For example do this simple experiment:

With one hand close one eye and put your finger just in front of you but don’t cover the background, just move it a little bit to the right or left side, depending on which eye you had closed.
Now focus on your finger, just look at it and, don’t move your view from it! Try to see the background without moving your view from the eye. You can see that it’s blurred and your finger focused.
Now try the opposite, focus on the background and see at your finger without moving your view from the background. It should be blurred.
You have two fast prime lenses in your head! :)

We are used to see the world through our eyes, which behave approximately like a fast 50mm lens. That means that when we see a picture with a good bokeh our attention will point immediately to the subject and then we have the opportunity to admire the soft and nice texture of a blurred background.
Think about it, we are not able to see that background with our own eyes. Well, actually we are, but we cannot see it directly, we can only perceive it from the external borders or our vision.

To understand the technical details of the Bokeh, you need to understand the depth of field. For a technical explanation check the wiki. Anyway you don’t need to understand to go so deep into technical explanations to be able to use it. Let’s discuss here the practical (and funny) part of it.

The depth of field is directly related with the aperture. That is the amount of light that your lens let pass through it. The wider the aperture, and the bigger the blur. The narrower the aperture, the smaller the blur. Don’t get confused with the f/stop number. Check out the aperture controls in your camera.

Left: Wide aperture Right: Narrowed aperture

The number used to indicate the aperture is called the f-number or f/stop. There is not a concrete definition of the term stop in this context. Think about it as an attempt to say “something that stops light to enter!”. If we narrow the aperture, in some way we are stopping light to enter. The lack of a concrete context for the term “stops” could lead some confusion. Let’s focus on the practical matter: the f-number has a direct relationship with the diameter of the circle that we saw in the previous pics. Remember a big f-number indicates a narrowed aperture and a small f-number indicates a wide aperture. So don’t get confused. If somebody tells you “increase the aperture!!” what do you understand by that? Increase the f-number, “stops” light to enter or increase the diameter of the diaphragm?

Remember:

The smaller the number, the wider the aperture and the bigger the amount of light that will enter through the lens.

To obtain a good bokeh we need a wide aperture, that means a small f-number.
The best lenses to obtain this are the fast prime lens, the most common ones are the 50mm and 85mm at 1.2, 1.4 or 1.8F. Anyway, any lens that could be set to an aperture less than 2 or 2.5 is enough.

With this kind of photography we have to be specially careful of two things:

- It’s really hard to focus with such a small depth of field. We cannot rely 100% on the autofocus. Sometimes it’s necessary to deal directly with manual focus.

- In well illuminated environments we have the camera to shot at a huge speed. Depending on the equipment, sometimes the camera cannot afford the required speed. In such cases we can use an ND filter

ND FILTER (Neutral Density)

Check these three pictures that will show the meaning of the depth of field

If we narrow the aperture, the depth of field also changes and the sharped zone increases as well.

Also, the depth of field could be used to bring to focus the subject that we are interested to show. For example, in these two pictures, the second one shows the doll in the back giving a sense of depth. If we compare the second pic with the first one, we can see how we increase that sense of depth focusing subjects that are not in the first plane.

In this video, you have the depth of field in action.

Direct link here

The depth of field is a powerful concept that we can use for many different creative purposes. From a basic understanding, it’s used to put in evidence a particular subject and to catch our attention to the sharp point. From a generic point of view, depth of field is just an art, so let’s talk about it a later post.

Check some bokeh in Flickr

I bought one for 3000 yen ($33) in a shop in Akihabara (Techno district of Tokyo) that sells junk stuff. The glass is in perfect conditions and the big aperture plus the good ISO performance of the Pentax K-X makes a good combination for nocturne urban photography.

The lens started to be manufactured in 1962, based on the data in this database. It uses the old but popular M42 mount. Basically it’s just has a screw and you have to turn it until it got fixed into the camera body. In fact it’s not practical, it takes some time to change lenses. Actual Pentax K-X and other models don’t use that mount system anymore but there are adapters for them. I used an adapter that cost me the same as the lens!

This is the lens mounted on the Pentax K-X

I love the retro fashion of the lens :)

It’s not so big. Anyway it’s a little bit odd to see that lens in a new camera. When I see it, remembers me to see an old lady dressed as a teenager…

I love the bokeh and quality of this lens. It has a finest and soft bokeh, much better than the 50mm 1.4F for example. The aperture is manual and it’s better to use it in manual, because the camera automatic settings will get confused with no aperture control. When you use it in manual, changing the aperture and the focus, reminds me of a time where all those automatic capabilities was just science fiction. Changing manually the aperture and the focus, for some reason makes me feel a Leica experience. I just have to worry about few settings and I need an understanding of those settings as if they was part of myself. Just set the aperture, speed, focus and shot.

Don’t worry to buy old lenses. Just keep in mind that you maybe need to use only manual settings. It’s important to check carefully the lens, anyway. Scratches, malfunctioning or humidity could be there, hidden for an inexperienced eye, so if you still have no experience with this stuff, try to go to the shop with a friend that could advise you.
Soon I will publish a post about who to check the quality of used lenses.

To shot portraits do we need a studio? do we need a special high quality gear?
Of course if we have a studio, the knowledge, the time and the equipment we can do almost anything! But usually we lack of the necessary tools when we find the right person and the right moment to shot a good portrait.

This little Howto will explain how to do it with a DSRL, a small flash, an extension cable and a white sheet.
All this stuff can be easily carried in a bag.

Ok we are ready to shot portraits that looks like made in a studio.
Now the only thing we need to understand is the light.
Think about light as it was a high pressure water stream but without the damage that the water can produce. It’s easy to see the root source of a stream of water but it’s really hard to understand where the light comes from.
In a studio we can control light sources and direct it where we need. In case of an improvised portrait we have to minimize as much as we can non controlled light sources. That’s why we need a flash and a reflector, just to overcome environment lights.

Many other factors will come depending on the situation and the subject. For example, a cap, long hair, color of the skin and so forth. All of this can only be understood with practice and the practice is the funny part of this :)

How to make the background dark?

The darker the environment is the easier for this kind of portraits.
In case we have to take it in a well illuminated environment, we have to play with aperture and lights.
The flash light will be stronger than interior lights and this will help us.

For example, instead to bother a real model let’s take a drossel figma dool that will never complain to be tortured with the flash :)

This is the artificial illumination of a neon light at home. This is the illumination as perceived by a naked eye.

What we have to do is set the camera parameters so the background and the subject get totally dark without flash light. In this case I chose: aperture f/11 and speed 1/250.
Just increase the speed and reduce the aperture to minimize as much as possible the light that pass through the lens.

This picture still contain some information, if we increase exposure, brightness and fill light in Lightroom we can see that behind that dark square there is still something

So at this point we have to set our reflector as close as possible to the subject as well the flash. We don’t want that any light goes to the background, we want it dark.
This is the final result

Here you are, portraits everywhere and no need of studio or too expensive illumination equipment.

Finally this is the way to put the reflector and the flash.

In case the background don’t get totally dark, don’t worry, you can always use some post processing to make it dark :)

Check these pictures, they were made with the same technique in bars and streets:

So with these HowTo’s posts I want to explain how to develop that eye, and not how to understand that eye.
This makes a huge difference. Teaching how to develop something is nothing more than teaching one, of several paths, to reach the same point. So you don’t have to follow any path, you just have to see how other people feel and walk that path to get what you like for your own path. That’s why it’s not possible to explain the photographer eye, it’s only possible to show how people feel it. From that experience we can wake up our own one.

Let’s start with Composition. How important is to find the proportions and distance relationship between the elements in a photograph? There are some common rules called: Golden Rules If you don’t know them, please read about that first! Please don’t blame me because I told you before that no rule can explain how to develop the photography eye. These rules are related with the way humans perceive visual information. Of course, these rules can be broken to achieve the unachievable.

How can we put together the elements to have a good looking picture?

Every person, when seeing an image, has a different approach to it. Some people just see it as a whole, other people from one angle, because something called their attention, whatever.
So first of all, remember that it’s impossible to take a picture that everybody will love. Some people will consider it a crap and some of them may consider it a visual masterpiece.
Anyway, independently what people could think about the image, remember what a picture is, or one of it’s multiple definitions. It’s the art that captures that static moment in time, the real present. It can tell you a story.

Don’t try to think about this in the few instants before you shot it! Instead of that, try to get out with the proper attitude. You will notice how after some time, you will develop a better capacity to observe and see details that before just passed out unnoticed to your view. Take your time, see the things that surround you. Do those things tell something to you? Do you feel something when you see that moment that you thing it’s worth taking?

I got a good acceptance with this picture in flickr. It was taken with a Nikon D70, just a normal, entry level, old digital camera.
It was near one of the first places I lived in Tokyo, in Higashi Nakano.
To be honest, I didn’t feel really good that day. I started to live for a long term in Japan at the end of 2006, and at that time I was new here with almost no friends. I felt sometimes really alone.
So I decided to get out at night and do some photowalks until dawn was breaking in my lens.
So that picture tells a story, I still had a long path to do, starting my life in a new country, discover a new culture… It was dark, like my feelings of loneliness, and nobody was there, as my life was at that time.

So what I want to say is: if you shot your pictures and you just forget that you have a camera, try to feel the environment, smell the air, look at the simple things, like a street or a window, or a traffic light, or a taxi, whatever. Walk, see, feel, think, let yourself go… And in that moment, as an impulse, you will feel the need to share the whole moment with others. The only way to do it is using that camera in your hands!

So what about the composition???

So the secret is, when you see your story, when you feel that, when you are synchronized with the things you are seeing, in that moment try to see through the lens the same thing you are seeing with your eyes. Remember the basic rules and try, practice. After several shots you will realize the technical differences between the camera and your eyes. As a technical thing, you will be able to overdue these differences quickly and you will concentrate to develop that feeling, set your mind to the exploration and the harmony between you and the environment. You won’t have to worry what composition is anymore.

Try it and let me know your experience. Send me links of your pictures if you try to do this :)

Rule of Thirds

This rule is more about composition. It has a strong relationship about how humans perceive reality and how humans read visual information.
You just have to divide the frame in three parts horizontally and vertically. So we will have three zones and 4 intersection points.

Try to place the objects of interest in the intersection lines and avoid to center the object in the middle of the image.

Of course it depends, for example, in this picture I cropped it to put the main subject (it was me…) in the middle of the frame. Why? Because the main subject of this picture is not related to the sharpness of the image but to the whole situation that shows a man fighting the wind with his bicycle.

One more scenario where the Rule of Thirds is applicable is in landscapes, where the horizon line plays an important role in the composition. Just try to avoid the horizon line to divide the image in two perfect parts. Just place the horizon line in the upper third or the bottom third, depending on which part of the image you want to give more emphasis. For example, if it is the sky, put the horizon line in the first third from the bottom.

Of course there are exceptions, for example in this picture I preferred to leave the horizon line just in the middle because in this picture the important part is just the horizon!

Diagonal rule

In this case we use the zone indicated by the following image. The important part of the image will reside in the zone delimited by those lines.

For example these pictures can illustrate these rules:

Golden Spiral

One more application of the golden number is an spiral. The one I draw in the picture is not perfect, but it renders the idea.
It’s not necessary that the object takes the whole picture. The important thing is that the composition makes the eye move to the center of what you want to show.

For example in this picture, your eyes will go immediately to the faucet. Okay, it’s the biggest object in the composition, but if I would like to take the faucet in the middle of the frame, the eyes wouldn’t point directly to the faucet as in this case:

There are more rules, these are the basic ones and the possibilities to play with proportions and discover new properties are infinite… So let’s try and play :)

I was just riding my bicycle on a big bridge. The wind was really strong. I had to stop and go by walk so I thought that it was a good moment to shot a picture.
It was really hard because the wind moved the camera all time so finally I found a way to fix it against the border of the bridge. Fortunately it didn’t fall down to the water ^^;
Shot with a Canon G11

These are the pictures I got that day. De-saturation and other post processing with Lightroom.

I like to leave some parts in color and black and white. The thing that I’m trying to achieve is to do it as it was natural. The meaning depending on the moment. I feel different sensations when I see color or monochrome images. This sensation, this feelings I want to show could be expressed using the color as a medium. What do you feel when you see images with unreal color or lights?

To obtain this picture the camera was set for long exposure of 3 seconds. I hold a flash in my hand, and Ashe was ready to move as soon after the flash shots.
So: shot, flash and run. In this way the background mixed with the image of her.

Let me know if you like to see images post processed in this way.

I was riding my bike all around Tokyo, until Odaiba. In these days the weather is really cold here but the air is clean and there is no humidity at all. Perfect for night long exposure shots.
The main problem is to find a place with no vibrations. I didn’t have a tripod this time, but even with that it’s really hard to have a perfectly sharp image. The main reason is because Tokyo is a city with hundreds of subterranean trains, it’s in a seismic country and has a huge amount of traffic. It’s almost impossible to have a vibration zero zone.
The best place is in the top of a big building that absorbs almost all vibrations, and it’s specially made to resist earthquakes, so minimum earth movements remain almost unnoticed.

This place is near the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. I just stopped with my bike and took this pic.
The water gets no replacement… so I really don’t want to imagine to dive into it…

View from one of the bridges that connects Tokyo to Odaiba (an artificial zone made with recycled trash).

Cropped version :)

I like to desaturate certain zones of a photograph to express the feelings representing the desaturated and the colored zone. I didn’t want to continue because I already ride too many up and down bridges after a long day riding my bicycle.

It doesn’t mean that only a great job could be accomplished with effort, and suffering, neither with primitive tools but the condition of “I have nothing more than this to do what I want to do; and what I want to do is going to exceed beyond the possibilities of my tools” is the condition that set our minds to start with the creative process to achieve what actually seems unachievable.

The camera in the iPhone is a crap, everybody knows that, but the challenge to do a great picture with it shots our imagination beyond the machine and its limitations, allowing the photographer to express, maybe easily, his/her talent.

It happened in the past when cameras were far away from the quality of our days and when digital photography was just science fiction. With very limited tools, photographers did a great job. Today to accomplish something similar we need some kind of limitation in our gear. The iPhone, just imposes that limitation and forces us to use our imagination to find the moment, the right composition and a plus: to use our imagination to combine several tools to edit our pics.

The only difference is that before the post processing happened in the dark room playing with time, mixture of chemicals, light, filters and so on. Now we have to do that using software. Anyway, at the end, the result is the same: improving our creativity and going always beyond limitations.

These are some pictures I took these last 6 months. I still need to get used to my iPhone camera.

Taking pictures with the iPhone force me to think different. I have to think about the limitations of its camera and how to show what I want to show. It’s interesting to have this kind of challenge, it’s a way to train myself in different scenarios where this crap of camera is all what I have :)

What do you think about mobile phone pictures?
The quality is not good? Do they force us to stimulate our imagination?

That day, my friend Danny Choo took the occasion to organize a meetup for a photoshot of the girls and then a photowalk around Shibuya

They are already 20 and supposedly adults. How many things do they already know about life?

Do you notice something unusual? There is a Storm trooper in the ceremony! ^^;

The Mac store in Shibuya is trying to sell iPhones to Stormtroopers as well.

Danny with two Guardian Angels in Shibuya.

There was also a small show. I like the gear in the picture on the left. It’s a flying camera :)
It was hard to catch the chair, I missed the first one and then I did as much as I could to be ready to catch the second one.

Check also the pictures of:

@stevenagata, Photoset on Flickr

@iMorpheus, Photoset on Flickr

@tamegoeswild, Photoset on Flickr

@KyleHase, Photoset on Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting website and actually is one of the best and most visited sites for this purpose. By the way, many photographers asked me sometimes why I chose Flickr. The main complains from non Flickr users that I heard were:

1. The interface is ugly
2. It’s hard to browse
3. It’s not intuitive
4. I cannot create my own template
5. The design does not match my own style

Well I don’t agree with those assumptions, so instead to reply individually, let’s do it in this post.

Flickr is more than an online album or a hosting website for image and video. Flickr is the online Swiss knife for a photographer. It’s a tool that has the flexibility to adapt and help to promote and make a great diffusion of our photography work.

The interface is ugly? Well, what is ugly? It’s a personal and subjective impression. Maybe for some people it is ugly and for others it doesn’t. What about Google for example. Do you think that Google design is elaborate? It has the same design as 10 years ago! But it’s the best search engine out there and because it’s fast and useful it becomes a good tool.
Well for Flickr it is the same. It’s a powerful tool.

It’s hard to browse. It has a complete set of options for search. You can perform search by licenses, cameras, tags, people, titles, groups and so forth. Is it hard? It depends, if you just want to perform a simple search, go to Google and search for an image. Flickr can do sharp searches inside its database. In fact it’s used by many publishers to find great photos. Thanks to it’s powerful search options some publishers got in contact with me to buy full resolution pictures, for example here, here, and here

It’s not intuitive. To make something powerful you cannot make it stupid. Usability forces the user and the designer to reach a point of balance to keep the interface useful and easy. Flickr has a good balance, it’s useful for professionals and it is still easy to use for people that just wants to see pictures. Look at Flickr interface for a minute and please “read” the links in there. You can find a full set of options. There is also a slide show button that lets you see the pictures in a more fancy way.

I cannot create my own template. Please! Flickr is not a myspace-like site. It’s an online photo and video hosting service. It’s the visual-data-base of your photography life. Flickr provides more flexibility than just allowing users to create a simple template.
Flickr has an API that allows third party applications to make use of all its capabilities. There are hundred of applications making use of its API to present your photography in the way you desire.
For example:

1. Moo cards. Cheap and good quality business and personal cards totally customizable. Just link your Flickr account and feed moo with your photographs.
2. phpFlickr it is a class written in PHP by Dan Coulter you can use this class to create custom websites using the pictures in your Flickr account.
3. Many plugins for wordpress, check this list
4. And hundred of more applications out there, check this huge list

So you can create your own template to show your work stored in Flickr, using it not only as a storage system. Look at it as an interactive database of your visual work. Your own rules, your own design and an interface to interact with your content. Is that not enough?

The design does not match with my own style. Do you want to use Flickr as your own portfolio? And it doesn’t match with the design that represents your style? As in the previous point, think about it as a tool that, among many other things, includes also a web interface. It’s a tool, and as a tool the aim of it is to be used as a tool. Create your site, design it and use Flickr as your own database.

The final and more important characteristic of Flickr is the social aspect. Creating a photo and video hosting service with an indexed database and a search system build on it, is nothing far away from what we can find out there in other services. But creating a video and image hosting service that is also social, is a challenge and Flickr accomplishes that.
It helped me a lot to find people with amazing and inspiring work. It also helped me a lot to put me in contact with many photographers around the world and near my city. It has all the social tools to fit perfectly in a Web2.0 experience.

The social aspect of Flickr is the most important thing of it. If people don’t see your pictures, it’s the same that your pictures do not exist. Art made by humans will feed human minds. Social means people, people means eyes and minds that see what another mind saw through a lens. The feelings, sensations and messages hidden in any pictures can only by understood and transmitted if the public have access to them.

Where do you upload your pictures?
Why do you prefer a different platform?
What is the thing you really hate of Flickr?

This is not a pro camera, it’s an entry level one. But to be honest, you can have the same performance as many pro equipments. This camera has really full set of options, a big manual to read and a really huge menu to configure almost anything. BUT the great thing is that Pentax K-X has options for people that don’t know anything about photography as well. It’s possible to use it in automatic and never enter in the menu. This is a great thing and a big challenge at the same time: “How to make a camera that will make a pro feel comfortable and an amateur feel that an DSRL is not hard to use.”

Before introducing the details, here you have a quick description.

Good: Pentax K-X is good for night photography, it has a wonderful ISO competitive with high end pro cameras. It’s fast to focus, is light and easy to carry. It has a nice design, it takes the advantage of doing video with a DSRL, it’s compatible with almost all Pentax lenses, even the very old ones. It’s completely configurable and, at the same time, extremely easy to use. It’s good for pro and amateur. It has a really good price!!

Bad: It’s noisy, the plastic is good, strong but cheap. The menu design is ugly but at least really functional. It lacks of video and HDMI output.

The design is unique! You can choose from several colors combination. If I have to be honest with you, I confess that I never was interested in these things, but having something that is not only good for its purpose but also nice, helped to set my mind in a more creative and funny attitude.

It’s equipped with a High resolution 12.4 megapixel CMOS image sensor. K-X also features sensor-shift Shake Reduction for stabilized image and video capture up to 4 stops max! I tried it and I could really notice the difference! Specially when I was carrying the 300mm lens. I usually use that lens in the night, so helped by the darkness and the distance, I could have a discrete photowalk ;-)

The LCD is large up to 2.7 inches, featuring Live View with contrast, phase difference, and Face Detection autofocus. The quality is really good and the image is almost the same in a real monitor.

It also performs a widescreen HD video capture in full 720p resolution (1280×720) at 24 FPS cinematic framerate. It can use any PENTAX 35mm lens giving the possibility to experiment a huge range of angles. I will upload a video that I’m preparing to show the quality of the video with this camera later on.

I usually process my pictures in Lightroom but for those that love to do on-the-fly processing, like changing colors or applying special filters, this camera has a huge set of effects as many compact cameras do.

It has a fast 4.7 FPS capture speed and 1/6000 second maximum shutter speed. Specially for sport or nature pictures. I also use this option to shot people expressions in events. This is something I learned from my friend Jim Grisanzio. Just a little change in the muscles of the face makes a huge difference in the final expression. In portraits the subject knows that he/she is going to be photographed but in events, people is not usually aware of this, and photographers take advantage of this situation to catch natural expressions. It’s hard to catch that moment, specially for moving subjects. In this case a good FPS capture ration helps a lot. Check Jim’s pictures in flickr, to understand what a really natural expression means :)

The focus is fast!! It’s noisy, but fast. A responsive 11 point wide angle SAFOX VIII autofocus system helps for this purpose and can easily track moving subjects.

One more great thing is that it uses common universally available and easy-to-find AA lithium batteries (also compatible with AA NiMH rechargeable and alkaline batteries). I already tried using just one charge for the whole day and I didn’t even see the battery low signal.

Let’s talk about the lenses. I got the combo with the 18-55mm that also matches the color of the camera and a 300mm.
The performance and quality is really good. Some of the pictures bellow can be downloaded in full resolution.

The ISO is just GREAT! For that price I have a 6400 ISO with a really low level of noise!
Just to compare the ISO and the differences with older cameras and a new Canon G11 check this pictures at different ISO’s.
Speed 1/100 and 5F for all pictures.

Pentax ISO 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400. Click the images to see the original full resolution, it’s huge!

Nikon D200: ISO 400, 800, 1600, 2000, 3200. Click the images to see the original full resolution, it’s huge!

Canon G11: ISO 400, 800. Click the images to see the original full resolution, it’s huge!

Nikon D70: ISO 400, 800. Click the images to see the original full resolution, it’s huge!

One more example using the Pentax K-X with ISO 1600 in the night of Shinjuku (Tokyo), click to enlarge full size:

These are some pictures that I took with Pentax K-X during these days. I’m still getting used to it :)

Do you feel dizzy? I really feel dizzy when I look at this picture…

Do you like the colors?
Do you feel uncomfortable to carry a colored full camera with you?

I think that other makers should think about this possibility. The color does not change the quality of the camera. I would like to see a Nikon D3s in red or blue! why not! Don’t you?

Thank you for your comments on Flickr and feed back!

Some pictures about yesterday night. The portraits have been made in the bar, the Hobgoblin in Shibuya.

Yukari Morishima, twitter: @yukari_m and Satoka F, twitter: @lhuga

Of course everybody had a poken :)

Mary Gibson, twitter: @maryag

Coming back home in West Shinjuku. You can find good yakitori in these streets. It was already late at night, no more trains and January 2nd, of course almost no people around :)

This is a Chochin. In Spanish this word has an interesting meaning ^^;

Do you have a Beer & Blog group in your city?

The main advantages I find in this camera are the size, the low weight and the great functionality in such a small thing. It has the right size, not too big not too small. The weight is enough to keep the camera steady.

The 10.0 Megapixel CCD sensor is enough. I don’t want more Megapixels for a compact camera. The reduction of Mp in the G11 improved the light sensitivity compared to the previous model, the Canon G10 that was equipped with a 14.7Mp sensor.

The 5x wide-angle (28-140mm equivalent) zoom lens with optical image stabilizer really works in any situation. I shot at 1/20 sec and the image got quite well stabilized, almost no blurred. The only thing I miss is the possibility to create huge bokeh as I’m used to with lenses of 1.4F or 1.8F/stops.

I don’t care too much about the LCD screen. It has a 2.8” tilt/swivel LCD (461k dot resolution) It’s really enough to check the results. Compared to the G10 model, Canon made the LCD movable and this makes life a lot easier specially because this concept matches with the idea of a “combat field” compact camera. It’s perfect to catch moments and don’t get noticed, like this:

I never used RAW image recording for compact cameras. In this case I have to think twice due to the quality. In good conditions the G11 can match the same quality as many DSRL where a RAW format makes more sense for post processing. Also the decrease in price of the storage, makes it easy to save in RAW.

For those that don’t want to think too much about the controls, the G11 have 26 shooting modes with manual control and custom settings to match almost any situation. Anyway all controls can be set manually becoming a good choice also for pro or advance amateur photographers.

The video quality didn’t change too much from its predecessor the G10, VGA movies, 30fps. Just be careful with the memory card. If it’s a normal slow one, the video gets some delays creating some jumps like in this one:

It also has a great while balance control. Specially I love the on site average white balance calculations. It determines pretty well the real colors in hard situations.

Personally I don’t like the strap it comes with. It’s too small and the camera weight is not enough to make the strap steady around your neck. So I prefer to use a hand-strap that also gives me the versatility to hide the camera easily in my bag or in my pockect, in situations where photographers are not welcomed :)

It has two memory banks you can select. For example, create a configuration in the menu and then save it in one of the two memories, C1 or C2. Every time you switch to one of those, the settings will be automatically set. I use it to have a black and white configuration, so anytime I need it, I don’t have to waste time looking through the menu settings. I just set the C1 memory and that’s it.

The optical view finder is useless, but sometimes I use it because I’m used to DSRL cameras more than compact ones. It does not represent the real view and there are no indicators inside. The viewfinder do not reflect the input from the lens as well, it’s just a glass that provides some approximate references about what we are going to shot.

The Macro is pretty good, in fact is one of the best things of this camera. See some examples:

The battery is powerful enough to stay one entire day of non-stop-shooting.

You can find this cameras for a reasonable price at Amazon and if you live in Japan don’t forget to check kakaku.com

Did you tried this camera already?
Feel free to comment your feedback.