White balance.

As you can see, both of these shots were taken with the toys sitting in the same place. It's a corner lit by a north facing window and isn't the brightest spot in the house. I have never been a great enthusiast for flash, preferring to use natural light if I possibly can, and both pictures were taken that way.

Woodey, K-01 & FA43.

Teddy, TZ40.

Initially, on both cameras, using AWB I had great difficulty with getting the colours how I wanted them, then I switched the WB to daylight and things improved dramatically. It still wasn't quite to my liking though, so I fine tuned the WB towards the blue end of things and my satisfaction. I was particularly pleased to find that, whilst the range of adjustment was a bit more limited, I could do this on the small sensor TZ40 as well as the APSC Pentax. Thank you Mr Lumix.

Dodgy door locks and roses.

I was waiting for the locksmith to arrive (it's a long story!) so I thought I'd give the TZ40 a bit of exercise.

TZ40         1:1

Both shots have been post processed, using the Google+ implementation of Snapseed, on my Chromebook. To be honest this has now become my normal method of workflow.

TZ40                16:9

I really can't say why, but I rarely shoot in 16:9 format. Seeing this outcome though I think I'll try using it more often.

Comparing the Lumix TZ40 and FZ200.

I don't wish to pass any value judgements here, but rather to allow any viewer to decide for themselves what they think of these two images, and which they might prefer.

Both photographs were taken hand held using (not very good) natural light from a north facing window. Both cameras were set to program mode and zoomed to x3. In addition the TZ40 was set to macro mode and iso 400, whilst I used a +4 close up lens on the FZ200 which was set to iso 320.

TZ40, 1/25 @ f5.2

FZ200, 1/40 @ f2.8

Perhaps I should also say a word or two about my current workflow. In recent months I have tried to simplify my everyday photo' work flow, and to that end I am currently using an Acer C720 Chromebook and Google+ for handling my photographs.

I shoot exclusively in JPG and then save the image files to both a usb stick (for simple, quick access to them) and an external hard drive for archiving. The images can then be previewed on the Chromebook, and those I wish to currently use are uploaded to Google+. Once there, post processing is carried out using the Chrome OS implementation of Snapseed within Google+.

It's simple, straight forward and doesn't involve paying Adobe (or anybody else) huge wads of money, not that I would wish to stop anyone from doing that if they so desire.

Returning to the fold.

TZ40

It seems impossible that it is nearly 3 years since I posted anything on this blog of mine. How time flies! Anyway, time to resurrect it I think. Why? Well for one thing I'm less and less pleased with flickr. I'm sorry to say that I don't feel that the recent changes have been for the good, at least they don't work for me. I also gave ipernity a try, but that wasn't right for me either. Consequently I have moved to using google+ for storing photos on the web. However I kind of feel I don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry having access to that archive, but that I do want a public photographic presence on the web, the blog format would seem to offer that opportunity with the added benefit that I can witter on about things which interest me and hopefully you.