Today’s post by Joe Farace
The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.—Marshall McLuhan
My plans for a Saturday PhotoWalk were simple: I was going to dust off my black body Panasonic Lumix GX1 (more later,) charge its battery and then stroll down Mainstreet in Parker, Colorado capturing some street scenes in black and white. I borrowed Mary’s Beetle convertible and drove to downtown only to find the street barricaded and a car show—a big one—in progress.
After I was lucky to find a parking place on the O’Brien Park parking lot, I changed the GX1’s Photo Style from Monochrome to Standard because I knew there would be some colorful cars to photograph. I still planned on shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and use the Micro Four-thirds default 4:3 ratio to take advantage of the camera’s full 16-megapixels. Then I hung the camera around my neck, grabbed my cane and started walking.
For all of you counting the number of the times I dropped my cane at the car show, based on my last PhotoWalk, I was especially careful around the cars and only dropped it twice, missing both the cars and my feet both times. It was quite sunny—and at 88 degrees F, also hot—making the camera’s three-inch screen (460,000 dot) LCD screen virtually useless. I was glad to have slipped the LVF2 viewfinder onto the GX1’s hot shoe before leaving home, and it proved indispensable for capturing images of the cars. In recent times, LVF2’s have become so valuable they now cost more than what I paid for my (used) GX1 itself with a LVF2! I haven’t customized the camera much, only adding a leather Panasonic half-case that was never sold in the USA; mine came from Japan via eBay and looks and feels wonderful.
How I Made this Photograph: Because this show was the most crowded I’ve attended in a long time, somebody was always walking into my shot whenever I tried to do anything but closeups. This image of a 1961 Corvette is actually a composite of two image files—I shot three—with different sections combined to eliminate the people walking into the frame.I also did a little perspective correction. The lens used was the Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens at 32mm with a Program mode—my car show default—exposure pf 1/320 at f/10 and ISO 400.
Why Choose the GX1?
After all, it’s an old camera, having been introduced in 2011 and just has a 16MP sensor with a top ISO setting of 12,800. Here’s what DP review said about the GX1 at the time: “With a solid metal body construction that weighs in at nearly 320g without a lens, the GX1 feels in hand rather substantial, in a way that calls to mind not only the GF1* but classic film camera bodies.” It’s that “classic film body” feel is why I really love the GX1. So much so that I own two of them: The other, with a silver body, was modified by Life Pixel with their Hyper Color infrared conversion and you’ve seen images from it many times on this blog.
How I Made this Photo: This was Mary’s favorite picture of the show because, although she wasn’t there, she felt “it was a good documentary image of the event.” But I had several people walk in front and back of the truck as I was shooting. I made two shots and was able to make this composite; it was easier to make than the Corvette image above. Purists might think this is “cheating” but I think it’s an image that I could have made if I stood there waiting for an hour pr so. The lens used was the selfsame Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 at 24mm (48mm equivalent) with a Program mode exposure of 1/500 at f/11 and ISO 400.
I would like to emphasize that part of my attraction, maybe all of it, is the camera’s look and feel. My friend Barry Staver likes to say that the best camera is “the one you have with you.” Recently Matt Osborne aka Mr. Leica, was shopping for a Leica digital rangefinder camera since his favorite had been sent to Leica in Germany for repair for what looks like and extended time. He was very and I mean very particular about the replacement camera’s appearance he was looking to buy because he believes that if you like the way your camera looks, you’ll use it more. That’s probably why for my last PhotoWalk, I picked the Olympus Pen F, which I happen to think is the best looking Micro Four-thirds camera of all time. The Lumix GX1, I think, comes in second.