How to shoot?

After a month of messing around with the GH2 I finally sat down and went through every word in the poorly written manual and mastered the settings on the GH2 that had confused me but which I really wanted to use for my photographs.  I did a portrait assignment on location with the camera and its 14-140mm lens last week and, at ISO 160, the images were just right. (go figure).

But the big revelation to me was to set the preview to "constant" if I wanted to see real time changes in exposure, on the screen, when I changed camera parameters.  I also found the "sledge hammer" settings in the film modes for sharpness, contrast and saturation.  No fine tuning allowed.  The jumps are big.  But in Jpeg the one jump up to higher sharpness helped me zero in on what I wanted in my files.  More apparent sharpness.

My lens test, on Saturday, showed me that all of these cameras and most of the lenses are pretty darn good.  Even lenses from the 1960's and 1970's.  You just have to eliminate operator error or operator laziness.

I ran into a large group of photographers who were doing the downtown "photo walk" thing and I was surprised to see that none of them had embraced the smaller, mirrorless cameras yet.   Each participant was carrying a full sized DSLR.  One person was walking around, shooting handheld with a Canon 24mm tilt/shift lens on a big Canon body.  They all seemed to be having fun.

I was happy to be traveling light.  Just the GH2 and the Olympus 60mm 1.5.  Fast and easy.