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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Micro Four Thirds Site 