New Camera / member

[dmonk]

Learning my FZ50 and trying out Olympus TCON-17 1.7x teleconverter.
Shot the attached picture with the 1.7x and at 200 iso.
Overall I am happy with results as long as there is enough light.

ONE questiion, Is it better to shoot at 10mp and then crop with Acdcee or to use the EZ zoom shot at 8 or 5 mp?

[Pave]

I don't know whether it is best but I never use the EZ on my FZ30. I try to avoid the cropping as well and instead get as close as possible...
But when it is not possible, I crop...
Because as far as I know the EZ is not as miraculous as Panasonic would like us to think. The fact that when you lower the resolution to say 5Mpix, the part of the senzor that works is decreased somewhat su*ks...So you don't end up having better quality photos...
I think that some months ago there was a thread about this topic...I mean about the fact, that when you set your camera to lower resolution, part of the sensor doesn't work...

[genece]

I feel just the opposite.....I use EZ quite a bit, I feel it helps you meter and focus on what you want.....And if your main use is to view on a monitor or on the net 5mp is all you need in fact it even allows for some cropping.......If you intent is to print, 5mp is fine for 5 X 7 prints but if I wanted a large print I would use a larger size......I really use a teleconverter much less than I did before the EZ modes........but as was said its not a miracle worker but 5 mp is enough for most of my needs. And it does help if you use spot or one area focus and metering.
By the way thats a nice job with the Robin. And you are correct about light is the secret.
I am not sure if you would be interested but my wife has pretty much taken control of my FZ30 and most of these photos were taken at 3EZ by her.

http://imageevent.com/grc6/fz30/fz30goestoalaska

[Pave]

What Gene said is of course true...5Mpix is quite enough for such pics as he described. But I meant something different. By lowering the resolution you also loose part of the capacity of the already-quite-small sensor which seems like a waste to me...

[dmonk]

Genece, Thanks for the link to the Alaska pictures. We are planning on going there next year and doing an Alaska by Rail tour. The pictures are fantastic.
I bought the FZ50 and sold my Canon digital because we ride a motorcycle a lot and also birdwatch. I just found the SLR too heavy and bulky for those uses and the FZ50 is more convenient and gets as good a picture at least with good light. I bought the teleconverter mailnly for taking pictures of birds. They don't let you get that close. I am pretty happy so far with it. Using the 1.7 lens with the 12x zoom and then being able to crop I am really happy with what I have gotten so far.
Again thanks for the Alaska pictures, we are anxious to go there.

[Mike63]

Those Alaska pics are great, my kind of country. I want to go so bad, unfortunately I would have to retire first and thats a long ways off. I will have to stick to the Colorado rockies for now.:)

[genece]

I spend some time in Colorado ever year if possible.....I love the Rockies.
I sure do wish I would have moved there when I was younger.
If you want you can find more Alaska Photos here.
Click on the D50 or FZ30 albums
http://imageevent.com/grc6

[dmonk]

I absolutely recommend retirement and love the Rockes too.

Yesterday I took several pics of an Eagles nest at 10-8-5-3 mp. With the TCON-17. The only one that was in focus was the 8mp shot. I believe I manually focused that one. Do you have problems with autofocus with the teleconverter installed?

Attached are a couple of pics from Black Lake NM I took with the FZ-50

[genece]

Nice photos......when I used a teleconverter on the FZ10 and 20, I used spot focus and spot metering. When I got the FZ30 I really liked using the one area high speed focus and CW metering....and when using the TCon 17 with those settings I immediately felt the Tcon 17 worked better on the FZ30 than it did on the FZ20....I still feel that way, but I do not use the converter enough anymore to have any valuable opinions, but I have no trouble with the focus.
One other thing, someone here ...(I think its John Reed) seems to believe that IS mode 1 works better with a teleconverter. Perhaps its worth a try for you.