New advances in digital cameras now include Live View LCD Focusing and Movie Mode. Those cameras can make the best lens from the year 2000 and seem out of date as they are incapable of Maximizing those features! These are very important considerations to weigh when making your next lens purchases.

Olympus and Panasonic/Leica were leaders in this new technology soon joined by Sony and now Nikon, Canon and others are following. The amazing advantages of Live View Focusing on the LCD allow one to fine tune manual focusing in ways never possible with an optical viewfinder. Beginning with the Panasonic G1 and the Olympus P1 Digital Interchangeable Lens Cameras without using a Mirror came onto the market. The advantage of reducing the distance from the lens mount to the sensor by half makes these systems amazing for use in shooting from the hip with articulated LCDs. The display can be extended, rotated and shooting from the ground or overhead becomes a breeze. Panasonic was one of the first to release an Electronic Viewfinder that uses a super high resolution display at the eyepiece without need for a optical view through the lens. The advantages to such displays become obvious when shooting macro or manually focusing precise settings that cannot be seen with the naked eye through an optical viewfinder.

The old methods of autofocusing a lens become useless on such advanced systems. Contrast Detect Auto Focus is one way the camera can focus a new type of lens without a mirror. This allows one to see the autofocus on the LCD without shutting off the display while it focuses. If you own lenses prior to 1999 they probably cannot focus this way! The first lenses made to use the new focusing technology tended to jerk into focus and make an audible sound when focusing from point to point which now renders those lenses undesirable for use in High Definition video which most of the new cameras include. Panasonic/Leica was one of the first to release Silent Focusing Lenses that smoothly move from one focus point to another in a transitional method. This is clearly the bar for all new lenses to attain in order to be functional for today’s digital camera technology.

Be cautious about your purchases of lenses to think ahead and find lenses that can take full advantage of new camera technology. 95 percent of lenses on the current market do not have the ability to Contrast Detect Auto Focus and of those only a small percent have silent focusing motors for use with video.

Now this year Panasonic/Leica and Olympus are again first to release Power Zoom lenses for digital camera systems. This allows for transitional zooming that is smooth and desirable for use in video applications. Micro Four Thirds is the most complete mirrorless camera system on the market. Tamron and Tokina Kenko just joined this format to release new lenses that maximize this technology. Sony NEX and now Nikon also have camera systems without a mirror. Many top dog shooters have purchased a smaller mirrorless camera system thinking it would be a novelty second camera for them only to find that in a matter of a couple months adopting it as their primary method of imaging leaving their old clunky Digital SLRs with optical viewfinders sitting on the shelf. Many admit using the bigger older systems just to impress by size the fact that their camera looks more pro like cause it’s big when shooting for clients, but prefer the advantages of the new mirrorless systems for ease of use and precise focusing.

Be sure to think ahead when making future camera and lens purchases rather than just buying the next release of what you had before. The advantages to the new systems are numerous and offer new and innovative ways for more creative digital photography.

I began using Live View systems that could autofocus with the Olympus E-330 which split the view between optical and LCD. Then the Olympus E-510 and the E-3. When I moved to the E-30 it could autofocus without flipping the mirror with Contrast Detect Autofocus. With the Panasonic G-1 I moved to having an electronic viewfinder and always live view autofocusing. I now added the Panasonic GH-2 which is amazing with professional level high definition video and silent autofocusing lens with a FOV of 28-280 mm. The GH-2 even has touch screen autofocus to move the focusing by touch to various subjects while shooting video. It is truly amazing how fast digital cameras have come since my first Olympus C-3030 I began with in 2001.

Although some feel you must have Canon or Nikon to get quality professional camera it is important to note that Olympus and Leica are also known for making lenses of the highest quality and also Sony with their ownership of Zeis lenses. When you next visit a real camera store be sure to try out other brands and systems. Each has various advantages for certain types of shooting. Moreover think ahead in purchasing lenses than can focus with mirrorless camera systems and have silent focus motors to avoid a purchase today that you won’t be using in a year or two when you upgrade your camera.

Barry Weber

Barry Weber

Meeting on the big day of the Groundhog! Since we haven’t had much winter here by the first week of January, perhaps the Groundhog’s role might easily be ignored. The photo subject for images is to shoot winter outdoor activities. Hockey, sledding, skating, snowmobiling, whatever your imagination can capture. Please bring images along on a USB stick or CD in JPG form. We recommend 3 of your best choice images per person, recommending one image per subject to keep our image viewing fresh. The meeting begins at 6:45 p.m.

Are you a laptop and desktop computer user? Do you shoot a lot of RAW images? One idea to best server a multi-computer user, is to store all your raw files onto an external Firewire or USB drive that is self-powered. That way all your work projects can quickly float to whatever computer you use. It also avoids that painful cleanup sessions to free one’s laptop of storage space when needed. Users of Lightroom or Aperture might consider creating a unique library for each photo project. That enables one to backup each project onto DVD using one to a couple DVDs. I suggest having a certain discipline to assure non-deletion of images. I personally burn 2 DVD copies of all images shot at the end of each day of shooting. Usually small projects can fit onto a single DVD. Double sided DVDs are helpful to avoid spanning across multiples. Software such as Toast for Macintosh can safely span many DVDs for archival purposes. Another idea to have a full show and tell library of finished images is to create 10 quality JPG image of each final favorite and store it on your laptop. Users of iCloud, iPhone, iPhoto, iPads might want to create an iPhoto library that only contains final showpiece images which will then automatically sync across all your devices for easy sharing. Be sure to include archiving as a part of your initial processing before deleting images from the camera cards. Good housekeeping techniques in archiving images can free up creative time for more shooting, and avoid unpleasant maintenance or clean up time from hard drives. Another sensible backup approach is to consider purchasing additional hard drives that can be stored in your safe or fireproof storage off site. Now that an internal 1 Gb Harddrive is about $100 or under, there are little drive docks that look like toasters, where you can just drop a drive in and backup your stuff. Labeling an archive drive with a month, a quarter, or a year of final images can be a best choice for later retrieval of your full RAW files and projects. How you choose to archive your files will depend greatly upon the volume of shooting you do. If you have any ideas or questions about how to manage the resources of files photography generates, please share or ask for input at our meetings.

It’s that time of year again. We will be having our holiday party at the December 1st meeting. Bring your spouse or significant other and join in on the conversation and enjoy the food. Plenty of food and drink will be available and I don’t want to take it all home, so come hungry and leave satisfied.

The photo topic for the December meeting is “the first signs of winter”, which does not have to be snow related. Nothing else but the party is on the agenda for this meeting.

Join members photographing displays of art along with street scenes and after dark shooting too. Tripod recommended. Supper at Jimmy Johns on 5th Avenue between 5 and 6 pm.

Meet outside restaurant at 6 pm to move along art crawl and shoot.

The topic for the September 1st, 2001 meeting is “Hands”. Hands in any location or configuration whether human or not are fair game. Bring your 3-4 best to share during the meeting.

Don’t forget the August 18th photo shoot in Cold Spring. We will meet starting at 5:30pm at the restaurant next to the Cold Sping Bakery. The sun is setting earlier these days, so we won’t have as much daylight shooting time as in St Joseph earlier this summer.

Cameracat

My sister asked me if there was any way to get deleted photos off of a memory card. I said I didn’t think so, but someone she knows was able to, but it cost an arm and a leg. They were deleted accidentally and there was a trip to Canada on there. Also, some of her daughters Project 365 pics too. The card hasn’t been formatted again and no new pictures taken on it. Just wondering if any of the great minds of the Camera Club had any answers.

Thanks!