R
Ranger 9
Guest
This evening I gave my newly-purchased G1 its first workout, shooting more than 1,000 frames at a theater rehearsal under pretty tough conditions.
The pictures themselves probably won't interest most people, but if you want to see how the G1 performs under low light, at high ISOs, with fast action, shooting into the lights, etc., you can see them by clicking this link.
The kit lens' modest maximum aperture was hopeless for this situation, so I used a selection of M-mount or M-adapted lenses via my Chinese-made adapter. Lenses used were 35/1.2 and 50/1.5 Voigtlander Noktons and 50/0.95, 85/1.5, and 100/2 Canons.
I intend to write up a blog post later, but a few pleasant surprises included:
And some not-so-good surprises:
Most of this stuff is livable, but I have to admit I'm going to need to do some soul-searching about whether or not I want to keep the camera in view of its ISO 1600 performance. I realize that isn't an issue for most people here.
The pictures themselves probably won't interest most people, but if you want to see how the G1 performs under low light, at high ISOs, with fast action, shooting into the lights, etc., you can see them by clicking this link.
The kit lens' modest maximum aperture was hopeless for this situation, so I used a selection of M-mount or M-adapted lenses via my Chinese-made adapter. Lenses used were 35/1.2 and 50/1.5 Voigtlander Noktons and 50/0.95, 85/1.5, and 100/2 Canons.
I intend to write up a blog post later, but a few pleasant surprises included:
-- I had surprisingly little trouble focusing manually without needing to use the magnified focus-assist feature; whenever I tried using the focus assist, I found no difference from where I had focused unassisted. Not needing magnification made action shooting easier.
-- The eye-level finder's brightness under dim conditions was a big help, and when shooting black-and-white, being able to see a black-and-white finder image is a nice feature.
-- The battery life was much better than I had expected. I was able to get through more than 400 exposures before the battery indicator stopped displaying "full." Since I had no spare battery, I put the one battery I did have in the charger during our one-hour dinner break. With this one top-off, I was able to shoot from 1:30 pm to 10 pm covering more than 1,000 frames.
-- The eye-level finder's brightness under dim conditions was a big help, and when shooting black-and-white, being able to see a black-and-white finder image is a nice feature.
-- The battery life was much better than I had expected. I was able to get through more than 400 exposures before the battery indicator stopped displaying "full." Since I had no spare battery, I put the one battery I did have in the charger during our one-hour dinner break. With this one top-off, I was able to shoot from 1:30 pm to 10 pm covering more than 1,000 frames.
And some not-so-good surprises:
-- ISO 3200 is basically unusable even by my rather lax standards, and 1600 is much less smooth-looking than my Epson R-D 1 at the same rating. I had to dial down to 800 to get images that looked as good as the R-D 1's at 1600. (There's one R-D 1 photo in the set for comparison.)
-- Shutter lag is surprisingly long for a non-reflex camera. I was able to deal with it by anticipating, but it was a challenge.
-- The camera isn't heavy, but the dinky front grip doesn't do a very good job of distributing its weight. I've actually got a blister coming out on the end of my third finger because that's where most of the stress is concentrated.
-- Shutter lag is surprisingly long for a non-reflex camera. I was able to deal with it by anticipating, but it was a challenge.
-- The camera isn't heavy, but the dinky front grip doesn't do a very good job of distributing its weight. I've actually got a blister coming out on the end of my third finger because that's where most of the stress is concentrated.
Most of this stuff is livable, but I have to admit I'm going to need to do some soul-searching about whether or not I want to keep the camera in view of its ISO 1600 performance. I realize that isn't an issue for most people here.