GardenersHelper
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There is an ongoing discussion starting here in my Journey thread about comparing my FZ330 bridge camera and G5 micro four thirds camera for capturing images of invertebrates. David @davholla has very sensibly suggested that in order to get some like for like images I could capture some images of dead insects. And he suggested, again very sensibly I think, that to avoid unconscious bias on my part I should get someone else to compare the shots, with them not knowing which shot was from which camera. This post is asking you to look at some images and say whether you can see that one or other is better.
I want to find out which camera is better for me in real-life conditions. I therefore captured the images hand-held, using flash, and using the smallest available aperture to get the maximum depth of field. I used autofocus with a small focus box in the middle of the frame. This is my normal capture procedure for invertebrates. I captured images of three scenes. The first was about 18mm wide, which is a bit more than 1:1 for those used to thinking in terms of APS-C cameras, or around 2:1 in full frame terms. The other two scenes were smaller, both about 13mm wide.
I used a Raynox 150 close-up lens with the FZ330 and a more powerful Raynox 250 with the G5. Kitted out like this they both have pretty much the same minimum scene width of about 13mm wide. These are the configurations I typically use with these cameras. In both cases I used the KX800 twin flash.
When working hand-held, especially when there is a breeze like there was today, and with fairly small scenes, there can be a lot of variation from shot to shot, so I captured 10 images with each camera of two scenes, 40 images in total. When I came to look at the images the variation was so large that I captured 10 shots each of a third, static, indoor scene, and even with that one there was a lot of variation. For each scene I tried to place the focus box in the same place from shot to shot, and for the shots from each of the cameras, but as you will see the centre of focus is rather different from shot to shot, even with the static indoor scene. I'm afraid the angle of view is also more different than I would like for the first scene.
In order to keep the exercise realistic for the way I handle my images, I have given all the images the batch processing that I normally use in DXO Optics Pro and Silkypix. I usually do image-specific adjustments in Lightroom, but this time I simply exported from Lightroom as 1300 pixel high JPEGs, which is the size of image I normally produce.
The 60 images are in this album at Flickr. I have removed the Exif data. I know it is difficult with all the variation, but do you get a sense that one of these cameras did better than the other? If so, which one? If you could indicate what you saw that influenced your conclusion that would be very helpful.
I would welcome any help you can provide with this. Thanks.
I want to find out which camera is better for me in real-life conditions. I therefore captured the images hand-held, using flash, and using the smallest available aperture to get the maximum depth of field. I used autofocus with a small focus box in the middle of the frame. This is my normal capture procedure for invertebrates. I captured images of three scenes. The first was about 18mm wide, which is a bit more than 1:1 for those used to thinking in terms of APS-C cameras, or around 2:1 in full frame terms. The other two scenes were smaller, both about 13mm wide.
I used a Raynox 150 close-up lens with the FZ330 and a more powerful Raynox 250 with the G5. Kitted out like this they both have pretty much the same minimum scene width of about 13mm wide. These are the configurations I typically use with these cameras. In both cases I used the KX800 twin flash.
When working hand-held, especially when there is a breeze like there was today, and with fairly small scenes, there can be a lot of variation from shot to shot, so I captured 10 images with each camera of two scenes, 40 images in total. When I came to look at the images the variation was so large that I captured 10 shots each of a third, static, indoor scene, and even with that one there was a lot of variation. For each scene I tried to place the focus box in the same place from shot to shot, and for the shots from each of the cameras, but as you will see the centre of focus is rather different from shot to shot, even with the static indoor scene. I'm afraid the angle of view is also more different than I would like for the first scene.
In order to keep the exercise realistic for the way I handle my images, I have given all the images the batch processing that I normally use in DXO Optics Pro and Silkypix. I usually do image-specific adjustments in Lightroom, but this time I simply exported from Lightroom as 1300 pixel high JPEGs, which is the size of image I normally produce.
The 60 images are in this album at Flickr. I have removed the Exif data. I know it is difficult with all the variation, but do you get a sense that one of these cameras did better than the other? If so, which one? If you could indicate what you saw that influenced your conclusion that would be very helpful.
I would welcome any help you can provide with this. Thanks.
