This is Christmas Eve and we have spent a pleasant day with my Mother. We drove from Los Angeles the day before to Roseville. Northern California is also enjoying a respite from the rain and the birds seemed to enjoy having a sunny day to bask in the sun and get some warmth.

We took the 100-300 mm zoom and the Panasonic GH2 for a stroll. It was a fantastic lens for grabbing shots of birds. I am posting a couple of pictures, but they are rather grainy. I could not get close to the...

At long last, the rains have stopped in Los Angeles and it was wonderful to step outside and see the blue skies and some white fluffy clouds.

This was my chance to break out the 100-300mm Panasonic lens and the GH2. A couple of small birds were chirping in my backyard and I wanted to take some photos. They are, I believe finches, and I simply cranked out the zoom to 300 mm. When I ported the images out to Aperture, the program normally displays the RAW files as the masters. I was...

It is another wet and dreary day in Los Angeles and I stayed home, thinking I would photograph raindrops as they strike the pavement. I've never done this before, but I thought this would be a chance to try the GH2's high speed burst mode. This is new feature for the Panasonic G series cameras. It is only available on the GH2 and not present on any earlier model. This high speed burst mode reduces image from the 16 megapixel sensor so that it outputs as only 4 megapixel array (2336 pixels wide,...

It is a gloomy day in Los Angeles and I was too lazy to go outdoors and find photographic subjects on this dank and dreary day. However, my cat, who is admittedly much smarter about the weather than its owner, was napping on my chair. So I cranked the ISO up to 1600 on the GH2, set the lens to 140 mm and shot with 1/5 second of a shutter speed at f5 aperture. I am including the image: it is showing the full extent of the frame and I will be the first to admit it is not a scientific demonstration...

We just received a Panasonic GH2 and while I did not have a chance to actually take pictures, I had enough time to put in the battery and check the automatic focus.

Its automatic focus is indeed faster than the G2 or the GH1. I can't judge if it is twice as fast, but I am eager to see how this works with some fast actions shots. I never gave up my Nikon D300 because its speed to reach focus was noticeably faster than the G2 or GH1. Also, it provided me with a workable image at ISO...

My wife and I have been walking about. She with her Panasonic G2 and her 100-300 mm Panasonic Lens and me with my Nikon D300 and its 80-400 mm Nikon Zoom. My impression. If you love long telephotos and want to work with the 35 mm film equivalent of a 600 mm, the Panasonic G2 with its zoom beats the equivalent Nikon equipment as a field lens.

First off, there is the weight factor. The Nikon is just too heavy for taking out on a 2 mile hike. While it is doable, you will not do so if...

I feel embarrassed. For the past several months I have neglected this blog and in part the delay was due to working on a book. But, thankfully, the book is put to bed, sent off to the publisher, and it will be scheduled to be shipped at the end of January. So now I can return back to "real life" and feel free.

To celebrate, I purchased an early Christmas present for my wife, a 100-300 mm Panasonic zoom lens. I like working with telephotos, and my wife is absolutely addicted to these...

Working with Infrared views again. The only problem is that the camera has very little sensitivity and I had to rate its iso to 5000 and settle for 1/8 second exposure. The results are noisy but workable. I generally remove the color from IR shots, but in one shot I tried some pseudo coloring. Have to come to a decision on whether I should start carrying a tripod around and reducing the iso.

Brian

It was a sweltering day in Los Angeles--and the bright sun, beating down on the city did not encourage photographic explorations. So I waited for nightfall and was awarded with a near full moon and a cool night air. Setup the telescope and admired the moon--but it was so brilliantly white that I did not expect to bet any usable shots. I removed the 2X extender and just used a 1.4X, so I was working at about 980 mm focal length. The moon did not fill the frame of the camera so when posting the image...

Its over a week since I started exploring the Panasonic G--and I had the good fortune to mix and match two Panasonic cameras--the GH1 and G2. Both of them surprised me as being incredibly versatile picture taking machines. For most of my work in a research laboratory, I used a Nikon F4 for film, then a Nikon D200, D300, and D700 for digital. There is nothing wrong with the Nikon system--the lenses all did what I wanted and the image quality was excellent. The D700 was a very good low light level...