Adding 4K Photography
4K Photography - Preparation is essential
The better you prepare for the photo session, the better the results you may get, so it's best to premeditate the whole activity. Photographing my little-feathered friend, NuttyBoy (Common Nuthatch, Sitta europaea) surely presented a challenge for me as he is extremely agile and swift creature.
With some planning, prearranged scenery, proper settings on my Lumix FZ1000 and a good dose of 3Ps (patience, perseverance, persistence), I was able to make several successful shots of him. Like this one:
Supreme importance of having a proper light
As with all photography – and particularly with 4K photography – the importance of light is of paramount importance. Simply told, the better light conditions, the faster the shutter speed I can have. Consequently, this will allow you me to ‘freeze’ the action more effectively in particular when capturing scenes where there is a lot of swift, sudden and unpredictable moves of the main star in my 4K session, NuttyBoy.
Checking closely the shutter speed
The Panasonic LUMIX FZ1000 shoots at a rate of 25 frames per second when in 4K mode. Shooting at over 1/1000th of a second is a must when using the 4K photography. Thanks to the FZ1000 bright Leica f2.8-4 lens I was able to reach the most suitable shutter speed that is possible. I easily reached 1/2500 while photographing my NuttyBoy.
Aspect ratio
For the NuttyBoy session, I chose the 3:2 aspect ratio as this is the native FZ1000 sensor ratio. All other ratios are crops.
Update/Modify my gear
4K photography may make me look at photography in some new, different way, and this might lead me to update my camera gear. One thing I will have to consider is a tripod. Although I'm used to hand-held photography via my previous workhorse Fuji HS50EXR, update in the form of the tripod has to be foreseen.
I should think also of a high-speed U3 SD cards, with a minimum 90 Mb/s read and 60 Mb/s write specs, as they represent a key element for the 4K photography.
Trial and error learning
Since 4K Photography is new to me, lots of practice will be needed, However, even these first tries confirmed the possibility to achieve very good results. Someone might say:« C'mon this isn't photography anymore.« I'd answer:« Maybe it's not, but it's the new way of achieving some splendid shots that would otherwise be missed.«
All images © 2017 Sreco Tzar. All rights reserved.