manually. Adjust until the stars appear as small as you can get them. If you have a manual focus lens, set to affinity as a great place to start.

You will probably have to take a couple of shots and review them. Star trailing is more of a problem than focus being off.

You can't focus on stars with AF unless you are using the EM-1 III or EM1x with Starry Sky software.

EM1X doesn't have the Starry Sky update.  But I agree with the rest.

kamerakiri wrote:

Raist3d wrote:

Beautiful click!

That flare in shadow adds character to this shot.

If I'm correct, those are stars in background, aren't they? Brilliant click! I like this concept of starry sky as bokeh. Very good composition. Bright sign against starry sky looks so beautiful!

Thanks and yup, those are stars in the background.