bhphotovideo.com – as good as it gets …

I have ordered from B&H Photo in New York many times. They have very good prices and a very good selection of used equipment at very fair prices. And most importantly, they ship fast and cheaply. I usually pay between 8 and 12 dollars for shipping. Plus, they pre-calculate Canadian taxes and the small duties or brokerages that apply. Thus, they are the least painful US company to deal with, bar none.

And to top it off, their customer service is astonishingly good.

I bought a used 100-300 Panasonic stabilized lens for $379, which is very cheap for that lens. It came in excellent condition and has worked pretty much flawlessly since I got it. When I ordered, I figured I would throw in a battery for the GH2 and G5, which share the same battery size. It cost me $14.79 and shipping was included in the one low price.

I received the lens quickly, but the battery took an extra week. And even though it was shipped separately via Purolator, there was no extra charge. Wow.

But it arrived DOA. It was in the ubiquitous plastic case that had to be cut open, so I know it was brand new. But neither charger will light up, and neither camera will function with it. So it is a brick. And certainly not worth shipping back at such a cheap price. Still, I mentioned it on their customer service site, and lo, and behold, they shipped me a new one.

Can you believe that? Awesome service … believe me that, if you have not tried these guys for camera stuff, you really ought to. Of course, be aware that they sell American goods, so Nikon equipment specifically is not warranted in Canada. You will need to ship south if you have problems. On the other hand, I don’t mind the risk for used equipment since there is no real warranty on that anyway.

Highly recommended!

Panasonic G5 with 100-300 Mega OIS shoots the Moon hand held …

Ahhhh Beelaba Moonaba …

Panasonic G5 + 100-300 Mega OIS  @300mm (EFL 600mm)  160iso  f/5.6  1/25

So hand held at 600mm … neat. Of course, I was asking for more than 4 stops of stabilization and I got most of what I wanted, but the image is still slightly soft, so I am not writing home about it just yet. I need to play with it some more and to try shooting the moon from a tripod with it. Even more fun if I pit it against the Tamron 500mm mirror lens, which in the end was the only lens to survive my purge of Nikon gear.

So anyway … the top right hand sea is Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity) and the mountains to the top right of the mare are Montes Caucasus. That’s a pretty good view of them, despite only having 600mm. I quite like how it came out.

Of course, what I would like is to get the whole rig perfectly stabilized and then work on getting a perfect exposure that is slightly over exposed. That reduces noise dramatically and allows me to get a much cleaner 100% crop (which this pretty much is.)

So there you have it … the fun never stops when you have a 2x crop factor

Update: I should probably clarify the conditions of the shooting. The moon was just above the horizon on its way down, so the “seeing” (clarity of the atmosphere) was poor. Further, parts of it were obscured by cloud, another knock against the conditions. All in all, I cannot complain about the result.

Micro Four Thirds (m4/3, MFT) travel kit …

My burst of acquisition to replace the D7000 and all lenses is nearly over. I started with one emphasis and ended up shifting it a bit. I had planned on two bodies and the two Power OIS zooms, which I acquired almost right away. But the video bug hit me fairly hard and I decided to grab a used GH2 for a decent price. That gives me three bodies. I would have traded the GF3 for a different body had I not smashed it to the ground (twice) thus rendering it unsellable for anything approaching its value.

On the other hand, three bodies is immensely useful under some circumstances. For example, when traveling to a place where you are shooting flora and fauna at the same time, it helps to have the full range covered one one body and to have super telephoto covered on another body. And if you have the third body, a fast lens for nice bokeh when shooting close ups is a real luxury (as I found out in Montreal two weekends ago.)

So here is my new luxury travel kit:

Fuji F200EXR  1600iso  f/4.1  1/20

The cameras and lenses from left to right:

• Panasonic G5 with Olympus 45mm 1.8
• Panasonic GF3 with Panasonic 100-300 Mega OIS
• Panasonic GH2 with Panasonic 14-140 Mega OIS

So I can reach for the GH2 to shoot pretty much anything. Distant wildlife or flowers where I cannot get too close would call for the GF3 and 100-300. And close subjects or people would see the G5 with 45mm 1.8 called to action. A very nice set of lenses. The Samyang would be along for use now and again, and would be swapped onto whichever body had the least useful lens on it… often I would expect that to be the 100-300 swapped off. But one never knows …

So where are the power zooms? Simple … I decided that it was wasteful to cover the general 28-300 shooting range with two lenses. One is more than enough, and the Panny lens is of excellent image quality. That leaves a body free for the 100-300 while allowing a body to carry the fast lens.

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Another change is that my vision of how to shoot video had changed completely. Instead of zooming in and out in the decidedly amateurish way, I will always shoot multiple bodies. One will cover the wide shot, I may add a second wide shot from a different angle, and one will cover closeups. I can then change camera angles smoothly, as professional videos are done.

An example of my first attempt at multiple body shooting …

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Anyway, the real problem is how to carry these … I am able to carry the other kit, where the two lenses are the Power OIS zooms, as they are really tiny. They fit and carry very well in my backpack. But these are a little more difficult to carry around in my usual kit.

So if anyone knows of a fairly large messenger bag that can carry these three as they are shown (lenses mounted) and a laptop, I would be grateful to hear about it.

Incompetence, mark … whatever …

It seems that the never ending stream of mistakes cannot be stemmed any more. The latest is the venerable Wii, a simplistic console if ever there was one. Only the new “U” model has had a launch that makes Windows 8 look like a darling

The Wii, it seems, takes an hour to apply the first update. Huh? Since when does a few patches take that long? Well, anyone who has used a PS3 knows the sting of incompetence only too well. That thing updates itself all the time, and they make it unbelievably complicated and slow.

Apparently, Nintendo wanted to join the “stupid” party … where updates are not small patches, but rather wholesale swap outs of the software.

I know this song. It happens when software teams concentrate on everything except their build and deployment technology, which they hack together in the crudest possible way. That slows them down, and it slows every consumer in the world down.

It is so tiresome to see fundamental mistakes harm otherwise good products and waste so many peoples’ time unnecessarily. Boo on Nintendo, and boo on Sony for the PS3 update system. And while I’m handing out raspberries, boo on Microsoft for Windows 8’s issues with the desktop and Metro interactions. Would it really have been so difficult to allow us to pin Metro apps on one monitor and Windows 7 apps on the other? That would make so much more sense than the mess they shipped …

Panasonic GH2 – Review Part 1 – The arrival …

I was trying to decide whether I should make a big splash purchase of the GH3 or not when I realized that I really just wanted a really good video cam with very good image quality. I already have the G5, which is close enough to the top of the m4/3 heap for my purposes, and I thought why not try the GH2? These are very impressive video cameras and the image quality is very good, being the first generation of the 16mp MFT sensors.

So I placed a “want to buy” post on fredmiranda.com and someone replied that he had a GH2 that he could part with. We ended up agreeing on $535 plus shipping and he threw in an extra battery. Since these batteries are also compatible with the G5, I am in great shape suddenly for spares. I have three batteries for the GF3 as well, so I expect to do very well on my next trip.

Here, for example, is an image of the way I could configure these cameras for a trip.

You can see that I have the PZ 14-42 on the G5 and the Olympus 45mm 1.8 on the GH2. The GF3 has the 45-175 video lens. This could work, but is not really what I plan to travel with. Because I ordered a 14-140 used from Henrys and plan to have that on the G5 most of the time. This frees the GH2 for the 45mm and the GF3 for the 7.5mm fisheye.

I will probably switch things around now and again, and when filming, the GH2 will likely shoot the wide shot with the 14-42 while I use the GF3 for close ups with the long lens and the G5 for close ups with the 45mm … something like that … I’m just a hack so we’ll see where I go with that.

Of course, the GH2 and G5 will have their stereo mics running and the GF3 the mono mic … plus the TASCAM DR05 will be recording. I will see how well they blend for a wide open sound.

Meanwhile, a couple of high ISO shots from the GH2 just to see what it can do …

Panasonic GH2  Olympus 45mm 1.8  2000iso  f/1.8  1/100

Clearly, the shadows are at risk a bit. If your monitor is calibrated, this probably looks alright. But if your monitor is a typical TN panel, there is probably quite a bit of blotchy noise in the shadows. I don’t mind this performance, but I am pretty sure that the G5 is somewhat better. The clarity is first rate, however.

panasonic gh2  Olympus 45mm 1.8  3200iso  f/1.8  1/60

Now 3200 is really pushing it. I think I will set an ISO limit of 1600. Still, this is not bad looking on a calibrated monitor.

I do like having three batteries and two chargers for the G5 / GH2 … that’s going to be really convenient. Now I just need the G3 to share batteries with the GF3 and I will be able to carry every lens premounted …

So … I think I will keep this thing

Sony RX100 versus Fuji X10 versus Nikon J1 at 3200 ISO – High ISO Shootout

Just a quick comparison using my favorite imaging-resource.com mannequin series of images. The method was to load all three JPEGs into CS5, then crop the J1 image to 4:3, then downsize the SOny and Nikon images to match. Then crop the eyes out of all three and compare.

No contest. J1 wins, RX100 just behind because of slightly higher clumping in the hair, X10 not even in the contest. Chroma blotching, no hair detail, white balance way off … yuck.

Of course, the X10 would fare better shot the way I recommend, but since no one shoots it that way on test sites, this is a fair comparison. Fuji need to step up their game a bit … the competition has really heated up.