FZ30 - A Contrast Problem ?

[Nancy Gabby]

Ditto on what corpsy said. And from my own experience, all of my cameras were expensive digicams (the 2100 when it came out was around $700), and they all needed a little tweaking. You probably have an idea of a specific digicam which might have had slightly contrasty pics. But your pics (the originals) look fine. I think if you still have another digicam, you should run a little test. Take a picture of a subject with both cameras. If you can, set the shutter/aperture/ISO exactly the same on both, then look at them side by side and see the difference. You should also post it so we all can see. If the exposure is way off from one camera to another, then just adjust it so both images look like they were exposed the same (I think ISO's aren't exact in the digital realm, so one camera shoot lighter or darker at a given ISO). The other thing you can do is download some original sample images from different digicams from Steve's reviews so you can see for yourself what images look like right out of the camera. But part of me does side with you, it is kinda annoying that you don't just get a great image right out of the camera, or they at least should have a setting where they boost everything so it looks good and call it "vacation mode" or something. I know I take thousands of pics when I am on vacation, and I don't, I simply can't PP all of the pics. But realistically, it is still a heck of a lot better than film, so we are moving forward in a photographic sense. Good luck, and I hope you do the test!

[Corpsy]

Here's one other thing to try. Download a copy of Picasa. http://picasa.google.com/index.html

This is a freeware image viewer made by Google which is very fast, easy to use, and can view raw images. It's probably the best image viewer out there.

It's also one of the easiest image tweaking tools there are. While browsing images, you can very quickly adjust the exposure (called a fill light in Picasa), adjust the contrast, pick a neutral color to white balance, adjust the temperature, and a bunch of other effects.

The best thing is that when you make changes, you don't have to resave the image. The viewer remembers the changes you made and keeps them in the program so you can actually make changes to an image, shut down your computer, come back tomorrow and undo the changes with hardly any effort.

Obviously it's not a replacement for Photoshop, but if all you need to do is tweak the exposure and contrast in your images, this might make your life a lot easier.

[rduve]

slipe wrote:

I have a Photoshop action that applies PT Lens, defogging, a little sharpeningand auto contrast to an entire file.

Slipe, can you send me that PS Action? Seems quite useful. Thanks.

[jusak]

Hello everyone,
Attached are 8 photos:
4 from Canon G3 and 4 from FZ30.
Similar photograph conditions, more or less.
(As you'll see, i used a professional model for the test)
What do you think ?

Tomorrow I'm going to check another FZ30 at the store, just to be sure, because I still can't believe that Panasonic had left those darn grayish contrast /exposure setting.

Thanks a lot everyone for your time and references.
Ju

[jusak]

Canon G3:

[jusak]

FZ30:

[jusak]

G3:

[jusak]

FZ30:

[jusak]

G3:

[jusak]

FZ30: