It's really amazing how much gear you can gather in a period of only a few years. This is about the first image taken with this new combination of the Panasonic G5 and the excellent 12-35 f2.8. I think this is the best camera Panasonic have brought to market since the DMC-L1. For those of you who have been reading this blog you'll know that the L1 is my favourite camera of all time because of the ergonomics and the image quality I get from it. I was very surprised at the focusing speed of the camera, to my mind it equals the Olympus OM-D if not a little faster. The shutter sound is non-existant if using the electronic shutter option. More in the next post.

This is the last from this combination now but I'm sure that I will be using these tools for a long time to come. I really like the old equipment, especially the first generation Pentax cameras with their 6MP sensors. Note to self: Dust them off and get those Pentax primes back out. Might even get myself that newly announced K5IIs which doesn't have a AA filter. Really a big deal if you're a raw shooter like myself. The images should be sharper and with those Pentax primes it'll be a nice setup to have.

Again converted with SFXII. One of the many stills during the 3 hour session. Aginn taken with the L1 and the PL 14-150. This is probably my favourite camera of all time. I've had some really great images out of it and although it's only a 7.5MP camera I don't need it for huge prints. I have 3 of these because I would be really lost if one died on me and I didn't have a backup. You don't hear much about them today because they're really old by todays standards. If you haven't tried one out, get one. They're really cheap on ebay these days. The 14-50 kit lens it came with can also be has for a few hundred these days. A really great kit lens in my opinion. 

A couple I know wanted some images of themselves dancing Tango. They wanted something different too, not only stills but wanted to show movement. I didn't know the venue but figured it could be very low lighting and not much daylight either. I was correct on both counts. Had a really hard time with white balance here. The Panasonic L1 is not known for it's correct white balance settings but since I'm a raw only photographer I really didn't care at the time.

This is the last image from this lens for now. I just selected this to stress the fact that DOF at this focal length is really paper thin. I know I could have stopped down a stop or two but that would have meant increasing the ISO value. I like using my lenses wide open much of the time and keeping ISO low. If you don't use your lenses wide open or if the lenses aren't that good wide open then what is the point in having them. Either get rid of that lens or try another copy. That is why photographers buy these fast lenses, to use them in low light conditions or for selective focus.

To me, this is my best image of the day. I really like how you can see the light hitting this cymbal. Again taken during a little break the band had during the 5 hours they played in total. I'm lucky to get a handful of these keepers during a photo session. On that day I may have gotten 5 that I really liked and that's out of some 1000 images. That doesn't mean that I throw the others away, It's just that these images are a tick better.

I was looking around for some subject during a break and these saxophones were staring me in the eye all the time. Maybe they were too close to me which is why I didn't see them earlier probably. I couldn't get them all in the frame they were that close. I knew that I wanted to crop the image into the square format so I place them in the middle of the image. This is one good thing about the size of the file you get from the Nex-7. Plenty of cropping room. I wish that Sony would come out with a firmware upgrade which allows you to select a square format. I think they're the only manufacture that doesn't have this option nowadays.

I cought the lead singer here pretty well in this image. He was lead singer, trumpeter and comedian all in one. Good music and we enjoyed it. I had to try a few frames to get this one though which didn't leave a lot of time to refocus.