GH2 Maximizing Photo Quality

Personaly my stills are not that great with my GH2 but its my stills ability for sure,would this guy get the shots he has taken with a GH2 is another story.

Re: Sample clips discussion
Here is an interview-based documentary I shot with the GH-2. To fully appreciate this photographer's wildlife photos, be sure to go to Youtube and watch full-screen in HD. Some of the best wildlife photography I've ever seen!

"Behind the Lens" Interview with Colorado wildlife photographer Vic Schendel - YouTube
 
azonicbruce said:
Shot JPEG or RAW? Superb detail.
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Raw. I use Lightroom, so processing RAW is really easy and I don't personally get any benefit from shooting JPEG. The JPEG quality is good on this camera too when I have used it. Thanks for all of the compliments. God created the beauty, all I did was press the shutter =).
 
I agree with the combination of shooting RAW and using Lightroom. In fact, I've always done that and I always wondered why people kept denigrating the photo quality of the GH2, which I found significantly better than my old Canon 30D with L glass. I shot my brother-in-law's wedding a few weeks ago and decided to switch to JPG mode to get faster write speeds and more images on my card and those images really have no range on them at all. I feel bad that I shot the ceremony in JPG now.
 
I'm usually not one to use RAW, simply because I'm pretty happy with JPEG results, and I want as fast of a workflow as possible, however, the fact that I now have Adobe Bridge w/ Camera Raw, I can totally see how it wouldn't hurt to shoot RAW+Jpeg and quickly process shots that are keepers, or that are critical. Anything that Lightroom offers that would be be an advantage over Bridge/CameraRaw?
 
Here is a shot using GH2 and 14-140 lens.
I was shooting stills and video for a Girl Scout video.
This lady has been active in Girl Scouting for almost 60 years.

GH2_lady.jpg
 
[Sorry in advance for the big images - we're talking about IQ so I thought that I'd post larger than normal]

Here it is with the 100-300 zoom. IS of this lens is very good.

Sunflower on the verge by john m flores, on Flickr

Once you dial in a white balance, you can get nice colors. A white balance card helps a lot, as does shooting RAW.

Soon by john m flores, on Flickr

And here it is with adapted lenses
Pentax DA35 Macro Limited

Sunflower by john m flores, on Flickr

Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro for Pentax

Heart of a sunflower by john m flores, on Flickr

The fact of the matter is that all cameras over $400 are capable of good images in good light. It's when the lights go dim that the differences really start to show. Even there the GH2 has surprised a bit. There are situations where it will shoot a clean ISO3200:


Panasonic GH2 @ ISO 3200 by john m flores, on Flickr

Most of the time I'll limit myself to ISO1600, but it's comforting to know that ISO3200 can by used in a pinch. Still, I reach for the Pentax K-5 when it comes to stills. The files are just more malleable in post.
 
A few from a festival in the summer. Pushing the low light gig photography to the limits. Most shot at EFL 600m ISO 3200-12800 RAW. All processed and edited in LR3.
P1010506.jpgP1010576.jpgP1010580.jpgP1010611.jpgP1010660.jpg

And a grabbed landscape while on holiday last month (JPG).
P1020011.jpg

I've got a few images from my GH1 that I was very pleased with too....but this is about the GH2 :-)
 
Lightroom offers the best media management of photos, with meta tagging, folders that reflect your folder structure on your hard drive, and batch processing of RAW. All editing is non-destructive as well, LR saves the edits you make as instructions that it applies every time you view the files. This keep the HD footprint small and makes it easy to revert to the original If you take any amount of stills, it's totally worth it. Now only if it handled video well...

I'd highly recommend staying away from iPhoto because the way it organizes photos on your hard drive is positively byzantine. If ever you get to the point where you want to graduate from iPhoto to a more powerful platform, you'll want to mutilate yourself while trying to export the photos cleanly. At least that was the case when I switched to Lightroom several years ago.
 
john flores said:
Once you dial in a white balance, you can get nice colors. A white balance card helps a lot, as does shooting RAW.
Soon by john m flores, on Flickr
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John, I agree the Panasonic JPEG colours out of camera can be a bit off. I've found a few settings that I'm quite happy with using the modifiable WB settings. RAW gives you ample recovery, but it's good to get it as accurate as possible to start with, as you will know.

Your image "Soon" is epic. Really like the composition and the feel of it a lot.
 
john flores said:
Lightroom offers the best media management of photos, with meta tagging, folders that reflect your folder structure on your hard drive, and batch processing of RAW. All editing is non-destructive as well, LR saves the edits you make as instructions that it applies every time you view the files. This keep the HD footprint small and makes it easy to revert to the original If you take any amount of stills, it's totally worth it. Now only if it handled video well...
Click to expand...

If you're shooting architecture without tilt shift, or fairly poor/cheap lenses, I would also recommend DxO into the mix as the first stage RAW developing, then into LR and maybe add NIK too.
 
john flores said:
Lightroom offers the best media management of photos, with meta tagging, folders that reflect your folder structure on your hard drive, and batch processing of RAW. All editing is non-destructive as well, LR saves the edits you make as instructions that it applies every time you view the files. This keep the HD footprint small and makes it easy to revert to the original If you take any amount of stills, it's totally worth it. Now only if it handled video well...

I'd highly recommend staying away from iPhoto because the way it organizes photos on your hard drive is positively byzantine. If ever you get to the point where you want to graduate from iPhoto to a more powerful platform, you'll want to mutilate yourself while trying to export the photos cleanly. At least that was the case when I switched to Lightroom several years ago.
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John,
Your work is AMAZING.
We are all very fortunate to have your input here at this Forum.

THANK YOU.
 
Just got my GH2,  I'm a complete newbie to still photos, but I've been impressed with the GH2 stills.  I don't have much to compare to, but my apartment lighting isn't great, and it still shoots reasonably well at 1600 and 3200iso.

P1000133.jpg
 
DPStewart said:
John,
Your work is AMAZING.
We are all very fortunate to have your input here at this Forum.

THANK YOU.
Click to expand...

Thank you! As you might surmise, I'm a stills guy first, video guy distant second. I'm learning so much from the collective here on the forum. I'm just glad that I'm able to help on the stills side!
 
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