I have started a lot of posts lately and they have all stalled.

I am tired at the moment, handling the third school term hump, new clients in their finals seasons and just sick of the tail end of winter.

They were all going to be something they are not worthy of, so I am going to quickly pull out the stumps of these dead trees.

Gimbals.

These just need to F&$k off from my thinking. Nothing personal, nothing irrational, just the idea of them needs to go away so I can focus on all the ideas I have that are as good or better.

White balance.

I am realising this is the simplest path to better quality and faster processing, probably the single most important adjustment for quality and consistency. RAW is fine, but nailing down some things are time savers, because the preview you are given can be misleading.

Unfortunately just setting it manually does not work, because Lightroom and Capture 1 will re-adjust the previews slightly, but a pre-set for batch processing a ton of time. Trying to get it right in camera does stabilise your eye for later post processing as well as helping with guesti-mating WB for video better.

Gear (this one kills off two redundant posts).

A long winded post on the virtues of all gear from any era and the false claims made by manufacturers about the need to adopt the next best thing or be damned to the pile of photographic second-ratedness is avoided.

Our maker fuelled obsession with more resolution and bigger numbers is becoming less and less relevant as the numbers are plenty big enough folks! This has always been the case and always will be, but right now, there is less and less reason to buy the newest and greatest, because basically it is all great.

Coming from a mirrorless user of over 10 years, right now I feel the very best bargains are to be found in all the recently discarded DSLR’s available. Seriously good cameras for peanuts folks.

Japan kit (again!).

I was torn between my perfect “Zen” kit of the Pen F, 9, 17, 45 and 75mm (or just 17 and 45)* and my “low stress” kit of a pair of worn EM10 mk2’s, the street expert Pen mini with the 9, 17, 45 and 12-60 and 40-150 kit zooms.

The Zen kit puts me into a limited, maybe precarious (1 camera with 1 card), but highly focussed and clean space.

The other kit adds depth, options, with low preciousness but also clutter, both mental and physical. Both suffer from worrying issues with old and under used batteries for the Pen F (I need all 6 to feel safe!), the other shows signs of reliability issues from age and heavy use of these non-pro cams.

I have decided after all that to go with a G9 mk1, the second set of lenses from above (or maybe the first) and a single EM10.2 as backup. I have never shot Japan with Panasonic, so it is maybe time for a change and the Pana colours in early Autumn may be a winner, especially if the forecast rain comes.

The capable G9’s are still not as natural to me, so sole reliance on one I hope will change that. A small bonus is more pixels and weather sealing, as the weather looks patchy.

I have a basically unused one that takes 2 cards, produces great video, has good battery life, EM1x like handling, stabe and low light performance.

All clear now, stumps pulled, field clear, time to move on.

*Shot for 16:9 cine-wide format, then processed as pairs or in triptych, just for fun (in RAW so not really, but with frame lines for composition and import).