So many features

I don’t know about you but having had my camera for a while, I still get lost in the many menus and features and settings of my camera! Now, ‘My advanced Operating Instructions for advanced features of my Lumix DMC-GX8 ‘ manual, is 15.8 megabytes and contains 13 chapters and 400 pages of instructions for operating the advanced features of my camera!

I probably only use 20% of them, why is that? Well, mainly because of my mindset of shooting in RAW. Many of the features of our cameras only apply when shooting JPEG. When shooting JPEG, our cameras in built sensors and processor create the JPEGs based on the settings or features that we have enabled. When shooting RAW, we do our editing, processing and converting images from RAW files to other formats on our computers.

That age old question, should I shoot RAW or JPEG

I can never make my mind up about the arguments for shooting in RAW or JPEG as it always depends on the context of how you are going to use your images. Clearly, there are some huge advantges to shooting in RAW. But there are also advantages in shooting JPEGs as well. After all, if shooting RAW was the only way to take good pictures, then why do camera manufactures spend so much type developing sophisticated cameras that shoot only JPEG or JPEG and RAW?

Personally, I like to use both. However, this can be discouraging too, as some camera features cannot be used when shooting RAW and JPEG. I find this quite frustrating but I understand why that is. For me, we should be taking advantage of more of our cameras features, after all, we did pay for them and they work well!!!

Any picture is better than no picture

Below are some shots I took of some surfers. I came accross them whilst out walking, I only had my 18-60 zoom with me and could not get close enough to the action.

I needed to take advantage of my camera’s in built Ex tele conv function. The Extra tele convertor in the Lumix GX8 allowed me to enlarge the images without loss of quality.

However, the trade off was that I could not shoot RAW and had to except smaller file sizes. I was even able to crop the images. Now, are the exhibition quality? no. Will they win any awards? no. Can I make big prints from them? no. But they are good enough for the web and displaying on my computer or TV screen. And, they do capture the thrill of the surf. I guess from a journalistic viewpoint they might get used, if no other photos were available and a paper wanted some shots for an event they covered, as any picture is better than no picture!

So, If you are of the mindst of only shooting RAW or have not read your camera user manual to understand all of the features and functions available to you, maybe you should.

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