1866 - Its All Good

2011-11-26

Today we had sunshine in Villach. This was a first in a few weeks, every other day since having been foggy and gloomy.

I still didn’t make a lot of pictures. What I found out though is, that the JPEG engine of the FZ-150 is excellent. I hardly can produce anything better than the camera’s JPEGs, even if I work from RAW. This does not mean that I will use the camera’s JPEGs, but at least in terms of image quality there is not much to be expected.

There are still enough reasons to use RAW though. Setting your own white balance is a good one and there are others. In general, as soon as you want to take your image into Photoshop, RAW is the safe way to go.

The Song of the Day is “Its All Good” from Bob Dylan’s 2009 album “Together Through Life”. Hear it on YouTube.

There are 2 comments

April   (2011-11-27)

What is the maximum resolution of the JPG files in the FZ-150? (I'm wondering if they are print quality, and at what size.)

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andreas   (2011-11-27)

April, this is a 12 megapixel camera and at base ISO its image quality is very good. It's slightly noisier than the D300, but you wouldn't see that in a print. Higher ISOs or extreme treatment in Photoshop are a different story. Yesterday I took an image of a far-away castle. At 600 mm it completely filled the frame, but due to haze the histogram was only a narrow band around mid-tones. It's amazing what you can get out of such a photo, but what you have to do in Photoshop is similar to the signal amplification that happens at higher ISOs. Although the image had been taken at ISO 100, the final image didn't look like that. DSLRs hold up better due to their wider dynamic range, but you can't expect miracles either. Thus: expect to be able to print properly exposed images at base ISO just as you would with the D300.

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