We bought several Panasonic LX7 cameras for reporters to use in cases where we don't hire a photographer. Unfortunately in journalism today, reporters are expected to be photographers, even though many are not really susceptible to even basic photography training.
The reporters don't understand the principles of exposure. I want them to use the camera's iA "intelligent automatic" mode, since it will, for example, choose the camera's portrait scene mode when appropriate and do things like focus on the eyes and try to achieve shallow depth of field. I feel like that's my best bet to get usable photographs.
But I also want RAW versions of the photos. No matter what I tell them, our reporters tend to take pictures in mixed indoor lighting with, for example, one side of a person's face lit by sunlight from a window and the other side lit by fluorescent light. It would help to have RAW files in these cases so that I'd have more latitude to adjust white balance. I really hate using unflattering photos with green or purple skin tones.
To my dismay, I learned that one of the settings disabled by iA mode is the ability to save RAW images in addition to the JPEGs (this is also true of the scene modes). Is this something I'm stuck with? Is there a workaround? A firmware update I should apply? Or someone at Panasonic who accepts feature requests for future firmware updates?
I'm guessing there's no way around this, but I'd welcome any ideas.
The reporters don't understand the principles of exposure. I want them to use the camera's iA "intelligent automatic" mode, since it will, for example, choose the camera's portrait scene mode when appropriate and do things like focus on the eyes and try to achieve shallow depth of field. I feel like that's my best bet to get usable photographs.
But I also want RAW versions of the photos. No matter what I tell them, our reporters tend to take pictures in mixed indoor lighting with, for example, one side of a person's face lit by sunlight from a window and the other side lit by fluorescent light. It would help to have RAW files in these cases so that I'd have more latitude to adjust white balance. I really hate using unflattering photos with green or purple skin tones.
To my dismay, I learned that one of the settings disabled by iA mode is the ability to save RAW images in addition to the JPEGs (this is also true of the scene modes). Is this something I'm stuck with? Is there a workaround? A firmware update I should apply? Or someone at Panasonic who accepts feature requests for future firmware updates?
I'm guessing there's no way around this, but I'd welcome any ideas.