Sigh…why didn’t you say this before I took 4,000 photos on vacation. Not an exaggeration. 
Welcome to another rabbit hole hobby.
2 Likes
dear god! what have I done!!!
goes into corner of shower sobbing
Sorry bud.
but…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!? Nice birthday gift for yourself!
I have several lenses too. If you ever want to check any of them out, let me know. I’m assuming you got the 2 kit lens system from your photo – 12-32mm pancake and 40-150mm zoom?
1 Like
That is correct! I also got the T-2 Pro in the mail today from Massdrop, and I think my Focal Elegia arrive today hopefully soon!
Thank you for the Birthday greeting!
2 Likes
Here comes another deep, deep hole to disappear down.
And Happy Birthday… Belatedly.
1 Like
That’s definitely an issue. Though in general, for product/review type shots, it is easily worked around simply by using a tripod, a fixed low-ISO setting and a longer exposure.
The other issue is depth of field control. Or more specifically being more limited in what you can do from a shallow-depth-of-field perspective. The 2x field-of-view crop of M43 (vs. full-frame, or 1.5x vs. APS-C) means you need to be able to either focus closer (sometimes needing a macro lens to get close enough) or a much faster (larger maximum aperture) lens to get the same amount of control.
The Panasonic/Leica 45mm f/2.8 Macro OIS lens was a great help in that regard, and something I preferred, optically and for working distance, over the newer 30mm Macro.
Of course, for still-shots another, much cheaper, option is an adapted, fast, manual focus prime - and using such lenses is one of M43s strengths - both with the short flange-distance making lots of such lenses adaptable, and the extensive manual focus-assistance they offer.
1 Like
I was literally about to buy the Sony 6300 mirror less APS-C camera (same as @taronlissimore and @andrew have) but then @antdroid told me about the Lumix and for the price it was a much easier pill to swallow for jumping into taking photos. Plus as I’m playing with it I’m learning a lot. It is also making what you were teaching me make way more sense lol. I’m having a bunch of a-ha moments already… I just went in and played with SS and ISO settings for low light pictures and was blown away when I got it to work the way I wanted. Such a cool new hobby…I am already filling my head with dumb thoughts of taking all these awesome pictures and working for Nat-Geo 
lol
3 Likes
I struggled picking which macro lens to get but ended up with the Olympus 60mm f2.8 macro and I’m very happy with it. I hadn’t used it too much for product photography but just started to with the Comet review and I really like the results. I also just bought the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 a couple weeks ago and it’s a very useful tiny fast prime. I still like the 25mm prime (which I have a manual f1.8) for product photos but 20mm is a better walking around lens.
I have an all-arounder Lumix 14-140mm zoom lens but I never use it. I’m sure it’ll come in handy when I travel but right now, it’s collecting dust given all the prime lenses perform so much better.
1 Like
just ordered this…found one brand new for $50 cheaper than the going price…I have now blown through all my play money, for the next couple months lol…time to start buying toys for the wife and kid to assuage my guilt 
3 Likes
They had a promotion on Panasonic lenses that just ended. Maybe you squeaked by. It was $250 recently with Panasonic mfg instant rebate. Most stores had it at this price.
If you got it at an approved retailer, you also get a 3 year extended mfg warranty as well. Same goes for your camera and other Panny gear.
1 Like
Working on getting my Picture quality up… what do you guys think? @Torq did this come out alright I tried to format it in the banner style (for practice purposes).
6 Likes
Nice job! Looks better than phone pics before. 
Might want to try moving the lamp a little further away so its not so harsh up top. You can probably spot fix that in Lightroom or Photoshop too. But otherwise, it looks nice. Pretty headphone!
Is the camera treating you well so far?
2 Likes
Good so far, just learning how to use it. Yeah I was practicing with different filters in that picture, limited light source options (hotel in Ottawa). I book @Torq recommended has been a huge help, along with his tips on shooting and Photoshop.
I highly recommend Adobe Lightroom or DarkTable (free opensource clone) for RAW photo editing and enhancements/filters. It’s a much faster and simpler workflow application than photoshop is for photography. Photoshop is good for creative picture editing, layering and creation.
2 Likes
I use a lightroom initially, then I use Photoshop after just to get familiar with it and to get the crop size right. Still learning all the tricks, found a couple of fun quick guides on Lightroom that I’ve been messing with.
Definitely getting there!
And you’ve got the aspect ratio and resolution nailed.
Compositionally/technically, you want to watch for situations in which you have extreme dynamic range - and where possible try and avoid them. That’s easier to do in product/review shots since you control the composition and have time to adjust it - where as, say, with street photography, sometimes a shot presents itself and you either take it or lose it.
In this case you have to try to balance the need for good shadow-detail retention, since most of the Elegia are black, while also attempting not to blow-out the highlights with the lamp. Without stacking multiple exposures (which requires a tripod) for high-dynamic range techniques, it’s almost impossible to capture something like that without crushing the shadows AND blowing the highlights. So, as @antdroid says, moving the light out of the frame is one way to help with that.
Shooting in RAW there are some tools in Camera RAW (the raw-file import tool used by Lightroom and Photoshop) that let you alter the tone curve so that you can preserve more shadow AND highlight detail, but they’re at the mercy of the limits of the dynamic range on the sensor for the camera in use.
Note that I moved this part of the discussion here since it’s more about the photography than is about the Elegia (feel free to post the picture in the Elegia thread).
5 Likes
There is an easy to use Crop Feature in Lightroom that you can save a custom setting for:
The Crop Button is the dashed line box icon.
As you see, I mistakenly typed in 2:4 instead of 1:2.4 when I made my banner post last time. lol.
2 Likes
For Macs, I recommend Pixelmator Pro. A little easier learning curve, I think, but as robust as Adobe products yet much less expensive.
1 Like