Aperture priority and Panasonic LX3

Pier, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I read an excellent posting at Doonster, titled Panasonic Lumix LX3: further observations, describing how to use the LX3 with manual focusing, using f/4 to get hyperfocal. I tried this today, and it worked well, although I forgot a few times to check the focusing distance before shooting.

Here is the hint from doonster: "I use the focus button when I want AF. Works well and is far more ergonomic that using AF and the AF-lock button. Also mean I can pre-focus or focus and re-compose with ease."

This is really convenient, and there is no shutter lag to speak of with this. The only drawback is the need to remember that you are no longer in autofocus, so you need to use the focus button before shooting.

Manual focusing works quite well, and you are really in control of what you are doing. The LX3 shows the depth of field as a yellow bar on the display. I was mainly using f/4 (and f/8 with the tele end of the lens) to get enough DoF in my shooting, and this worked well.

I tried once again b&w photography with the LX3, using the "dynamic b&w" film mode. I'm not quite sure whether I like this in all cases, but here it seemed to do a competent job. Here I actually used f/5, I'm not quite sure why.

Update: I noticed that Doonster had another nice posting, about "how good" you are at something. I feel that there is no single answer.

My main occupation has centered around writing for a long time, and every once in a while I have felt that my skills have been going downhill. And I guess that has once in a while been also true by some arbitrary measure. But later on I have realised that these "detours" have been necessary to find something new, which has in fact then helped to improve the skills by a big step.

Photography is such a nice hobby for a novice like me that there is so much to learn. Thus you keep improving (or feel that you are improving) despite failing all the time. Without failure, no progress.