Photokina 2014: The Big Sleep

Another Photokina has come and gone and now we can make sense of what was announced. Before I touch on anything, I think it a significant point to recognize how Photokina has lost some of its luster in the past few years. Most big camera announcements do not come at Photokina. Think about it: The Fuji X100 and X Pro were both announced in early spring, as were Sony's A7 cameras. Olympus E-M5, Panasonic GH3 and GH4, Sony RX100: as far as I remember, none of them were announced at Photokina.

Still, it's the only photography-specific show with major, international coverage, so that will always make it something.

So, that said, moving on.

This was a very boring Photokina. Maybe I'm being spoiled by the world of cell phones, tablets, and computers, but I've come to expect some degree of surprise and excitement from big shows. This Photokina isn't a huge letdown, but it's far from exciting. We have Canon playing catch-up two years late. We have Nikon producing capably boring, or boringly capable, products. Panasonic continues its quest to make a m4/3 camera that is somehow smaller than the sensor. Olympus continues to release pro-thusiast gear at a glacial pace. And Leica released some products for prices that make me question the sanity of Leica fans.

The Good:

Panasonic LX100: For me, the star of the show was the Panasonic LX100, which further confirms that camera companies need to stop fucking using X's in their camera names. It has far exceeded the realm of stupid and has entered utterly baffling.

I very much like the Sony RX100 and even bought an RX10, but the images never fully lose that P&S look. The colors are never as rich as a larger sensor, the noise is always visible, and on and on. The 4/3 format is as small as you can go and maintain an image that stands up to pixel peeping, and even then, that is sometimes not true. The LX100's sensor means that this is the most compact, pro-level imaging device that you can buy, besting the Canon G1X by about a centimeter in every dimension.

All is not well with the LX100, though. The camera's viewfinder is underwhelming, and the controls aren't really the best, and it's overpriced by about $200. Also, it's too big to be pocketable, but too small to be usable with gloves, large hands, or with truly professional speed. It is at least progress, though. The Sony RX100 was the first, others copied, and now Panasonic is moving it forward again with more robust video features and a larger sensor.

Panasonic and Olympus have both hinted at the prospect of dropping m4/3 in the future. This is because they want to charge Canon-like prices for their products, but can't because they're products haven't really been all that good. Then Sony comes along with the RX1, A7, A7R, and A7S and can suddenly charge Canon prices while still selling as many cameras as they can make. Just as with the RX1, a good transitionary product for Panasonic could be a fixed-lens camera with serious video chops. It would be expensive, since video requires fantastic optical mechanics, but I bet that it would sell. I see the LX100 as a portent of this future.

The LX100 can be seen as a pocket-sized GH4 in many respects, and that is awesome. The battery is too small for significant video work, but perhaps an extended battery grip will be released. The GH4 is a fantastic product and the only product in Panny's imaging stable that is both impressive and well-priced. Some of its thunder was stolen by the amazing Sony A7S, but even then, the GH4 does many things that A7S cannot do, and does it for $1,000 less. If Panasonic isn't cowardly, they will wedge as many pro-level video features as they can into the LX100. That is the only way they will be able to justify the extreme price.

Otherwise, the $900 will be much better spent on a compact camera with interchangeable lenses.

Canon G7 X: All aboard the X train! Canon finally realizes that their P&S market will continue to erode unless they do something, and the best course of action is to copy Sony! So they did. The G7X is an RX100 with a Canon wrapper, and that's not a bad thing. Canon's wrapper is better than Sony's. It's unfortunate that the camera is priced at a premium, but ah well. Also, I will always trade a bit of size for image quality, and if I were in this market, I'd take the new LX100 over this any day of the week. But, to Canon's credit, I'd probably rather take this over the RX100.

Fuji: Fuji was pretty quiet this show. They released the updated X100T, which is a solid update. If you have the older X100's, I don't see you wanting to upgrade. If I wasn't so interested in video, I would have bought an X100 long ago.

The real progress is in Fuji's ever-growing lens system. They've produced some winners and losers, and these new lenses look like winners. I'm worried about the distortion on the 16mm lens, since Fuji has shown Olympus-like predilections when it comes to dealing with optical problems in software, but I withhold judgment. Also, Fuji appears to be getting a bit too confident as the prices on these lenses are rather high.

All in all, I like Fuji, and these does little to alter my opinion. In fairness to other companies, though, Fuji is able to do this simply because their lens system is small. Canon and Nikon have huge lens systems already and...... you know what? No. I take that back. I'm thinking as I write this, in case you couldn't tell.

Canon and Nikon could do this. They could release updates to their lenses, especially since many of them suck. But instead, they don't. They rest on lenses, some of which were designed in the 80's. So again, kudos to Fuji.

Leica D-Lux: Say wha?!... you may be saying. But yes, the overpriced Leica versions of the LX100 is a fine choice. Basically, it's because you get a license for Adobe Lightroom included with the camera, a $140-ish value. Along with what I consider to be a much more attractive design, the $100 final premium doesn't seem too bad.

Olympus E-PL7: This is almost bad, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Olympus continues to work at the small, feature-packed, mid-range camera segment with good results. None of Olympus' cameras are selling terribly well, and Fuji and Sony are slowly but surely eclipsing the m4/3 format, but they still deserve recognition when they release a decent product.

It's unfortunate, though, because both Sony and Fuji have more impressive products for the price, and in Sony's case, cheaper. Even Olympus offers the E-M10 for only $150 more. I feel that this camera will be stillborn on the market, even though I'm sure it will be fine.

Sigma: Sigma continues to impress with their new lenses for great prices and their innovative Foveon cameras. I talk up Sigma a lot since they are truly innovating. They are truly providing new tools and new experiences, not just rehashes of old ones. Their DP cameras are utterly unique and I think that everyone should own one. And since their DP cameras are such unique tools, the new viewfinder attachments don't seem bulky, they seem like a new form of imaging, because they are. Definitely the domain of deliberate professionals and enthusiasts and all but useless for Soccer Moms/Dads, these cameras have captured my imagination.

The Bad:

Samsung: Samsung continues to plug away at this mysterious product called a cam-ehr-ahh. Nothing they have hitherto produced has been correctly priced or competitive with other companies. Their sensors only very recently entered the same league as Sony, Nikon, and even Micro 4/3. Their lens selection is poor and expensive. Their workflow is poor and slow. Their system is lean. And worse still, serious photogs seem to be a corporate afterthought for a company that is making most of its money from Galaxy cell phones.

The new NX1 is an SLR-styled camera just as SLR style cameras are beginning their long, slow descent into sales Hell. It's APS-C just as Sony, Canon, and Nikon are beginning the rush to fill their product lines with Full Frame. It's among the most expensive APS-C cameras out there, besting everything that Fuji makes and cheaper than only the new, ridiculously over-priced Canon EOS 7D MkII.

The new camera will have only a single, high-end lens, which unsurprisingly is the lens they are releasing with the camera, the new 50-150mm f/2.8. That sounds like a decent lens, except that they will be charging $1,500. This isn't as badly overpriced as Panasonic and Olympus' lenses, but it's close. There is always the possibility that the image quality will be exceptional (for example, the Panasonic 42.5mm lens is priced too high, but at least the images are great) but since this is Samsung, I doubt it.

Moreover, if you are interested in saving money, you can buy very impressive lenses for cheaper than this lens from Sigma for Canon, Nikon, Sony, and even Pentax.

Basically, Samsung has given us no reason to ever consider their cameras, and this show doesn't change that.

Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8: Just as with Samsung, Olympus is releasing a similar lens with a similarly stupid price. Worse for Olympus, they have superior optical designs available in their Zuiko lens line, but they incomprehensibly refuse to release them.

Panasonic GM5: The strange success of the GM1 has of course spawned the GM5. It's slightly larger but has a few more features. Just as with Sony and their bizarre feature swapping with the various versions of the RX100, the GM5 loses the flash of the GM1 and replaces it with a viewfinder and hotshoe. I feel as though Panasonic is chasing the success of the Nikon 1, without realizing that the 1 only succeeded because it was a Nikon. It was actually a terrible camera.

Moreover, to me, this is Panasonic going down a market niche that is already dead. The GM1 was a surprise to me, but it wasn't a huge hit. It was simply a success. This area of the market — compact, fashionable phones — is doomed to die. Cell phone imaging has already reached a point where most people are happy with it for their uses. And as phone companies increasingly focus on their cameras, stylish, small cameras stand no chance.

The Ugly:

Canon EOS 7D: Canon's EOS 7D Mark II was a huge disappointment. The 7D, for reasons I do not fathom, was a legend. It was a huge success, selling millions of units over its five year life. Its sequel is an event. Leave it to Canon to make that event so thoroughly meh. The 7D MkII isn't even terribly competitive with other cameras from last year.

Canon has also spent the past five years showing everyone that it doesn't give a shit about APS-C as a viable professional format. Everyone thought the 7D heralded a new wave of pro-level crop lenses, but these never appeared. We got some in the form of Sigma and Tamron's excellent crop lenses, but none from Canon. Hell, if not for Fuji and Sigma, I would say that APS-C is dead.

Along with that, Canon will cripple its video so as not to step on the toes of their more expensive video equipment. And for the honor of owning this product, you will have to pay almost as much as the Sony A7R, nearly twice as much as a Nikon D7100 or Sony A77, and right about the same price as the Nikon D600 and Canon 6D.

There is only one conclusion to draw: Canon is insane.

The Open Camera Module: Olympus should be proud. They're the only company to make all three lists. Their Open Module display was just silly. To me, this was Olympus saying "Look! We innovate and stuff too! We've got, like, ideas!"

I make this highly negative assessment because even in their presentations they say that they are unsure as to why or how anyone would use this. This is Olympus screwing around and thinking that it was viable for public presentation. It's not. Try making something that people want.

Nikon D750: It seems pretty harsh to place this under ugly, but it's because this camera is much more than just a camera, it reveals the intransigence that still holds sway at Nikon.

Basically, the entire market is changing. Camera sales are dropping. SLR sales are dropping quickly and mirrorless cameras are not picking up the slack effectively, even though their sales are increasing. This state of affairs was predicted by me, certainly, but my many, many others long before I started writing. This isn't news. Lots of people knew this was coming.

So instead of changing with the times, Nikon is doubling down, apparently under the assumption that there are hidden islands of camera-buying demographics that their current product line-up somehow doesn't cover. That is the philosophy behind the D750: there are people for whom the D610 is too cheap and the D810 is too expensive.

I do not believe these people exist. There are people who would buy the D810 if it cost as much as the D750, but Nikon isn't doing that. There are people who would buy the D610 if it had more features, but Nikon isn't doing that. Instead, they are making yet another iteration in between the two and charging a premium for it.

Panasonic CM1: Panasonic's last effort in the cell phone space was two years ago with the Eluga. It had a rather cool commercial that was ruined by five solid seconds of branding and stupid slogans. It was a catastrophe that lost Panasonic a bucket of money. It was a nice cell phone, and was one of the first to be water sealed, but they tried selling it for $700.



The phone underperformed almost every other major phone on the market. If they had sold it for $300, they might have stood a chance, but that trademark Japanese Electronics Company arrogance came out in full force and they tried charging over twice that. And today, Sony is making the news because their own smartphone division is losing buckets of money because Sony continues to try to charge a premium for their products without any actual innovation.

Not to be outdone, Panasonic is back at it, with an even more ridiculous phone at an even more ridiculous price. Since Panasonic skipped the 1" sensor altogether with the LX100, they decided to put one in a phone. A very large phone. Actually, it's not really a phone, it's a camera with a phone in it. In fact, Panasonic is even calling it a smart camera. And they're so unsure of this Frankenstein creation that they're only releasing it in France and Germany... for some reason. Oh, and they're charging 900 Euros for it.

Everything is wrong with this stupid creation. First, before I rip it to shreds, understand that I think cell phone imaging is in need of significant innovation. I thought that Sony's QX cameras were a good start, and I own a Nokia 1020, warts and all. The prospects for imaging in our little, pocket-sized supercomputers are limitless. If they had left the CM1 in the oven for a while longer, it may have come out truly desirable, but in its current form, it's like trying to make a very small layer cake instead of just baking a great cupcake.

I could really go for a cupcake right now.

Setting aside my lack of cupcakes, let's look at this cameraphone the three ways available to us: as a camera with a phone; as a phone with a camera; as a hybrid.

As a camera with a phone, it sucks. It's nothing more than a severely limited P&S in a bulky body. This is irritating because I argue that the first company to release a high-powered product with an Android OS will own the future of imaging. They refuse to do this because that would require opening up their system, and none of them want to do this. They all want to be Canon and Nikon, with their walled gardens filled with their chattle, from whom they can suck blood at will. It's the same blind greed that stops companies from releasing cell phones that are truly open.

So basically, this is a bad camera with what will likely be a mediocre phone attached to it.

Looking at it the other way around is just as problematic. This is a terrible phone. It's wide and bulky and will never fit into a jean pocket. It's nearly twice as expensive as an unlocked iPhone or Galaxy S. No one with their sights set on a phone will give this a second look.

But what about the final way? How about looking at as a unique hybrid. This is undobutedly how Panny would like you to see the phone, since it's the only way this could make sense, but a hybrid is supposed to give you the best of both worlds, not the worst. The CM1 isn't compact like a phone nor feature-rich like a camera. It has the bulk of a camera without the features!

Perhaps Panny thinks they can add features in software, but that requires a company that actually knows software, and Panny doesn't know software at all. If they promised that this will be the first in a long line of CM cameras, developers might, might, fill the breach, but that is highly unlikely when they could instead release software for Android or iOS and reach a far wider market.

For the hybrid angle to work, the CM1 would need to offer something very similar to carrying both a phone and a camera, while offering the ease of a unified body. For 900 Euros (about $1,200), I could buy an iPhone (on contract) and a new LX100 and still have money left over! The iPhone fits easily in my pocket, and I'm quite accustomed to carrying a camera around on a strap. Basically, the CM1 is the answer to a problem no one has.

That doesn't mean I think that it's not a shot in the right direction. It is. But Panasonic has proven quite well that they are not a phone company. They are better at making cameras. And make no mistake, a camera with Android is still the future, but it will only be the future when the letters attached to it are S, L, and R.

All of this is unfortunate, since I would likely buy this camera... phone... Camerhone? Cameroon? Phonera? Who cares. I would likely buy this if it wasn't such a mess and for all for an eye-watering price. I've never owned a "normal" phone. I've always owned a strange phone from a faraway land. Back in the day I was importing Nokia N-series phones for their badass cameras. Before that, I was rocking an Ericsson that was originally on Vodafone in Germany. I have a thing for weird phones, so I am perhaps the person most likely to look upon the CM1 fondly, and I still think that it's stupid.

---

And that's that. Another year, come and gone. I'm not seeing the level of competitiveness that I would have hoped for, but even this boring year is way beyond the dreary 2000's, where each year brought nothing in the way of innovation save for more, overpriced Canon and Nikon garbage. That says a lot about the industry where even a bad year is actually pretty good.

It's a good time to take photos.

Go Sigma, Go Sigma, Go! New Sigma 50mm Art Lens Destroys All Comers

Well, maybe not all comers. The already-legendary Zeiss Otus stands tall. But considering that the Sigma costs one-quarter the cost of the Zeiss, who cares? Fuck the Zeiss, I'm buying Sigma.

Also, the Sigma has autofocus. Beat that, Zeiss.

Read the review at SLRGear for a detailed analysis of the image quality and check out the Lenstip review for a more digestible analysis of its resolution and distortion. Lenstip is important because all distortion analysis is done on RAW files, meaning that in-camera corrections aren't possible (I'm looking at you, Panasonic and Olympus.)

Sigma just keeps hitting home runs. It's amazing. Combined with companies like Blackmagic, Fuji, and even Sony to a degree, Sigma is fracturing the foundations of the contemporary camera industry. They are producing exceptional — exceptional — products for prices far below the competition. They are also producing unique products in the form of their Foveon cameras.

Sigma deserves praise and recognition for what they are doing. And unlike Fuji's first attempts with the X-system, they also deserve sales. Lots of sales. Seriously, if you don't already own all of Sigma's new Art lenses, there's something wrong with your medula ob-lon-gata. That's a Waterboy reference, son. Try to keep up with the jokes.

As a bonus, if you consider yourself a videographer, be excited. Attach the new Sigma to the Speedbooster from Metabones and you will have an f/1.2, top-pro, 50mm lens with which to shoot buttery-dreamy scenes. If you shoot video or photo, it doesn't matter; buy this lens.

Similarly, if you consider yourself a true photography enthusiast, you need to own at least one Foveon camera. Their images aren't just good or bad, they are different. Fundamentally different. How many Canons or Nikons fulfill that?

I lampooned the Panasonic 42.5mm lens with it came out as overpriced. Yet again, Sigma has produced a piece of glass that is top-pro. It's true full frame, with image characteristics that exceed everything except a $4,000 piece of kit from one of the most famous lens companies on Earth. Companies like Panasonic, Canon, and Nikon should hold their heads low in shame.

This is one of the greatest lenses ever made. Congrats Sigma on your great work.

Sigma Continues Its Trend of Upending The Camera Market

The very first test images from Sigma's new 50mm f/1.4 Art lens have hit the pipes. It is amazing. It's only competition is the Zeiss Otus that wowed the world two months ago.

 These shots are all wide open, so we don't know how it does stopped down yet, but it doesn't matter. To my eye, it's not quite up to the Otus, but the differences are so small as to make no real difference, especially considering that the Otus costs $4,000 while the Sigma only costs $1,500 and the Sigma has autofocus.

The important thing is that the Sigma blows the Sony/Zeiss and the Nikon out of the water and back into more water. It is amazing. Bravo Sigma for again showing other companies how it's done.

This is a great time to point out the review of the Nikon 58mm lens at Lenstip. You can always spot a good review website when they really let harsh words fly when they are called for. Most websites are terrified of pissing off the companies that buy advertising space, meaning that bad products rarely get the reviews they deserve.

The Nikon 58mm is an overpriced piece of crap, and their review says it all.

Perhaps I am naive but I admit when Zeiss announced their Otus 1.4/55 and Nikon – the Nikkor AF-S 58 mm f/1.4G I though we were going to deal with two lenses which were a match for each other. It seems, though, that only Zeiss was serious about it and Nikon was joking all along, trying to sell you a rough piece of trash for a lot of money under a cover of a storied Nikon legacy. I really don’t intend to torture the tested Nikkor any longer because it is not worth the time and trouble.

This is why Oly and Panasonic piss me off so much. This is their fantasty! This is their goal! They want to be able to have such control over their closed system that they can charge comically huge prices for garbage and pad their profits on the backs of those who bought their cameras. It's bad enough that we have two companies doing this (Canon's included). The last thing we need is two more.

Voigtländer Does It Right; Gives 25mm Lens New Stepless Aperture Dial

As I have said before, Micro 4/3 is an exciting system to be in because of all of the companies that aren't Olympus and Panasonic. Voigtländer and their fantastic f/0.95 lenses are at the top of that list of companies.

It may seem odd to hail such a seemingly small change, but it speaks to the focus of Consina; they understand the enthusiasts and pros. They understand the small things that we want.

This also makes the 25mm lens even more of a must have for videographers. You can now smoothly and dynamically control depth of field during your shot.

The stepless aperture dial had previously been available on their other f/0.95 lenses, the 17.5mm and 42.5mm lens. Even without autofocus, all three of them are must-have lenses for the Micro 4/3 system.

In case you are unfamiliar with these lenses, they are so special because they are the only lenses in the Micro 4/3 system, aside from lenses attached to the Metabones Speed Booster, that will give your photos a full-frame look. And by full-frame look I mean that shallow depth of field and the smooth gradation between out-of-focus and in-focus areas of the image. On a small crop sensor, you need extreme aperture to achieve this.

And yeah, an aperture of below one does that.

Olympus 12-40mm drops below $900

We're getting there! The Olympus 12-40mm has dropped below $900 in advertised prices. The advertised part is important, since camera companies operate on the desirability principle. By that I mean that a company advertises a very high price to make a product seem desirable and exclusive, even if the product never sells for that price. Cameras, watches, stereo equipment... now that I think about, really anything that an upwardly mobile bachelor would own... all of these things are well known for advertising a price that is far higher than for what they are actually selling.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I knew that the Oly 12-40mm, just as the Panny 12-35mm before it, was almost never selling for full price. Panasonic pulled stunts where they would sell it at discount for very short periods of time before raising its price again. Olympus didn't do that and are instead allowing resellers to advertise prices more in line with demand. That means that with a motivated reseller, you could nab one of these lenses for $850, or maybe even less. At that price, I still wouldn't, but if you do, I at least won't make fun of you.

I'm sounding a bit like a broken record on this, but the Sigma 18-35mm has changed things. If the 12-40mm had been released eighteen months ago, it would have been praise-worthy. But coming as it does after the significantly better, significantly faster, and significantly cheaper 18-35mm, it is a non-starter. Every product should be a reason to buy into a system. The 12-40mm is a product only for people already dedicated to Micro 4/3 and with no other options.

That said, the 12-40mm is a good lens. Once it drops below $800, which I consider an inevitability, it will be an adequate deal. It would need to drop to $500-$600 to be truly impressive, and while Oly would be smart to do that, they won't. Until that time, if you're desperate for a Micro 4/3 zoom, you could do a lot worse than this.

My Increasing Disillusion With Micro 4/3

DxOMark recently reviewed the newest version of the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 lens. It performs fantastically. It is easily the best lens in their tests. It has autofocus and costs only $900. And this is the rub: with a Metabones image reducer-type adapter, this would become a 17mm f/0.7 on m4/3. F/0.7. For $900.

Note: I converted the focal length into 4/3 terms. The image actually seen on the frame would be identical on full-frame or 4/3.

Tell me again why Panasonic is trying to sell its 42.5mm f/1.2 for $1,600? On what fucking planet do they live?

The Olympus E-M5 is a great camera. I love it. The E-M1 is great. I even feel much better toward the GX7 now that I've had a chance to use it. But the Speed Booster just makes the entire system untenable. A $600 adapter opens up the lenses of other systems and turns the market on its head.

To play Devil's advocate against myself, I understand that some degree of design must go into keeping the lenses at a particular size. Yes, the FF lenses are significantly faster, but they are also larger — often by a great deal. That said, it doesn't matter. Any photog on Earth would happily trade a little size for a lens that is faster than f/1.

Metabones hinted at a live micro 4/3 adapter, and that would be peachy keen. I do like my tiny lenses and frequently go back to my beloved GF1. Especially when I don't want to truck along a Nikon as when just going to a restaurant with friends. And while FF equipment is usually larger, it isn't always by much. Canon's 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm primes aren't very large and wouldn't appear out of place on a small body. And again, with the Speedboster, their apertures are all below f/1.0. But whither Micro 4/3 with that ability at hand? A system of small cameras that people buy to then use their Canon lenses?

The prices of 4/3 lenses are just becoming too big a burden for the sake of maintaining the system. The Panasonic 42.5mm really drove that home in grand fashion. I've felt a bit ripped off with my current lenses and their public statements indicate that they will be making no course corrections in the future, meaning I will feel even more ripped off then. The Speed Booster has made it so I can no longer abide this. Not when the Sigma 35mm becomes f/1 on the Fuji X Pro 1, a camera that can shoot ISO6400 without much breaking a sweat.

You can see in the freaking dark. Nothing in Micro 4/3 offers this, and if it did, they would try to charge a bazillion dollars for it. That I will not accept.

There is a concept in economics called the opportunity cost. It's the sort of thing you learn in econ-101. Basically, when you spend money, you are not just spending the money, you are spending the opportunity to buy other things. So when I spend $500 on a lens, it costs me the $500, any other lens I could have bought, a wardrobe, four pairs of shoes, one-hundred $5 Footlongs from Subway, and on and on.

Included in that cost are all of the other competitive camera products out there. Some of them are truly amazing. And that's the rub, right there. That's why camera companies are so desperate to get you into their closed or semi-closed system. That dynamic alters the value equation. Because then, when you spend $500 on a lens, you are not spending the opportunity to buy another lens, because you would have to buy into an entirely new system. It reduces the number of alternative uses of your money, reduces the opportunity cost, and thus increases the value of the lens beyond what it would be in a perfectly competitive landscape.

The art of pricing is thus determining how far a camera company can squeeze its adherents before they start to jump ship to another system.

I bought into Micro 4/3 at the very beginning. I even bought some old 4/3 lenses. And I have felt squeezed ever since.

Fuji Again Impresses With Its Lens Roadmap

Last year, Fuji impressed with its lens roadmap. This year, they're doing it again. I feel safe in saying that Fuji and Sigma are showing every other company how its done, at least as far as lenses go.

We finally get our first glimpse of a super-telephoto zoom that isn't blah like the 55-200mm. We also get our first glimpse of a very interesting 16-55mm, which is the long-missed 24-70mm equivalent zoom, with even more on the long end, extending out to 82mm equivalent. Granted, that zoom extreme will likely be too soft to be of much use.

I very much hope that Sigma gets into the X-mount game. It's not yet a replacement for a giant system like Nikon or Canon, but it is getting there much more quickly than Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, or Olympus. Bravo.

I'm Proven A Little Wrong

I said that I wanted to be proven wrong with the new Panasonic 42.5mm lens, and I have been... at least a little.

Lenstip, one of the websites that reviews distortion based on uncorrected raw files, has posted their review of the lens and it is very positive. The lens is very sharp, nearing the performance of the Voitlander 25mm and the Olympus 75mm. Like those lenses, its distortion is very low, which is a first for a Panasonic lens.

It's not a perfect lens, though. It has some extreme longitudinal aberrations and its vignetting is high. The latter problem wouldn't seem extreme except that of all the problems that a crop sensor should face, vignetting should be the least of them.

But it is interesting that the article compares this lens to the Voitlander 25mm and the Olympus 75mm. Both of those lenses performed better and cost a great deal less. That price makes what should be a competitive lens into something that is still competitive, but not terribly impressive.

As I said, this does little to change my thoughts on the lens. It is significantly overpriced. Even with its OIS, it shouldn't have cost more than $1,200. That said, it is at the very least a good performer. Once the price comes down to something reasonable, or if you can find one on the used market, this could be an excellent purchase.

Until then, your money can be spent much more wisely elsewhere.

Panasonic's New 42.5mm Nocticron Priced and Dated... And It Is Bad.

Let's face it, everyone knew that the upcoming 42.5mm lens was going to be a disaster. Not a disaster in quality, but a disaster in price and availability. If Panasonic priced it well (under $1,000), they wouldn't have enough to fulfill demand for the next twenty-four months.

That was one possibility, but I never thought they would go that route. Panasonic is like the little kid that wants to play with the big kids, but doesn't quite get it. They don't realize that you need to have arms before you can swing the bat. As such, Panasonic, in their desire to be Canon or Nikon, has saddled their new lens with a truly absurd price.

Sixteen-hundred dollars. Sixteen-hundred. That makes it the most expensive piece of camera equipment that Panasonic makes, not counting pro-oriented gear.

As I mentioned in an earlier article about abandoning Micro 4/3, there are no excuses for these lens prices. In image terms, this lens is the equivalent of an 85mm f/2.4 lens on Full Frame. For less than one-quarter the price, one could buy the Canon 85mm f/1.8 and put it on a FF camera with three times the ISO performance at high-ISO and significantly better performance at low-ISO. Or go crazy! Splurge an extra $400 over the Panny and buy the Canon 85mm f/1.2 that will produce dreamscapes!

Or perhaps the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 for only $1,100. Or the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 for only $900.

And remember, the Panasonic is a crop lens. Meaning that to achieve similar results, one could buy the Canon 50mm f/1.2 and simply chop off the edges to achieve an 85mm field of view. This would cost the same, but the Canon lens has more glass in it. The Nikon 50mm f/1.2 only costs $1,200, though, so that would save you money.

As if to rub salt into Panasonic's self-inflicted wound, Fuji announced its own lens in the 85mm range, the 56mm f/1.2. It costs, shocker, $1,000. The Panasonic is the only lens among these that is stabilized, but when the most popular Micro 4/3 cameras are all sporting in-camera IS, this isn't much of a selling point, nor does it negate the price argument.

That is because the Panasonic lens is not on equal terms with these other lenses. It has less glass and less complex optics to achieve what it achieves. It is a cheaper lens. Panasonic asking the price that it is asking is pure greed.

It is especially greedy because I can all but guarantee that the distortion on the lens is off the bloody charts. Panasonic and Olympus have pioneered the act of producing crappy lenses, correcting in software, than trying to charge full price.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong. Maybe this lens will have amazing performance. Maybe it will be tack sharp wide-open, with minimal distortion. Maybe it will have beauitful bokeh and supreme resistance to flaring.

Or, more likely, it will follow what other Panasonic lenses do: provide good image quality for too much money. I was proven wrong by the Sigma 18-35mm, and I would love to be proven wrong again. I really, truly would. I'm sitting on a Panasonic GF1 that has seen very little action. I actively want to be proven wrong. I just doubt I will. And even if I were, the mere existence of the aforementioned Sigma 18-35mm lens makes any argument in favor of the Panasonic tenuous.

Perhaps Panasonic's decision would make a little more business sense if they had a lock on their lens system. The GH3 and GH2 are still very popular in videography circles, meaning that a fast lens would be valuable. But Panasonic has already been surpassed by Voitlander, Blackmagic, and SLRMagic. Panasonic does not have a monopoly and yet is trying to charge monopoly prices.

I'm sure that some executive somewhere at Panasonic is aware of these problems. I'm all but certain that their logic is to advertise inflated prices and then sell on discount. This keeps the impression of exclusivity and value. They did this with both of their X lenses. They are doing this in the hope that at some point in the future, their system will take off and they will then be able to actually charge these prices. This of course won't happen, but hope has that nasty habit of springing eternal.

Silent Spring, in Panasonic's case.

fō-tō-gră-fē's Product of the Year

Every other website does a product of the year, so we may as well do the same thing.

Most other websites are either picking cameras or picking multiple products, but in my opinion, there is only one thing out there that deserves recognition: the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 lens.

Many other websites are choosing the Olympus E-M1 or the Sony A7/A7R. This is nonsense. I've grown too tired of companies producing amazing cameras and then doing shit to support them, or, worse still, doing shit and then trying to charge ridiculous amounts for it. After Sony pulled that with the NEX-7, I swore: never again.

No matter how good the E-M1, GX7, or A7R currently are or will be in future iterations, they are still the products of traditional camera market thinking. They all want to develop a system from which they can squeeze money. They all want to be the next Canon and Nikon in the same way that every damned cell phone company wants to be the next Apple.

Never once in their product meetings does anyone ask "how can we make the best product for the lowest price?" Not once. They start by asking "how can we charge the amount of money that we want to charge." Sigma did this to wide-spread derision with the original, $10,000 price for the SD1.

Sigma learned its lesson hard, though, and came back stronger and smarter for it. The 18-35mm lens is top-pro quality glass for only $800. And as any good photog will tell you, it's more about the lens than the camera.

There has been much discussion this year as to whether it is truly worth it for many people, even pros, to use full frame gear. The lenses are more expensive and larger, the sensors are more expensive, and the files are larger. It becomes increasingly hard when cameras such as the Fuji X-trans sensor and the Nikon D7100 perform amazingly, even at low light.

This is a good discussion to be having, and one that the camera companies do not want us to be having. Camera companies spend all of their time thinking about how they can talk you into buying something more expensive. They do not think about making what you already have better. As such, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Panasonic would have never released the 18-35mm lens. They would have kept that design a closely-guarded secret and only sold it for an incredibly-high price if they even sold it at all.

That's why the Sigma is our product of the year. It changes the paradigm. None of the cameras or lenses released by the major companies changes they paradigm. They may be very good products, but they all toe the industry line. If you own an APS-C camera, you need to own the Sigma.

Since I'm focusing... ahem... so much on lenses, I would like to mention some others that deserve attention. SLR Magic and Voitlander continue to produce some amazing lenses for amazing prices. Zeiss wowed the world (at least partially because I think everyone assumed that Zeiss forgot how to make good lenses) with its mind-blowing Otus 55mm f/1.4. I would like to choose one of these lenses, but in this day and age, autofocus is a necessity to consider a product an award-winner. Niche markets may be fine with manual-focus, but an award does not go to a niche product.

So with that said, this will probably be the last post of the year. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and may all your photos be in focus and exposed correctly.

I Think That I Will Be Abandoning Micro 4/3 For Photography

Something hit me earlier today: a van. And while I was lying on the ground waiting for the EMTs to arrive, I thought about Micro 4/3 and my usage of the system.

Both Olympus and Panasonic talk about how their systems offer excellent image quality while also reducing the size of the lenses, and this is true, but only to an extent. To understand why, we have to analyze the way the various companies use the measure of focal length.

Focal length is really a rather useless measure. What's more important is the field of view, and this is measured in degrees. It is in this measure that lenses of various systems can be directly compared. For example, a 25mm Micro 4/3 lens has a crop factor of 2. This means that to determine the field of view in comparison to Full-Format, we need to multiply the focal length by 2. So a 25mm Micro 4/3 lens has the same field of view as a 50mm Full-Format lens.

It's important to remember that using Full-Format as the baseline is entirely arbitrary. That's why Medium-Format is larger than Full-Format. Back in the day, Full-Format was just called 35mm, or sometimes small format. There were as many "formats" of film as there were photographers, since you could mess around with your setup as much as you pleased.

So with 35mm set as the "default," we developed crop factor. The reason why crop factor is called crop factor, though, is because that's what it is technically doing. When you put a FF lens on an APS-C camera, the sensor is only seeing the center part of the image circle. It is taking a crop of the image circle. You could achieve the same effect by using a FF camera and simply cutting off the edges to "zoom" the lens.

So it is with Micro 4/3. A 25mm Micro 4/3 lens has the same field of view as a 50mm FF lens and is noticeably smaller than a 50mm FF lens. It is not much smaller than a FF 25mm lens, though! And from that wider image, you simply do your own crop factor by cutting away the edges of the picture until you produce the same field of view as the Micro 4/3 lens.

This is not a perfect comparison. There is still a size penalty, but it is not as large as Olympus and Panasonic would like you to believe. For example, the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 is 64x69mm and weighs 305g. Its 150mm focal length on FF is somewhat matched by the Canon 135mm f/2, which is much larger at 83x112mm and weighs a stonking 750g.

But take Canon's 85mm f/1.8. It is 75x72mm and weighs 425g. That's much more comparable, and from that, you can take a center crop to achieve a 150mm field of view. Again, there is still a size penalty, but not nearly as large.

Does this comparison hold true for zoom lenses? This is harder because the zooms of the Micro 4/3 system are mostly of medium to low quality, while the 4/3 Zuiko zooms are hard to directly compare to Canon and Nikon. The two stars of the show right now are the Olympus 12-40mm and the Panasonic 35-100mm, so we'll use them.

Canon has a 17-40mm f/4 that about fits the bill. The lens is a stop slower, but a FF sensor will be three stops better than a Micro 4/3 sensor, and the bokeh of a f/2.8 Micro 4/3 lens is actually the bokeh of an f/5.6 FF lens. So not only will that FF lens be better in low light, it will have shallower depth of field. The Canon lens is also $160 cheaper than the Olympus.

But, again, the size penalty exists. The Olympus is a featherweight at 70x84mm and only 382g. The Canon 83.5x96.8mm and 500g. For me, the size penalty is not enough to sacrifice what FF can give me, all while giving it to me at a lower cost. And considering the colossal failure that was 4/3, it's obvious that many people feel this way.

The Panasonic 35-100mm has sister products in the form of the Canon 24-105mm f/4 and the Sigma 24-105mm f/4.  The Panny is 67.4x100mm and weighs 360g. The Canon is 83.5x107mm and weighs 670g. The Sigma is 88.6x109.4mm and weighs a porky 885g. There is a lot of extra weight in those FF lenses, but not much extra size.

Is there a better comparison among the Zuiko lenses? Yes. Olympus has a 14-35mm f/2.0. That lens is two stops faster, giving it similar low-light performance to Canon's f/4, and has precisely the same depth of field. This monster is 86x123mm and weighs a Brobdingnagian 900g. It also costs $2,300. As you can imagine, not too many of these were sold.

And since I love throwing this lens in the mix, the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 blows them all out of the fucking water.

Micro 4/3 should be giving us a size and price benefit. That is the value proposition. Smaller sensor, less glass, lower price. Neither Panasonic nor Olympus want that. They want to earn the money that Canon earns. Well too bad. The world has changed. Sony realized that, and that is why they've ditched their APS-C systems.

I am well aware that simply comparing numbers isn't the best way to reach a conclusion. One 50mm lens can have the same numbers while being vastly superior to another 50mm lens. This could be called the "Leica Argument." First, anyone who thinks Leica's lenses are priced based on how much they cost to make is an idiot. You are paying a lot for the Leica badge. Second, I'm comparing well-regarded lenses to other well-regarded lenses. And while the Canon isn't quite as sharp, it doesn't have distortion bad enough that it releases Cenobites like all Micro 4/3 lenses.

So, yes, I will likely be leaving Micro 4/3 behind for photographic purposes, especially with the dynamite new Full-Frame gear from Sony. But I will absolutely not be abandoning the system. Video companies have grown to love Micro 4/3 and for good reason. Blackmagic and SLRMagic (no relation) both have put the full force of their development behind the mount, and while the GH3 is dead, the upcoming GH4 may have what it takes to compete.

This is no mean compliment, either. Video is exploding and becoming very important to a large part of the market. The "average" consumer will never move beyond their phones, but there are millions of people around the world who care immensely about video. And seeing as how Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, and Olympus are only vaguely aware that these things called "moving pictures" exist, the possibility that Micro 4/3 will become the default format for video is a real possibility.

For that reason, I will not only not be abandoning Micro 4/3 entirely, I will likely invest even more in it, just not with anything from the two progenitors of the system, Panasonic and Olympus. This is sad for me, because the new E-M1 from Olympus really is an A-grade product. I held it and I loved it. But a system is built on its glass and its price, and Panasonic and Olympus just cannot get their shit together.

Sony Is Looking Good Again

Earlier this year, I posted an article about Sony being a huge disappointment. I'm not completely eating my words with that, but I'm at least eating a few.

What I doubted Sony was doing is precisely what they are trying to do. They're going about it in a way that I never expected, though.

Effectively, Sony is abandoning their NEX series of cameras. You'll still be able to buy them, and Sony will still make cheap lenses for the APS-C cameras, but all future development will be in the higher end Full-Frame gear. This is disappointing because that means using larger lenses than you would otherwise need on your always-going-to-be-awesome NEX-7 and NEX-6.

It also means they are abandoning their SLR, oh, excuse me, SLT camera business in favor of mirrorless. Even though Sony never said this directly, their strategy is to focus on FF mirrorless and develop everything around that. Mirrors? Gone. Crop sensors? Gone. Sony is denying this, of course. They claim that they are still dedicated to their extant camera lines. They say more products are coming.

I would imagine that their "dedication" to continuing development of their Alpha SLR lenses is nothing more than a PR stunt just as Olympus' "dedication" to their SLR line of Zuiko lenses was PR garbage. They are saying that purely to keep the market from collapsing, because when it is apparent that Sony has abandonded all of their extant systems in favor of a mirrorless system tilted toward Full-Frame, photogs will start to abandon the SLR system in droves and used lens prices will plummet. And since lens prices are partially determined by their value on the used market, if the used market collapses, so collapses the new market.

I don't think photographers will be much fooled, though. They sure as hell haven't been fooled by Olympus. Used prices for the Zuiko lenses is around 50% or less of retail. Sony's Alpha lenses are destined for the same fate. Sony knows this and has simply made the decision that their market share of the traditional market is small enough that its loss is insignificant in comparison to the gains possible from entry into the next great frontier of photographic development.

Because make no mistake, the RX100 was destined to be a success, as was the RX1, the RX10 will also be a huge success, and this new A-series of cameras will be a huge money maker for Sony. Huge. The businessperson in me cannot fault their decision, but the consumer in me is pissed. Lots of dedicated photogs bought into Sony's NEX and SLR camera lines, and now they are left out in the cold.

Yes, yes, Sony is providing adapters so the lenses these people own will not go entirely waste, but being accommodated is a world away from being catered to.

This step also opens the door for Sony to do the same fucking infuriating crap that Nikon and Canon pull: selling things for ridiculously high prices. Remember the five-hundred dollar optical viewfinder for the RX1? Yeah. Expect more of that. Remember how Sony's Zeiss-branded lenses were stupidly overpriced for crap optics? Yeah. Expect more of that.

But Sony has done one thing very well, they are abandoning enthusiast-level APS-C cameras, but they are dropping the price of their FF gear. I don't know whether Sony always planned this or Canon and Nikon's sub-$2,000 cameras forced them to price their cameras lower than they wanted, I suspect a bit of both, but it doesn't matter. The end result is the same: a dynamite product that will sell like the dickens.

As with so many things recently, I look to both Sigma and Tamron, who have both made huge strides in their lens quality over the past five years. They are no longer the "discount" choice, they are now a genuine choice in their own right. As long as lenses like the Sigma 18-35mm keep being made, APS-C will live on. And as long as the two keep improving, I'll buy Sony's cameras, and then never buy one of their lenses.

The Epidemic Of Crap Mirrorless Lenses Continues Unabated

I love Fuji. I will probably be buying my first Fuji camera soon, maybe the upcoming X Pro 2, and appreciate their focus on the enthusiast.

That said, even Fuji has partaken of the odd habit in the mirrorless world of designing and building crappy lenses and then correcting those lenses in software. This applies to all aspects of bad lens design: aberrations, distortion, vignetting, and even flare. Micro 4/3 has been the absolute worst, with many of their lenses being full-priced while having distortion and vignetting that would cause a Leica engineer to literally crap their pants. And I mean literally literally. Poop would leave their butt and drop into their pants. This would be amazing because Leica is German, and as we all know, Germans do not poop. They just hold it until they die of old age.

Oh, right. Fuji. Well, Fuji had produced some lenses with less-than-ideal characteristics. The 18mm had noticeably bad distortion, and the 60mm macro had difficult-to-correct pincushion distortion. But Fuji has truly outdone itself with its very own overpriced piece of crap, the 16-50mm.

But, you may ask, how could a $400 lens be overpriced? That's not too expensive. Well, it is. The 16-50mm produced an eye-watering seven-point-two-percent distortion at 16mm. As Photozone points out, that's nearing fish-eye territory. The distortion is so bad that the corrected distortion is nearly 1%. Good god, Fuji!

Perhaps if the resolution was amazing, but it's not. It is decidedly average. And the average in this category includes lenses that cost $200 and are superior in every single way.

This is a major disappointment from a company that has done nothing but innovate and price their products well. I suppose that every company makes a mistake now and then. I just hope that this is Fuji's first and last.

Fuji 14mm f/2.8 Reviewed: Damn-Near No Distortion

One of the things that infuriates me the most out of Micro 4/3 is the space-time-ripping distortion levels on the lenses. They hide this optical flaw in software. Many times, this is invisible, but other times, it is not.

Fuji's lenses likewise have used this trick on a couple of occasions, the 18mm comes to mind, which pissed me off. But Fuji has brought out the big guns for its newest 14mm lens. I'm talking distortion of a nearly-imperceptible 0.22%. Compare that to Olympus' similarly-priced 12mm lens with distortion of a very noticeable 5.4%. The Olympus is faster by a full stop, but the Fuji is wider by 3mm equivalent.

This is a good lens at a fair price. It's a sad day we live in when we must praise a company for simply making a decent product.

Another Example of How Panasonic and Olympus Are Full of Crap

Panasonic and Olympus are both idiotic companies. They are also frustrating as all get-out, most expecially Olympus. Panasonic is frustrating because both their cameras and lenses have problems. Olympus is frustrating because their cameras are very good, but their lenses have problems.

Both Panny and Oly have either announced or released wide-angle zooms in the past year. Panny released their 12-35mm last year, and Oly is releasing their 12-40mm later this year. Both of them are slow in the world of high-end glass. I find this ridiculous because their sensors are very small. Making bright lenses should be easy. They are not doing this because of greed.

The Sigma 18-35mm exposed in stark illumination the absurdity at work. It is designed to operate on a larger sensor, costs $200 less, is over a stop brighter, is sharper, more even, and has significantly lower distortion. It makes a laughing stock of Oly and Panny's lenses.

The Sigma lens should have come out years ago, but, as always, the lens companies didn't want to release it. They make so much money from herding their chattle into their closed systems that the idea of giving them a good price for good equipment probably caused physical illness. Thankfully, the Sigma has finally let the cat out of the bag.

But I'll express my love for the Sigma in another post. For now, let's focus on how Olympus and Panasonic suck.

A common reprise from PanOly, and from their fans, is that the lenses are slower because size was a consideration. First off, that's total horse shit because no one who truly cares about photography would ever give up a stop of light for anything. It increases the artistic boundaries of the lens by an order of magnitude... ya' know, if art was measured in the decimal system.

Also horseshit is that the Micro 4/3 sensor is quite a bit smaller than APS-C — 25% smaller to be exact. That means that any lens that is designed for APS-C can be reduced by 25% to find the equivalent lens size for the 4/3 sensor. Obviously, this only applies to the optics. The conversion isn't entirely applicable since motors and whatnot don't scale linearly.

So let's compare lenses, shall we. The Sigma is 78mm wide and 121mm long. Reduced by 25%, we have a lens that is 58.5mm wide and 90.75mm long. It's also a stonking-heavy lens at 810g. And while the weight comparison isn't as accurate, let's apply the 25% to it as well to get a hypothetical lens that weight 607.5g.

The Panasonic lens is 67.6mm wide and 96mm when extended. I used the extended length because the Sigma is an internal focusing lens and has a set length. As such, the hypothetical Sigma lens is SMALLER, he typed in ironic bold & capital letters, than the Panasonic lens. It's a boatload heavier, though; the Panny only weighs 305g.

The Olympus is 70mm wide and between 84-94mm long (I can't find a measure of its extended length). Again, the Oly is larger.

This is not meant to be an absolute, irrefutable, scientific study. It is meant to illustrate that when Oly and Panny say they had to take size into consideration with their lens designs, they are lying. They are lying because they want more of your money for less of their product. In Oly's case specifically, they have this fantasy that their SLR Zuiko line will somehow come back to life and as such, they cannot compete with it.

It really makes me wonder how the hell Olympus managed to release the 75mm f/1.8. Was no one watching that lens designer when he accidentally green-lit a great lens?

Regardless... Olympus is better than Panny. Their upcoming 12-40mm will sell for $999, which would have been great if not for the release of the Sigma. In this, they have already shown more sense than Panasonic did with the $1300 price for their 12-35mm. Granted, they've gone and named their new lenses "Pro," which I'm sure has caused many a pro to chuckle at Olympus' presumptuousness.

I'm a fan of primes. I think most non-journalists and non-wedding photogs are fans of primes. That said, I can't deny the ease of having a zoom lens on me. I would like a zoom lens that doesn't limit me. The Sigma did that in a big way. I would like one for my 4/3 cameras, as well. But both me, and the few other 4/3 shooters who I know, the instant we remove our 25mm f/1.4 or 75mm f/1.8, we regret it.

Indeed, my GF1 has spent nearly its entire life with the 25mm f/1.4 on it. It's a compact camera that gives me wonderfully artistic capabilities. The 12-35mm Panasonic forced me to work very hard to ensure that my shots didn't appear to be from a very good P&S. The zoom didn't liberate my artistic vision, it restricted it. That is something that I could not tolerate.

So again — I know that I reiterate this like some sort of broken recording of an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn — I will not buy any of these new lenses from Panasonic or Olympus. In fact, I'm not sure who would.

Actually, that's a very good question, and I mean it sincerely. If you are a serious photog and you own these lenses, why did you buy them and why do you continue to use them? Are you not at least a little upset that they appear to be artificially limited?

The Utter Uselessness of Camera Reviews

Some time ago I inveighed against Photography Blog for their review of the Sigmas SD-1. It was so horrible that the bias of the magazine didn't just reveal itself between the lines; the article screamed it out for the world to see. But this problem is not unique to Photography Blog. It is not even unique to the world of cameras. It is pandemic across all websites that review products.

I read an article written by Frank Bruni, the ex-food critic for the New York Times, where he was talking about his review philosophy. Basically, he never reviewed restaurants that couldn't take it. As he saw it, a reviewer has an immense amount of power, especially one for a major publication like The Times. A bad review can, no exaggeration, be the cause of a restaurant's failure. As we learned from Spider-Man, with that power, comes responsibility.

For my part, especially when dealing with massive companies, this concern does not exist. The obligation of the reviewer does not belong at all to the company and belongs entirely to the consumer. These companies are asking consumers to spend money — a great deal of money at times. A good reviewer rips those products to pieces. That's the fucking job of a critic. That's why critics are different from some schmo on YouTube. They have experience; they have taste; they have the resources to effectively understand a product vis-a-vis the totality of other products on the market. If anything, a critic should be actively trying to ruin a product's reputation.

That said, I don't think that most major online publications are actually concerned about this. Especially in the tech world, very rarely does a single publication wield enough power to do significant damage. Still, their reviews are frequently useless.

For example, Cnet is a completely pointless pile of shit at this point in its life. It's a scam for people who don't know about other, smaller websites. Many years ago, they overhauled their review system from a 0-5 star rating to a 0-10 rating. This new system would not follow the academic system where anything below a 6 is considered poor. Instead, 5 would be perfectly average, 0 would be far below average, and 10 would be far above average.

What happened exposed the bias of major publications in the clarity that only pure numbers can bring. Since 5 was average, you would expect their average review to be, I dunno', 5?

Of course, it wasn't five. It was 7.something.

What's amazing is not the result, but that no one thought that putting a quantifiable measure to their reviews may be a bad idea. It revealed beyond doubt that giving a review score some sort of objective value was a terrible idea. It allows people to actually compare products in a meaningful way. Of course, this is precisely what readers would want, but it is precisely what companies do not want. And this is, as I'm sure you've guessed, the reason these companies are useless cyphers that do little but produce quotes for marketing efforts. And just so you don't think I'm picking on any specific company: every major publication is suffering from the exact same problem.

The question is of course why the hell the publications would do this? The answer is simple: they want to keep getting invited to the party. If a company sends you a product to review and you then rip it to shreds, you won't get any more products sent to you. It injects necessary an unavoidable bias into the review process. That's why Consumer Reports buys all of their review cars on the open market.

A recent example of this was in the admittedly elite world of sports cars. The UK reviewer Chris Harris went onto Jalopnik to rant about the way Ferrari handles review cars. Ferrari's answer was, of course, to ban him from ever driving one of their cars again. He is still banned to this day. (side note: if you have the money, never buy a Ferrari. I don't care what Ferris Bueller said.)

It is for this reason that we must adjust the way that we read reviews. On many websites, if they have a 5-star review system, anything below a 4 is total crap. Of course, they won't say this in the reviews, but that's the hidden meaning. When a website like Photography Blog or DPReview reviews dozens, perhaps hundreds of products every year, and almost every product scores the equivalent of 4-stars or higher, you know that something is fishy.

Many will attack me for being a curmudgeon, and perhaps I am. I'm not hating on companies and their products because I'm chasing some dragon of perfection. There is no dragon and there is no perfection, but there absolutely is a best product at the moment.

An element of product criticism that seems to have been completely abdicated by critics is the quality of a product in relation to other products. It doesn't matter if a new camera or car is a solid camera or car, if it's not as good as other products for the same price, you give that fucking thing one star! It reminds me of the maxim, there are no bad products, only bad prices.

This company is saying "give us your money!" If that company is not giving me as much as another company for the same amount of money, I want to know about it!

But that would be a terrible thing for major companies. Canon has been producing cameras that are no way near competitive with other companies for many years, but they have used their market dominance to effectively shut down criticism of that. Do you think that DPReview would ever rip into a Canon camera? No. They never, ever, ever will. If Canon produced a camera that literally did not work, DPReview would still give it a 65/100.

(Side note: This is only a mild exaggeration. The Pentax Q, a joke in the photography world, scored a 70. While on the subject of DPReview, I've noticed that when cameras are just so awful that they could never give it a good review, DPR simply doesn't review it. They never reviewed the Canon EOS M, and they didn't review the Sigma SD1 until the Merrill version came out along with its much, much, much lower price.)

The major companies work very hard to keep the landscape as it is. They want to maintain control over the publications that write about their products. When a publication gets out of line, they snatch away access to junkets, review products, and freebies.

Obviously, not all websites are like this. Steve Huff is great, as are a few independent developers. But they are photographers first, critics second. We need someone who has the money and the drive to be both a photographer and a critic. Someone who recognizes that their obligation lies with the readers, not with being soft on some multi-billion-dollar company's shitty products.

Oh Lordie, Olympus. You Make Things So Difficult.

It's been awhile, but the release of the first big update to the Micro 4/3 world is the kind of thing to bring someone out of hiding.

I'll get right down to it; as has been the case with Olympus in the past couple of years, the new camera, the E-M1, is good. They've finally unlocked the 4/3 lens collection. Granted, they've done it in a positively ungainly way, but hey, that's just fine. Moreover, the camera is loaded with pro-level features for a decent price. $1,400 is a lot to pay for a small, crop sensor, but when it comes in the body of the E-M1, it's at least fair.

That said, the lens with which you can get the camera is a disaster. It once again smacks of Olympus not wanting to compete with its 4/3 lenses (in this case the 14-35mm f2.0 that sells for over $2,000) and they are shooting themselves in the foot with it. It is better-priced than Panasonic's comical 12-35mm and 35-100mm lenses, which are wildly overpriced and (or so I've heard) did not sell as well as Panasonic had hoped.

The Oly lens, a $1,000 12-40mm lens, only goes down to f/2.8. For $1,000, in the era before the Sigma 18-35mm, I would have said fair enough. Not anymore. Sigma brought its A-game and other companies are having to play catch-up.

Fair dinkum, the Olympus is splash-proof while the Sigma is not. But neither lens is stabilized, so the comparison is very good since that is what really causes the price of a lens to jump. Also, the Sigma lens isn't quite as wide or long as the Oly. But none of those elements explain the lower price and nearly two-stop advantage to the Sigma. It is a lens in another league. It, and also the Metabones Speed Booster, changed the game.

Olympus may respond by saying that its (really quite good) 5-Axis stabilization adds a couple of stops to any lens on it. That's true. In certain circumstances. You know how often IS of any type is useless? Pretty damned often! Do you know how much bokeh is added with IS? Zero! How much you want to bet that this lens is also corrected in software and its optical distortion is some eye-gouging number like six-percent? I'll bet you a dollar.

Olympus may then respond by saying that the Sigma is noticeably larger and quite a bit heavier. That is true. How many pros will care when nearly two stops of speed are on the line? Almost none. And even if we accept Oly's argument, then they should price the lens cheaper. Smaller lenses are easier to design, require less crystal, and require fewer exotic optical elements like aspherical lenses that look like some kind of sombrero. Oh, what's that Olympus? You're not going to lower the price to reflect this? Then shut the fuck up.

And while we're on this subject, let's address the Zuiko lens with which Olympus was trying to not compete: the 14-35mm f/2.0. It is a lens that Oly sells for twenty-three-hundred-freaking-dollars. This lens is utterly destroyed by the Sigma. The Sigma is one-third the cost, sharper, faster, and slightly wider. It's shorter, though, but few people use these types of lenses on the long end. Still, point for Oly.

So this is a sitation where Olympus is trying to avoid competing with a lens of theirs that is already completely obviated by other lenses on the market. They are also dropping a lens into the 4/3 marketplace where Panasonic has likely already sold this type of lens to everyone who would want it in the form of their 12-35mm.

The new E-M1 is pre-selling like soon-to-be-released hotcakes. This is not necessarily a good sign for Olympus. A huge amount of market pressure is being let off in the form of long-neglected E-5 owners. The sensor in the E-5 sucked back in 2010 and it really sucks now. These people have been waiting for this replacement camera for years and they will cause a huge explosion of sales at the outset. I will go on the record and predict that E-M1 sales will drop off a cliff after the initial month of sales.

You might be saying "well, that's a rather safe prediction." And indeed, many tech products, even those considered a success, follow that trajectory. But the E-M5 didn't. Neither did the RX100. Nor the D800. And even though those were utter home-runs, the E-M1 should have a continued trickle of sales over the next many months. It should never drop below older, equally-priced products, which is exactly what every other Olympus and Panasonic camera has done over the past three years.

This is yet another situation like the E-M5 and the Panny GH3. It is good, but not great -- Whelming as opposed to exciting -- Just as many things wrong as right. In this competitive market, Olympus can't do that, and I'm sure as hell not waiting around for them to get it right. The game has changed and I have changed right along with it.

I'm holding on to my 4/3 gear, but I'm not using it anymore. That doesn't mean that 4/3 cameras aren't still great for certain applications. If you want a small size and want some decent lenses for a good price, Micro 4/3 offers a lot of great products. Indeed, its lower-range lenses are the best on the market. But the instant they try to play in the high-end game, they fall to pieces. For those with deeper pockets or higher ambitions, Micro 4/3 remains a non-starter. That pisses me off, because it doesn't need to be.

As I'm sure you could figure out from my effusive praise, I bought the Sigma 18-35mm and have it on a Canon 50D. The camera isn't as good as the Oly, not by a long shot, but the lens makes it better, and I feel good knowing that I bought a lens that forces the dominant companies to re-think their strategies. Buying the cheaper lens also helps me save for a Sony RX1, because, damn... I want that camera.

Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 Is a Fantastic Deal

I failed to write about this because I've been busy, but I wanted to point out that I must happily eat my words. I said that Sigma would try to charge an arm and a leg for their new 18-35mm. I based this on the fact that they tried to charge, oh right, ten-thousand dollars for the SD-1 when it was first announced. Well, it appears that they learned from their mistake. Sigma announced the price of the new 18-35mm f/1.8 and it is a scant $799. This is called being competitive. If only Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic would hear the news.

Not only that, the lens is excellent. I'm talking truly excellent. This is a world-class lens for a wonderful price and you should have it in your kit like yesterday. If you are one of the weirdos who actually bought a Sigma SD-1, then it's a no-brainer. You need this lens.

Two reviews are out, SLRGear and Lenstip. Both are unequivocale in their praise. SLRGear even goes so far as to say that if you are even remotely interested in this lens, pre-order it now lest you will have to wait months to actually get one. From the review:

SPECIAL NOTE: As you'll see below, this is an incredible lens at an amazing price vs. the competition. We believe it will be severely backordered.

Damn. That is some high praise. For me, this is especially exciting because it finally puts a top piece of glass on Pentax for a decent price. Pentax's cameras are great, but their lens selection sucks. This lens alone makes Pentax cameras a viable option. Which is great. I love Pentax cameras. My first camera was a Pentax K1000.

Long story short, if you have a Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Sony, or Pentax APS-C camera, and you don't already have a lens like this, buy this lens. This is borderline top-pro glass. Top-pro glass for only $799.

The New Sigma f/1.8 Zoom Is The First Lens of The Post-Speed Booster Era

I said that the world had changed after Metabones announced their Speed Booster image-reducing lens adapter. To recap, what the Speed Booster does is take all of the light gathered by a full-frame lens and squeeze it down into an image circle that just fits an APS-C sensor. This does two things, first it eliminates the need for crop factor. Since the APS-C sensor is no longer taking only a small, center crop of the FF lens' image, it's no longer acting like a zoom. A 50mm full-frame lens no longer equals a 75mm APS-C lens. The final image is the same.

Second, it makes the image brighter. An f/2.8 full-frame lens increases in brightness to f/1.8 when all of that light is focused on the smaller APS-C sensor. It's wonderful.

There was nothing stopping lens companies from doing this. Canon, Nikon, et al., they could have made their FF lenses brighter on APS-C cameras with relatively small alterations to their FF lens optics. They did not do this because of greed.

Canon, Nikon, Sony: all of the camera companies make more money by restricting freedom. If they give you flexibility in how you manage your hardware, they limit their ability to squeeze money from your pockets. As such, it has taken them this long to simply take larger, FF lenses and squeeze them onto the APS-C sensor.

Indeed, even companies that exist solely as a discount alternative to system lenses, such as Sigma, display this greed.

Sigma is the first to respond, though. They have released an f/1.8 constant aperture zoom lens for APS-C sensors. It has an 18-35mm range, which equate to 27-52.5mm on full-frame, give or take a milimeter.

Usually, designing a lens and bringing it to market can take a long time — one to two years. I don't think that was the case with this lens. I suspect that they basically took an extant optical design and simply installed a Speedbooster-like optical element at the back of the lens.

Sigma does not have a FF lens with those specs, but they do have a discontinued lens that is 28-70mm f/2.8. That lens would equal around an 18-44mm f/1.8 on the Speed  Booster.

Moreover, if we analyze the measurements of the lens, we find similarly corroborating evidence. The 28-70mm Sigma lens weighs 18oz. The new 18-35mm lens weighs 28.6 oz. (If nothing else, the sheer weight and size of the lens confirms FF optics)

The Metabones Speed Booster with AF support weighs 7oz, giving the 28-70mm a weight of 25oz. Not exact, but close.

Similarly, the 28-70mm is 2.91" in diameter. Very close to the 18-35mm's 3.1". The length of the 28-70mm with the Metabones adapter attached is 4.43". Decently close to the 4.8" of the new 18-35mm, but not definitive.

All things considered, I think that this lens was a relatively quick rejiggering of an optical design they already had. When Sigma says that the design was difficult, I think they are lying. They are lying because they want to justify the very high price they are undoubtedly going to ask for it. Remember, this is the same company that tried to sell the SD-1 for $10,000.

Fuji's First Kit Zoom Is A Home Run

Fuji released along with the XE-1 a new kit zoom, which by nothing more than the virtue of an f/2.8 max aperture. The real question was of course whether the lens would measure up in other metrics, and compliments of a new review and Photozone, we can finally know.

It's very good. Not excellent, but it holds up well in comparison to other kit zooms. The resolution is fantastic, but the distortion at the wide end is significant. Again, it's as though the one thing that other camera companies have taken away from Micro 4/3 is that it is totally acceptable to produce a lens with sky-high distortion since it can be corrected in software. No. That is lazy lens design.

Similarly, the vignetting is pretty high, being well over 1-EV at f/2.8. This isn't a deal-breaker, especially with the Fuji sensor's low shadow noise, allowing the edges to be easily brought up in post. And considering the excellent resolution characteristics, only a fool would reject the lens.

My only criticism is that the lens is only a good deal if you buy it in the kit. As a stand-alone lens, it is still good for the price, $600, but not great. In the kit, it only costs $400, which is a great deal indeed.