Sunset Guitar Hike

On Monday after work, I headed for the hills with my guitar and camera, hoping to get a few good shots for my newly redesigned website. I raced up the steep, overgrown path to reach the top in time for golden hour. We’ve had a lot of rain this year and the hillside was unusually lush and green. 

I brought my Panasonic G7 with the 20mm f/1.7 prime lens, my tripod, and my beautiful Taylor 714CE.

For my cover shot, I wanted to frame the picture almost directly into the sun. I’ve never tried that with this camera setup before, but I think it turned out really well. I was shooting wide open at f/1.7 for a nice soft background, and I had the shutter speed maxed out at 1/4000. I set the exposure metering mode to spot and pointed it at my shirt, and the Auto ISO ended up between 125 and 500. This left me and the guitar reasonably well exposed, while the landscape around me was overexposed for a soft sunset like appearance. The grass was super-green, but in some of the shots I amped up the golden amber-waves-of-grain vibe in Lightroom.

After shooting straight into the sun, I turned around to take some shots emphasizing the greens and blues.

Since I was alone, I needed a way to be in the shot when the camera focussed and triggered. So, I put the camera in 10-second countdown triple-shot mode. I turned on the camera’s wi-fi and used Panasonic’s Image App on my phone to see the live camera image. When ready to shoot, I’d walk out front and frame myself in the shot, then touch the phone screen to set the pinpoint for the Auto ISO. Then I’d hit the shutter icon to start the countdown and give me time to put the phone away to strike a pose. This worked ok, but I found that the app lost its connection to the camera after every shot sequence, so I was constantly force-quitting and restarting the app. Is there a better way??

Lesson learned- bring an extra camera battery and charger for the phone! Apparently, using the wi-fi on the camera, and the app on the phone are both heavy battery-consumers.