I did some small-time shopping today and picked up some spare parts.
What makes that one worthy of interest? Well it's essentially the same size and weight as the Lumix 14-140 but faster at f/4.5 all the way through the range! (The adapter adds bulk, but it's still pretty small.) On days where the 70-300 4Thirds lens is a bit much, this little thing could be fun. IT's not stabilized.. but that's also true of the 70-300.
Why have a great camera on one's shelf when Aurora is showing off and a bright comet is doing its thing?
Early images were uninspired but a bank of higher clouds left around midnight PDT on 10/11th October - and things got interesting in a hurry! I test-drove many ISO and shutter options with the 20-60mm zoom at 20mm f/3.5, and captured plenty of red and green glow in the wide field. I switched to my Pentax 28/2.8 for a while but skies were bright enough for f3.5 so the zoom got most of the action. I even tried a few videos which haven't been reviewed yet(!).
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Then I remembered time lapse. I'd wanted to try that in May's auroral storm but 1230am isn't my sharpest for memory. I set up about 100 shots with 10 seconds between them and off it went. Now and then I adjusted the shutter speed as the glow pulsed. When finished it asked if I wanted a video, Yes I Do!! I chose 3fps so it lasts about 33 seconds, and it's excellent!
Not bad for guessing at some features that I didn't fully know how to work yet.
Ten days later I was out seeking comet Tsuchinshan/Atlas as it receded from the neighborhood. I'd seen it a few days prior, but the G100 took that job. It did nice work, but again: why not use the Max camera for these few faint photons?
Skies were again striped with high clouds, but after 15min things improved. I took many nice shots (oops, jpeg only!) as it dropped near the trees. The clouds returned after 20 minutes of decent clarity, so we returned home. I only brought the DA70 lens since it's bright at f/2.4.. but for a second time I missed my 85/2 lens for a night of sky records. It's around here someplace!!
While assembling a bare-bones S5 team, I did a few indoor tests to check on adapted lens image quality and ImgStab usefulness. I shot a calendar and some labeled jars. First shots with the Minolta 100-200 were sharp and contrast was great, and the Rikenon 70-150 had a few blurs before I became more serious about posture and technique. At that point images were quite similar to the 100-200 for color and clarity.
Today I shot a spider-web under construction on our porch. The 20-60mm can reach 0.4x closeup images, but I stayed further back to keep the spider from worrying. Those came out nicely too, and had much more light to work with.
I went to town at midday and tried out the fall colors at our city-central lake. It's too early for pervasive fall color but it's getting underway! I've set the S5 on 4:3 so the 21.5Mpx images were framed best around 35mm. I shot at both extremes to get a feel for the lens' great range; it's really impressive to get the lake and the entirety of the coloring tree just to its left! In landscape mode!!
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The following day I wandered about with the Pentax DA40 xs attached. It was fun -- but I did shoot two black images, both times just after powering up the camera. I'll need to watch for more of those! I already deleted them, so I can't check the EXIF to see whether any particular parameter was out of whack.. oops.
After an evening of failed connections between my GX7 and its Lumix phone app, I tried the Lumix Sync app. The S5 uses that, but the GX7 cannot; only the G9 and G100 can manage that since it accesses bluetooth to facilitate connection. That sucks!
So once again I shall let the GX7 depart, and likely find a g100. Much as I've enjoyed that camera over the years, the few frustrations aren't worth the bonus hassles.
With the G100 I lose about fifty shots per charge* from the GX7, the tilt screen and inbuilt IStab :^( - but I do gain a few things:
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