Panasonic EXTREMELY cool hyperfocal setup on LX5 - a revelation to me...

[nippa]

I suspect that this hyperfocal feature is going to appear on the Leica X1 a they were talking about introducing a hyperfocal feature in the next firmware.

Thanks for the heads up on this I hadn't realised the camera could show that.

Later: I've just checked my DLux4 which I bought in October 2008 and that has the same feature...I never knew

 

[Ray Sachs]

Another related small but cool discovery. Just looking through the menus on the LX5 this morning, trying to find something specific, an noticed that you can have the camera remember your last manual focus setting and your last zoom setting on startup. So, if I'm doing a bunch of street shooting on a day with good light. I can set the camera to something like 35mm at f4 or f5, set the hyperfocal distance as discussed earlier in this thread, and shoot away for awhile. Then shut the camera off, put it in the bag, and when I next start it up, EVERYTHING comes back to exactly where it was, so I'm ready to shoot almost instantly without having to re-adjust anything. When I was shooting a lot with this cam initially, I'd have to reset the zoom and manual focus each time I started it up. Which was not a terrible burden, but even THAT wasn't necessary it turns out.

In addition to being a great little everything camera, I've come to the conclusion that for outdoor street shooting, this is the best camera I own. And neither the ep2 or gf1 suck in this regard at all. But, jeez, incredible DOF range with the small sensor, quick response (particularly in manual focus mode), and essentially instant hyperfocal setup. Any VERY small differences in IQ don't show up until the light gets low or at much larger print sizes than I ever do. What a great little tool...

-Ray

 

[Streetshooter]

Oh yeah...

Ray, I too discovered the way to let the camera even sleep and then wake at the last setting. I love the way it returns to the selected zoom and hyperfocal distance setting. Even after a week, it comes right back....
The Panny people maybe made mistakes with other Lumix cameras but they didn't miss a trick with this one. I got mine on Oct 2nd and haven't used anything else since....

Aside from everything else.... you'll catch H**L trying to kill the battery. Power management is the best I've ever had in any camera!

 

[Ray Sachs]

You know, i was thinking about the LX5 relative to my old film SLRs recently. The last film SLR I spent any time with was a mid-'80s Nikon FE-2 (not absolutely sure that was the model #, but I think it was). I bought it with a 28-85 Tamron zoom. I think I may have had an old 50 f1.5 that i could also use on it, but this was the first decent zoom I'd ever used so I think I used it the vast majority of the time. It was a great camera. But I think the LX5 is better in pretty much every regard. The only exception is for shallow depth of field shots, which the small sensor makes very difficult except in macro or telephoto situations. But the Nikon wasn't much better in that regard until I stuck a fast prime on it. But other than that, the LX5 does everything else as well or better, the IQ is every bit as good (better, now that I don't need a full darkroom to do my own processing), the lens has a broader range and is faster throughout the range, it has many electronic aids beyond just having a simple light meter and an aperture priority mode (although that's what I use the vast majority of the time), and its a pleasure to shoot with (unlike some other similarly diminutive cameras).

I'm still really enjoying my m43 cameras and I do still shoot with those too - just love that 9-18, in particular, for certain kinds of shooting. But if they were all taken away from me, I could live with the LX5 as an only camera very happily. And it fits in a pocket (along with a couple hundred "rolls of film" and still has great handling. Which does present a dilema for traveling.

Amazing.

-Ray

 

[vincechu]

Thanks so much!

Both of these revelations really are amazingly great to realize! Thank you both so much - do you think we'd have known this if we'd put that Panasonic LX5 CD with the full manual in our computers????

haha made me laugh, seems I'm not the only one who doesnt read manuals. Think of all the plastic panny could have saved and our environment :'(

Back to the topic - thanks so much for sharing this, I've currently just been doing my landscapes on my lx5 by using F8, but this will be a big boost to my shooting - many thanks,

Vince

 

[deirdre]

I don't need an LX5. (But this feature is cool, so I want one.)
It doesn't come in blue. (I hate black cameras, but I did cave on the Leica….)
I still don't need an LX5. (You want to save your money for an M9, right?)

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Cool feature, would love to have it.

 

[tanngrisnir3]

OK, help me out here. I've followed the thread, understand the mechanics of what's being described and am still left scratching my head with a "And? So what?".

As long as the camera focuses on what you want it to focus on, what's the point/good of this trick? What am I missing here?

 

[deirdre]

As long as the camera focuses on what you want it to focus on, what's the point/good of this trick? What am I missing here?

You are assuming you'd have to focus, and in some situations, that's not an easy task. Sometimes, it actually is easier to know how far your subject is, pre-set, and not have the camera focus. Much quicker to shoot for one thing.

 

[Ray Sachs]

OK, help me out here. I've followed the thread, understand the mechanics of what's being described and am still left scratching my head with a "And? So what?".

As long as the camera focuses on what you want it to focus on, what's the point/good of this trick? What am I missing here?

For some applications, it wouldn't be of any benefit. For some, its quite a large benefit. For me, its all about street shooting. I'm often carrying my camera at chest or belly level and shooting from there. I've developed a pretty good instinct for what I'm gonna get framed at a 35mm (equivalent) focal length. But I'm obviously not framing really precisely since I'm not looking at the LCD while I'm shooting. If I'm using AF, unless I have the AF focus point aimed at the exact subject I'm trying to get, it might be focussing on a building or tree off in the distance and I'll miss the subject I'm aiming for. If its set for hyperfocal so I know that everything between about 3.5 feet to infinity is in focus, I don't have to worry about which point or points the camera's focussing on - everything I want will be in focus. By leaving it in manual focus mode, it also speeds up the time between pushing the shutter button and having the shot execute. Which often matters in street shooting, where people are moving, I'm moving, everything is happening in a pretty dynamic fashion. A quick response matters. I'll enclose one quick shot that I simply wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't been using this mode. I have lots of other ones, but this is possibly the best illustration - taken with the LX5 just a few days after I got it. If I'd been using a center point AF, the living woman in the foreground might have been well out of focus (even at the same aperture with its reasonably wide DOF) with the signs on the distant buildings being perfectly sharp. With hyperfocal, they're all in focus.

This feature doesn't matter in shooting landscapes or more deliberative portraits or for lots and lots of things where AF works just wonderfully. But for some types of shooting, its wonderful.

-Ray

View attachment 31145

 

[grebeman]

This feature doesn't matter in shooting landscapes or more deliberative portraits or for lots and lots of things where AF works just wonderfully. But for some types of shooting, its wonderful.

-Ray

I would have to differ and say that being able to focus hyperfocally is a key element in landscape photography, or have I been wrong for the last 40 years

Barrie

 

[Ray Sachs]

I would have to differ and say that being able to focus hyperfocally is a key element in landscape photography, or have I been wrong for the last 40 years

Barrie

You're right of course. It certainly can matter for landscapes when you're trying to maximize your DOF. But there are a lot of landscapes that I'm very happy to shoot with AF too. So I guess I was trying to simplify the explanation as much as possible. Apologies - I probably OVERsimplified it...

-Ray

 

[grebeman]

No problem, my thoughts are as much a reflection of my being an old school "Ansel Adams" type who likes pinsharp landscapes with maximum DOF, I have great difficulty in accepting some "modern" photographs where this does not apply, either because the photographer felt it to be artistic or left it up to the camera.

Barrie

 

[Ray Sachs]

I think my perspective is warped because so many of the landscapes I've done in the past year have been with the S90 or LX5 when I'm out on a bike ride in nice weather. In good light, with those cameras at a fairly wide angle and stopped down to something like F5, the DOF is so enormous that if I focus on something in the middle distance, everything's gonna be sharp. So I don't think about hyperfocal in that situation. If I did more specialized landscape shooting in lower light and with longer focal lengths, I suppose I'd pay more attention. As it is, I tend to use hyperfocal for street shooting. I might use it more with my m43 gear but its just a hassle to try since there's no distance scale anywhere, so you're down to guesswork trying to focus on a spot that's about at the hyperfocal distance...

-Ray

 

[grebeman]

Ray,
Your last post is very pertinent and points up the thing that really bugs me about modern lenses, the lack of feedback they offer to the photographer in terms of where their focus is set and what their depth of field is. I tend to use old legacy lenses on my m4/3 cameras for that very reason, they feed back to me information which I want as a "thinking" photographer, I want to be in charge of as much of the process as I can, modern designs take that away from me.
The fact that the LX5 goes some way to restoring this with its hyperfocal readout is what has sparked my interest in the camera, though I have yet to take the plunge. It was also the design element slated for the Fuji X100 that means I am following that camera with some interest.
I also take on board your comment about the inherent DOF in small sensor cameras being of value in landscape photography and relieving the photographer of having to think in hyperfocal terms.

Barrie

 

[Eric]

Ray,

Interesting thread. I use the Samsung EX1 and wish it had a distance scale! But I agree with what you say about small-sensor cameras shooting landscapes. When practical, I basically follow Merklinger's approach to DOF, setting focus at the farthest point and stopping down to sharpen nearer parts of the scene. At 5.2mm and f/1.8, I get acceptable sharpness from infinity to about 6 feet. Stopping down to f/5 would bring it to about 2 feet.

I'm frankly more interested in producing focal separation, blurring backgrounds, which is possible at somewhat greater-than-macro distances with our two cameras: keep enjoying yours as I do mine.