First time shooting with Panasonic LX7 - tips

[ronscuba]

Topside I like to use a Whibal card.

WhiBal - LensAlign

UW with my FX7 I liked to use the sand or my grey fins. Even used the coral/reef successfully. Happy with the results, so I didn't use a card UW. I did not like the results using the sun. Have not tried my hand, but know many who do that too. Haven't had the LX7 UW yet.

 

[Mike]

---------- Post added May 15th, 2013 at 10:22 AM ----------

Forgot to mention.
Gray cards produce horrible green colours. I think this is the issue that Wetpixel had with the LX7 and why they gave it a poor review.
There is also an issue with the gray card slates having some gloss instead of being matt and creating the issue of too much light in the sensor.

My personal experience is that best results are achieved balancing on your hand or sand something I have never done before as I always used my white balance slate, but with the LX7 is a no go

Is that underwater only? So far the wb above water, which is all I've been able to do, using a gray card seems to look decent.

That's really F'd up if a camera in 2013 can't use the professional method of setting WB correctly! Shooting hands, sand, fins, sun.. etc... is all a compromise rather than using an 18% gray card, that's disappointing if this camera can't function correctly using one.

Since I'm ranting, the other thing that pisses me off is the misleading claim of the camera can do time lapse, which was something I was excited about having on this camera. Once I learned it can't really do it, that was a huge disappointment. If the LX9 comes out with it, I can already see my LX7 heading to Ebay.

It really is a poorly written manual.. I got mine last week and still haven't worked my way through it all.

Have to agree with you. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what features you lose when shooting video, specifically the follow focus settings which seems like a great feature to have when shooting macro.

 

[Interceptor121]

Am not even sure what the focus follow setting feature is but I can tell you that the camera does a sterling job even with two diopters to find focus by itself
Also what do you mean exactly when you say it doesn't do time lapse?
There is a table that tells you what is accessible in which mode frankly this camera manual is not better or worse than others and I have seen a few in the last years
But then this is all subjective I guess

The issue with WB underwater may have to do with the fact I use the padi slate but frankly as the hand works and it is always with me I like it better!

 

[ronscuba]

Gray card SHOULD work underwater. Haven't tried it with the LX7. Can't think of any reason it would not work. Most colored writing slates are too shiny and reflective to be used for WB. I use the sand and fins out of convenience.

Pro's like to use a card so they have a consistent reference. Professional editors that combine footage supplied by different videographers appreciate that consistency.

 

[Mike]

Am not even sure what the focus follow setting feature is but I can tell you that the camera does a sterling job even with two diopters to find focus by itself
Also what do you mean exactly when you say it doesn't do time lapse?

Follow focus is a focus setting, you put the cross hairs on whatever you want to focus on say a crab sitting there, push the button and it locks on the crab, if the crab moves around the camera moves focus on the crab the entire time it's in frame. I thought messing with it last night the manual said feature isn't available recording video, but I could be wrong.

Time lapse - shoot me a 5 minute video consisting of an 8 hour time lapse of the clouds going by. Not possible. Or set it up to time lapse the sun going across the sky, or a flower opening up, all not possible.


This "famous" "time lapse" shot using the LX7 is looped, not real.



This one is not really time lapse, just a 10x sped up video shot using creative mode and setting on 'minature'

 

[Interceptor121]

I have done a time lapse of sunset with the lx7 is on my grenada video
It is a bit limited In terms if interval as the max is 30 minutes and you can only take 60 shots but overall it works to do the 4/5 second time lapse

To Ron I don't use a professional level card maybe that's why there is a problem
To mike it does not have focus tracking in video to be honest I had the rx100 and that was the only way the focus would work the camera was hunting for focus most of the time and it was unusable in macro so I had to switch to manual
If you look at other cameras in this segment none has time lapse and only one has focus tracking in video and it does not work
After all it is still a compact camera and the footage that comes out for me is great and good compromise between ease of use and functionality

 

[matdiver]

You mean blue is the color of the pencil writing?

Yeah. Weird, huh? I just had a slate with grey pencil on one side, and the other side half covered in light blue scribble and half just plain white, so I could compare. In each case I filled the rectangle in the viewfinder with just grey, light blue, or white. Best results were with the light blue, but the grey pencil wasn't bad. Also, by scribbling pencil on it, the slate becomes less reflective. Have you ever tried WB'ing using a pale blue sky topside? Seems to make the image "too" red on land... but that's kind of what we're looking for underwater I guess.
Matthew

 

[Interceptor121]

Yeah. Weird, huh? I just had a slate with grey pencil on one side, and the other side half covered in light blue scribble and half just plain white, so I could compare. In each case I filled the rectangle in the viewfinder with just grey, light blue, or white. Best results were with the light blue, but the grey pencil wasn't bad. Also, by scribbling pencil on it, the slate becomes less reflective. Have you ever tried WB'ing using a pale blue sky topside? Seems to make the image "too" red on land... but that's kind of what we're looking for underwater I guess.
Matthew

Blu sky has a color temperature of 16000K but the LX7 only gets to 10,000 SLRs can get to 14,000-16,000. On the LX& you can do the same just by setting K to 10,000 however this at shallow depths is a disaster.

It does work well below 20 meters and then you can also pump the tint to orange (more natural) or magenta (very blue with little green)

very strange about slates, I think my PADI slate is a bit cheap and the grey side is too shining, but as my hand seems to work well and it is always with me I am glad I have less things to stuff in the already full BCD pockets!!!

 

[Mike]

I have done a time lapse of sunset with the lx7 is on my grenada video
It is a bit limited In terms if interval as the max is 30 minutes and you can only take 60 shots but overall it works to do the 4/5 second time lapse

That's a claim of having a time lapse feature as much as a camera that can change it's focal length from 28mm to 29mm claiming it has a zoom feature.

I don't consider 60 frames of capture or about 2 secs of video the definition of a camera able to produce time lapse video. I have no idea why Panasonic would even bother with this lame half done feature, if they went as far as they did, I can't understand why they didn't take it to fruition and remove the limitations and fullfill the ability to really do time lapse video. 95% of the work was done, but the last 5% missing makes the feature virtually useless.

They have so much right in this camera and I mean really impressive what this camera is capable of, it's jaw dropping, mind-blowing how much they have right, its just disappointing and almost false advertising their claims of having a time lapse feature, I just don't get what they were even thinking?

 

[Interceptor121]

An not sure what you were expecting the camera cost me £250 and retails now at $330 in US I did not buy the camera for this feature the fact that has some it's a plus. Maybe they do a firmware update and improve things but this is not a showstopper at that price
I use the gopro for time lapse its pretty useless at all the test but it does take 1000 shots before the Counter gets reset and you can anyway chain them