The soon to be G9 (1 Viewer)

[Essex Tern]

On the G85 I have single central AF point on C1 and a diamond shaped area of several on C2, so switching for me is about turning the wheel. There is a button to turn for SAF to CAF or back. I find that works reasonably easy.

Niels

Pretty much the same as I used my G80 - on the G9 I can change the AF mode with just my thumb, without moving either hand away from it’s resting point, which is why I have gone this route so far.

Can’t say as if I have fully finalised my settings yet though, there are so many ways we could do things - at the moment I have just reduced things to what I really need for birding, a lot of function buttons I have made duplicates of others just so things don’t get over complicated with too many buttons for things I don’t need - if there is something I find I am missing in the field I will of course think again.

 

[rka]

Birding Trip test

Tested for about 4 hours this morning using 1-Area AF (the second from smallest setting) and decided to stay with E-Shutter. The lighting was generally good and took pictures and short clips in well lit and shaded (with decent secondary light) situations.

From this trip:

1. G9 focused generally very quickly on fairly static subjects and I thought I had many in-focus pictures until I checked at home on a larger screen. When the focus worked, the pictures were excellent. Keeper rate probably 30%.

2. G9 was very good with the few BIF of distant birds against a cloudy sky. 90% keeper rate.

3. My concerns about ISO from a previous post did not manifest here today. I got several shots at high ISO (i.e. 1600-6400) that would have been very challenging with the same lighting conditions with the EM5.

4. Video clips were a bonus and generally ok. Will need to develop better technique for holding steady. Video eats batteries.

5. I got 4.5 hrs of pics/short clips before the battery died. I would probably need 2 batteries to last a day.

All in all if Panasonic tweaks/improves the AF for stills of small fuzzy objects, this will be an excellent camera. All the other attributes are very good.

 

[rka]

More AFS Testing today.

Tested for 3 hours with 1-Area AF, Custom AF and the 255 AF options. Also tested many options for customising Function buttons.

Findings:

1. Generally AFS keeper rate on static objects was > 80% and I think I have figured out why it is much better than my last session (will give view later in post)

2. 1-Area AF was fairly consistent as before.

3. After trying many Custom AF patterns, the one that worked best for me which gave a higher % of sharp shots as compared to 1-Area was the single middle AF square. I will use this instead of pinpoint mode when the accuracy is needed.

4. The 225 AF shrunk down by about 1/3 also worked quite well for BIF or shots with 2 or 3 subjects.

5. Using video in Photo Mode (M) defaults to automatic settings. This leads to slightly overexposed video in dark settings (not too bad) and very underexposed video in scenarios where the bright sky is behind the bird. I’ll therefore use this if taking stills in even lighting or darker areas and quickly press the button for video. For strongly backlit scenarios, will use the Custom Video mode where I can set the Aperture/Shutter/ISO etc.

Regarding AF, my current theory is once the lens only needs a little bit of focusing, it will lock on the subject all the time. However if the subject in the lens is blurry and the background is closer to being in focus, the background locks on most of the time even if the AF zone completely covers the subject. Back to old method to handle this by focusing on something else at roughly the same distance to the bird and then get focus on the bird.

 

[njlarsen]

Regarding AF, my current theory is once the lens only needs a little bit of focusing, it will lock on the subject all the time. However if the subject in the lens is blurry and the background is closer to being in focus, the background locks on most of the time even if the AF zone completely covers the subject. Back to old method to handle this by focusing on something else at roughly the same distance to the bird and then get focus on the bird.

I have seen something like that on both this and the previous camera. The exception is the shot in a very dark area of a forest falcon I have alluded to above, where even a manually focused shot could not be repeated because the AF went completely off on the next half press. (but I am using the G85)

Niels

 

[Essex Tern]

Received my battery grip this week so took my G9 out for a test in the drizzle today. Think once I get some good light I shall be pleased with the results from the camera.

They are all biggish crops, and the Goosander is a fairly big crop, but my best record shot to date - just can't get close to them!