Category: Photography

new cat photos with an old camera

whbeebe

More cat photos, the top of Nicholas and the bottom of little Danï resting her head on Beau’s back. Both of these were taken with an older camera I have seldom spoken of, let alone used. It’s a Panasonic GH4. I purchased the body in 2018, a year after the GH5 was launched and the GH4’s price had been cut to $800. I picked one up because I couldn’t afford the GH5. All I wanted was to try its video features and see if I had any abilities as a videographer. I now know I’m not a videographer, but the GH4 is also a decent stills camera, and from what I’ve seen, it still is. Furthermore, the sensor resolution is “only” 16MP, the same as my Olympus E-M5. That doesn’t matter in the least if there’s a decent lens in front and proper shot discipline is practiced. It has a different color science than the Olympus which I like as well as Olympus’. So my purchase of the GH4 wasn’t a waste.

One special feature the GH4 has and the reason I still keep it is because it has a built-in flash that still works quite well. None of my other camera bodies have a build-it flash, only external flashes that came with the bodies. The aggravating problem with separate small flashes is I keep misplacing them, making it a pain when I need to use one. If I’m using the GH4 I don’t have that worry.

The only problem is the GH4 has no in-body image stabilization. Either I take my photos in reasonably bright light or else I put on a lens with image stabilization. As it turns out, I have two such lenses; the Lumix G 30mm macro and the Olympus PRO 12-100mm zoom. Both work with the GH4 and give me decent stabilization in low light. For example the lower image of Danï was taken with the 30mm in the darkened inside of my home.

As for fast lenses required for bokeh and foreground/background separation, that too is an expensive myth. The upper image was taken with the Panasonic Leica 1.4/25mm at f/2, while the bottom image was with the 2.8/30mm wide open. In neither case did I need anything fast like f/1.4 or f/1.2. I could just as easily and happily have used the equally capable Olympus 1.8/50mm, a less expensive, smaller and lighter lens by far. For me, it’s far more important to gather information (sharpness) in a photo than go for the insane bokeh that so many blindly worship. Extreme lens maximum f-stops make for overly expensive and unaffordable camera equipment.

The GH4 is still as potent a creative tool in May 2022 as it was when it was launched May 2014.

and now a photo or two from the big girls

whbeebe2 Comments
Figure 1: Ruby Tuesday

I spend too much time on the cats and not on the pups, the big girls. Ruby (Figure 1) will turn fourteen years this August, while Dreamboat Annie (Figure 2) turned seven back on Valentine’s Day.

I’ve been a dog person a lot longer than I’ve been a cat person. My first experience with a dog was when my wife and I were dating back in the early 1980s. She had a big goofy male Yellow Lab she’d named Rhett Butler, because at the time she was living and working in Marietta, Ga. And living in the south at the time she gave her Yellow Lab a proper southern name. When we got married later in the 1980s and moved down to Orlando, I got my very first personal dog, a female Black Lab whom I named Catherine (Katie) Scarlett O’Hara, called Katie, another proper southern name and fitting in with Rhett’s naming convention. Over the years we would come to own a number of male and female Labs, each one arriving when one of the priors left us.

And so we finally got to Ruby. When Ruby’s companion Max left us in 2015, we set about looking for Max’s replacement. Annie, being a Doodle, was a bit of a surprise to us because we wanted another Lab companion for Ruby, and we were looking to adopt a rescued Lab, but we couldn’t find one without a lot of drama. Then one of the vet techs working at our veterinarian knew about a litter of Labradoodles that had one left, and needed to find a forever home. Thus were we introduced to Annie, who arrived to live with us when she was five months old. The two have bonded and are quite close, as you would expect.

Today I was out doing some basic water exercises in the pool and the girls were out with us poolside sunning. I was able to photograph them both while they were still.

If you look carefully you’ll see a lot of white on Ruby’s muzzle. Annie’s coat now has a lot of silver highlights, which really shows off her naturally curly coat. She still has those touches of ginger on both sides of her upper muzzle. Yes, all the cats and dogs get along just fine.

Figure 2: Dreamboat Annie

Commentary on the Photos

As with the last post, these photos were taken with my iPhone 11 Pro, except this time I used the telephoto. These were also taken outside in afternoon sunshine. With a different lens and good lighting, the results are quite acceptable. No distortion whatsoever. As I’ve written before, careful use of the iPhone camera system can produce acceptable results as long as you stay away from the wide angle lens in any light, and try to use good lighting for everything else.