john-henry
Well-known member
I've been playing around with the F30 for a few days, and find it's a bit of a mixed bag really - one one hand you can get some pretty good pics out of it and on the other if not careful the camera does its best to take the edge off them by its agressive in-camera sharpening and noise reduction techniques. At times it's also a pain in the A*** with its settings, irregular white balance in poor light and a tendency to overexpose. But overall, in my non-expert opinion, I think it's one of the better digiscoping cameras on the market at the moment.
The lens is quite sharp and gives good detail, but one thing I found is the more you crank up the ISO the more the images look overprocessed resulting in lost detail and slightly 'blotchy' colours. Although noise is virtually non-existant Jpeg artifacts aren't and the higher the ISO used the worse these become, I found keeping the ISO as low as possible, but still giving a reasonable shutter speed, the better the images I got.
White balance was OK in AUTO in good light but a bit irregular when skies were grey and dull, trying SHADE in these conditions didn't seem much better but maybe I was expecting too much or just need to play around a bit more.
One thing I did find helped a lot was using EV compensation, minus values of 1/3 and 2/3 in bright light helped keep the highlights from being blown out and plus values in grey, dull light helped saturation and under-exposure of a dark bird against the sky.
Don't take what I've said above as bad points of the camera they probably apply to many others out there as well, it's more like helpful hints from the 500 or so shots I've taken so far.
Speed of operation is really fast, so fast in fact that when using top3 or bottom3 it's difficult to take just one frame, it's taken two before you realise it! The screen is really good, large, clear and usable for focusing.
The menus are quite easy to understand and access, ISO and EV, probably the settings changed most, have their own buttons which helps a lot.
That's about it for now, I'll post a bit more as I go along, and hopefully so will a few others as they find their way around the camera.
I,ve put some of the better pics I've taken below (and dumped loads more bad ones) with some of their EXIF data for reference.
Buzzard - ISO 100, 1/[email protected], +2/3 EV, 14.1mm zoom, WB-cloudy.
Cormorant - ISO 200, 1/[email protected], -2/3 EV, 22.1mm zoom, WB-auto.
Little Grebe - ISO 200, 1/[email protected], 18.1mm zoom, WB-auto.
Wigeon - ISO 400, 1/[email protected], 14.1mm zoom, WB-shade.
Spotted Sandpiper - ISO 400, 1/[email protected], -2/3 EV, 12.2mm zoom, WB- shade. (The -EV was a mistake on my part).
Regards
John
The lens is quite sharp and gives good detail, but one thing I found is the more you crank up the ISO the more the images look overprocessed resulting in lost detail and slightly 'blotchy' colours. Although noise is virtually non-existant Jpeg artifacts aren't and the higher the ISO used the worse these become, I found keeping the ISO as low as possible, but still giving a reasonable shutter speed, the better the images I got.
White balance was OK in AUTO in good light but a bit irregular when skies were grey and dull, trying SHADE in these conditions didn't seem much better but maybe I was expecting too much or just need to play around a bit more.
One thing I did find helped a lot was using EV compensation, minus values of 1/3 and 2/3 in bright light helped keep the highlights from being blown out and plus values in grey, dull light helped saturation and under-exposure of a dark bird against the sky.
Don't take what I've said above as bad points of the camera they probably apply to many others out there as well, it's more like helpful hints from the 500 or so shots I've taken so far.
Speed of operation is really fast, so fast in fact that when using top3 or bottom3 it's difficult to take just one frame, it's taken two before you realise it! The screen is really good, large, clear and usable for focusing.
The menus are quite easy to understand and access, ISO and EV, probably the settings changed most, have their own buttons which helps a lot.
That's about it for now, I'll post a bit more as I go along, and hopefully so will a few others as they find their way around the camera.
I,ve put some of the better pics I've taken below (and dumped loads more bad ones) with some of their EXIF data for reference.
Buzzard - ISO 100, 1/[email protected], +2/3 EV, 14.1mm zoom, WB-cloudy.
Cormorant - ISO 200, 1/[email protected], -2/3 EV, 22.1mm zoom, WB-auto.
Little Grebe - ISO 200, 1/[email protected], 18.1mm zoom, WB-auto.
Wigeon - ISO 400, 1/[email protected], 14.1mm zoom, WB-shade.
Spotted Sandpiper - ISO 400, 1/[email protected], -2/3 EV, 12.2mm zoom, WB- shade. (The -EV was a mistake on my part).
Regards
John