Intro by Skip Cohen

Two of the things I love most about the members of Panasonic's Luminary Team is their diversity matched together with the never-ending quest they have for education, their own! They're constantly experimenting and pushing themselves into new areas of imaging.

This short post from my good buddy Bob Coates is a prime example. He's written a number of guest posts here on the SCU site and is constantly experimenting in raising the bar on his own skill set. Check out his blog, Successful-Photographer.com for great content, including more on the technique on the time-lapse example he used in this short video.

Note: I chose two of my favorite images, which have everything to do with LUMIX cameras, but nothing to do with time-lapse photography. What can I say? I love the guy's work. LOL

Looking to keep up with the Luminary team? Check out the LUMIX Lounge. You'll never be disappointed in what these artists are up to!  

by Bob Coates

Trying out the Time Lapse feature on the Lumix G7 and I'm impressed how easy it can be to create some cool looking imagery. 

The clouds were on the move in my hometown of Sedona, Arizona. It was a classic blue sky with white puffy’s flowing past the red rocks around the corner from my house. I set the G7 on a tripod. Camera in Manual Mode to avoid severe lighting changes as the clouds moved through. White Balance was set to Daylight for the same reason. This keeps the final movie from having a case of the flickers. 

Here’s the best part: After the capture of the images you head to the Playback Menu on the camera and you can set the Quality and Frame Rate and tell the camera to process out the video.

For this I choose 4K video and 12 FPS. I had tried 7 FPS and that made the video rendering too choppy. I didn’t shoot enough frames to go to 24 FPS. Remember you want to hang in there as you make your captures as it takes quite a few images to have a Time Lapse of any serious length. (Math is your friend in knowing how many frames you need to capture to determine a certain length of finished video) 

If you head over to the link below I’ll share more information on settings and how I made the additional movement that looks like the camera is in motion in post production: http://successful-photographer.com/sedona-time-lapse/

Intro by Skip  Cohen

Here's a perfect example of one of the things I love about the photography industry. It's all about the friendships we share and this guest post by Mark Toal is perfect to make the point.

While Mark and I have known of each other for a lot of years, we had never actually met or spent any time together. This past summer Panasonic brought their annual Luminary meeting here to Sarasota, and it gave Mark and I a chance to talk.

Right out of the blocks he mentioned we share a good friend, writer, artist and educator Joe Farace. In fact, I just shared a terrific giving-back idea thanks to Joe earlier this week.  Well, since that first meeting Mark and I have been catching up to each other regularly, and we're hoping to grab dinner one of these days when he's here in the area.  

We're all part of an incredible industry. And, it's relatively small with each of us overlapping friendships and networks all based on a foundation of passion for imaging!

I know cell phone technology is pretty amazing these days, but nothing beats a real camera when you're traveling. I love this post from Mark, written last Spring, and his point is timeless. He's shooting with the little GF6 with the 12-32mm lens kit. He's never without a camera, and the benefits are obvious with what he shares in this post.

You'll find more of Mark's posts at "Mirrorless Photo Tips - Exploring the Soul of Photography". In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this short post and follow Mark's lead. The tagline for Panasonic's LUMIX line is "Changing Photography" and that's exactly what they're doing.

Check out more about LUMIX with a visit to the Lumix Lounge where you can follow each Luminary. This is an amazing group of talented, creative and diverse artists!