Things I wish Panasonic would add for stills shooters

[RichardC]

Flash with electronic shutter enabling high resolution composites with dedicated flash. The Olympus EM1 Mk2 does this.

Auto ISO with fill flash. I imagine this would require some sort of pre-flash to accurately gauge exposure.

 

[pdk42]

Flash with electronic shutter enabling high resolution composites with dedicated flash. The Olympus EM1 Mk2 does this.

Auto ISO with fill flash. I imagine this would require some sort of pre-flash to accurately gauge exposure.

Great suggestions Richard. I’m not very experienced with flash photography, but I can see the sense in these capabilities.

 

[Jonathan-Mac]

- Adding a "LiveTime" feature. This is Bulb mode where the display gives regular peeks of the building image (incl histogram and zebras). It's great not only for knowing that a shot is properly exposed, but also for allowing in-camera dodging & burning (e.g. holding back exposure of the sky).

- Simple sky tracker using IBIS - as featured on Pentax cameras. It would definitely be useful for astro shooters.

Maybe you can think of more. I somehow doubt we'll ever see any of this though - Panasonic (like everyone else) seems fixated on video and hybrid now.

The first of the above, I'm pretty sure my S5 can do that. I've used it for the few astrophotography photos I've done.

As for the second, i think it's likely that Pentax have patented it. Maybe if Ricoh finally knock Pentax on the head they'll sell the patent rights to someone.

The biggest thing I'm missing is focal length in the EXIF, but that's already fixed with newer cameras I understand.

 

[pdk42]

The first of the above, I'm pretty sure my S5 can do that. I've used it for the few astrophotography photos I've done.

No, that's Live Comp. The difference is that Live Comp does a continual stacking of images with an "additive" algorithm (new bright areas get added to the image). Live Time is basically a normal long exposure but where you can peek at the exposure at regular intervals to see how it's going. Live Comp is great for things like star trails, car lights on roads, blurring running water, perhaps even removing people moving about. But Live Comp is useful for in-camera burning and dodging and for determining the ideal time on a long exposure.

As for the second, i think it's likely that Pentax have patented it. Maybe if Ricoh finally knock Pentax on the head they'll sell the patent rights to someone.

Yes, I suspect that's the case.

The biggest thing I'm missing is focal length in the EXIF, but that's already fixed with newer cameras I understand.

Yes, focal length, but not a way to record the f-stop used.

 

[RBecker]

As for the second, i think it's likely that Pentax have patented it. Maybe if Ricoh finally knock Pentax on the head they'll sell the patent rights to someone.

Yes, I suspect that's the case.

--> There are different options to bring an astro tracer to life: Pentax is using the GPS data from the internal gps tracker for position and the internal movement sensors to calculate the exact position of the camera pointing to the sky.
--> But you can do this also by tacking some pictures to scan the sky and measure the movement in the files. this movement is then corrected by IBIS movement in the following pictures. This method seems to be free, because several astrotracers are working like this. But only astro companies are using this method right now, no camera manufacturer...

 

[Quentinquirelino]

Flash with electronic shutter enabling high resolution composites with dedicated flash. The Olympus EM1 Mk2 does this.

Auto ISO with fill flash. I imagine this would require some sort of pre-flash to accurately gauge exposure.

For flash photography, there is a lot potential for improvement for Panasonic. I don't know if the burst rate still are very bad with flash photography in the latest body's, but with the S5 you don't get much more than 3 fps for example. At least not with third party.
Also if you read through different forms, the TTL functions seem to be a lot more problematic with Lumix cameras compared to competitors. Again, it's mostly with third party flashes. But even if everything is much better with Panasonic flashes, you loose a lot of options without third party flashes.

 

[Prosecutor]

There‘s only one thing I wish: a fully stacked sensor. I‘m fed up with rolling shutter and banding.

 

[dseres]

There‘s only one thing I wish: a fully stacked sensor. I‘m fed up with rolling shutter and banding.

Why not do you wish a global shutter? I read, Panasonic has some working prototypes of an organic sensor allowing global shutter technology.

I am not sure if the newer models have a GPS module, but I miss it in my S5D. So my wish is to have a GPS module.

 

[Rel75]

They seem to have been experimenting with organic sensors for a long time now. However some think it will never be used in an actual camera which is sad.

Panasonic's Organic Sensor May Be Complete, But Likely Won't Be Used

Panasonic hasn't seen a reason to use it, so why should anyone else?

petapixel.com

 

[jpl]

White balance menu settings for snow. Might need settings for Sunny snow and Cloudy snow.

 

[Mmichaelhh1234]

Dwelling on the improvements that the S1Rii brings to the party, I've been reflecting that it's really mostly about video. There are a bunch of simple things that Panasonic could offer to improve the life of stills shooters, but there has been very little progress since the S1 was launched. These are some of the things I'd like to see:

- Adding a "LiveTime" feature. This is Bulb mode where the display gives regular peeks of the building image (incl histogram and zebras). It's great not only for knowing that a shot is properly exposed, but also for allowing in-camera dodging & burning (e.g. holding back exposure of the sky).

- Better bracketing options for HDR - today if you want -2, 0, +2 for example you're stuck with shooting five exposures and throwing away the -1 and +1 shots.

- Doing an in-camera HDR that delivers a raw file. Bonus points for some in-camera decision support that examines the DR of the scene and figures out the best set of exposures to make.

- Improved live-view to show the raw file numerical values (a bit like an in-camera rawdigger). Today all we have is the histogram and zebras driven off the JPEG rendering.

- In-camera filters via compositing multiple images (like what OM do with Live ND and Live Grad ND) - and to put the resulting image into a raw file.

- Better focus bracketing/stacking - select a near and a far point and get the camera to work out the best focus increment and number of exposures. Also have the ability to stack in-camera and build a raw file (not the 6K JPEG-only photo mode available in some cameras).

- More variants of hand-held hi res - so a composite technique but where it's not just for hi-res. The obvious use-case is to leave resolution the same but to stack multiple images at high ISO to give lower noise.

- Simple sky tracker using IBIS - as featured on Pentax cameras. It would definitely be useful for astro shooters.

Maybe you can think of more. I somehow doubt we'll ever see any of this though - Panasonic (like everyone else) seems fixated on video and hybrid now.

Does a tethering app like capture one address any of these items?