Things I wish Panasonic would add for stills shooters

[pdk42]

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.

 

[dirk]

Yeah, this is true. I am afraid that Panasonic will stick to his "focus on videographers" camera-strategy and leaves the field of photographers to Leica and Sigma. That would be bad news. We need more competition to get better products.

This ND, bracketing etc. features of the MFT system are really valuable for photographers. But same there, it was more Olympus, which pushed in that direction than Panasonic.

That is a risky road for Panasonic. Not everyone has the money for Leica gear and Sigma will be always offereng very niche camera-bodies. The L-Mount allienace risks with this, that new customers decide for another system because of the the price and choice for photographers.

OM system with Live ND and Live Grad ND feature plus focus stacking for macro work is very impressive. For sports photography they have very fast fps with mechanical shutter and better IBIS, thanks to the smaller sensor. Plus smaller and lighter telezooms vs. fullframe. These are big USPs for MFT.

 

[xaviergut]

Just two things from my side:

- A longer-lasting battery. DJI released what they call an "Extreme Battery" for action cameras, the same size as the previous ones but with much longer battery life.

- 1TB of internal memory... The Sigma BF already has internal memory (230GB), as does the Hasselblad (1TB), but I hope it becomes standard in cameras in the future.

 

[RuleOfThirds]

- 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).

You mean this feature ?