November | 2017 | Micro Four Thirds Site

November 2017, I was at a Cosplay (or COStume PLAY) event called the Anime Festival Asia in Singapore. It wasn’t pre-planned. I just had my walk-about combo of my Panasonic GF9 (GX850/GX800) and the Panasonic 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6.

If I’m being honest, this would not be my combo of choice had I known that this would what I would spend the day shooting – Cosplayers posing at an indoor location.

For the camera, I would have chosen my Panasonic GX85 (GX80) mainly because of its in-body sensor stabilization. Most of the location was indoors with less-than-ideal lighting conditions. The sensor stabilization would have avoided camera shake for the shots which required longer shutter opening times.

For the lens, I would have chosen the Panasonic Leica 12-60 f/2.8-4.0. Just simply because it’s a sharper lens than the 14-140mm.

And that brings me to the second reason for choosing the GX85 – the ability to put on an external flash. For the bigger lenses, a shadow would be cast when using the in-built flash, unless you’re really at the telephoto end. You can see some of this in the photos below.

I find the Panasonic 14-140mm sharp anywhere from f/8.0 and bigger (i.e. down to f/3.5). I set my camera to Aperture priority and a setting of f/4.0. At the tele end, the camera would automatically go up to f/5.6 as that would be the widest aperture for this variable maximum aperture lens.

Ok, so I may have lost a few shots due to camera shake, and the in-built flash did cast a shadow. But the results show that the combination of the GF9 (GX850/GX800) and the non-professional 14-140mm can produce some really sharp results. Hope you agree (^v^)

Panasonic GX850/GX800/GF9 ~US$420 / C$540 / £365

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Pacsafe Venture Safe 100 GII ~US$39 / C$49 / £30

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Panasonic 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 ~US$480 / C$585 / £400

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November-December 2018

All right. So it’s a year later, and this time it was a planned visit to the Anime Festival Asia, so I brought along the combination which I said in the writeup above from last year.

Panasonic GX85 camera body with the Panassonic Leica 12-60mm, and a Godox TT350o flashgun.

Firstly, something about the flashgun:

With a big lens in front of the GX85, you cannot use the in-built flash, as it will cast a shadow on your subject. Secondly, the in-built flash isn’t nearly strong enough for the reach you’ll need.

The “o” at the end of the model number TT350o signifies that it is compatible with Olympus cameras, but that also means it’s compatible with Panasonic cameras as both are micro four thirds. Note that there’s a TT350P, but that’s for Pentax cameras and not Panasonic cameras.

Although I have the more compact Panasonic DMW-FL200L, I bought the Godox mainly because it has high-speed sync, where you need the flash to fire when you’re using higher shutter speeds. More relevant for bright outdoors and not for today’s indoor event.

When you get familiar with using an external flash, you’ll find out that it’s best to use flash in manual mode. This is because you will want to set both the Aperture as well as the Shutter speed. In general:

– The Aperture will determine the brightness of your subject in the foreground. The larger the aperture (smaller f-stop number), the brighter your subject.

– The Shutter Speed will determine the brightness of your background. The slower the shutter speed, the brighter your background.

For this event, as I was photographing cosplayers, the background didn’t matter and I wanted to blur it as much as possible. So I used the largest aperture of my Panasonic Leica 12-60mm, which varies from f/2.8 to f/4.0 depending on the focal length.

To get a visible background so that the environment can be seen and felt, I found that I needed to use a shutter speed of 1/30s and even 1/20s.

That brings me to the camera. For this year, I brought the Panasonic GX85 which has in-body image stabilization. At shutter speeds of 1/30s and slower, I really needed this, which was lacking in the GF9 (GX850/GX800) which I used last year.

And finally, the Panasonic Leica 12-60mm gave me a variable aperture of f/2.8 to f/4.0, which is just a tad better than the Panasonic 14-140mm which gave me f/3.5 to f/5.6.

This year, I was also a bit more heavy-handed with the post-processing, cos I felt that these anime (cartoon) characters lent themselves well to “unnatural-looking” editing.

So here’re some of the shots I took this year:

November 2019

I was back at the event in 2019, but as I took quite a lot of photos and am running out of space at this blog site, I’ve included this update at my new blog site. Do check it out!

Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520

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Panasonic Leica 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 ~US$660 / C$840 / £682

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Godox TT350o ~US$79 / C$108 / £69

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Made a visit to the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. My weapon of choice: the Panasonic GX85 (also known as GX80 in Europe) and just one lens – the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8.

1. Critically Sharp Wide Open

Yes, I have a sharpness fetish and of all the lenses I own, I would say that only the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 is critical sharp wide open (i.e. at its maximum aperture setting of f/2.8). Almost all the images I’ve included below were shot at f/2.8.

2. Motion Blur

With the in-body stabilization of the Panasonic GX85 (GX80) working together with the in-lens stabilization of the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 to give Dual Stabilization, motion blur due to camera shake was essentially non-existent even at the 100mm telephoto end.

I did get a few bad shots due to too low a shutter speed resulting in motion blur of the subject – many birds just can’t keep still even if they’re not flying. Best to have a shutter speed of 1/500 seconds where possible to eliminate that.

3. Point Focus

At f/2.8, especially at the telephoto end, even a small bird won’t be entirely in focus. So point focus was necessary on the eye of the bird. I believe that for most Panasonic cameras, you can’t have point focus in auto mode, so I choose Aperture-priority at f/2.8 (see above), and put the cross-hairs of the point focus on the eye of the bird.

Ok, so here’s some of the shots from my trip to the Bird Park:

Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520
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Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 ~US$750 / C$970 / £820
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On another occasion, I decided to “go long”. So I brought along the Panasonic Leica 100-400mm. Like the 35-100mm f/2.8, it works with my GX85 (GX80) for Dual Image Stabilization. Certainly needed at the tele focal lengths necessary at the bird park.

Almost the same settings use as for the 35-100mm f/2.8. Point focus and spot metering. Just try to lean the lens against something when going really tele since I didn’t use a tripod. And yes, the extra reach of the 100-400mm was much appreciated for the small and often distant birds.

Ok, so here’re the shots I took using the Panasonic Leica 100-400mm:

Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520
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Panasonic Leica 100-400mm f/4.0-6.3 ~US$1,236 / C$1,566 / £1,160
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Tele lenses are great for zooming in for close-ups of the birds, but difficult if you want to include friends or family in the shot as they cannot take wide shots. So on the next occasion, I brought my Panasonic 14-140mm ultra-zoom lens. At the wide end, 14mm is wide enough to include people in the shot. At the tele end, 140mm stretches even further than the Panasonic 35-100mm that I previously used above.

Shooting birds at a bird park presents some challenges. Some of them are behind glass, which makes photos a bit soft:

Then again, some of them are in cages, where I needed to use manual focus or the camera would automatically focus on the cage and not the bird:

But back to the 14-140mm lens. When I initially got the lens, I thought it wasn’t a particularly sharp lens. But now, although I haven’t really done controlled tests, I’m convinced that many of the shots I thought were not sharp were actually due to motion-blur i.e. movement of the camera.

Main reason I think so now is that I used to only have the Panasonic GM1 and GF9 camera bodies which did not have in-body sensor stabilization. But when I use the 14-140mm on my newer Panasonic GX85 (GX80), both the in-body stabilization of the GX85 combine with the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) of the lens to give what Panasonic calls Dual I.S. Hope you agree that the following shots, some taken at the full 140mm are really quite sharp.

The Panasonic 14-140mm is not only versatile with its 14-140mm focal range, the image quality from this lens leaves little to be desired. Although I have lenses like the Panasonic Leica 12-60mm which is even more critically sharp, the Panasonic 14-140mm is still my #1 travel lens mainly because of its versatility while giving up very little in terms of image quality.

Finally, I also got lucky with a critically sharp panning shot during one of the shows while I was there with this lens: