Is Pentax's new K3 A Game Changer?

Hats off to Pentax. They have done something different. In case you haven't already heard, Pentax has introduced a new optional "low-pass filter." I put that in quotes because it's not technically a filter.

I don't mean to take away from the, um, coolness, of what they have pulled off, though. It's impressive and something I would have expected a bit sooner. Basically, the K3 shakes the sensor very quickly on a sub-pixel level to add a tiny amount of blur to the image, effectively providing a low-pass filter effect. This can be turned off whenever maximum detail is desired.

It's probably a rejiggering of an extant technology. Most IL cameras have a sensor that sports some sort of "sonic" dust removal system to keep the sensor clean. By sonic, they mean that the sensor shakes the dust off. So to me, this is an implementation of technology that's been long in the making. It's still good, don't get me wrong, but not a huge shift... pun unintended.

I have also been waiting for a camera company to use the sensor to take multiple, quick exposures while moving the sensor to set locations to increase resolution. I could have sworn one of the MF camera companies was doing this already, but now I can't find it. Regardless, we are already doing it for HDR photography where the camera quickly takes three shots in succession. One sub-pixel shift to the left or right would theoretically double resolution.

But forget all that. Thank you Pentax for giving us something new. We now have Sony, Pentax, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic, and especially Blackmagic all giving us new, or at least new-ish, stuff. Now, who's missing... who's missing... oh right! Canon and Nikon! Who are off doing fuck all.

Does Noise Performance Matter Anymore?

I am an unrelenting, pixel-peeping, anal-retentive, curmudgeonly prick. For many years, when a new camera came out, all I cared about was what it looked like at ISO-3200 and would berate cameras that fell short. Because, at the time, that really mattered.

After many years of sensor development, I'm beginning to think that we have reached a critical point — the point where ISO performance for nearly all major cameras is enough for nearly all applications.

Hitherto, I was an advocate of more ISO, all the time. The better the noise, the more psychological barriers are eliminated. Moments and situations where a person would never have previously considered using a camera are suddenly open to capture. The epiphany moment for me was when I first used a Nikon D3s. With a good lens, that camera could see in the goddamned dark.

But that was years ago. That was a time when Canon, Nikon, and Sony's consumer cameras couldn't exceed ISO-800 without shitting themselves. ISO truly was the limiting factor in most photography. But look at most cameras today. For most of them, ISO-3200 is a cakewalk. No, none of them approach the extreme nighttime prowess of the D3s, but some get close. The Fuji X-series is just jaw-dropping in its low-light capabilities.

In all likelihood, things will get even better. Soon, APS-C cameras will be able to hit ISO-6400 without breaking a sweat. Taking photos of a black bear under a new moon? Psh! Ask me to do something difficult.

That's one of the reasons why my curmudgeonly focus has been increasingly turning to lenses. The only company whose sensors still suck is Canon, so just buy whatever camera offers the most features for the lowest price with the best workflow and rest assured that the sensor will keep up.

We may not be there quite yet, but it's getting close. And what a great place it will be.

Autofocus Matters: Olympus E-M5 vs. Canon EOS M

Not much to say about this. It's a knock-out. Good autofocus is an amazing photographic tool. There's a very good reason why its invention thirty years ago caused such a massive upheaval in the industry, resulting in the rise of Canon and Nikon and the nearly complete destruction of the old European photographic industry.

The Android Camera Revolution Is Not Yet Here

I have yet to comment on the upcoming Nikon S800c, which initially appears odd. I have frequently said that the company that is first to turn their cameras into a platform is the company that will rule the next generation of cameras. I expected that company to be one of the smaller players — Panasonic, maybe Samsung — and   that prediction may yet hold true. Oh sure, Nikon has announced a camera. And it does have Android. But to say that it's something special is something different entirely.

The S800c is a relatively low-end digital camera. Its ergonomics, build, design, optics, and sensor are all budget-level hardware. The only thing that stands out is the inclusion of Android. And that, right there, is the reason why this is nothing. Simply releasing a cell phone with a big lens and no cellular radio is not what I mean when I say a camera as a platform. I mean that Nikon needs to design and implement an entire standard around the OS. I'm talking a platform, with an API, a marketplace, and stadardized hardware.

A camera that will produce images barely in excess of the iPhone, will have no software produced especially for it, and still costs $30 more than most people will pay for an iPhone is not a revolution. It's not even an attempt. It's Nikon, hoping to trick a few idiots out of some money.

You may be thinking that Nokia has brought the revolution with their jaw-dropping 808 Pureview. While they could do this, they would need to completely redirect their efforts. The 808, and the eventual Windows Phone Pureview phones, are all cell phones first, cameras second. We need a camera company that is going to release top-flight, professional imaging gear with Android as the OS and their ordinary camera imaging software as either a parallel OS or an application.

We need a company that is going to lay down the foundation on which application developers can do great work. We need a company that is going to create a standard so developers know for what they are creating applications. The future belongs to the company that is going to create and than shepherd a tight integration of technology and software and make it easy for others to participate. It does not belong to a company that releases the products about which it actually cares with all of the same, old shackles and restrictions that they always have.

This camera is worthy of no attention. The inclusion of Android is a gimmick. It will fail to sell. It is not the future.

Momma Don't Take My Whole Damned Corporation Away

Kodak has filed for bankruptcy. More so than Polaroid, I consider this the end of an era. We have officially, and without doubt, left the analog world behind.

Obviously, this was coming long before analog had even shown signs of weakness. The first time that I ever played with a digital camera was in 1996, and even then I knew that it was the future. Kodak's fall is its own fault.

It is still hard to say that, though. Kodak could have succeeded. It actually did have quite a few things going for it, but instead of leveraging those into something good, they were sold. Kodak sold its medium format sensor business to Phase One. It sold its most valuable patents to... someone. Executives failed to partner up with other companies. They failed to make competitive consumer products. They failed at almost everything.

But most egregiously, they failed to live up to the name. Rest in peace, Kodak. We hardly knew ye.

Picasa, Color Space, and ProPhoto RGB

I have been wrangling with color profiles in Adobe Lightroom and Google Picasa for some time, and I hope that what I have discovered will help some people.

First off, if you are using Lightroom, or any major RAW editor if my information is correct, you will be working in the ProPhoto RGB colorspace. This is a very broad color space that is ideal for tweaking the colors of rich photos.

Before this became common, the most common was AdobeRGB, a color space that was created as a professional alternative to the sRGB color space that is the default of Windows and most other programs.

Unfortunately, not all programs play nicely with AdobeRGB, much less ProPhoto RGB. Picasa is one of them. I have found that a picture may look perfect in Lightroom, but like total crap in Picasa. It's because Picasa does not, apparently regardless of the color profile in which Windows is working, display ProPhoto correctly.

When displaying the images online, Picasa seems to be able to figure it out and provide correct photos, but not in the desktop software. This is doubly odd because Windows Photo Viewer seems perfectly capable of correctly displaying images that are in both the AdobeRGB and the ProPhoto RGB color spaces.

This is beyond annoying. I hate having to jump around in color spaces as opposed to using a single space from process to print. It also means that, when posting online, you have to specifically restrict your images to make sure that they display correctly in all of the most popular viewers, of which Picasa is certainly one.

I suppose that it's not the worst thing in the world, just make sure that whenever you are displaying images directly from Lightroom or ACR, encode them in the sRGB color space to ensure complete compatibility. But c'mon, Google! Even Microsoft managed to get it right, and they're idiots.

UPDATE: The color rendering problem also exists within Chrome. The following screen shot was taken of the same photo, on the same page of this blog. On the left, Firefox, on the right, Chrome. Seriously, Google, what the hell is going on?

Requests Of Sony

Seeing as Panasonic and Olympus have no interest in following the desires of their most ardent fans, I am going to start listing, for Sony's use, all of the things that I need to make my transition from Micro 4/3 a more painless affair. This will be an updated post. So Sony, here we go...

Small (Quality) lenses: Obviously, I don't expect lenses with an equivalent focal lengths of the Panasonic 45-200mm in a similarly compact package, nor do I expect them to be as cheap, but getting as close to this as possible is critical. I hear tell that you are refocusing on a series of pancake lenses, which is fantastic. Pentax's pancakes are pretty good, but they frequently underwhelm in regards to resolution and especially contrast. Avoid these pitfalls and trust me, the enthusiasts will be willing to pay. Just look at the sales of the NEX-7. We are out there, and we have money. Every enthusiast has at least one lens that cost $1,000 or more. Make sure that a Sony badge is on that lens.

Completely Open Your Lens Standards: I have written extensively about how the future of the camera world goes to the first company that is willing to produce a platform camera. The second most disruptive thing would be for a major camera company to produce a completely open lens standard. Lens companies pile on, accessory makers pile on, the size of the system grows exponentially, and before you know it, one company owns the entire SLR market. The Four Thirds alliance tried this, but only half-heartedly, and the rest of the system was so borked that it never caught on. They then promptly dropped this entirely for Micro Four Thirds. Open both the E and A mounts completely. The future potential of this would eliminate most anyone's hesitation about buying into your system. Become the standard, Sony. Become the standard.

Another Adapter: Anyone who has seen comparison shots between the NEX-7 and the A77 has seen the noticeable difference in noise characteristics. That translucent mirror is great tech, but some of us really don't want it, which is why we want the NEX-7 and not the A77. Release an adapter for A-Mount lenses that relies on contrast-detect autofocus. Yes, yes, it's very slow. I don't care. I want every drop of ISO performance possible out of the camera. It would also be a smaller adapter, which would be great. I could already use M-Mount lenses with a super-tiny adapter, so make my use, and thus purchase, of a full Sony kit all the easier. UPDATE: Yes, I'm aware that there is an A-to-E mount adapter, but it doesn't support autofocus. There's no reason why it can't. Olympus 4/3 lenses can autofocus on Micro 4/3 bodies, it is simply slow.

Be A Camera Company: Olympus is a camera company, but is incompetent, and possibly nearing bankruptcy. Panasonic is not a camera company and does not seem to want to even pretend. Pentax is too small to really shake the Earth (to be fair, they are doing just that in the medium format world). Fuji is showing great, great promise, but they have quite a ways to go. Canon and Nikon, together, own the industry, and as such are hyper conservative. Sony, you can be the camera company that the industry needs. Focus on the cameras. Push them hard. Make your own accessories for cinema, photography, and production. Create an entire system of innovative products that other companies either can't, or won't, make. Make your system exciting.

Photographic Cliches That I HATE

There are a number of conversational cliches in the world of photography. Many of them are just demonstrably wrong, like "Olympus Color," or "The Leica Look." A few others are taken as damn-near gospel, even to the most cynical photogs.

Sharpness doesn't matter: This cliche is trotted out most frequently by Leica people who are trying to justify their hilariously overpriced lenses.¹ But that doesn't mean that others don't fall back to this old canard. Anyone who is trying to defend their system of choice, even when said system has some lens that positively sucks, will try to argue that sharpness doesn't matter. It's how the lens "feels," whatever the hell that means.

Sharpness does matter and everyone knows it. Pixel-peeping is also more than a geeky pastime. By analyzing the smallest elements of the image, we can provide a semi-quantitative measurement for the later, full impression of the image. Anyone who has ever dealt with medium or large format film knows that all of that extra detail, even when printed small, combines within the visual field to provide an impression of texture. Only after pixel-peeing does one understand what this texture is or from whence it comes, and it is entirely predicated on how fine the detail is. Sharp lenses make images pop.

And that is only the artistic element to the argument! There is a large, practical argument as well. A sharp lens that extracts the maximum of detail from an image renders an image that is flexible. I have greater freedom to crop and cut the final image while retaining detail and texture.

The camera doesn't matter: This is something that I have only ever heard from internet commenters who want to think that they know what they are talking about.

It goes like this: person A asks "I want the best images. Should I get camera X, Y, or Z?"

Person B immediately answers with "It doesn't matter what camera, it's the photographer!"

This piece of total nonsense not only fails to answer the question, it insults the asker! Two birds with one moron. Said moron is doing this to show off their photographic bona fides, such as they are, and convince everyone that their "art" is just so damned good that they don't even worry about the equipment. The statement is not only insulting, it's completely wrong. If it was true, pro-level cameras wouldn't exist. We would all use cheap point-&-shoots.

For many environments, you need a very expensive camera to get the best shots. Wildlife and bird photography requires a lens the size of Ron Jeremy's naughty bits. Great landscape photography requires a giant sensor with the dynamic range of John Barrymore. Great portrait photography requires a lens that has an aperture the size of a dinner plate. All of these features cost lots of money. It is NOT the photographer; it is a synergy of artist and tools. Both need to be present.

*Insert Product Name* Color: Again, this tripe is spouted by someone trying to defend their camera company of choice. A very common one is Olympus color. I think that this is because Olympus has some cachet to its name and sells cameras priced within reach of enthusiasts. They then have to explain why they would buy an overpriced camera with a sensor that is always two steps behind the competition.

There was a time when color actually meant something. Lenses can cast very distinct hues over images, and a photographer's choice of film had significant effects on the final color of the image. Today, color can be set to whatever the photographer wants in a post-production program like Lightroom. There is no such thing as "color," anymore.

Three Dimensions: AGAIN, this nonsense comes from someone trying to justify their choice of camera system. This one is so abstract, so subjective, and so impossible to quantify that I essentially never hear it from those in the hoi poloi world of Canon or Nikon. Usually, this comes from an enthusiast who has bitten the bullet and bought a medium format camera. They now need to justify this purchase against those who bought a Nikon D3X and an entire briefcase of Zeiss lenses for the cost of a single digital back from Leaf.

Generally, a sense of three-dimensionality in a two-dimensional image requires shallow depth of field. This allows lines of contrast of varying degree to fade in and out and thus provide the eye with reference to infer depth in space. The larger the sensor, the more blur, and, sometimes, the more gradual the blur. But this is heavily dependent on the lens and similar effects can be had from a Canon or Nikon.

But that's not enough for these people! No! To rationalize the purchase, they claim extra dimensionality even when the aperture is set small enough to put everything in the image in focus. I don't think that I have ever heard this nonsense from top-pro photographers. They have medium format because they need massive resolution for their overly-glossy spreads in GQ, or whatever they do. Point is, they buy this for no other reason than to earn money. As such, they don't need to justify it. They need resolution; resolution costs a lot. It is a simple equation.

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1: I don't mean to disparage Leica. I mean to disparage the people who like Leica. And not even all of them.

Can A Cell Phone Replace A Camera?

Ars Technica has performed an acceptably complete comparison between an expensive compact camera, a Canon EOS 20D (my current APS-C camera), The Samsung Galaxy S II, the iPhone 4, and the iPhone 4S.

I have frequently discussed my love of the iPhone 4S's camera. It's a real wonder. It is leaps and bounds ahead of every other cell phone camera on the market and significantly better than all of the low-end P&S cameras that I have used. This comparison only confirms that.

As regards resolution, the Olympus XZ-1, with its superb lens, blows everyone else out of the water. The Canon would have made a better showing if they has used better glass, such as the 60mm macro. They bafflingly justified their choice of lens by saying "choosing a different lens, on the other hand, has its own series of trade offs." Yes, like better image quality. Regardless, overall, the iPhone 4S is only somewhat behind the Olympus in good light. Its rendering and lens are excellent.

But the question has never been whether the iPhone is better than a high-end P&S camera. Of course it isn't. The Olympus is still better in every way. The question was whether the iPhone 4S is better than cheap P&S cameras that are under $250. I think that the answer is most certainly yes. I wish that I had done comparisons when I had the chance, but you will have to take my word for it. If your current camera cost you less than $250 when new (not counting Chistmas discounts and the such), the iPhone 4S is better.

A Treatise On Digital Noise

Noise measurements garner a great deal of flak on message boards across the interwebs. Much of this is directed at whatever website is doing the measuring by another website that doesn't have has many readers.

A website that receives more than its fair share of this flak is DPReview, which measures per-pixel noise in its charts as opposed to overall image noise. This means that camera with smaller photosites will usually have a disadvantage over cameras with larger ones, and cameras with higher pixel counts will lag behind competitors with fewer, even if overall noise is identical.

The only website of which I am aware that measures overall image noise is DxO Mark, but this has practical problems as well. I'm not sure why, but their measurements very frequently do not jibe with my everyday experiences with cameras. For example, I'm a Micro 4/3 fan, and they list the Panasonic GH2 as inferior to the GH1, even though every photo that I ever took confirmed that the GH2 was superior, or at the very least identical.

For many reasons, I fall on the side of DPReview. In much the same way that I argue pixel-peeping is actually a worthwhile endeavor, analyzing pixels as opposed to the image is important. The only reason that I will address today is low-light noise, which is frequently incorrectly analyzed when looking at an entire picture.

In a well-lit environment, where every pixel is exposed beyond the noise floor and thus each pixel has true data, an overall image analysis is very accurate. But the instant that light levels fall and the environment gets more challenging, pixels will start to fall below the noise floor. One large pixel when exposed to a poorly-lit environment is much less likely to fall below the noise floor than a smaller pixel. So even if you have four pixels, averaged together, they've all fallen below their noise floor, resulting in no actual data. I use images from DPReview to illustrate that they are correct in their method.

In the above images, we have the SLT A77, A55, and the NEX-7. According to DxOMark, and a recent article at an A77-defending/DPReview-attacking website, the A55 and the A77 should be identical, and that any difference is the fault of DPReview's analysis protocol. Look at the 100% patch of darkness at the top. The A77 is much noisier than either the A55 or the NEX-7. "Ohhhhhh", they will say, "that is at 100%! We must analyze the whole image!"

Ok. Fair enough. Again, DxOMark and this website say the A55 should be almost identical with the A77. Then why, even at the small size I am using for the actual article layout, is the A77 noticeably noisier? Look at the blue cast, the reduced reds and greens, and the overall loss of contrast. Click on the image to get the large version and the difference is even more obvious. DxOMark shows no difference. DPReview does. In the actual end result image, there is a difference. Not a small, kinda'-sorta' there difference, either. An obvious one, even at low-resolution.

This impression is only strengthened by appeal to DPR's Studio Comparison tool. At every ISO setting, even when controlling for variances in exposure, the A55 pulls more detail out of the dark areas. That means that DPReview is right, DxOMark is wrong, as is the website attacking DPReview.

It is in this environment that ISO becomes critical to good images, and it is in this environment where overall image analysis becomes less important than a quick check at pixel-level performance. Because why bother with an overall analysis when one can quickly analyze a small group of poorly-exposed pixels and immediately be aware of the sensor's characteristics?

DPReview is the lord of camera review sites for a reason. They get shit right. They may not be as scathing in some of their reviews as they should be, but the raw materials to make your own conclusion are uploaded at high-resolution, without stupid crops and page-after-page of self-congratulating talk about art and photography. That is the reason why they are far and away the #1 photography website on the planet. They have no pretenses. They review cameras. That's all.

All of that said, I think that since cameras are tools, a website should start reviewing them based on tasks completed. For example, to determine the quality of a sensor, a color chart should be placed on a wall with a very dim, white light. Then, don't just publish the images, publish what settings were required to successfully image that chart such that all of the colors were represented correctly. That lets the photographer know in how extreme of an environment the tool will still successfully function.

Oh, and I should add that I do not dislike DxOMark. In fact, it is my second favorite photography website behind DPReview. Its data is something that should be taken as part of a gestalt of data from it and other websites , but very few websites are as thorough, extensive, and expansive as DxO. Most of the time, my personal experiences jibe perfectly well with DxO, but that is compared to DPReview, where my personal experiences essentially always jibe with their work.

The Wonder Of Ten Thousand Dollars

I don't usually talk about video hardware on this site because, well, look at the name. But the release of Canon's C300 and then, almost immediately afterward, down the street, RED launching the long-anticipated Scarlet, has made me interested. The C300 is a bit over my magic $10k barrier, but I wouldn't expect it to be there for long, what with Scarlet being all like "I don't give a damn." Or maybe that was Rhett, but it doesn't matter. Rhett didn't know shit about photography.

The amount of photographic and video hardware to make your eyes melt has been increasing as the prices have been going down. Undoubtedly because as the prices go down, the market size increases. In this venerable bracket we now have the Pentax 645d, a RED, a Canon, the Nikon D3X successor, and under that we have the new Canon 1D-X, the Panasonic AF-100, and lord knows what wonders Sony is going to release in the coming months. Being a high-end enthusiast has become incredibly exciting in a very short time.

I suppose that we have the Canon 5D to thank for this. Without it, the explosion of interest for video in the lower price brackets would have taken much longer to develop. And as the RED/Canon meeting has shown, the high-end will come down, and the low-end will go up, and where ever they meet, cool shit will undoubtedly result. That meeting place appears to be at around $10,000.

When the Pentax 645d came out, I was sure that I would own one within a year or two. With these developments, my money might very well end up somewhere else. Best Picture, here I come!

My Growing Disillusionment With Micro 4/3

Rumors have been flying about Panasonic's successor to the GF1 for some time. I have the GF1 and love it. My only real problem is the noise level of the sensor, which is rather extreme. Detail starts to be significantly lost at just ISO400, and by ISO800, noise is noticeable even in Facebook-sized images. But aside from that, the rest of the camera was near-perfect.

As such, the primary thing that I wanted out of the GF2 was a better sensor. instead, I got the exact same sensor and a reduced feature set in a less-ergonomic body. The GF3 went even further, removing any semblance of enthusiast or pro-oriented elements. The GH1 was the only camera in the Micro 4/3 world that was at least comparable to APS-C cameras, and its noise levels were very good. I expected a lot from the GH2 and thought that I would buy it.

Instead, I was disappointed by the GH2. Its overall sensor performance was actually worse than the GH1, and the development focus appeared to be on the pipes surrounding the sensor to better generate video. This, as is well-known by now, resulted in the best video DSLR camera on the market. Which is good! But I take primarily photos, not video. As do most people.

The G3 finally arrived with a new sensor. Its noise levels were much improved, but every other element of the sensor was the same. Dynamic range and color depth were identical according to DxOMark. And seeing as Sony, Nikon, and Canon are making huge leaps with each sensor generation, the G3 was outdated before it even came out. My seven-year-old Canon EOS 20D outperforms it. It fixed the problem, but just barely.

Now the GX1, named in line with the X-Series lenses, is coming out. It will have the same sensor as the G3. This means that a camera that won't even be out until 2012 is already dated. Considering the quality of the lenses available for Micro 4/3, I was prepared to eat sub-par cameras. But this, and most glaringly Olympus' recent corporate debacle, are pushing me away.

This behavior speaks of a corporate philosophy that has no interest in pushing boundaries. In fact, the only company out there that seems really dedicated to pushing the industry forward is Sony. I'm feelingly increasingly like I will sell my Micro 4/3 gear. The increased size and weight is a tough pill to swallow, but the better cameras provide increased flexibility when trying to shoot wildlife, which, like whiskers on kittens and packages tied up with string, is one of my favorite things.

A Request of Google

The future of the camera market goes to whichever company has the balls to make a camera as a platform. By platform, I mean a piece of hardware on which users can put any software that they wish. No camera companies are willing to do this because that would necessitate making said camera open to developers. This is not a difficult future to see. But, as anyone in the photographic industry knows, camera companies are all run by trained orangutans, meaning that the future that is so apparent to us may as well be 2001: A Space Odyssey to them.

Basically, no camera company is willing to do this because they have too much invested in the way the old market worked. Namely, you bought a camera and thus bought into that camera company's ecosystem of products. It was very difficult if not impossible to mix-and-match products. Giving developers access to the software of the camera would open this closed industry up immensely. But that intransigence in the face of the future, and the relatively low cost of entry, means that the photographic world is ripe to be turned on its head.

Just as Apple did with the music industry, Google, you can do this to the photography industry. Apple stumbled into this when they opened up the camera on the iPhone to developers. This propelled the iPhone to its current status as the most widely-used camera in the world. No other camera even comes close.

Now you can take it to the next step. You can design and build a camera that pushes things forward just as you are doing with the ongoing Nexus project. It would take very little. Contract a company to build the body, buy off-the-shelf internals, aim it squarely at the enthusiast, and slap Android on it. Call it the Camdroid. Perhaps it's better to think of it as an Android cell phone without the phone part, a giant camera sensor, and where developers have access to almost every element of the hardware

You don't even need to contract an optics company! You can simply use the Micro 4/3 standard, which is at least partially open, and thus take advantage of a large selection of extant lenses. Since your focus is the software, you won't care about selling yet another camera next year and won't be terrified of UPDATING THE CAMERA SOFTWARE like current companies are.

Moreover, a focus on the software means a focus on the experience of photography. A lean, focused pro who wants three settings: WB, aperture, & shutter speed; or a drugged-out club hound who wants every photo that he takes to look like it had just dropped acid. Any setting is possible when software freedom is given to the user.

Please Google. Turn the camera into the platform that it is destined to become. Drag Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Leica, and Panasonic in the future. Ideally, kill a few of them in the process. There are too many companies and too few brains in the camera industry. Push this forward. That is what you do, Google. Push this shit forward.

The Real Future Of Cameras: Up For Grabs!

I discussed in my previous post why I don't think that modular cameras will make it big in any market except for the top-pro market, where it is already succeeding, so why bother discussing it.

There is one avenue that manufacturers seem to be avoiding that certainly is the future: openess.

As we go into the future, the old models are becoming increasingly restrictive. You buy a camera and, frequently, can only really buy lenses from that manufacturer. You can only buy accessories from that manufacturer. And if that manufacturer totally borked something in the interface to their camera (Helloooo Fuji X100), you're stuck with it.

But imagine cameras that are widely intercompatible. Imagine lenses that work well on a variety of bodies. Imagine software over which YOU have control. This is the future.

To see that this is a viable and valid future, one only need look to the iPhone. How the hell does something with a crappy, little sensor become the most popular camera on Flickr, when there are NO other cell phones anywhere near the top 10? Simple. Openness.

The iPhone became a photographic tool because application developers were given access to the sensor architecture. They were allowed to expand the camera. It became more than a camera; it became a platform for photographic development and experimentation. We can compare the success of the iPhone to the failure of Nokia, who have always produced the best phone cameras. Nokia tried to produce things by themselves. They didn't foster a platform on which others could develop. They tried to maintain complete control. And we all know how well that is turning out for them.

That's why I like m4/3 and 4/3 so much. There are some limitations to the sensor, certainly, but the entire thing is much more open than Canon, Nikon, or Sony. I can mix and match Olympus and Panasonic, with a smattering of Voigtlander, and their products compete based on their merits, not on whether I'm locked into one system or another. Competition based on value and quality? What a novel idea!

The first camera company to make a camera with an API and a marketplace owns the future. It's that simple.

The Future of Mirrorless Cameras

Quite a few very influential people are claiming that mirrorless cameras will take over the mid-range completely within the next five years. SLR cameras will be reduced to a niche, and an entirely new age of cameras and lenses will emerge. I doubt this. What's more, I doubt it for entirely market reasons, not technological.

While people enjoy the small size of mirrorless cameras, the majority of mid-range camera purchases ($500-$1500) are made by men. Men like gadgets, and men also like to pose. The NEX'es and 4/3s'es of the world will never have the pro cachet of SLR cameras. And since neither Nikon nor Canon will threaten their huge installed base of lenses, their pro cameras are going to be SLR's for some time. That halo effect means that the mid-range will have a significant amount of SLR sales happening for the foreseeable future.

That said, I think that people are idiots for doing it. We should all be buying into the new systems. The more we do that, the more the market will experience upheaval, and the greater the progress. I've cast my lot, at least for the time being, with 4/3's, but any of the other systems could lure me away easily.

I've gone in with 4/3's because lenses are more important than cameras, and high-quality lenses will always be smaller and cheaper on the smaller sensor than they will on the APS-C sensors of Samsung and Sony. Still, Samsony has an inherent advantage that will always exist with every generation of cameras, so I want to see some serious product definition and refinement out of Olympus and Panasonic.

Neither company has effectively delivered a well-defined array of cameras. All of their cameras seemingly offer the same things for a wild array of prices and with obtuse alpha-numeric names. Olympus, Panny, here's some advice.

Have ONE camera under $400. Make sure it's branded as the discount version. Different name, different style, different everything. Have your standard camera, which is kind of the flagship camera. It's the philosophical representation of your models: good cameras, low price, small size. And then have one model in the $1,000 range. Don't go higher than $1,500. I don't care what your market research says. NO ONE WILL BUY IT. That's it. Three cameras for each generation. It seems easy, but instead we have this bewildering array of cameras.

Next, focus on fast, high-quality zooms. People in this price range are going to prefer zooms. You can cater to the enthusiasts with quality primes later, for now, zoom. The fact that the Olympus 12-60mm isn't already available in m4/3's is insane. Whatever you guys do, do it quickly. Sony and Samsung will market the hell out of their larger sensors, which has you at a perpetual and inescapable disadvantage. You must push out more lenses, focus your model line, and then cater to demographic tastes. For example, sell your entry-level camera in a multitude of colors. Sell a camera package specifically marketed as a party shooter with the 20mm 1.7 lens.

But not before you cut the fat in your product lines and grind our some better zoom lenses.

A Digital Man Yearning For Film

I am hard-core digital. I love digital photography and would always choose it over film. There are disadvantaged to digital, but they are vastly outweighed by the advantages. The big one is digital frees you to take photo after photo. Willy-nilly. Want to take 5,000 photos in a day? No problem. All you need are a few memory cards. Trying to do the same thing back with film was absolutely impossible.

But there is a quality to high-end film that digital has not yet matched, and even I have to admit that. It's strange. It's something that is difficult to, but somehow still can be, communicated over a computer monitor. Pictures taken with, say, Ilfochrome project a tonality and color gradation that even the best digital cameras have not yet matched. This is most blatantly visible in the gradations of rich colors into black, like green leaves in shadow. I can only assume that it is some fundamental limitation of the Bayer interpolation process that cameras use to deduce colors.

Every time I'm shown a high-end print from someone's medium format or 35mm camera, I wish that there was a reason aside from personal, hobbyist satisfaction to using them. I can't be a photographer in this high-speed world with film, and I sure as hell won't feed myself as an are-teest by taking purrty pictures. But film does have an aesthetic appeal. I'm sure that digital will eventually match film, but for now, I still kinda' wish that I had the time and the money to play around with film.

Nikon D7000 Dukes It Out With Pentax K-5

Holy crap! The Nikon D7000 has been ranked near the tippy-top of APS-C sized SLR cameras! With an overall score of 80, that puts it with or above all of Sony and Canon's full frame cameras. Excellent work, Nikon!

The D7000 is fighting with Pentax's K-5, which even more shockingly mustered an 82, which matches the Nikon D3s. If these numbers are to be believed, sensor development in the APS-C arena has kicked into turbo. I'll wait for further information, but this is making me reconsider my previous ideas about Micro Four-Thirds.

I still say that m4/3's is the best system to buy into for someone wanting a family shooter. It's compact, fantastic lenses cost very little and weigh even less, and Panasonic has proven a complete dedication to the format. You can buy a m4/3's camera and lens for less than $800, buy two more lenses for $500 to $1000 a piece, and you'll have a complete kit that fits into a small camera bag and will do for any situation an average person could imagine. Perfect.

But I used to also argue for the four-thirds format over APS-C because the increased sensor size didn't seem to net much benefit. Going up to full-frame resulted in a significant difference, but notsomuch APS-C. The smaller sensor's 2X crop factor meant that zoom lenses positively sung, with greater length and deeper depth of field. Colors were somewhat better on the larger sensor, as was dynamic range, but I felt that if that was a serious concern, you should save up for a full-frame camera. APS-C just didn't provide enough of a quality boost to warrant the increased size and cost.

These results change that perspective. The best 4/3's sensor on the market is the Panasonic GH1/2, which has a best score of 64 on DxO Mark. That plopped it smack in the middle of most modern APS-C cameras, truly, trailing the EOS 7D supercamera by only two points. But trailing the leading APS-C camera by 18 points cannot be ignored.

As I said, I'll wait to pass judgment, but if these early results hold up, anyone with enthusiast or semi-pro aspirations cannot consider the 4/3's format any more. APS-C has just walked away.

Tests and reviews for the camera Nikon D7000 (DxO Mark)