On Holidays and New Equipment
Sunrise
Ponta Delgada, Azores
February 4, 2024
ISO 200, 45mm, F/2.5 1/400 sec
This was supposed to be a blog post featuring pictures from the Azores taken with my new Panasonic Lumix DC-G9. Well, new to me anyway, although the packaging it arrived in looked unopened so it is possible it was new. I had been considering buying a new camera recently, and with the release of the Lumix DC-G9II the prices for the original dropped quickly. But I digress. This post isn’t about my new camera or even the trip to the Azores. Rather, it is about a painful lesson I learned, and maybe by sharing it I can prevent others from making the same mistake.
I have been shooting with my Panasonic Lumix GX85 for 5-6 years now. I am very comfortable with the features of the camera, the layout of the controls and have it set up to meet most of my needs. I assumed, wrongly, that being a Panasonic Lumix of approximately the same era as the DC-G9, it would function the same. I assumed that I would be able to learn the camera on the fly, and it would be fine. How wrong I was.
I decided that the best way to learn was to just start using the G9. I gave the online user guide a quick once over, but after that I just started shooting. At first it was random shots around the house or the nearby park. None of the shots were composed particularly well, but that wasn’t the goal. I set the camera to IA (Automatic) and let it determine the settings as I got comfortable with the layout of the controls. The first shots were not great. I found myself very disappointed by the Automatic mode on the G9, until I discovered IA+. Once I turned that on, the photos started turning out much better. I was happy with the output and ready for our trip to the Azores.
Our holiday in the Azores was amazing - exactly what we both needed after a long, gray winter in Amsterdam. The people were extremely friendly, the food and wine were amazing, and I got some photos I am very happy with. As I reviewed them on the camera, there were more than a few I thought had great potential to be something really good. I did not bring any technology with me on this trip other than my phone, so I took the risk that the SD card wouldn’t fail and I would be able to upload the photos to Lightroom once we were back home. Luckily, the SC card made it without any issues and all my photos were ready to be uploaded.
Normally when I upload photos, I upload all of the RAW files to Lightroom and all of the JPG to Google Drive. This is a process I have practiced for years now, but recently I began to wonder if it was necessary. I never really used the JPGs; they merely took up space in Drive. Why was I keeping them if I had RAW files in Lightroom? I never posted the JPGs from Drive, preferring to edit and export the RAW files into JPGs if I did post them. Once Google stopped storing JPGs free of charge my Drive space was becoming quite limited. The duplicate images seemed like a waste of space, so this time I made the decision to delete all of the JPGs on the SD card and just upload the RAW files. That was my second- and more significant- mistake. As you might be guessing, most of the shots from the Azores were only JPGs. When I enabled IA+ in the camera it defaulted to just shooting JPG, not RAW and JPG. When I connected the SD card I quickly sorted by file type, deleted all of the JPG files, responding to Windows' question of “Are you sure, this will permanently delete all files” with a decisive "Yes”. I then quickly opened Lightroom and uploaded the RAW files on the card. It wasn’t until I started to review the photos in Lightroom that I understood the mistake I had just made. The photos from my morning photo walk were missing, as were the photos of the waves crashing against the pier one stormy afternoon. The photo of, as I told Melissa with a smile, “A ship, plane and crane all in one frame” was missing as well. It was then I realized what I had done. For the entire week, other than the first full day, I had been shooting in JPG only.
Now let me be fair, there were several opportunities to prevent this from happening if I had just paid a little more attention. The G9 has a very informative display on the top that I should have noticed was only shooting in JPG. If I had paid more attention to the balance of files on the card I would have realized there were far more JPG than RAW files. If I had just followed my normal process one more time I would still have all of the photos from our holiday. Instead, I am left with 20 or so fairly bad photos that were mostly test shots I took on arrival.
Despite my disappointment, I did learn a few valuable lessons. First, learn how to use your equipment. My instinct was to just get out and shoot, and that is valuable, but I should have spent way more time learning how to use the camera. I should have taken time between shots to check the settings and review the photos more carefully. Second, if you are going to change a process, do so cautiously. Take time to ensure the step you are about to skip can actually be skipped. Maybe you only do this the first time a process changes. If I had, I would still have all my photos from the Azores. Finally, be patient. If I had been patient, either learning how to use my new camera or in uploading the files, I would at best have RAW copies of all my photos, and at the least have JPG copies. Instead I have neither.
