I’ve been playing with the custom color settings on my little camera. I finally found a way to punch up the saturation and contrast…and most importantly the noise reduction in camera. And I think I finally understand the program setting … pretty cool — you just set one variable and the camera calculates the other settings.
Sunday DH and I went for a city walk in Almere … the light was pretty terrific … well there was some … maybe it was a tad harsh.
I wish I had the money to just buy Painter 12…but I don’t So I downloaded a demo of Alien Skin Snap art (which used to impress me but the new version over does the painted effect in my clunky hands).
So I went over to Corel and saw that they have a whole array of products. While I’ve got Paint it! show for the Ipad (which is really cool) I noticed that there is a desktop version as well.
It’s kinda neat but instructions are sparse (read the PDF instead of searching for the 2nd video – it’s mentioned but I couldn’t find it 
)
There’s a couple other Corel auto painter products as well. Paint it! looks pretty cool. It seems to work better on a higher resolution image. As always the water color setting works fairly well (which is pretty standard for digital painting software – FilterForge water color works well too).
I’m brainstorming how to get the most out of virtual painting programs…how to leverage the digital side of things.
This is my highly subjective and incomplete opinion of my new camera
(a little bit about us – we’re American expats who have lived in Holland off and on for the last 20+ years. We love gadgets and being early adopters – when the budget allows)
Our other cameras are a Canon 40D and a Panasonic Lumix 3DMC-FX35.
I chose the GF2 because of it’s size and my good experience with the Lumix line. I wanted something that I could carry everywhere that would shoot RAW and have manual controls. I use ACR and Noiseware so the reported ‘noisy’ jogs wouldn’t be an issue in my case.
Standard setting on my FX35 are; vibrant color, with point focus. I shoot in the ‘landscape scene mode’ a lot. I haven’t found an equivalent way to shoot with ‘vibrant color’ on the GF2. Yes there is a way to input custom settings but I don’t see a way to use those with shooting modes.
The focusing ring on the lenses have no markings so it’s not apparent how to focus on infinity. If anybody can tell me how to do that I’d appreciate it.
I’m shooting with the 14mm until I get used to it. F3.2 seems to be a good ‘sweet spot’ for the kind of shallow depth of focus captures I like to make.
The D40 still takes better pictures – it does have a larger sensor after all but I don’t tote that around with me everywhere.
The GF2 does have manual settings but they are a bit fiddly to get to with the touch screen so I’m not likely to use them that much. I’m more of an aperture priority girl anyway.
I like the touchscreen especially how I can set the focus anywhere in the frame. Get that focus out of the center!
The ISO, WB, exposure compensation & bracketing controls are super easy to set.
I haven’t found a case I like – they all seem to be too bulky for my purposes – so I’m seriously considering getting a messenger-type camera bag to use as a handbag.
I took the camera on my walk today and a really cool thing I noticed was that it was so small that it didn’t scare away the birds.
There is an optional viewfinder that attaches to the hot-shoe – it would be worth the price if it were a waist level one, but it isn’t.
Another really cool feature I discovered was that you can shoot square frames. The wide panoramic 9X13 of course is great but sometimes I just feel like making square pictures.