hey jpbturbo, your name and the tiny SW characters you show remind me of this

+ nice portrait, he seems to be thinking "why the hell didn't I bring my signed beastie boys cap?!!"
would be so nit to create a PV vintage lens visual database, covering lenses most relevant aspects for taking stills and films...
are you a luthier?

gashô

@brucker
WOW!!! sweet mother of bokeh... 3 aliens mindafuckas!!! the Dressen pic (too cool to be a film) is awesome, actually they're all awesome but the guy-poet Kakujo concentrating his energy besides the river - with help of silhouette the bird - is just... plain beautifull layers :D

I guess that the contax helps... Shuji how did you process them?

in 365 scenes from movies that dont exist also loved 20130510ED002c, 20130210, 20130309, 20130403, scene 20b of 365, 20130220 (if I was Jodorowsky the job would be yours), scene 17b of 365 20130117b DSC_5665, getting down to business

gashô

PS
funny enough when I wrote "too cool to be a film" I didn't know this series was called 365 scenes from movies that dont exist

you can definitely get away with shooting great images as long as you're closer to Base ISO

@fotosiamo indeed your site is proof of it, though it is not what turns me on... I just can't seem to get used to faces with almost no skin texture, specially chicks.

latest image I did with the GH2 and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8

that's just the finest portrait made with a great lens - thanks for sharing, also set up - you squeezit well my friend. for video, the 45 focus ring is kindof tiny which makes things a bit more challenging when manual focusing (without FF) but on the other hand it also has superb IQ and bokeh. first 55 secs of this video were made with that lens and macro shots + an inverted ancient canon FL 35mm. all good

As a fashion and commercial photographer shooting primarily with the GH2 and GH3 more recently ( http://www.fotosiamo.com ), you can definitely get away with shooting great images as long as you're closer to Base ISO. I strobe majority of my shots even on location, so I don't worry about that as much.

Check out the latest image I did with the GH2 and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8. This is lit with two Profoto Acutes, one in a softbox outside the window, camera right, the other in medium stripbox camera left.

Now just gotta get more experience in video work =D

well after the avalanche of participation I go on playing the gong: DUUUNNNGGGggg!!!!

Today (german accent trans-fassbinder-cabaret-bold-guy style) weee bRing you a fAlse hdR.
Went to the beach to see some crazy guys win money for enjoying big waves in a chunk of foam, nice! and I mean it. The hour was the least favorable for image capturing, lot of chicks though. Highlight headroom of gh3 sensor is really bad - please before start loading guns and cannons - especially if you are coming from full-frame. I saw an image was worth the out of my nose then downward movement of my index finger; I tried not to burn highlights. Funny thing while I was at it, a kid came into the frame in the right moment, well, it's not really funny.

Trying to bring back some DR, from one picture only, I exported 3 versions (2 were virtual copies) from lightroom, they're the small jpegs. HDR is not really my thing, I try to only use it when circumstances impel me or when there's going to be massive editing. Long time since my last HDR, so I decided to go back and check which program rendered an output more to my licking. Because results differ quite a bit from program to program, I took the tiffs for a walk; auto curves and wb in PS, no extra sharpening. Resized them with also free resizeit; I really have to bring here my findings on downsizing... that's for another day. In order of better to worst - remember is MY taste, I prioritized natural looking and absence of ghosts/strange gradients/artefacts straight out:

Image Fuser (free) - http://imagefuser.sourceforge.net/
Photomatrix
FDRtools (free)
Photoshop HDR

The ones I didn't even bother to bring here were luminance-hdr, HDR Darkroom and worst of all nik HDR efex pro.
Of course we cannot generalize from this poor example only. But 1 thing I can say, I've used Image Fuser for a long time and it is very nicel :)

Cheers to all, especially the ones with even spaced protuberances on their chests

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PS
BTW because you are relentless curious creatures what it is written - initial reason (this corny I am) for stealing the moment - on top of roof O AMOR AINDA EXISTE ==> LOVE STILL EXISTS

gashô

@bheath you photo looks good!!! which 35? why do you convert gh2's raws? is a question of space, speed, getting rid of xmls…?

some reading (with lots of comments, ah the people voice!!!) http://lightroomkillertips.com/2010/to-dng-or-not-to-dng/ http://photographyconcentrate.com/should-you-convert-dng/ how to DNGize http://lightroomsecrets.com/2012/03/lightroom-4-tip-new-dng-options/

DNG files are smaller (read somewhere between 10-20%), develop settings are kept inside the file instead of an adjacent "sidecar" (xml) file, "DNG format includes a checksum that can detect file corruption" and its compatibility (future proof) is maximized.

Seems conversion has some advantages. IMHO main drawback is workflow speed. If you back up (and you should) big stacks of photos, with DNG - case parameters had been modified - you would have to overwrite the whole file, while xml are tiny tiny poopoozas. Extra conversion time on import or after selection. A BIG reasonable case/cause to convert to DNG is your camera not being supported by the software of your choice. Still, the more interesting feature, under my tilt-shift point of view, is the corruption jacket; in the past I had some crooked RAWs among my photo library citizens, I fondly call those "politics".

My POV: if your back up drive is big enough (and they're cheap for sure), you don't have time to spare (nor despair), you're not already thinking in your grandchildren's legacy and you have the end of the world feeling under control, you could always convert… say later.

now? wait wait now?

gashô

PS oh I forgot to mention in some cases DNG conversion may loose some metadata.