The Online Photographer: Cameras, new

Cameras, new

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Where Do You Stand on Retro?

So—the long-awaited and much-discussed Fuji X100 is beginning to fall, like the occasional droplets of a coming rain, into users' hands, even though it's currently sold out at B&H Photo and at Amazon. And all sorts of reviews are hitting the web, the best of which is probably the "Conclusion" section of dpreview's (I like their new expanded conclusions, since that's all I read anyway). Image quality—the rubber-meets-road aspect of all new and as-yet little-known cameras, but especially fixed-lens ones—looks very promising. But the more pressing question remains to be answered: Do you like the way it looks?

I have a real love/hate affair with retro. For the most part, I love classicism—the idea that there is an undying essential, proper and right style underlying all temporal and temporary iterations of an ideal. And I like old things—I'm not a neomaniac. And I like the process of refinement that happens with designs that are evolved slowly and thoughtfully over time—you can see the results of that in things like acoustic guitars and small wooden sailboats, or hand woodworking tools. I even buy a magazine called New Old House (it appears to be a bi-annual, which is about as infrequently as a magazine can come out and still be called a magazine), which features new houses purposefully made to look like old ones.

Retro sometimes actually works. Well enough. The not-so-mini Mini.

So why do I hate retro? You really only have to look at this to know instantly. (It's an Excalibur limo, for those of you momentarily too shocked to think straight. Shades of Liberace.) Retro always has at least a whiff—and all too often, more—of tastelessness about it; an ugly underlayment of the contemporary showing through or, worse, an essential misunderstanding of the target style betraying itself in the attempt. However much you like it, it has to be conceded that retro style not easy to pull off. Much as we might admire old originals, cars don't have fenders any more, houses aren't built by carpenters on site from scratch these days, and Elvis is dead.

Done right, or right enough (and the dividing line there is often razor thin), I love it. I fell for the X100 at first glimmer and time hasn't dimmed my admiration, even though I haven't held one in my hand yet (I live in the sticks, remember), and even though I have a photo-friend who felt the opposite at first and whose negative opinion appears to be hardening as time passes. The X100 is channeling the aesthetic of the compact rangefinder 35's of the '60s and '70s—cameras like the Minolta 7sII, Olympus SP35, Olympus RD, and Canon QL 17 G-III, with some flavor notes of M3 thrown in too. I think it does it well enough to convince. What about you?

(And check out the "Category" for this post. Little joke there.)

Mike
(Photos: Fujifilm, Mini Cooper)

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Ctein adds: And further inflaming the datageek wars, DxO has their RAW benchmarks for the X100. I'm hoping that by the time a review unit gets to me, we're a coupla generations down the firmware. I'll always withhold judgement until I can test something myself, but dpreview's extraordinary shopping list of interface problems is daunting. Like most of the other commenters, 80% of what's on their list won't apply to me... and the other 20% are real killers.

Featured Comment by Jeff Hohner: "Love retro when it's done right. You're right, the line is fine. Design will always be about function and fashion. I enjoy nods to past fashions. They highlight history and the conversation culture has with itself over time.

"But I also believe 'form follows function'—more or less. (Not the strict Modernist formulation of that, everything stripped down to its essentials; there's always room for a little decoration in design, call it style.) As you said, objects, if designed conscientiously, evolve to approach ideal forms. So retro can also serve function, when it returns a tried and true design.

"To wit: the sublime X100.

"I am ecstatic to see camera design return to this form: compact body, dedicated control dials, optical viewfinder. For my kind of photography, this is the most useful tool, the tiny aluminum pencil sharpener (another triumph of design) of cameras. (I still shoot primarily with '60s rangefinders, so perhaps I'm biased. The X100 will be the first large sensor digital camera I will have ever purchased.)

"About the looks of the X100, I don't think it's actually all that. It's still too button-busy for me. And what's that screen for on the back? Looking down on it from the top, however, just makes me want to throw it around my neck and start taking pictures."

Featured Comment by Paul W. Luscher: "I guess my problem with retro is that it's phony, and appears to be an admission that we can't make things as nice anymore. My feeling is that if you wanna go retro, buy real retro. Get an M3 or M4 and learn how to use it, rather than getting a faux-M...."

Featured Comment by Andrew Roos: "The X100 looks...Gorgeous from the front. Gorgeous from the top. Gorgeous from the sides. Cheap and nasty from the back."

Featured Comment by Peter Rees: "I often still take pictures with my beloved 'old' Nikon 35Ti—there's a retro design that justifies itself through the sheer functionality of its gorgeous analogue interface, or what we used to call dials. As for the X100, I don't like it—too many unnecessary curves. Visually, it feels indecisive, perhaps reflecting the haste with which it (and its infamous 'infirmware') were brought to market."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "If a camera's styling is driven by, and works well with, the camera's functional design it's sublime whether 'retro' or 'futuristic.' But as accurately noted earlier, this is a rarity.

"If a camera's design is driven by styling it's destined to become a short-lived failure.

"I've not touched an X100 and have no plans to buy one. Early reports, however, suggest that it's an average APS-C camera hampered by a fixed lens and an version 0.9 operating system. I think it might be closer to an example of the latter case than the former.

"Ctein's column last week featured the obviously debatable headline 'No One Cares How Hard You Worked.' But this topic could be headlined 'No One Gives a Damn How Pretty Your Camera Is' with no debate."

Featured Comment by charlie: "Great design transcends time, genre and category."

Mike adds: I'm not sure I necessarily believe in the "form follows function" mantra. Seems to me it often leads to some pretty dispiriting forms. Concrete shell buildings with metal-truss roofs in the exurbs, for instance. Perfect examples of form following function, but bleh. Here's an instance of function being subservient to form. Here's an example of what happened when they realized life would be easier for the mechanics if they just shucked the pretty skin and went with a form-follows-function approach.

Beauty can be its own reward.

Featured Comment by mark lacey: "Well I'm 52 and just bought my first Rolleiflex, a 3.5 E3, and I can tell you I look pretty bloody retro wandering around with that. Might even have to get a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows!"

Mike replies: ...And a briar walking stick. With a tripod thread mounted in the top.

Featured Comment by Tom M: "$1,600 for a fashion accessory? For that amount of money, I think I would rather buy a $500 canon G12, and two pairs of $400 boots, and have $300 left over for the latest fashion accessory, the iPhone 5, coming out this summer. Ha ha!"

Featured Comment by Shaun Kelly: ""I shot severe weather for over a decade with a pair of Koni Omega Rapids—big, bright viewfinders, leaf shutters, built like tanks. I carried a old Nikkormat and a pair of Spotmatics with fastish primes as backups and for the time crunched/low light shots.

"I went to digital with a Nikon D40x and have not regretted it, but had been looking to upgrade for the last few years. I never did upgrade—I don't need autofocus and half the other bells and whistles, and while sensors improved, it seemed incremental...I coudn't afford the first FX cameras, though I nearly got a D700, but fell into the 'wait 6 months and something better will arrive' trap, and now I'm waiting for a D800, maybe. I can wait; the D40x still takes nice images. The micro 4/3rds with EVF's caught my eye, but I couldn't choose one, so I waited there, too.

"On the other hand, I pre-ordered the X100 months ago and got mine from the second batch of US shipments—easy decision. The OVF is great. The lens is fast and sharp, the leaf shutter is a leaf shutter. I can make good images with it, the controls feel right, the camera feels right in my hand. I really like it.

"Sure, I'd love it if they'd written the firmware right, and I hope the uproar makes them fix it, but it didn't stop me from getting some great storm pictures already. I expect I'll get a lot more storm images with it, and probably a lot of decent indoor low light people shots as well. Plus, as opposed my other cameras I have it with me right now."

Posted on Tuesday, 17 May 2011 at 10:23 AM in Cameras, new, Cameras, old | Permalink | Comments (127)

Saturday, 09 April 2011

Wild 'n' Wacky Cameras

Cary Norton is completely freaking stoked about the Legotron—and with good reason; go to the link to see the nice pix he took with it. Assembly photos at his site.

And if you've always wanted a Hasselblad but just couldn't spring the scratch (they're actually still fairly expensive on the used market)—you could go the route of Kelly Angood's Pinhole "Hasselblad," made almost entirely of corrugated cardboard. An oatmeal cannister probably works better—but isn't as stylish, unless you admire the Quaker dude's bomb diggity lid.

Classic pinhole camera body

Of course, the weirdness of Cory and Kelly's two cameras pales in comparison to something truly weird, such as Wayne Martin Belger's Human Skull Camera, made from the 150-year-old skull of a 13-year-old girl. Fair warning: the link might somewhat discomfiting if you happen to be a human being yourself.

Mike
(Thanks to numerous readers)

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Posted on Saturday, 09 April 2011 at 01:38 PM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (12)

Friday, 08 April 2011

Ricoh GXR and GRDIII at B&H

The GRDIII looking larger than life size. The camera has a fanatical following.

B&H is now stocking the Ricoh GXR and its accessories, as well as the Ricoh GR Digital III, a connoisseur's choice amongst pocketable point-and-shoots. (Once upon a time, Ricoh was one of the few photographic brands B&H didn't carry. Although the price is lower in Japan, instead of higher as is usually the case.)

In addition, B&H is offering a rebate for Sony NEX cameras. It's a bit convoluted, but what it amounts to as far as I can tell is that when you buy a NEX 3 or the more expensive but more popular NEX 5 with the 16mm "pancake" lens, you can get $150 off the price of the 18–55mm zoom lens, or (not and) you can get $100 off Adobe Lightroom. If you buy either NEX camera with the zoom, you get the Lightroom rebate but not the rebate on the extra lens.

Clear as mud!

Mike

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Posted on Friday, 08 April 2011 at 09:10 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (13)

Tuesday, 05 April 2011

Real Reasons to Pick One Camera Over Another

...Or a few that I can think of right now, anyway. In reverse order of importance:

8. You have a relationship with the company or one of its representatives. I know too many stories to recount. Includes sponsorship by that company, or membership in that company's Professional Services. Or maybe you just know someone associated with that brand, like my now-retired friend Don "Mr. Pentax" Nelson.

7. The camera really does have a feature you really like that a competing model doesn't have. If you really, really want video, you won't be happy with a Sony A900. If you really want, oh, say, body-integral IS (ahem), you won't be happy with a 5D Mark II.

6. You're "standing in line behind yourself." Dan Ariely, in his book Predictable Irrationality, notes that people love to do what other people are doing, so all of us are more likely to "stand in line" behind others and do what they do. In other words, lots of people buy Canon because lots of other people buy Canon. But, Ariely points out, we also "stand in line with ourselves," meaning, we want to do again over time what we have done before. Marketers know that if you've bought six Nikons in a row over twenty-five years, you're much more likely to buy a seventh Nikon. If you think of yourself as someone who "always buys American cars," your next car is much more likely to be an American one. And so on. It's harder to market something new or different to someone with entrenched habits. (I still can't believe I bought a car without a stick shift.)

5. The system in question has certain accessories you really need—the best flash system or a certain underwater housing or whatever.

4. You are already invested in that system.

3. It's what all your friends use. A friend emailed me this morning privately about this, and he's right. If all the photographers around you use one brand and you use another, you lose all kinds of benefits—loaning lenses and accessories back and forth, sharing esoteric secrets of menus and settings, etc. I started out with Contax, and switched to Nikon because I joined a studio with three other shooters, all of whom shot Nikon. It was partly that I wanted to borrow their equipment, and partly that I wanted to do my part within the group and be able to loan my equipment to them.

2. The lenses you want or need fit that camera body.

1. You really want a particular camera. It amazes me that so many people will go to such great lengths working to objectively justify a particular buying choice when the real reason is simply that they really want it. To me, really wanting something is the best reason to buy something, not the worst. There's nothing dishonorable or indulgent about it; you'll be happier, shoot more often, and might even do better work if you have the camera and/or lens you want. They're only cameras—we're not talking beach houses or Italian exoticars or Gulfstream jets. If you really want something, lucky for you—how much better is that than indecision, or not having a basis to choose, or, worst of all, "purchase paralysis"? It's worse to not know. So if you really want something, save your money and get it.

Why not? It's a very good reason, if you ask me. We only live once.

Mike

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Featured Comment by hugh crawford: "When I was doing this stuff for money, the biggest reasons to pick a brand were that:

It was easiest to rent if you needed some esoteric lens or accessory;
It had enough people using it that it was easy to buy or sell used gear at not too much of a loss (pro gear didn't used to lose value very quickly);
Assistants knew their way around it; and
Clients were comfortable with it.

"So I ended up using Nikons, Hasselblads, and Normans, because they were effectively the cheapest, most practical gear I could be using, because it was popular, even though I would have much rather used Rolleis, Pentaxes, and Graflexes. Normans were fine either way.

"Now I'm using full-frame Canons and the Sony NEX because they work with all the Nikon, Pentax and other weird bits of gear that I have lying around or want to try. Don't much care for the lenses that match the cameras, although there are some lenses for the other Sony cameras that look pretty nice."

Posted on Tuesday, 05 April 2011 at 07:17 PM in Cameras, new, Photo industry | Permalink | Comments (42)

More on Canon vs. Nikon

Slightly finer grain on the "Ultimate Canon vs. Nikon Guide" post: What I was saying is that yes, it's good to have a nice camera, and everybody should. But it's really not a matter of urgency which brand you choose. Divide DSLRs into rough categories—entry-level, mid-level, and pro-level. Simply pick your level, and then pick one of the available options and get on with it.

Nikon D5100

This morning's announcement of the new Nikon had me thinking of headlines like, "Of All the DSLRs in the World, Here is Another." Of course, there's actually no reason at all to be snarky. It's a Nikon. I bet it's going to prove a perfectly wonderful product, chock full of goodness and high value—very sane, no doubt formidably competent and up-to-the-minute. And almost completely predictable. And not, in any way I can discern, terribly exciting. I could have predicted the feature set. Heck, I could have predicted the price point, rounded to the dollar (Nikon D3100 kit, $699. Nikon D7000 body, $1199. You figure it out: D5100 kit, $899. Duh.)

We all have good reasons for making our personal choices. I love my K-5's quiet shutter and the way the front and back control dials work in manual mode, and I'm rather pleased by its compact good looks, the way it form-fits to my hand. (That Pentax advertises on TOP doesn't hurt my fondness for the marque, either, although that was sort of a chicken-and-egg kind of thing.) And there are always differences between products that make this one a little more suited to one usage and that one a little less suited to another.

The anti-Trump: You're hired!
But here's a somewhat mean-spirited mental exercise. Imagine I were to land a big grant to do a documentary project (it's not that far-fetched). I get to hire half a dozen photographers for a year to do nothing but go out in the world and shoot—work hard on whatever projects grab their interest, wherever they want to go, with good pay and logistical support—company vehicle, an archivist/IT assistant back at headquarters, etc.

And you're one of the shooters.

There's only one catch. We have to use the cameras donated by various companies that are helping to support the project.

So you and the other five photographers arrive for initiation day and we have a bunch of brand new two-body, three-lens* kits waiting from various manufacturers. A D7000 kit, an E-5 kit, a K-5 kit, a 7D kit, and so on. (Since this is imaginary, we're even going to imagine there are two of whatever camera Sony will eventually replace the A700 with, too. Or is that just too outlandishly implausible to imagine? Snark, snark.) And to make matters fair and keep them simple, we draw names out of a hat as to who gets what.

Could you deal with that?

Of course you could. I mean of course you would. Any photographer would, and could. That's my guess, anyway. Each photographer would finish their year of shooting madly with two or three things about their camera they'd initially disliked but figured out how to work around and eventually got used to, three or four things they love about it, and maybe some stealth feature they didn't discover until two months into the project that they now feel they will no longer be able to live without.

And you know what else? No matter what camera you drew in the lottery, you'd love it at the end of the year. Know why? Because craftsmen learn to love the tools they use the most. It's working with a camera that makes you like it, not picking just the right one to begin with. Whichever camera you drew from the hat, you'd remember fondly all your life.

I'm just sayin'.

Mike

*ADDENDUM: The three lenses would all** be fast primes, of course, not "kit lenses." Remember whose daydream you're in!

**Addendum to the addendum: Okay, not Olympus.

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Featured Comment by Kelvin: "Try talking to jazz saxophonists. They argue about mouthpieces all day long and think that only amateurs use reeds softer than size 4! The Selmer Mark VI is also their equivalent to a Leica M3—you're not hard core unless you play what Coltrane played!"

Posted on Tuesday, 05 April 2011 at 09:44 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (65)

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

The Ultimate Canon versus Nikon Guide*

The common question: "Should I buy a Canon, or a Nikon, or something else?"

Mike's Ultimate Answer: Yes.

Mike

*Shortest post ever?

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Featured Comment by Daniel Clements: "Oh, good! That means I did the right thing."

Featured Comment by Pascal Sauvé: "Your shortest post comment made me think of an anecdote... When he wanted to inquire about the success of his new book Les Miserables, Victor Hugo sent a letter to his editor simply saying this: '?' Reply from his editor: '!' Now that is the shortest post. Ever."

Featured Comment by Russ: "Sorry, the correct answer is...maybe."

Featured Comment by Sheridan: "Mike, now we know: you are a Vorlon!"

Mike replies: Actually, "Mike" is just part of my encounter suit.

Featured Comment by Ophelia: "Succinct, accurate, to the point, and very very wise. Same thing that should be said if someone asks if they should buy a PC or a Mac, really. No, I'm kidding—of course you should buy a"

Featured [partial] Comment by Ben: "Socratic questioning is a really old concept, but another suggestion for the ultimate answer in almost anything is 'Why?'"

Mike replies: ...At least when you're five.

Featured Comment by Daniel Fealko: "Follow-on question: 'Why?' Dan's Answer: 'Because.'"

Mike replies: Are you by any chance the father of a five-year-old?

Featured Comment by Thomas Osborne: "...Just to the right of the Pentax ad."

Mike replies: Yes, the real answer is you should use a Pentax K-5 because that's what I use and you must be just like me.

Featured Comment by Miserere: "'Cos everyone wants to be like Mikey...."

Mike replies: 'Zackly. Who's guruing whom here?

Featured Comment by Patrick Perez: "So you didn't want to recommend the Lamborghini Murcielago?"

Mike replies: I recommend you go with the Ferrari 599.

Featured Comment by Maggie Osterberg: "Q: 'Should I buy a Canon, or a Nikon, or something else?' A: Mu! ::gong::"

Featured Comment by Boglev: "I am shocked—no one mentioned Ricoh GRD!?"

Featured Comment by Dennis Huteson: "What will you sit on now Mike, now that you've got rid of that rickety old fence?"

Featured Comment by Murchu: "Good. That's that sorted, then."

Posted on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 at 07:08 PM in Camera Reviews, Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (53)

Thursday, 24 March 2011

X100's Selling for Huge Premiums on Ebay

This "Completed Listings" page on Ebay shows early examples of the now-delayed Fuji X100 selling for premiums of up to $1,400 above list price. Apparently there is no shortage of sellers...or buyers.

I'm as big a fan of this little camera as anyone, but at the same time it seems like all this might be getting just a little out of hand...a bit of a pop phenomenon, or at least what passes for one in the world of camera enthusiasm....

Mike

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Posted on Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 07:49 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (29)

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Photography at the Speed of Light

By Ctein

I was catching up on some of my photonics journals last week and they reminded me that I still haven't answered for myself the question of just how fast digital cameras can get. What is the ultimate limiting ISO?

You know there has to be one. Simple logic. I mean, when you reach the point where the shutter is open just long enough to let one photon get through, you can be pretty confident that you're not going to be able to form an image.

Unfortunately that simple logic doesn't really tell you very much. There are a zillion comments online to the effect that the "laws of physics" limit how fast the camera can get, but it's pretty clear to me that the people saying that don't have any idea what that limit is. Statements can be both true and irrelevant. Much like pointing out that the laws of physics limit how fast a rocket can travel. No argument there, but rocket designers aren't bumping their heads on that speed-of-light brick wall just yet.

Where is ISO's "speed of light" limit? I don't know, but I can tell you of some improvements that push sensor speeds way beyond anything you've imagined. All are either proven technologies or such simple extensions of existing technology that we can be entirely confident they can be implemented. That doesn't mean they will be, but they do constitute a proof of existence.

The current speed champ, the Nikon D3S, provides very decent quality up to ISO 6400, and is usable up to 102K. Not that that would ever be my choice, but if it's the only way I can photograph The Second Coming or First Contact, it'll do. How do we make it even faster with no loss in image quality?

First, install a back-side-illuminated sensor (unless I misread the specs, the D3s isn't using one). BSI sensors are about twice as efficient as conventional ones at gathering light. Large pixels don't benefit as much as small ones. For the D3S I'd be conservative and call it a 2/3 stop gain (for micron sized pixels, it's distinctly more than one stop).

BSI sensors haven't made big inroads yet, although they're in a few cameras. I suspect a combination of cost and the fact that smaller-sensor cameras need them more desperately.

Next, Kodak has this nifty modified Bayer filter array that gains you another stop of efficiency. That's three-year-old technology; not certain why we haven't seen it in a camera yet. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, maybe Kodak's being a pain about licensing, dunno. Whatever, it's not a physical issue, so far as I know.

The Kodak array isn't the theoretically best one. It's probably possible to squeeze another half to full stop of efficiency out before you've reached the limit. I'll be conservative and say half a stop more.

The new hot area of development is sensitizers for silicon. Silicon detectors, at their very best, run about 50% efficiency. In addition, they are much more sensitive to long wavelengths of light than short ones. That's particularly bad because most often you're using high ISOs under indoor lighting that is generous in the long wavelengths and weak in the short. That's why the red channel in your high ISO indoor photos looks pretty clean, the green channel looks mediocre, and the blue channel looks horrible.

Anyway, an assortment of companies are developing layers and coatings that can be applied to the surface of the sensor that catch nearly all the photons and transfer their energy to the silicon. Some of these technologies are very close to rollout, if they're not already in production for the minuscule cameras that go into cell phones.

Combine BSI sensors, improved filters, and sensitizers and there's a 10X performance improvement. Let me emphasize that this is real improvement, not funny games being played with more amplification and noise reduction. What the Nikon D3S can do at ISO 6400, these technologies would let it deliver at 64,000. And when the flying saucers (or Jesus) descend onto your front lawn, you can crank that dial up to "11" for an unbelievable extended speed of 1,000,000.

Honest to God, I have no idea what you do with a speed of 1,000,000. Make handheld photographs by starlight? Just sayin'—it can be done, and we haven't exhausted the bag of technical tricks so don't assume that even this represents that performance brick wall.

Realistically, these technologies will appear in small-sensor cameras sooner, because they have more need for them. I don't think too many people will be unhappy when digicams offer the image quality of today's full-frame cameras. Trust me, they are going to get there.

Meanwhile, the skies still the limit, folks, and we still don't now how high is up.

Ctein

TOP's weekly column by Ctein (pronounced "kuh-TINE," and yes, that's his entire legal name) appears on Wednesdays.

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Posted on Wednesday, 16 March 2011 at 11:17 AM in Cameras, new, Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (60)

FWIW

For what it's worth (doubtless not much), I think I've come to a tentative axiom—

Current digital cameras are too complicated to be either a) adequately precise, or b) adequately durable.

I'm still on the fence as to what might be the best way to act on that. Two potential options:

Buy the best possible camera* and just make sure you earn enough with it so that it pays for itself several times over within a three-year cycle.
Buy the cheapest camera that is adequate for your needs, put up with its imprecision**, and use it sparingly until it's "totalled"—i.e., costs more to repair than it's worth. Cross your fingers that this is >6 years.

That is, two opposing philosophies: 1. offset high cost with high returns, or 2. eke maximum value out the equipment via the route of minimal investment. Option 1 minimizes the "A" constraint in the axiom and option 2 minimizes the "B" constraint.

Haven't come to any conclusion about that yet.

And of course the argument could be made that traditional mechanical cameras were too durable...sort of a dogs vs. parrots kind of problem....

Mike

*On the assumption that the best professional cameras where "good value" is not a design constraint will also have the highest precision. Not an automatically true assumption, as you're probably aware.

**Going on the assumption that this is unavoidable, as all digital cameras will be to some degree imprecise anyway.

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Featured Comment by Ken Sky: "You are leaving out the biggest variable in the equation—the photographer. As humans age we are prone to decay and increasing imprecision. I am sure my vision is more imprecise than the latest generation of digital camera. The likeliest cause of camera failure is human error e.g. dropping it or forgetting to charge the battery."

Mike replies: Right. In a private email exchange, a friend wrote, "How a camera fails matters. The worst kind of failure is one that's not obvious while you're shooting—i.e., you think it's working but find out when you get home that your negatives / files are trash," and I replied, "Agreed. My camera often fails because it's pointed at the wrong thing, which for some reason was invisible to my brain while I was out shooting but which becomes quite clear later on."

Featured Comment by JOHN MCMILLIN: "I've heard a similar idea postulated with automobiles, probably first by Public Radio's The Car Guys. Choose one: either buy a three-year-old car and keep it seven years, or buy a seven-year-old car and keep it three years."

Featured Comment by Nick: "Option 3: Adopt the notion that digital cameras are more like film that cameras: A consumable. Undersand that you aren't really sure how big a box of film you're purchasing, that there may be a couple hundred or a couple thousand rolls in it.

"Alternate Option 3: Consider that digital cameras, like all bits of consumer electronics, are more rented than bought. Understand that your are paying an upfront cost for something like a three year lease, and that the 'landlord' may be a bastard and kick you out after six months, or he may be a sweetheart and let you stay for years and years."

Posted on Wednesday, 16 March 2011 at 10:28 AM in Cameras, new, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (39)

Wednesday, 09 March 2011

Fuji X100 Faces Heavy Demand

Even with a premium price in place ($1200 instead of the initial projections of ~$1k), Fujifilm announced on Saturday that it has been overwhelmed with orders for the just-released FinePix X100, and cannot keep up with demand for the camera—or even its leather case and lens hood. In response the company is attempting to increase production, but may push most U.S. and U.K. deliveries to as late as April.

Mike
(Thanks to Kent)

ADDENDUM: It's very common to read on forums strident comments to the effect that there's "no excuse" for companies to have a shortage of product for an introduction—how can they not have known? But of course, looking at it from the opposing angle, the downside is pretty big too. I know of a couple of real situations where companies badly misread demand on the high side, and it was not pretty—lots of real money was committed and lost providing product nobody actually wanted to buy. Demand with no supply is frustrating for consumers, but supply with no demand can spell real losses for companies.

I've also heard the old adage that "When there's a line, the price is too low." I don't think that's so simple, either. I've been involved in price-testing several products where there was a distinct "shelf" or line above which the demand dropped off a cliff. In one such case, we found people who seemed quite happy to pay $19.95 for a magazine subscription who departed in droves when the price went to $20.95. (You can test this pretty easily by sending out renewal offers for $19.95 but randomly sending two or three thousand people the exact same offer but with the $20.95 price. Then just quantify at the percentages of renewal orders you get from the two groups. Ironically, in that case, there was lots of difference between $19,95 and $20.95, but almost no difference between $20.95 and $23.95.)

To me, it was a real risk on Fuji's part to hike the price of the X100 to $1,200. It's paying off, looks like, but that sort of move is never a mortal lock.

Tailoring the price too closely to match demand has other risks, too. Wasn't there a case with one of the iPhones where Apple charged early adopters too much of a premium and then had to give refunds once the price dropped, to defuse complaints from angry early adopters who felt they'd been gouged? The damage caused by that kind of bad PR can be difficult to assess. Imagine if Fuji put the price of the first X100s at $1,500 and got that price for the first two months—but then lost sales for the rest of the product lifecycle because of a persisting impression that the camera was overpriced—even after the price had dropped? People don't like being manipulated, and if you manipulate them too transparently you can pay a price for it in other ways.

And you can't just ask people, either. You get very soft data when you ask people how much they'll pay for something. People answer such questions from the standpoint of their "ideal selves"—themselves if they actually had as much money as they picture themselves deserving. But it's their real selves that actually buy things. Ideal selves love to confidently say, "I'll take it." Real selves tend to be more cautious.

There can be quite a difference between ideal and real wallets and bank accounts. Many's the time I've read a review of a hot new sports car that costs $60,000 and been very firm in my opinion that I'd pay $45,000 for it but not $60,000. A pollster would get an earload to that effect if I were being asked. But of course I have never actually paid $45,000 for a car in my life, and the chances I'll ever do so are pretty slim at this point. The market researcher would be left contritely explaining to the manufacturer that he just can't explain it—lots of people said they'd pay $45,000 for that car. That Johnston guy, for one.

Similarly, Fuji didn't know if people would actually buy the X100 until it came time for them to fork over the dough. It's easy to get your head turned by a pretty new product and exclaim with great enthusiasm, "I'd buy one of those in a heartbeat!" But that doesn't mean you actually will.

These companies have all been jilted before, believe me.

Of course every company would like to be able to predict demand just perfectly for every new product. But it's a very complicated guessing game. There are too many separate factors to isolate any one of them to the point of certainty.

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Posted on Wednesday, 09 March 2011 at 04:50 PM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (41)

Tuesday, 08 March 2011

The How Small Page

I'm afraid I don't know anything about this—like who put it together, which would be nice to acknowledge—but it's a very nice visual representation of the relative size of many of the current leading small cameras. If you click on the image, you'll get a larger version with the hairline guides.

I've been working lately (and seemingly interminably) on a feature called "Small Cameras We Love," for which this is apropos.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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Featured Comment by MiTaka: "Hi Mike, as a frequent TOP reader I am glad you found my comparison pic interesting. I have made it to show the size of X100, compared to other compacts with attached viewfinders. Note that I have put the images together, but the pictures are not mine. They are property of their respective owners.

"To answer some of the questions: G series are the same size as Nikon P7000. Two Canons in a single pic is too much for me ;) . I am not interested in comparing to film cameras, it's a moot point for me. They are just different. I must admit I forgot about Ricoh.

"P.S. Boy am I glad I didn't host this image on my personal site."

Mike replies: Thanks for doing everyone a service, MiTaka!

Posted on Tuesday, 08 March 2011 at 08:56 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (26)

Monday, 28 February 2011

The Canon I Missed

This is a little embarrassing, but also interesting (and with me, interesting trumps embarrassing). I didn't even notice that there is a new pair of entry-level Canon DSLRs, the T3 (12 MP) and T3i (18 MP), that were announced on February 7th. Obviously I've been paying too much attention to photography lately and not enough attention to cameras.

It's true that successive updates of well-known cameras don't tend to get a lot of attention, even though there are a lot of very talented people working very hard on those incremental improvements we take for granted. And it's true that digital photography years are like dog-years. It's further true that our typical reader is more likely to be interested in the next tier upward, the 60D / 7D level (the 7D is effectively on sale right now too, by dint of a $200 rebate). Finally, the most noticeable change here seems to be the replacement of the now-traditional "green rectangle" auto-everything mode with an enhanced "A+ mode" that does even more for those who don't want to do anything for themselves...which is not much in the way of news. But still, it's always tempting to contrast the easily-overlooked introduction of such cameras with the sensational announcement of the original Digital Rebel in the summer of 2003, and perhaps also with the arrival of the first "affordable" high-resolution camera, the 12.8 MP EOS 5D, two summer later. (Both deservedly considered landmarks in the history of cameras.) Now the "budget" version of the entry-level Rebel has as many pixels as the original 5D (more or less), and the non-stripped version has half again more, and the latest Rebel heirs flit past in the newsstream exciting only cursory notice. Or none at all.

...From me, anyway. But maybe that's my flaw, rather than any with the camera. One thing that's indisputable is that the new T3i, when it comes out in March, will be a better, more technologically advanced camera than money could buy in 2003; feels almost ironic.

I'm off to the dentist yet again this morning (the tooth is doing well, thanks), but I wonder, have there been any more recent introductions that I've flat missed? Better look into that when I get back.

Mike

UPDATE: At least my timing is good. In the day since I posted this, B&H Photo has gotten the camera in stock!

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Posted on Monday, 28 February 2011 at 09:29 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (11)

Saturday, 19 February 2011

New Fuji for Film Fans

I'm sure most TOP readers are aware that, a couple of years ago, Fuji introduced the GF670 (also badged as the Voigtländer Bessa III 667), a multi-format modern replica of the classic medium-format folder. The camera has been a good seller considering what a small niche it occupies, surprisingly popular especially in Japan.

So now Fuji has announced a wide-angle version, the Fuji GF670W Professional. The standard 670 has a fixed 80mm ƒ/3.5 lens on a collapsible bellows; the 670W will have a fixed non-extensible 55mm ƒ/4.5. The new camera will be available in Japan on March 23rd.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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Featured [partial] Comment by Mike Plews: "A quick check of Ebay shows a Plaubel W67 with a 55mm Nikkor and an asking price of four grand. Clearly this will scratch someone's itch."

Mike replies: Good luck to the buyer of that $4k Plaubel. Those Makinas—at least in some SN ranges—were notorious for fragile advance mechanisms. I had several friends who used Plaubel Makinas for serious work, and each had one or more film-advance failures necessitating expensive repairs. One friend had it happen so many times that he put the cameras in a closet and forgot about them...he said that otherwise his anger about the breakdowns would have taken over his life.

I was glad to learn that trick from him; I later used his strategy with a particularly balky tube amp that cost me a fortune but that worked—between repairs—for a cumulative total of a handful of hours. I finally took my friend's lead and just put it in the closet and washed my hands of it. It was good advice. The anger I found myself stewing in over that amp was not good for my health, I'm sure.

Featured Comment by Richard: "Well, include me in with the Japanese! I've had the Voigtländer Bessa III for over a year, and it's a joy. Not sure I will go for the wideangle version though, because one of the great things about the Bessa is its pocketability when folded."

Posted on Saturday, 19 February 2011 at 12:16 PM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (20)

Tuesday, 08 February 2011

X100 Update

"What? You don't like cat pictures? Who doesn't like cat pictures?"

If you're not interested in the forthcoming Fuji X100, it's going to seem like we're harping on the subject incessantly. If you are interested, you'll appreciate knowing that Fujifilm USA has just posted the official press release, and the first official image samples have also appeared. Boo yeah.

Alas, it looks like I myself won't be among the early X100 adopters after all. I'm afraid the Single Use Device has depleted the discretionary fund for a while. Maybe I'll have to do a closet dump to raise some rupees.

But those samples sure look nice. Assuming, as always with such samples, that you don't mind a few pics of cats, kids, and flowers. The picture above is wide open, the one below is one stop down. Yummy. The lens, I mean, not the cats.

"So you're some sort of dog person then, is that it?"

The camera has just been made available for pre-order from Amazon.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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Featured Comment by carl: "Here's the thing about cats: cats used to be people and they know that they used to be people. Thus the reason for all the attitude. Dogs, on the other hand, are looking forward to being people and believe that by being our 'best friend' they increase their chances of getting there. Dogs have the enthusiastic naivete of the aspirational; cats have the reflexive ennui of the disappointed."

Featured [partial] Comment by Ed Hawco: "I detect a bit of price creep on the X100."

Mike replies: You are not imagining things sir.

Featured Comment by Ctein: "OK, I'm not getting why folks are complaining about the sample image gallery. With only two caveats, I think it's great. There's a wide variety of subject matter and structure and lighting conditions, with the full range of lens apertures covered. I can figure out nearly everything about how that lens is going to perform in the real world from looking at these photos.

"The two caveats. First, we don't have a page of high ISO images yet (which won't tell me a damn thing about the lens, but will about the image collecting part, which is just as important). I'm guessing that will be forthcoming.

"Second, we're getting JPEGs, not RAW files. No doubt they were captured on the finest image setting, but it means we can't really evaluate the inherent sharpness, noise, color rendition or exposure range of the camera—those will all have been massaged by the rendering engine.

"In other words, pixel-peep with caution. If you like what you're seeing you can be sure the RAW will be even better. If you don't, you may just be seeing the deficiencies of the render that wouldn't exist in RAW. Don't jump to conclusions (unless you're an inveterate JPEGger)."

Mike adds: I agree. I thought the samples were quite good for grokking some of the qualities of the lens, which is chiefly what I'm interested in this stage (conclusions about the sensor simply require more in-depth investigation, which will come along after a variety of reviewers and reviewing sites have production samples to run gamuts of tests on). And the topmost cat picture and the picture of the little girl are excellent photographs, to boot. (On the other hand, I wrote privately to some friends that "people don't even seem to know any more what black-and-white pictures are supposed to look like." Fuji's samples are, in the words of one of those friends, "flat and lifeless.")

Featured Comment by John Roberts: "Seen on a bumper sticker: 'To a dog, you're family. To a cat, you're staff.' "

Posted on Tuesday, 08 February 2011 at 06:27 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (58)

Tuesday, 01 February 2011

Localization in Camera Markets

Panasonic has announced the pricing of the GF2, a somewhat smaller and simpler successor of the GF1. It'll come in black, silver, red, and white models and have a suggested retail price of $499.95. Availability is imminent—the middle of this month.

And speaking of mirrorless developments, Ricoh Camera has just announced the so-called "GXR Lens Mount Unit," in development for release next fall. You remember the GXR—that's the camera with the interchangeable self-contained lens-sensors units. The Lens Mount Unit will enable the use of Leica M mount lenses in a unit that contains a 12.9 MP APS-C sized CMOS sensor behind a focal plane shutter. In other words, exactly what many enthusiasts were barking for when the exotic GXR was first treed.

And speaking of Ricoh...it's a company that has long had a very low penetration and a low profile in the U.S. market. Think of Ricoh (the camera division, I'm talking about—the company also makes business products and much else) as being roughly analogous to Subaru—a proud but quirky little company that goes its own way, and that has a user base sometimes described as a "cult following." Small but dedicated. For years, Ricoh bypassed the U.S. for its cameras, feeling its products got lost in the crowd. In the last decade, however, it has quietly re-entered the U.S. market with at least four dealers: Adorama, Tony Rose's PopFlash in Thousand Oaks, California, and Rich Pinto's Photo Village in New York City, and it has just struck an agreement to sell directly through Amazon. So at least non-gray Ricoh cameras are available here again, and have been for at least six or seven years now. Still, Ricoh remains a very minor presence in the U.S.

And speaking of "regionality" where cameras are concerned...take the following with a grain of salt, because I'm no expert on the international camera market—this is just a report of rumors, none of which has an official source. But I hear there are some significant regional aspects to the popularity of various cameras and brands. For example, evidently it's mainly China that's keeping the global pipeline for the Leica S2 dry as a bone: the S2 is rampantly popular among newly minted millionaires there (and to a lesser extent in India). The country that's turning the Pentax 645D from a prestige loss-leader into a viable cash-cow product is India (and to a lesser extent China), where the camera is in great demand. And the Brazilians (they of the most recent economic miracle) are apparently wild for Sony NEX cameras. NEX 5's are apparently just the hottest thing going there. Or so rumor has it.

Of course, the opposite happens sometimes as well: The Fuji X100 was reportedly conceived as a niche boutique product principally for the Japanese home market, but is now slated for a worldwide rollout because of all the attention it got in the wake of Photokina.

My favorite lens. For now.

Finally—on a matter of extremely local concern*—can anybody steeped in Oly links 'n' lore fill me in on the current status of the rumored upcoming "pro" Micro 4/3 camera? Any camera that takes my current favorite lens is of at least a little interest to me.

Mike

*Here in my office, or, you might say, inside my head.

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Featured Comment by Russ: "In New Zealand Subaru are very popular and Ricoh not so much, so even your comparisons are localised!"

Featured Comment by Jeff: "My understanding is that the largest proportion of late model Leica M film cameras (MP and M7) have been sold in Japan."

Mike replies: Thank you Jeff. I forgot that example.

Posted on Tuesday, 01 February 2011 at 06:35 PM in Cameras, new, Photo industry | Permalink | Comments (23)

Friday, 28 January 2011

The Olympus XZ-1

In our brief comment on the recent Vegas CES, one new camera I didn't mention might turn out to be one of the most interesting and memorable of the show. The Olympus XZ-1 marks that company's return to the premium, enthusiast-oriented sector of the digicam market.

The Olympus is a little bigger than the S95 or the LX5, and it looks monumental in the picture above, but all of these cameras are very small.

The $500 XZ-1, which competes most directly with the popular Canon S95 and Panasonic LX5 (both $400—although note that the price of the Olympus will probably drift down once the pipeline fills), is most notable for a lens of oustanding specification, always a good sign in my opinion. It's a 6–24mm (28–112mm-e) ƒ/1.8–2.5. The Panasonic, which goes wider but not as long, is ƒ/2–3.3, and the Canon, which has essentially the same range, is appreciably slower at the long end at ƒ/2–4.9.

People have never liked to be reminded of this, but the difference between ƒ/1.8 and ƒ/2 is functionally pretty negligible. The XZ-1 lens certainly doesn't deserve to be called "superfast" or "super-bright" in comparison to an ƒ/2 24mm-e lens like the Panasonic's. While there's nothing wrong with the XZ-1's specification, where it has lustre for me is that it harkens back to the fast ƒ/1.8 lenses on Olympus's old compacts from the "digital morning" (call it 2000–2004). I've missed that. (One of those, the c3040z, was the first digital camera I owned.) In any event, the lens telegraphs promise with its iZuiko name and excellent focal length range and speeds.

The camera also has a larger than usual if nonstandard 1/1.63" sensor, same as the LX5. Neither Olympus nor Panasonic give the actual dimensions of the sensor, but it should be a little larger than 6x8 mm. The XZ-1 has sensor-shift image stabilization and a 3-inch OLED viewing screen.

The XZ-1 been getting a sustained level of attention on photography sites and forums. Dpreview's recent full review by Richard Butler notes that "the XZ-1 sits towards the minimalist end of the spectrum in its class," and says it's "a joy to use, quick and easy to control." Jeff Keller in the DCRP First Look says, "I didn't find shutter lag to be an issue, even at the slower shutter speeds where it sometimes occurs." And Steve Sanders at Steve's Digicams observes in his Olympus XZ-1 First Look that "the adjustable lens control ring around the extended lens...allows you to change a variety of settings depending on what mode the camera is in." Shawn Barnett in his Hands-on Preview at Imaging-Resource notes that the XZ-1 is "the first of the company's compact cameras to sport a Zuiko-branded lens," and he adds that "the optical quality I'm seeing at the lowest ISO settings is quite good."

All in all, this looks like a promising offering that will enrich an already successful class of cameras. The Olympus XZ-1 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo or Amazon.com.

Mike

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Posted on Friday, 28 January 2011 at 06:25 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (28)

Monday, 24 January 2011

The Single Use Device

Me with the Single Use Device, a Chamonix Whole Plate
view camera. Why the name? Read on. Photos by Jack MacDonough.

Contrarianism
Remember Younger Bear, the Contrary warrior in Little Big Man who rides his horse backwards and washes himself with dirt and dries with water? I've always been an admirer of contrarians—people who go against the grain and do the opposite of what everybody else is doing. I've never quite pulled off being one myself. Still, contrarianism was the initial inspiration for the Single Use Device. What's all the rage in photography today? Exaggerated, saturated color; image manipulation, such that the final picture doesn't always respect the lens image; and oversized prints. So, what's directly contra that?

Niche-niche-niche-niche
Shooting film is a niche activity in photography now. Within film, large format is a further niche. In large format, far and away the most popular and most-used format is 4x5 (inches, that is, in case you're not up on the subject)—the cameras are small and handy and the negatives are by far the easiest to enlarge (unless you count smaller formats like 2x3-inch as "large" format just because they can be shot with view cameras). So, larger-than-4x5 cameras are a further niche. And within larger-than-4x5 formats, the so-called whole-plate (WP) a.k.a. full-plate size (6.5 x 8.5 inches) is a tiny niche. How many whole plate shooters are there in the world? I have no idea, but I bet they could all fit in a living room.

A whole plate camera is possibly the most anti-popular camera you can buy. But it also only makes sense in relation to digital. For 20 years (1980–2000) I shot 35mm black-and-white. I wanted to be able to shoot a lot; I shot in available light (which according to the old cliché is better known as "available darkness"); and I used handy, light, portable cameras. With 35 exposures on a roll* and three rolls per tank, I could develop 105 pictures at a time. For me, it wasn't practical to do anything else. Digital changed all that. Digital is much more convenient even than 35mm. So, because digital does all the heavy lifting now, I figure I'm free to change my film shooting. (Philosophically, I've always preferred the answer to the question "film or digital?" to be "both." Your mileage, like Ctein's, may vary.) It no longer needs to be convenient or efficient, and I no longer need to do much of it. Being a secondary method of photography for me enables me to practice a different kind of film photography than I used to when film was all there was.

Single use
The "single-useness" of the Single Use Device is simple (although also not absolute. I'm explaining, not arguing). WP is such a specialty film size that there isn't any color film for it. You can cut down 8x10 sheets yourself in the dark, but you still have to find someone to process it for you. I haven't looked into it, but I doubt it would be easy to find such a thing. So that's one aspect: black-and-white only. At least for me. For all intents and purposes.

And then there's enlarging. Four-by-five enlargers are relatively common; 5x7 enlargers much less so; and 8x10 enlargers, especially now that most pros are no longer shooting 8x10, are less common still. Granted, it wouldn't be impossible to find a lab equipped to enlarge WP-size negatives. But, again, it wouldn't be easy. Or cheap. And it's absolutely not something I can do myself—even if someone gave me an 8x10 enlarger, I wouldn't accept it. It would take too much work to install it in my basement and keep it maintained. So, contact prints only.

Finally, for me, a 6.5 x 8.5 print isn't big enough to frame and put on a wall. It's more intimate than that. They're pictures to hold in your hands, pictures to be seen by one person at a time. That's not absolutely true, of course, but that's my intention.

So this isn't just a larger-than-4x5 view camera; it's a camera for black-and-white contact prints that you hold in your hands or put in a book to look at. Or, to put it another way, the exact opposite of what's most popular in the world of art photography right now.

What's the point?
Of course, if I decide it's not for me, then it's going to look like a very stupid purchase indeed. Remember my argument about how cheap it is to try a film Leica? This is the opposite. It's not a camera that will turn around easily—even to large-format buffs, who are a niche withing a niche within a niche. It'll be a walnut, carbon fiber, and anodized aluminum white elephant.

Then why bother? Well, there's absolutely no practical reason—I just thought it might be fun, and a nice counterpart to a DSLR. It's a direct connection to photography's history, and to the way many photographers worked in the ever-more-rapidly-receding past.

Anyway, that's my New Year's resolution this year: 50 sheets of WP film in '11. It's either going to be fun, or not. And if it's not, then there is, indeed, no reason to bother. But it might be. I aim to see.

Mike

Photos by Jack MacDonough. More about that tomorrow.

*Sic. A Printfile 35-7B sheet holds seven strips of five frame each, so that's what I shoot.

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Featured Comment by Jim Galli: "I had our friends at Chamonix build me a 5x14" camera. Does that make me in the running for most contrarian? The idea was to use 5" Aerial Recon Panatomic X stored in my freezer for 30 years into the long film winter."

Posted on Monday, 24 January 2011 at 08:57 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (94)

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

How To Make A Tablet-Based View Camera

By Ctein

In response to Mike's post "The End of Cameras?", psu posted that "A tablet based digital view camera could be a cool thing."

I quickly thought of several ways that one could actually build such a device. Three approaches use off-the-shelf stuff available today, the fourth is going to have to wait for some technology I wrote about in one of my "futurist" columns. In any case, I will throw them out for your edification and amusement.

Since I like the form and I really like the screen in the iPad, I'm going to put it in an iPad case and screen. Okay, I might have to add a millimeter or three to the thickness, but maybe not. I really think I can keep the form factor.

The whole trick to making this work is getting around the problem of the long lens- sensor distance in a view camera. I mean, it's not a very tough problem if you're willing to let your iPad be 6 inches thick, but doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? So how do you get really short lens-sensor distances? You use really short focal length lenses. But, then, how do you get the coverage for a view camera type sensor?

The answer? You don't even try.

Integrated camera modules are getting really, really small, a few millimeters on a side. The very latest ones are truly integrated structures; there is no separate assembly of the sensor with the lens; everything, chips and lens elements alike, is fabricated, micro-machined, aligned, and stacked in a fab line very similar to what is used to make chips. With no separate mechanical housing and alignment jigs needed, these integrated cameras can be made very accurately and precisely, with surprisingly good optics. High-quality ƒ/4 lenses are trivial; even high-quality ƒ/2 lenses aren't hard. From the view camera perspective, these are ultrafast optics.

To turn this into a view camera you turn to image synthesis or computational photography. On the backside of the iPad, we embed, oh, say, a 10 x 10 cm array of integrated camera modules. That's several hundred of these little cameras. Each camera makes its own photograph. Each photograph, in and of itself, is nothing to write home about. Throw them all into a data processing stream, and it's a whole 'nother story.

By themselves, integrated camera modules don't have very good exposure ranges or noise characteristics. Synthetic imaging can drastically improve both. For example you could put 4–5 stop neutral density filters over alternating cameras in the array. Another thing you can do to markedly improve picture quality is to reduce the pixel count. Remember, we have hundreds of these sensors, they can be a few hundred kilopixels each, with individual pixel sizes comparable to what you'd get in good professional cameras. You're still getting out 50 megapixels or more at the end.

At this point there are couple of ways you can go; at this conceptual level I can't say which is the best:

Take a page from the Gigapan camera rig. Give each camera in the array a long lens, so it only captures a small part of the field. Mount them so each camera captures a different part of the field of view, with plenty of overlap of course. Then stitch. Mechanically this may be the trickiest, but computationally it's the simplest.
Mechanically simplest is to give each camera a full field of view and then combine the images from all of them to produce what is called a "superresolving" image; this was used on Mars to produce photographs with 2–3 times higher resolution than the cameras were inherently capable of. The idea is that when you make repeated photographs of the same scene you don't get perfect alignment of images from frame to frame. By doing differential calculations on the frames, you can extract sub-pixel resolution. It's a well understood technique. In this case, you're applying the method to several hundred photographs. Each of them is not of very high quality, but the synthesized image is.
Go the full-blown computational photography approach, à la what Adobe and others have been investigating. Each individual camera doesn't so much collect a usable image, or piece of one, as collect data which can be integrated and synthesized to produce a high quality photograph. Ultimately this gets you the most image quality and flexibility from the hardware, but the computation requirements are formidable.

Any of these approaches require many gigaflops of data massaging; computational photography can push into teraflops without breathing hard. It's not a question of whether you could build that much computing power into an iPad case, it's whether you could do it without the case getting uncomfortably warm to the touch and your battery life going from hours to minutes. Time will solve that problem, but in the meantime, an interim approach would be for the iPad view camera to only display a "draft" rendering of the finished photograph. A dedicated GPU or DSP can pump out 6 GFLOP/sec/watt, so draft rendering would be well within the capabilities you could build into a tablet camera. To do a proper development job on it, you'd dump your data to a desktop machine and let it crunch away at its leisure. Kind of like Adobe Camera RAW processing on crack.

Feasibility
I am reasonably certain these designs are buildable today. If you threw me some money and R&D team, I could even optimize them and figure out which would be the best way to go. Frankly, I'm not interested in doing that. I just like playing with the ideas. But if one of you 25,000 or so readers actually has the wherewithal to pursue this, be my guest. Take any of these ideas and run with them, and more power to you.

I do request, if you actually come up with a product out of this, that you send me Number 2 off the production line (obviously you will keep Number 1 for yourself). Also, it would be nice if you paid me 1% of the gross sales revenues.

But, really, that's between you and your conscience. You're under no legal obligation, just a karmic one.

Then there's the fourth option. It's still well in the future, but I've written about it before:

"Picture Postcards?!"

Put a big swatch of image-collecting fabric on the backside of the iPad case as your sensor.

Not all clear when we're going to get that one, but the first three? Off the shelf, or close enough for jazz.

Ctein

Ctein's weekly column appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

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Posted on Wednesday, 19 January 2011 at 01:32 PM in Cameras, new, Ctein | Permalink | Comments (68)

Tuesday, 11 January 2011

Enigmatic Update Part II

Apropos the ongoing discussion I thought I'd post a first snap of my most recent camera acquisition. First, I have to throw out a caveat: there's nothing significant about a photographer getting a new camera unless he (or she) is going to use it. I've gotten a couple of cameras over the past couple of years that I haven't used much. And this one's just an experiment. So don't read too much in to this acquisition. It's of no significance or consequence yet.

Anyway...

I don't name all my cameras—but this one has a name. I've dubbed it "The Single Use Device."

The view of it above reminds me of a funny story (again, one I've told before). My late mentor, teacher, and friend Steve Szabo lived for a time in a houseboat on the Potomac estuary. Steve was among the early wave of art photographers in the 1970s who, led by George Tice and others, took the 8x10 Deardorffs that had been de-accessioned by the previous generation of architectural and studio photographers and started doing art and alt-process photography with them. In those days Deardorff 8x10s were little in demand and not very expensive (by which I mean roughly $350–$700), and Steve had two of them.

That was also the era of the Diana camera craze—a time when it briefly became fashionable for art photographers to do serious work with $5 plastic toy cameras with single-element plastic lenses. (The now-better-known Holga is essentially the same camera.) Curiously—and contrary to the original gestalt—authentic original Dianas now command relatively premium prices. In those days you could get one for as little as $4.95, so Steve had a couple of those, too.

The final thing you need to know is that cameras were relatively more expensive in the broad swath of the middle of the twentieth century than they are now. Before point-and-shoots came along in the '80s, having a camera pretty much meant having a 35mm SLR, and 35mm SLRs could always be fenced—er, pawned—for at least a dime bag. They were magnets for thieves.

What happened was that a thief broke into Steve's houseboat when he was away and cleaned him out. When Steve got home and took stock of his losses, he was relieved to find that his two Deardorffs—which were folded up, of course—were still there. But both of the worthless Dianas were gone. Steve concluded, much to his amusement, that the thief recongized the "camera-ness" of the camera-shaped Dianas, and assumed they were valuable, but had no idea what the Deardorffs were.

Looking at the picture at the top of the post, you can almost sympathize with that thief. If you weren't a photographer, you might not recognize that strange thing as a camera either.

I'll post more about the singular and radical single-use-ness of The Single Use Device later this week, or next. The story is surprisingly deeper than you might suppose.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Rob: "This summer, in Minneapolis, a thief smashed out my passenger-side window, rifled through the glove compartment, and stole my GPS (probably a dime-bag right there). He/she took my Tachihara 4x5 (attached to a carbon fiber tripod), that had been craftily camouflaged under a beach towel on the front seat, examined it, found nothing of value, and left it unharmed in the adjacent shrubbery. Here's a crime scene photo:

Posted on Tuesday, 11 January 2011 at 07:58 AM in Cameras, new | Permalink | Comments (31)

Monday, 10 January 2011

The End of Cameras?

I haven't mentioned CES yet this year—the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which ended yesterday. I guess it's because I found the whole thing to be pretty much a giant yawn this year. Basically, a bunch of new digicams were announced. That's got to be exciting to people who just didn't have enough digital point-and-shoots to choose from before.

The new digicams included a waterproof one from Kodak (the EasyShare Sport), a "ruggedized" (waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof) one with GPS from Fujifilm (the FinePix XP30), and a Casio with a BSI sensor (the catchily named Exilim EX-ZR100). Probably the two most significant camera introductions at the show were the Olympus E-PL2, an improved uptick of the E-PL1, and the Samsung NX-11, both mirrorless cameras based on earlier models.

The Olympus E-PL2 sure is a sleek and handsome little box.

It's safe to say that cameras weren't creating the biggest splash at CES. In fact, I can't escape this nagging sense of foreboding in the back of my brain that the camera functionality of multi-use devices is beginning to fatally contaminate the concept of the "camera" altogether. Well, maybe that "fatally" is hyperbolic. But first you have the increasingly ubiquitous cross-contamination of video and still-picture functionality, and then there's the continued improvement of the cameras in phones; and given the astonishing number of tablets introduced at CES—I think I heard the number was 80—how long can it be before tablets replace laptops and include built-in cameras up in one corner? Seems like the still-picture single-use device category is starting to take a beating. I hope the photography area of CES 2021 won't be a forlorn little corner with a few cheap, basic remnant products in it, like the darkroom supply area of my local camera store is now.

I don't know, maybe this is just general curmudgeonliness, or something I ate. I had a bad weekend, despite the Packers win and the generally fantastic football (see the video at the link if you haven't already). Let me rephrase that: I didn't have a bad weekend so much as America had a bad weekend*. Whatever the cause, and whether or not this sense of foreboding I'm describing has any merit, this CES still seemed rather forgettable in my book.

Mike

*Despite this mention, I'd rather not have to ride herd on a discussion about the event in Arizona. Too far off topic, and I'm far too preoccupied with it as it is. Thanks for your co-operation.

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Posted on Monday, 10 January 2011 at 10:30 AM in Cameras, new, News and Occasions, Photo industry | Permalink | Comments (56)

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