Back in September, Panasonic invited me to an event at the Tower of London where they presented their new digital SLR camera to photographers, enthusiasts, and the media. Full disclosure:

1. in return for my attendance they gave me a free point-and-shoot digital and
2. I’m not a digital camera expert.

Perhaps Panasonic hoped to convert me from film.

Whatever their reasons, I think Panasonic are doing the Right Thing. I have seriously thought about buying one of their digital point-and-shoots with anti-shake, but theirs is not a big name with the professional photographers, despite the carefully cultivated connection with Leica. (The question of whether or not most professional photographers consider Leicas serious working tools is one I’m not going to get into here.) Getting a bunch of smudgers together in a room and giving them the chance to try out new toys and get over their (possibly macho) suspicions of a company with a reputation for producing nice consumer hardware is smart.

Panasonic’s online outreach extends much further than just inviting bloggers to munch canapés and hear their spiel. They have started a free (and non-proprietary) UK landscape photography Website with competitions and rating systems and other interactive shininess. This is, in turn, part of their wider support for the Our Place UNESCO World Heritage site project. Images from this latter project were shown during one of the talks to demonstrate the landscape capabilities of Panasonic cameras, but something seemed to have gone wrong somewhere between exposure and display because, although they had clearly been taken by skilled pros, they weren’t reproduced too well. (The irony of this will be clear when I review the FX-33 below.)

Panasonic had invited a range of enthusiasts to fill the the audience too. It was interesting that one of the dedicated tech writers (possibly the guy from CNET) left long before the end, even though the event was well organized and informative, and the picturesque setting, the Tower of London, was well chosen for photography. We were introduced to personnel from Panasonic, including personnel from HQ in Japan. And the presentations took place in front of a gloriously bright and clear Pansonic TV. In this respect Panasonic’s range of consumer hardware turned out to be a strength. You can take a memory card from any current Panasonic camera and plug it into a current Panasonic TV and watch your own photos. They were, of course, keen to point out that they have been making camera hardware for years. One surprising statistic they offered is that Panasonic make more camera flashguns than any of their competitors.

Unfortunately, when we released into the natural sunshine later, armed with actual L10s, we weren’t able to fully explore the potential of their new digital SLR or publish the results freely without qualification. This was understandable, given that the model was still undergoing revision and we probably didn’t have enough time to get to know it well enough to get the best out of it, but it makes writing this post hard. Over at Photography Blog they’ve been naughty and published some pre-production shots from the same event.

All I can say is that the L10 felt reasonably well built—perhaps sturdier than a Sony Alpha-100, but nothing like as substantial as an old film Minolta Dynax 7 or Dynax 9—that it was nicely and sensibly laid out, that I almost came to appreciate the live preview and fold-out screen (but of course found myself using the viewfinder because that’s natural for me), and that it was loaded with lots of features, many of which I could see myself using. I was particularly amused to note that the L10 has a “film” button which could be engaged to produce effects at the time of exposure (rather than later with Photoshop), including black-and-white, colour saturated, and retro looks.

My main disappointment was that the sensor is not a full-frame, so wouldn’t offer me the same lens and aperture physics that I rely on to get the effects I want with film SLRs. I do my job before I press the shutter, not later, opening Photoshop. The L10 does, however, conform to the four-thirds standard which I guess makes it compatible with lenses from other manufacturers in this consortium. The big boys at Digital Photography Review have a fuller preview of the L10.

Although I haven’t used it much, preferring a cheap film SLR of course, I have to say that the FX-33 is a marvellous gadget. Features like its face detection, that identifies and focuses on people in a scene, and Intelligent Auto, that decides which of the camera’s many modes to apply in a given situation make getting consistently good results easy. To my amazement, it plugged into one of my Linux (Ubuntu) PCs to transfer images via USB cable without a hitch. ePHOTOzine has more details. One of the most impressive demonstrations of the Lumix point-and-shoot range I saw was when one of the speakers, not himself a photographer, connected a similar camera to that TV monitor I referred to earlier and showed us a bright, punchy shot of the Tower grounds that, back in the 70s, would have made a sell-able tourist postcard. I’d recommend the FX-33 as a Christmas gift to anyone looking for an elegant camera for a non-photographer, even at its full retail price

UPDATE: The L10 is Editor’s Choice at Popular Photography.

This blog is not dead. I’m truly sorry about the absence of new content here lately. I’ve been busy with all sorts of other things, but I hope I’ll be able to start posting again soon.

In the meantime, I’ve had a couple of communications from the proprietor of a cute photography cartoon strip site called “What The Duck“. In particular, he drew my attention to this strip about wedding photography. I’ve added What the Duck to the blogroll.

The length of a image divided by its width is its aspect ratio. The aspect ratio of standard 35mm film is one-and-a-half, that is 3:2. For televisions and for digital sensors it is often 4:3 (Four Thirds).

Interestingly, many useful compositional guidelines are also based around thirds and threes.

Most famously, many artists and photographers swear by the Rule Of Thirds—which is also explained here.

Even when you are interested in only two main subjects in an image, it can gain balance by the inclusion of a third defocused or cropped participant, or by a prominent inanimate object.

Father and Son: I

Father and Son: II

When you have three or more main subjects, triangular arrangments can be very effective.

The WedPhotBlog is back, but, because I will be doing a lot of marketing stuff for next year’s wedding season, the frequency of posting will fall to about twice a week.

I’m sorry for the lack of posting lately. Ironically I have been busy with photography work and with attending a course on running my business. I haven’t even been able to post daily to my main blog, PooterGeek. Don’t give up on the WedPhotBlog. I hope to be writing here more frequently in a few days from now.

There probably won’t be a new post here until Tuesday of next week because I am busy taking photographs, because I have to reorganise my photo archives, and because I would like to change the design here to better accommodate landscape photographs. After that normal service should be resumed.

My name is Damian Counsell and I photograph events for Sepial. Sepial specialises in wedding photography. I only use film cameras and I do not manipulate my images, either in the darkroom or with tools like Photoshop—except to crop, rotate, or resize them for the Web.

This blog is a way of advertising Sepial, sharing my discoveries about photography, and collecting and displaying some of my favourite images. Please look at the photos, read the posts, and feel free to comment.

The Wedding Photography Blog will also, perhaps perversely, link to the Websites of other photographers whose work I rate. Of course, if you are looking for a photographer, I want you to choose me, but there are so many terrible hacks out there that it’s difficult to find people doing good work and I’d rather lose your custom to someone I respect.

Although digital cameras have made it easy for almost anyone to take correctly exposed and focused photographs the results are often disappointing: washed out, poorly composed, and bland. I believe that by learning a few simple rules and taking a lot of photos anyone can make punchy, striking, and original images. Read this blog and learn how.