taken at flat rock beach in early 2024 to try out my first few lenses that wasn't the kit lens. post shot was with the lumix 42.5mm f1.7 prime.
sooc, om-5
lumix 20mm f1.7 prime (also shot f1.7 because i didn't know any better at the time):
lumix 45-150mm f4.0-5.6 zoom:
3 Comments
KevinFRK@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
You nicely caught the awesome "Beams of Light onto Water" effect, I'm jealous.
Out of interest, why were you saddened by sticking at f1.7 on the other shot: I'd have thought "sharper close up, softer in the distance" was a fine choice for this sort of shot, and more light from a lower f setting into the camera is usually good.
kai_nyaccoon@pawb.social · 1 pts · 16h
i think the change would have been minimal, but for the coastline shot i should've gone with f4 or so for a marginally sharper shot and to better guarantee that the entire length of the coastline is in focus.
looking back at the exif data, it was 1/2000 f1.7 at 200 iso (automatic, lowest iso for my camera). definitely could have afforded to stop down a little to hit my lens sharpness sweet spot, though i wouldn't learn about that until months after this shot.
when i first got these primes, i definitely made the beginner mistake of shooting almost everything wide open. it's true that m43 sensors probably need all the light it can get, but there were plenty of scenarios where that's just not needed.
here are two examples shot about 2 weeks before the ones in the post, also cluelessly in f1.7 that suffer from a narrow dof:
it wasn't until much later when i saw these zoomed in on larger screens that i realized using f1.7 was a mistake here. ya live and learn.
KevinFRK@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 57m
Thanks for a full reply, and a lesson in why thinking about aperture is sensible with landscapes.
With the original, it felt right (or at least acceptable) for the sharpness to fade away, and you had the foreground sharp - though sweetspots, and plenty of light do suggest there were better settings.
The roadway definitely doesn't work well (as you say) because of the out of focus fence on the far left where the mind goes "That's close, it should be sharp".
With the transformers - less obviously an issue, but I think with such a complex scene, maximum sharpness across the subject is for the best, and I can well imagine there's a better choice of aperture to get more of it crisp.
Of course, I'm hardly the best to comment - my joy is wild birds, where there's rarely enough light, and the birds are usually far enough away that DOF covers them all: thus my f setting is almost always as low as possible.