River Video using a DSLR and CineMover

Recently travelling through northern New Hampshire, I was driving along the Ammonoosuc River shortly before sunset.  This short video is a compilation of shots all filmed that evening along the river.  The key scene is a dolly move along a metal bridge. 

Driving that evening, I was looking for photo opportunities along the river when I spied the new bridge next to the old bridge.  Then I noticed the long smooth railing and and remembered that I had the CineMover dolly with me. 

 The CineMover is an inexpensive dolly created by J.G. Pasterjak.  Take a look for yourself here:

http://moveyourcamera.com

The CineMover is designed with vertical wheels and horizontal wheels, ideal if you have a long flat rail with a square profile.  However this railing here did not entirely favor the CineMover as the railing shape is basically a half oval.  There is nothing here to insure that the wheels track straight.  Additional care was required because the rail had a significant dent that could easily cause the rig to jump a bit.  But after several attempts, I managed to keep the rig mostly level along the 12 or 15 feet of uninterrupted rail; this move is not flawless, but it is pretty nice shot!

Panasonic Lumix G3

A picnic this week provided opportunity for my fIrst test drive of the Panasonic Lumix G3.
I am very pleased with the ease of use and the image quality. I was super impressed by the face-detection auto-focus and the LCD-touch-screen focus selection.

 Shown here is my favorite shot, Balasankar dishing up a nice overhand serve.  As you can probably guess, I am holding the G3 over my head for this shot.  An articulated/swivel display screen is very helpful for overhead shots and also down-on-the-ground shots.  I quickly learned to love this feature on the C-5060 (very few cameras had this feature back in 2004/5) and I absolutely required it for a replacement camera. The 3-inch swivel-touch-display on the G3 is a sweet upgrade.

ISO 800, f\6.3, 1/800 sec, auto white-balance
Shot as JPG  (not RAW)

(click the image for a larger view)

 

And here are a couple more shots with the same 14mm lens (equivilent to a 28mm on a full-frame DSLR).

 

Camera Upgrade – Panasonic G3

Across two decades, I have owned/used three film cameras, two digital cameras, and one video camcorder.  Recently, I acquired a new camera to replace my old digital compact.  The new camera is a Panasonic Lumix G3. 

The G3 is a relatively compact camera with interchangeable lenses.  It is half the size of my Canon DSLR.  The G3 is a Micro Four-Thirds camera.   Because Four-Thirds and Micro Four-Thirds are both open standards (jointly developed by Olympus and Panasonic), the camera can accept lenses from different vendors, such as Olympus, Panasonic, and Leica.

The biggest reason I replaced the old compact camera is poor low-light performance.  The old camera had a maximum ISO of 400 and was prone to a good deal of chromatic noise.  The new G3 has a maximum ISO of 6400 and the noise is far less than the old camera at ISO 400.  

The ability to record images in low-light is largely a matter of the image sensor.  Most small cameras employ small image sensors, which perform poorly in low light.  In recent years, some small-to-medium size cameras have been employing larger image sensors.  The G3 features a Four-Thirds sensor, which is about six times larger than the sensor in the old C-5060 and is half the size of the image sensor in my DSLR.  G3 has three times more pixels than the C5060, while the image sensor size is six times larger. So the individual pixels are larger; and, theoretically, larger pixels can take in more light.   But this is theory; the proof is the actual image quality.