BTW, WordPress is hammering the image and making it soft when it downsizes. I’ll see about uploading a better copy elsewhere and post a link to it.

Grasshopper on the porch step

I’m pretty happy with what I see from the camera so far, both images and video.

I ended up using it for the first time at our grandson’s soccer game. First impressions are highly favorable. The camera has a plethora of modes and settings to explore. I concentrated on using good old shutter priority mode and took some shots with the ‘sports’ mode built into the camera. Both methods seemed to work pretty well.

I let the auto focus system do continuous  focusing and predictive tracking most of the time. There was a little more lag in getting initial focus than my DSLRs, but the once locked on the focus tracking didn’t have much trouble keeping track of the subject.

It looks like, in daylight at least, the camera is capable of producing nice quality HD video.

Mainly though I have to say it absolutely hit my desired target of having a camera of considerably less weight than the Nikons I traded in. There are some tradeoffs to be sure, but it seems on first look as if they’ll be ones worth making in order to have a lighter and more easily totable camera.

Yesterday the vendor and I came to agreement on price and I’m taking part of the proceeds to purchase a Lumix DMC-GH2 with a 14mm-140mm lens and spare battery.

I really loved shooting with the Nikon cameras and lenses, especially the most recent purchase a D300S. But what I’ve found recently is I became a lot more reluctant to lug around the heavy camera and lenses for a variety of reasons.

Since the first rule of buying a camera is buy one you’ll use, it felt like a good time to try out something smaller, lighter and less obtrusive.

The new camera is due to arrive this coming Friday and I’ll post some first impressions after it gets into my hands. I’m particularly looking forward to experimenting with the HD video capabilities which have received good reviews for this camera.

I’m using Lightroom’s library function to handle not only my photo archives but also raw video footage (which oftentimes is coming from either my Nikon DSLR or one of our point-and-shoot cameras).

I’ve started using Lightroom’s ‘virtual copy’ facility coupled with ‘Smart collections’ to easily manage photos with different aspect ratios for various purposes (web, email, video, print). Once I’ve processed the photo for exposure, color balance, sharpness, etc., I create virtual copies which can be cropped into the right shape and exported to the preferred size.

For pan-and-scan photo to video, I take care of all processing and cropping to video dimensions and aspect ratio inside Lightroom; then export the photos and raw video to a dedicated folder that I monitor inside Studio’s video editing environment.

Others may have a better workflow but this one is working pretty well for me so far.

The passenger compartment door had a small ventilation port I was able to open and get the objective end of the camera lens outside for an unobstructed view, pointing without using the viewfinder.

Again, not my first choice of soundtrack but a legal one from the ScoreFitter accessory in Avid Studio.

Sorry about the soundtrack. I’ve been experimenting with Avid Studio 1.0 and the choice of music which is YouTube legal and doesn’t violate any copyrights is a bit limited.

If we get back into the picture-taking business we’ll post a note here.  In that event we’ll likely use one of the photo-sharing sites (flickr or Picassa) as opposed to posting on this domain; and if so we’ll post an announcement comment here and publish the links.