G9 with birds

[masayoshi]

Okay. Got it...well, no, this is actually not mine, but my birding friend's got one a few days ago. We just traded D500 and G9 for a day.
Got these pics as best shots, but no 'in flight' pics. My friend actually like D500 so much.
Would we trade them forever? Of course not
AF seems very responsive, but I'm not sure about CAF performance yet. When I get mine, I'll test more about AF area, sensitivity, etc, but it wasn't a bad start at all.

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1-21 rough leg 2 by Masaaki, on Flickr

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1-21 rough leg 3 by Masaaki, on Flickr

 

[Ziggy]

Cool.
Cropped at all?
Quite a lot of DoF there.

 

[masayoshi]

Cool.
Cropped at all?
Quite a lot of DoF there.

S priority, SS 1/2000, F5.7 and auto ISO (400), mechanical shutter. Obviously, I was lucky the sun came out between clouds for 5 min or so. Custom multi AF area with 5 box-cross in the center, AFC. First one is probably 20% crop, the second one is no crop, just adjust exposure and raise the temperature. For some reasons, LR showed very cold color. It was 32 degree F (0 degree C), but it wasn't a cold day at all with our standard in January.

 

[Ziggy]

Thanks for the info. Lots of plumage detail in the pics - very nice.
Snow on the ground? Might account for the blue light.

 

[masayoshi]

I got my own G9 today and trying to customize AF patterns for my likings.
I posted the following question in Facebook G9 group, but I'll also ask here.

When I customize AF area in 255-area AF pattern mode, and make it single box (best to nail focus on a bird perching on branch), the customization won't be recalled unless I press joystick once to show the single box in the center. Otherwise, the AF boxes swing back to all 255-area mode, which is obviously too big. Am I missing something obvious in the option?

 

[masayoshi]

Thanks for the info. Lots of plumage detail in the pics - very nice.
Snow on the ground? Might account for the blue light.

Yes, lots of snow, and my car was white (I even waxed a few days ago, so the roof top was really shiny). That explains!

 

[Ziggy]

I got my own G9 today and trying to customize AF patterns for my likings.
I posted the following question in Facebook G9 group, but I'll also ask here.

When I customize AF area in 255-area AF pattern mode, and make it single box (best to nail focus on a bird perching on branch), the customization won't be recalled unless I press joystick once to show the single box in the center. Otherwise, the AF boxes swing back to all 255-area mode, which is obviously too big. Am I missing something obvious in the option?

Cool, congratulations.
I go to single AF, enlarge the box (if necessary) and save that as part of a custom set.

 

[Ziggy]

Here's a few samples using AFC in dull light. They're just illustrations. There were some sensational Darter scenes which will have to wait till the morning

In AFC the default Focus/Release Priority is Balanced, which means that if it can't get a lock it'll attempt prediction. I left it at that setting. More info on settings at the bottom, and you can have some tentative conclusions first up, to save you the reading.
1. Again, I was impressed by the way AF could pick out my perched birds despite a lot of stuff going on around them.
2. Again, there was the preference for the more distant lock possibility mentioned above.
3. In repeated single shots of an evolving scene there was a noticeable number where the focus went a bit soft and recovered in the next (never noticed that with the G85).

1. First 18 MP extract from 6K photo mode. Just brilliant amount of detail. And the focus has done well.

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2. Distant Corellas sharp against a distant background. ? Light against dark

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3. Then as they take to the air the background wins.

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4. As they come on, against the sky there's no competition and they sharpen up.

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5. These two are revealing. The Woodswallow is in a busy context and with repeated half-shutter presses it could either be sharp or fuzzy and it was getting close to a simple alternation between the two (as I've found with the 12-100 and G85 but never the 100-400 and that body). It's impressive to get it sharp at all. Nice work Mr Panasonic.

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I've expressed scepticism before about the value of a single focus point in cutting through but on this occasion it worked on the other side of that Woodswallow that was well in shadow with consistently dark feathers. Also a big tick.

Lens: 100-400mm, ISO 400-1600, single shot plus bursts at 9 fps, Custom Multi AF points forming a diamond over about half the sensor.
Added: AF custom set #1 - AF sensitivity and switching sensitivity both 0, moving object prediction +1.
No editing or cropping; saved as JPEGs in LR with standard sharpening.
(The dirty spot turns out to have been a speck of dust from the factory.)

 

[pdk42]

That rolling shutter is pretty extreme. What is the G9's readout speed? It looks like it's a lot slower than the E-M1ii since except in some types of artificial light I only ever use eshutter on mine. Panning with birds does not introduce anything like that extent of bend.

 

[masayoshi]

That rolling shutter is pretty extreme. What is the G9's readout speed? It looks like it's a lot slower than the E-M1ii since except in some types of artificial light I only ever use eshutter on mine. Panning with birds does not introduce anything like that extent of bend.

I did banding test with my garage light, like I did in this thread:
GH5 e-shutter almost useless
I did with the same settings, same garage light, SS=1/640, etc , but tested G9 instead of GH5 against other cameras I have now. The banding with GH3 and EM1.2 was reproduced very well. Although this test provides just relative relations between three cameras, it translates well to the degree of rolling shutter (see page 2 of the thread above). So, more banding means in this test indicates more significant rolling shutter.

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As you can see, G9's banding is much less than GH5, so there is a big improvement. This proves the statement by Panasonic saying improved processing speed over GH5. But it still lags behind EM1.2. Personally, I don't use e-shutter for BIF, and use it only for perched birds, so doesn't matter. But for the folks considering panning for sport/action, e-shutter of G9 will show significant rolling shutter as @Ziggy 's photos already revealed.

 

[Stanga]

The G9 and G80 are best used with the electro mechanical shutter in the AFC mode. Only the GX8 seems to benefit from the electronic shutter.

 

[Armanius]

I did banding test with my garage light, like I did in this thread:
GH5 e-shutter almost useless
I did with the same settings, same garage light, SS=1/640, etc , but tested G9 instead of GH5 against other cameras I have now. The banding with GH3 and EM1.2 was reproduced very well. Although this test provides just relative relations between three cameras, it translates well to the degree of rolling shutter (see page 2 of the thread above). So, more banding means in this test indicates more significant rolling shutter.

View attachment 608740

As you can see, G9's banding is much less than GH5, so there is a big improvement. This proves the statement by Panasonic saying improved processing speed over GH5. But it still lags behind EM1.2. Personally, I don't use e-shutter for BIF, and use it only for perched birds, so doesn't matter. But for the folks considering panning for sport/action, e-shutter of G9 will show significant rolling shutter as @Ziggy 's photos already revealed.

What are we looking at when it comes to banding? Frequency or amount? Looking at the G9 vs EM1 images, there's less overall yellowish banding on the G9. And the G9 image looks cleaner too.

 

[masayoshi]

What are we looking at when it comes to banding? Frequency or amount? Looking at the G9 vs EM1 images, there's less overall yellowish banding on the G9. And the G9 image looks cleaner too.

Image quality is not relevant in this case. Frequency of the banding is proportional to sensor readout time. Please refer to this site, for example, about e-shutter and banding.
Horizontal banding (flickering) due to electronic rolling shutters

 

[Armanius]

Image quality is not relevant in this case. Frequency of the banding is proportional to sensor readout time. Please refer to this site, for example, about e-shutter and banding.
Horizontal banding (flickering) due to electronic rolling shutters

Gotcha. Frequency. Thanks for all the testing you did. I am half way through reading the thread you linked in the prior post. Thank you!

 

[masayoshi]

You're welcome. Here's another site, maybe easier with the GIF animation.
Everything You Wanted To Know About Rolling Shutter - DIY Photography

I actually never understood, why shutter speed of electronic shutter is defined this way, because even the actual exposure of each line of the sensor is 1/2000 sec, if the camera needs 1/2 sec to expose entire sensor, the shutter speed should be called 1/2 sec, right? Well, it is a shutter speed for 'each line' but not for the entire sensor. So, at least, it should be called something like 'line exposure time' in my opinion.

Well, maybe it's just me, but surely confusing for some people.

 

[pdk42]

You're welcome. Here's another site, maybe easier with the GIF animation.
Everything You Wanted To Know About Rolling Shutter - DIY Photography

I actually never understood, why shutter speed of electronic shutter is defined this way, because even the actual exposure of each line of the sensor is 1/2000 sec, if the camera needs 1/2 sec to expose entire sensor, the shutter speed should be called 1/2 sec, right? Well, it is a shutter speed for 'each line' but not for the entire sensor. So, at least, it should be called something like 'line exposure time' in my opinion.

Well, maybe it's just me, but surely confusing for some people.

Well, when we talk about shutter speed it's normally related to exposure and in that case, the "pixel exposure time" is what matters. The scan time for the whole sensor only matters when the subject or camera is moving.

 

[masayoshi]

Well, when we talk about shutter speed it's normally related to exposure and in that case, the "pixel exposure time" is what matters. The scan time for the whole sensor only matters when the subject or camera is moving.

I like the 'pixel exposure time', instead of shutter speed. My problem is camera doesn't show 'scan time' anywhere so I need to go through try and error, how much I have 'gelo' effect for moving subject or the speed of panning. I really hope global shutter CMOS sensor.

 

[pdk42]

I like the 'pixel exposure time', instead of shutter speed. My problem is camera doesn't show 'scan time' anywhere so I need to go through try and error, how much I have 'gelo' effect for moving subject or the speed of panning. I really hope global shutter CMOS sensor.

I think we're pretty close to a so-called "global shutter". The Sony A9 and the E-M1ii are getting close. Olympus demonstrated a POC a while back that totally eliminated rolling shutter.

 

[Turbofrog]

I think we're pretty close to a so-called "global shutter". The Sony A9 and the E-M1ii are getting close. Olympus demonstrated a POC a while back that totally eliminated rolling shutter.

Yeah, if we're honest, I find that even the very slow (1/10s), first generation 12-bit electronic shutter in my GX7 is good for 99% of my shooting. I almost never turn it off unless I need to use flash, push ISOs above 3200, or am shooting multi-second exposures.

Obviously I'm not doing a lot of panned, high-speed BIF photos.

 

[Ziggy]

So just for fun here is one of my Darters thinking it's a Tree Creeper. Have to say I was gobsmacked and wonder without the shots whether anyone would believe me about this.

Again, I'm very happy with the sharpness of the plumage.

The shots are not edited and only saved to JPEG in LR with std sharpening. I never have to touch WB in the field but I do a fair amount of on-the-fly exposure compensation given the changing light and these contrasty birds. The front wheel is assigned to that.

Lining up ...

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A kick of the the feet and flapping the wings ...

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Having a rest & checking the audience ...

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Claws in, wings out ...

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Take a break, take in the view ...

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Still a way to go ...

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Wing assist ...

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Sticking the beak in as an anchor ...

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Made it!

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OK. Dry the plumage out a bit more. So, what next?

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Well, take a walk with a jump or two along this branch ...

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This is a bit of a stretch ...

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OK, airspace is clear ...

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And away we go ...

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So that's a pretty interesting bit of learning. Normally it would have to spend a good deal of time drying out in order to be able lift off from ground level but with a bit of ingenuity it's given itself more options.