19th August 2019
Worlds first 4k/60P video recording for compact system cameras. Image quality = 6k Photos. 20.3-megapixel. Mirror less camera.
Lumix Micro Four Thirds
My lenses:
Lumix G Fisheye 8mm – creative lens – change the lens angle to create a curving effect.
Lumix G Vario Standard 14-42mm – suitable for a wide range of scenes from portraiture to landscape.
Lumix G Pancake 20mm – get their name from their flat, thin profile – Fixed focal length.
Lumix G Zoom Telephoto Zoom 45-200mm – close ups.
Lumix G Vario Ultra Telephoto 100-300mm – good for action sports and close ups.
20th August 2019
Exercise 1.5 Experimenting with your light meter
Bracketing exposures using Auto Exposure Bracketing
I am still going to have to read some more into spot meter reading and practice because I just cannot seem to hold the shutter button half way down, it is so touch sensitive it shoots straight away as I touch it. I am going to have to read about my camera, it’s settings and see if there is a reason or if I am heavier handed than I think I am!
Well still no go! I am getting very annoyed and also getting my knickers in a twist! Do not know what the hell I am doing! I point and take normal reading photos – OK, which I am glad of because I am getting use to the exposure triangle now and I can change the f-stop appropriately. POSITIVE…
…BUT, when I point at a light area, for example the window, I cannot hold the shutter release half way down, I can take the reading though, perhaps then I go back to the same position and alter the settings?????
OKay, If I use the touch screen, I can push the active AF point to the window while still focusing in the same position and then adjust. IS THIS HOW I DO IT? I am going to take some photographs and analyse them, I cannot sort it out by talking to myself in my head! I need to SEE the results to fathom out what is going on.
Well I have experimented quite a bit, still non-the-wiser for the correct explanation or even if I am doing things incorrectly. I have learnt that I should use the touch AF on my screen by moving it to the lightest part of the picture plane, read the settings and adjust accordingly and then move it back to the centre point where I was focusing to shoot. My experiments are below:
The above contact sheet shows my experimentation in altering the camera settings, especially the shutter speed. I kept shots 1-3 because they were not too underexposed as a first attempt. I then altered the F-stop setting to a smaller F-stop at the other end of the values to widen the aperture to let more light in. My bracketing is set as x 3, first shot then +1 -1, so this is how they are read in the contact sheet, left to right.
ALL shots: ISO 400 F3.6
Shots 1-3: SS 1/125 1/250 1/60
Shots 4-6: SS 1/6 1/13 0.3
Shots 7-9: SS 1/1000 1/2000 1/500
Shots 10-12: SS 1/100. 1/200. 1/50
Shots 13-15: SS 1/1600. 1/3200 1/800
When looking at the contact sheet I can see that altering the F-stop to such an extreme from the first three shots was actually a very big mistake. Shot 3 actually isn’t too far off a decent exposure target for a first attempt, so I should have only altered the F-stop from F22 to F20 and then tried again.
Having looked at these shots I decided to move my camera and take a reading at the window. I can’t seem to put my shutter button half way, so I took a crafty shot to see what the settings were, altered them accordingly, moved my camera back into position with the adjusted shutter speed to SS 1/6 and took the next shot. The result, dramatically over exposed. Not to despair though as I can really see how the shutter speed numbers are working now, like a small F-stop which lets in more light, a small shutter speed number lets in more light also as it is open longer. I also have realised that I took a reading of and adjusted my camera settings to the light, so no wonder it was over exposed.
As I started to get to grips with the settings in my head and how they operate, I decided this time to see if moving the touch AF on my camera screen would make a difference? I moved it to a highlight on the CD player and altered the readings and took the shot. But no, this time I managed to go to the other extreme and under expose the picture. I know by the settings (now) that I should have expected this but at the time the touch AF area that I moved was too large and took a reading not only of the highlighted area but the surrounding colour black of the CD casing and yet again, I left the touch AF area where I took the reading and didn’t move it back to the centre.
So here I go again. This time I did exactly the same as above but firstly I altered the touch AF area so that it was as small as it would go so that it only analysed a small portion of the shot, and secondly I moved the touch AF area back to the centre of the screen before taking the shot. This time I took the light reading from the notebook pages and I managed to receive a lighter result, still not good enough, but at least I am getting to grips with how to take light readings on my camera.
For the final shot I took the reading from the window and adjusted the shutter speed but I forgot to move the touch AF yet again. This meant the window area was exposed well but the remains of the image is underexposed as I had exposed for the lightest area in the picture plane.
While I was typing up this post, I had a break for a couple of minutes and came across the image above from borrowlenses.com. It is helpful for me to see such diagrams rather than reading text, because I am a visual learner and images literally soak in better than the written word, I can always remember images but text that I have read or spoken word tends to get lost with me.
I may not have the perfect shot yet but the learning curve that I was balancing on today was very interesting and I have learnt so much. I have learnt how the shutter speeds double or half when they step up or down a stop, I have learnt more about my touch AF area on my cameras monitor and I have begun to get to grips with the exposure triangle in my head.
I have not given up on this exercise yet though, I am turning tomorrow and trying it all again with the new knowledge from today.
dawntomlinphoto.wordpress.com 
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