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Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby AJB Temple » 17 May 2022, 13:53

I think you got your left and right muddled Novo?

Andy. It is a fact that you have bought a big zoom attached to a minuscule sensor - because you are at a price point. If you get the photo bug you will want to go full frame and good glass, but for now you have a handy and convenient camera that is capable of some good shots. It's never going to be fantastic in low light so just accept that compromise and focus on well lit scenarios.

The more you crank up ISO from a good light base level (typically ISO 100) the more noise you will get. If you are shooting in aperture priority (as many do unless shooting sports or birds) then you will find yourself cranking up the ISO to get the shutter to fire fast enough to avoid camera shake. That is greatly exacerbated by low light: you are fighting camera shake and under exposure. Shooting in JPEG makes this worse as there is less you can do about it in post. If you use auto mode in the camera (almost always a bad idea) then the camera may just crank up the ISO.

When you next visit my place I will show you a full frame camera with what people call "fast" glass. That just means a lens capable of wider aperture (hole) to let in more light (but requires the glass to be more perfect, and thus more costly). If you do some low light or night shots with it, say of the moon, especially on a tripod with remote shutter release (because that eliminates shake) you will see a huge difference in image sharpness.

Remember that the further away the object is, the worse effect camera shake has. This is because the angle of lines from you to each side of the subject back to you is very narrow. So you don't need to move much to shift the image. Just breathing moves the camera....

Reading books is OK but there is no substitute for walking round for a afternoon or a day with someone who knows what they are doing and can teach you. Are there any courses or clubs in your area?
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby TrimTheKing » 17 May 2022, 14:26

Can some of that noise in Andy's first shot also not be attributed to the fact that the 28MB raw file has been compressed to JPG before being uploaded, then compressed down to 141KB by the forum software...
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby novocaine » 17 May 2022, 14:51

TrimTheKing wrote:Can some of that noise in Andy's first shot also not be attributed to the fact that the 28MB raw file has been compressed to JPG before being uploaded, then compressed down to 141KB by the forum software...


it won't help it, but the noise is already there, it isn't losses from compression as it's to random, it's as Both Adrian and woodster say, due to the size of the sensor and the racking up of the ISO (think of it as similar to gain in sound recording).
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Andyp » 17 May 2022, 15:29

So Adrian what you have so politely pointed out is that I can’t make a silk purse from sow’s ear :) .

I really do appreciate the sage advice from everyone here. It has been very educational and I will persevere. Something that has become evident is that my eyes are not as keen as some of you and what I consider to be a good photo does not pass muster with the more knowledgeable. I am not by any means knocking the critiques, I would not have posted had I not been willing to learn.

Summer is not a time for lunar photography as I am usually in bed before it gets dark enough. Last night was an unscheduled awakening at 2am. Tripod and the techniques advised will be used at a later date.

Adrian is right the camera gives me a level of quality relative to it’s price and a quality that I am happy with. I hope we will have time on a future visit for Adrian to show me a side by side comparison of his better camera and lenses against mine, although I doubt I will be tempted to invest further.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Woodster » 17 May 2022, 15:50

I’ve not tried it myself but you could try taking a series of photo’s of the moon and then stacking them with software. I’ve used Affinity Photo software on a simple macro stack and it worked well and the software isn’t expensive.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/


https://petapixel.com/2020/10/28/eli5-t ... rs-signal/
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby TrimTheKing » 17 May 2022, 16:06

If I remember I'll set mine up later and try and get a snap for comparison. I've got a Canon 5Dmkii with a couple of lenses. Not the top of the range by any stretch, but a decent camera and I enjoy getting what I think are decent pics from it. I've got 70-200mm & 28-135mm lenses for it, so will take the same pic with both and see what they come out at, just for comparison purposes.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Pete Maddex » 17 May 2022, 17:04

Don’t forget the moon is moving to slow an exposure and it will come out blurred.

Do test shots at different iso and find the highest that is acceptable, modern cameras are much better than older ones, my Nikon D300 I was limited to iso 800 my D850 is good to 16000 a huge leap in performance

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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby AJB Temple » 17 May 2022, 17:23

5D MkII that Mark has is a good camera and, crucially, full frame. With decent glass it is more than capable of astro photography.

Andy - think to remember is that it is not about the gear, it's about the creativity of the man or woman behind the lens. Your camera is perfectly capable of taking great shots, but the limitations of it mean that good light is your friend. Very long zoom is a challenge for anyone, and firms who flog massive zoom lengths in small packages are just marketing. There is a reason why sports and wildlife snappers cart those massive 400mm or larger lenses about, and often use a DX type camera (has a multiplier effect).

I was mainly suggesting that I show you some of the photography tricks that were taught to me, and get you up the compositional learning curve a bit quicker. No need to spend any more money.

Personally I find long zooms really difficult to use. The big snag for me is that with quality glass (Canon L for example) they are really heavy and with cheap glass they are really slow. I think our longest is actually a Sigma 600 which we bought for bird photography and aviation. However, it is difficult to find the subject if it is moving quickly, and you need to be spot on with all the settings. It's a particular skill and I don't really have it.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby novocaine » 17 May 2022, 18:31

I think I might be the closest to your setup whilst still being a good DLSR. I have a 60d, so not full frame. My "glass" is OK but there is no L in its name. I also have a 400d which is pretty damn close to yours. Longest real lense is 200mm (tamron).o longest not real lense that was bought specifically for astro photography but is rarely used is a 500mm mirror lense.

You can see my photostream on flickr for what it was some years ago, before they changed the usage and I stopped using it. There is very little that's really special but for the most part it's all OK.

You can make a good image with an OK camera, you just need to know it's limits, which right now you are finding out quite nicely.
For the record.this isn't from an SLR.

https://flic.kr/p/5XdRQU

Nor this.

https://flic.kr/p/8vin7A

Image qauikty wise, they are OK, they would blow up to a3 size (I have, and they did), conpostionally though they are OK and I'm fairly sure one place quite well in the northwest photography competition a long time ago.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Woodster » 17 May 2022, 19:25

Pentax used to be one of the best for nighttime photography as the K1 has a built in Astrotracer. I think one of their cheaper models may also have it.

https://milkywayphotographers.com/artic ... to-use-it/
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Andyp » 17 May 2022, 19:46

Ah, Snowdon, brings back memories,
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Andyp » 18 May 2022, 07:49

I took this yesterday afternoon using my excuse for a tripod.
That church is 1.49 miles away from my front room. I had to use a 10 second timer on the camera as the vibrations from the tripod after hitting the shutter release shook the camera more than when hand held.

73ED0E29-A60C-4094-B656-76ADEF9E0B27.jpeg
(799.07 KiB)

https://flic.kr/p/2nmboXW

AD565031-AF9E-48A2-A795-EF221C5A4B80.jpeg
(85.8 KiB)


Sadly cloud cover last night prevented another shot of the moon.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Chris152 » 18 May 2022, 08:07

I'd say that's a very impressive shot for that distance, Andy!
As for the moon, it's actually really bright and shouldn't be causing any low-light sensor noise (that said, I've only tried to photograph it once, but was amazed how bright it is - my first shots were way overexposed).
And yes, that's not the ideal tripod! Very elegant tho... :-)
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby novocaine » 18 May 2022, 08:52

I've got that tripod, it's my travel light one. it's great although a bit flimsy. I added a hook underneath it so I can put a central tie to the ground to stablise it if needed.

good shot.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Woodster » 18 May 2022, 09:39

Andyp wrote:I had to use a 10 second timer on the camera as the vibrations from the tripod after hitting the shutter release shook the camera more than when hand held.


If you can’t operate the shutter via an app on your phone then remote releases aren’t expensive. ;)
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby TrimTheKing » 18 May 2022, 11:51

I didn't get to snap anything last night either due to cloud cover.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Andy Kev. » 18 May 2022, 13:18

I think that if I had that tripod, I'd definitely want to replace it with something a bit more sturdy. Calumet does a decent own brand carbon fibre tripod. Then you need a decent head. You can spend hundreds or get something like this which is more than adequate for any normal camera:

https://www.novoflex.de/en/products-637 ... -2092.html

I use it on a calumet tripod and have no complaints whatsoever.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Andyp » 18 May 2022, 14:15

89 quid and it doesn't even have legs! :)
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Andyp » 18 May 2022, 15:59

Well i’m gonna need a new tripod. Just picked up that tripod up and a leg fell off. :shock:

9B31B212-567D-40AF-B289-B0203A2120B4.jpeg
(529.52 KiB)


Cant see any reason why I shouldn’t araldite it

I can’t remember when or how I came by it. I’ve never owned an SLR. Might have been part of grandad’s cine kit.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby novocaine » 18 May 2022, 16:43

Brass legs.
Silver solder the crack.
Or glue it. Or bailing twine. Lol
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Eric the Viking » 26 May 2022, 09:33

Noise in images:
You have to make the best of it. My 6D is known for being, er, not very noisy, but it has to be used carefully. I'm quite pleased with this image, but the blacks needed careful tweaking. I can't get to the raw image from my tablet, but if I can I'll post a bit of the untweaked image - even on a bright day you can have sensor noise.
IMG_4756.jpg
Great White Egret, Eldorado Park (copyright SDM 2018)
(66.75 KiB)

I needed to expose for the highlights (you usually do in digital photography), and let the shadow detail go hang.
I think I also had an ND filter on the lens, to use it wide open, to reduce depth of field. I cleaned up the blacks on the computer.

The foreground blurred rock leads the eye in to the subject, and background blur similarly helps. My 300mm is f/4, which is just about OK for this sort of thing. Canon do an f/2.8 (often seen at F1 events) which would be better, but it is heavy and silly money (even though the back end is the same as mine!).

My f/4 is unsuitable for small wildlife though - in this case I was only about 15ft from the bird (public park). It doesn't mean you can't, but you have to accept limitations.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby AJB Temple » 26 May 2022, 11:45

Nice pic and very well explained.

I am coming to the conclusion that posting JPEGs on the internet tends to result in a degraded image anyway.

It doesn't seem like a big difference between f2.8 and f4 but the former is double the aperture area. The price difference in lenses between fast and just quite fast is eye watering. I bought all my glass some years ago, but even then for business use I could not justify the cost of Canon L glass at 400mm. The current model is £12k :o

I really like your composition and I expect you could bring the feather detail out a bit more if it was viewed on a big screen (I am on a laptop). Looks good having a centralised subject too. Black background is lovely.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Eric the Viking » 26 May 2022, 13:37

Thanks - I was really pleased with it.

You're quite right about the price difference. Professionals tend to rent lenses, too, unless they use them all the time. I"ve done it in the USA, where it's easier, but it's not really a cheap option long term.

I've had that lens for about 18 years now, and it's still in Canon's range, I think, which must say something about the design. f/4 makes the field just shallow enough for me. As I said, I have a set of neutral density ("ND") filters for the front, but I have no idea about what you might do for the f/2.8 version - the front element is huge and the filter would be very expensive. Also, the f4 just about fits in my camera bag, which the 2.8 never would (people leave them on monopods and carry them about over the shoulder!). After a day of lugging about, I know I've got it with me(!), but it's still do-able.

You're right about the feather detail - the full-size is pretty crisp. It's one of the advantages of shooting raw images*: if I did overexpose (and I do, often!), chances are some detail can be recovered, but there's nothing that can be done for the jpeg version. My software (Corel AfterShot and/or one of the free Linux tools) will find detail in the least over-exposed colour, and convert that to greyscale detail. You don't notice the de-saturation close to 100% white. It works really well, and is especially handy for clouds and flesh tones (good with caucasian foreheads!). I'm sure Photoshop has something similar, but I don't use it.

I"m being a bit mean about not using the 300 for small wildlife though. it's no good at a distance, but can do some acceptable close-ups. The min focus is about 4ft, which is just about OK.

This below was taken using my old 30D body, which is (a) an APS-C sized sensor, and (b) horribly noisy:
dragonfly1.jpg
Dragonfly, Zion national park, UT (copyright SDM 2013)
(402.18 KiB)

It's the same 300, but used at f/8 and as close to the insect as I dared get (they spot movement with the compound eye, so you have to be good at grandmother's footsteps...). There's barely enough depth of field in this case (deep shade by a waterfall pool in a canyon), but stopping down further would've risked blurring because of camera shake.

It's still an interesting photo, as we were there with our then-future son-in-law, who's a professional and had a 5D mkII (full frame). We shared lenses and a lot of the subject matter of the trip. Simon's photo of the same insect has a lot more detail than mine, and was one reason I finally swallowed hard and bought the 6D. I don't regret it, except for the much bigger body size, which is frankly a PITA.

E.

*I usually do both raw and jpeg in the camera automatically, as having something instantly viewable is helpful.
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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby Pete Maddex » 26 May 2022, 15:14

F1.2 is the way to go, check this out.

ImageBehind bars by Pete Maddex, on Flickr

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Re: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82

Postby AJB Temple » 26 May 2022, 15:41

Yes....but. I have a Canon 85mm EF1.2L that we bought specifically for business portrait and brochure work. It has stunning image quality on a full frame camera, but wide open the depth of field is so shallow that you can do a face with only part of it in focus but one eye super sharp. I found it quite a difficult lens to get used to.
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