A few sample pictures from my Lumix FX9
December 20, 2005
I let my camera battery charge all day and I took a few test shots right as I was leaving work today. All of these were hand-held shots taken with the optical image stabilization turned on (I think they were in Mode 2) and no flash. I retouched them really quick in Photoshop; nothing fancy, just a quick auto level and a small adjustment on the shadows/highlights. I’m pretty happy with these pictures seeing as how it was a pretty low light situation.
When you zoom in at 100%, you can see some noise in the solid color parts of the picture. The EXIF says these were at ISO 100 (the 2nd lowest ISO setting), I wonder if ISO 200 and 400 are worse :S Overall though, I’d trade a little bit of noise (which Terry tells me can be filtered out through software) over blurry shots anyday 
Here’s the trusty smartphone:
Here’s Terry, probably in the middle of explaining something technical:
In this shot, you can see that the image stabilization can’t account for everything; Cam must’ve moved right as I was taking the shot.
I would’ve been hard pressed to take these shots on my S400… hopefully the FX9 won’t disappoint!
December 20, 2005 at 2:44 am
haven’t done anything interesting lately huh? your posts are ALL boring =[
December 20, 2005 at 11:57 am
Hey Mark, thanks for the plaxo birthday card!
New cameras with image stabilization are sweet. I bought a new lens for my Canon Rebel SLR that has IS, and it definitely helps me get less blurry pictures. While it prevents blurring from camera-shake, it doesn’t prevent motion blur from movement of your subjects, which is why that guy on the left looks blurry … he was probably moving.
Have fun with your camera!
December 20, 2005 at 12:00 pm
Ahhh… thanks for the explanation Dave, I was wondering what was going on there
You’re very welcome for the birthday card!
December 20, 2005 at 2:42 pm
How do you guys stand that office? The sounds of 100 keyboards all clicking all at once all the time… it’d drive me crazy without a single actual total cubie anywhere.
And what’s with all the chairs with no arm rests? How am I suppose to kick back, prop my feet up, and catch my afternoon (or morning post-hangover) nap? I’d fall right out!
December 20, 2005 at 3:42 pm
Hi Chris – It does get noisy sometimes, but in general, I think the open office space is awesome. You get to see all your co-workers everyday and spontaneous discussions happen often that advance our product. Fortunately, I like my fellow co-workers, but I could see how this could actually be a negative
As far as the chairs, they actually all have arm rests. I’m probably a bit weird since I’ve removed mine, but everyone else’s arm rests seem to be in use
December 20, 2005 at 3:49 pm
@chris meller: All the office chairs here have armrests, it must not look that way in the photos or something.
We don’t have 100 keyboards clicking at once, only about 20-30
. Originally, the place was all cubicles but the engineers asked for them to be taken down. Nearly everyone works with headphones in any case so we can optionally tune out everything. Obviously people that are on the phone all the time are in the corner or have their own cubicles.
@dave: Image Stabilization on your Canon dSLR is going to be much more effective than Mega O.I.S. on the Lumix. Compensation on smaller cameras is less than on bigger ones like yours. Panasonic did a great job with this one. The shake is noticeably less than in the Casio line.
These shots are at 1/15 of a second @ 35mm (35mm effective focal length) so they are a 1 stop past the rule-of-thumb limit—near optimal for a vibration reduction system.
@Mark: those aren’t the most flattering pictures of me.
BTW, doing good exposure in fluorescent lighting is pretty hard. Oftentimes the shots are underexposed because exposure is calculated at the wrong time in the flourescence cycle. These new pocket cameras seem to have no trouble nowadays with both white balance and exposure—only the first shot is underexposed.
December 20, 2005 at 3:54 pm
@mark: ISO 200 and 400 will be noisier. The CCD sensor is the same at all ISOs what happens is the CCD/CMOS capacitance data is “gained up” to the proper ISO before it is “binned” into 12-bit channels (the final data is then de-mosaic’d into a 8-bit channel JPEG). Obviously gaining up the sensor data will magnify noise also.
December 20, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Ahh… Now that you mention it and I squint, I guess that is an armrest on that closest chair in the last picture.
I guess you’re right about the noise thing. Now that I think about our building at work, I guess the phones are the loudest part. The geniouses that laid out our floor plan decided to put the IT department in the very middle of the building, surrounded by 3 departments that are constantly on the phone. It gets quite noisy…
January 12, 2006 at 5:42 am
Hey Mark,
I think I got mine about the same time you got yours. I’m so impressed with it that I’ve just started a new Lumix FX9 blog.
My plan is to put various tips and stuff about the camera on it as I discover it.
January 17, 2006 at 1:07 am
Panasonic Lumix FX9 – thanks Mark
Towards the end of last year, Mark had the following post: plaxoed! � A few sample pictures from my Lumix FX9 [Mark Jen’s life @ Plaxo] I would’ve been hard pressed to take these shots on my S400… hopefully the FX9 won’t disappoint!
Now, 2…
February 1, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hello. And Bye.
March 20, 2009 at 4:58 am
very intresting
April 5, 2009 at 12:11 am
I’ve found a lot of excellent virtual birthday cards at 123Greetings. You may want to check the site, if you need one.