Phase One IQ180 Image Tests

Camera Labs has posted photo tests of the Phase One IQ180, the nine-million-dollar medium format digital camera that could resolve a golf ball on the surface of the moon. It's hard to really describe the power of these cameras. Just go check it out.

First Review of The Sigma SD1 Posted, Still Garnering WTF's

It's one hell of a... something.

Photography Blog is the first out of the gate with the Sigma SD1, one of the most infamous cameras coming out of the pipes. A brief history, the SD1 uses a different kind of sensor from all other cameras. Most cameras have a red, green, and blue sub-pixel situated next to each other, all three of which are later interpolated into full-color pixels based on data from surrounding pixels.

The SD-1 has a red, green, and blue sub-pixel layered on top of one another. Thus, each pixel in the final image is a full-color pixel. This has a not-undeniable advantage of increased sharpness, since there is no interpolation to blur edges.

That said, the sensor seems to be at a distinct disadvantage in other ways, noise being foremost among them. Oddly, this new version of their sensor has low highlight dynamic range, according to the reviewer, which runs counter to the older sensor found in the DP2 which performed very well in highlight DR and only fell down in the shadow areas.

The single biggest problem with the sensor is that at sensitivities above ISO800, an odd color cast of greens and purples appears over the entire image. This was true of the old DP1 and 2, and it appears that they have been unable to eliminate the issue. Color saturation in general fell off of a cliff after ISO800, and that appears to be found equally on this larger sensor. Basically, color is more important than sharpness. That means that anything above ISO800 is useless.

This is very unfortunate. I wanted to like this camera. There are so many things about its concept that is appealing. Firstly, the file sizes are smaller for this camera than others. For someone who takes lots of pictures, file sizes are a major concern. It requires buckets of computing power to process the RAW files, and they start stretching into the gigabytes after a very short time.

With every pixel being made to display at maximum sharpness, photos are smaller and of superb quality. While I very much want a Sony NEX-7, the 24MP RAW files are not things to which I look forward. And if the Comparometer at Imaging Resource is any indication, the level of detail captured by 24MP appears to be identical to the amount captured by the Sigma. Granted, the RAW files from the Sigma can get pretty big, but the JPEGs never exceed 10MB.

Secondly, it's different! There are so few cameras out there that are truly different. The vast majority of them are using the same concepts, the same technologies, the same layouts, the same everything. This camera dares to be different. That's a great thing and is does present a certain value proposition.

That said, Sigma is balls-to-the-wall insane to charge as much as they are for this camera. I will make a bet with Sigma. I will give them $100 if they sell more than double-digits in any given market. I would honestly be surprised if they sold more than one hundred of these cameras in the entire world. Eight thousand dollars nears the Pentax 645D and it outperforms this camera in every conceivable way. No sane working or enthusiast photographer would ever buy this camera.

And as an aside, the review of the SD1 at Photography Blog almost destroys my confidence in the website entirely. This camera is a disaster. It does not meet its competitors in features, in performance, or in lens selection, yet they still give it four stars. Importantly, all of their test photographs seem to be designed to present as best an impression of this camera as possible.

There are no sample photos above ISO800, they don't mention the saturation issue, and the only images to exceed ISO800 are the "test" images, which are helpfully in almost entirely black & white, thus hiding the horrible saturation problem. Even here, though, one can see the blacks being clipped into oblivion and the total loss of color in the golden metal arms of the pocket watch.

They try their best to compare this to the "disappointing" ISO performance of the Nikon D3X, which exceeds comedy and enters a flat-out lie. The D3X is the number-4 camera of all time at DxOMark's website as regards ISO performance. They extol the virtues of the camera's weather-sealing, then try to rationalize the camera by calling it a "studio camera." Why would a studio camera need weather sealing? They also willfully ignore that the new Sony NEX-7 costs one-eighth as much but captures similar levels of detail, or that the Pentax 645D achieves significantly higher detail and is a true studio camera. This mealy-mouthed review conjures up every point it can in defense of the camera and actively hides points against it. It is a terrible review.

A Big Reason For Staying With Micro 4/3

Obviously, I have made no bones about my dislike for the way Olympus and Panasonic are handling the Micro 4/3 system, but that doesn't mean that I am going to be selling out of the system just yet.

I pointed out how desperate the situation for them is when I said that the only reason for my staying with the system is not anything being done by those in the system, but by other companies. I want to buy into Sony's E-Mount, and possibly A-Mount, but I'm waiting on what Fuji may have in the pipes. I must admit, Pentax is also very interesting now that it has the financial backing of Ricoh, but it's Fuji that has my curiosity most peaked.

That was the negative, the positive is that Micro 4/3 still has the best entry-level video camera on the market: the Panasonic GH2. Almost everyone I know who is involved with online video production, or any video production that doesn't need to exceed 1080p, is using the GH2. It's penetration into the video market has been profound. As regards its significance, I consider it second only to the Canon 5D MarkII.

UNFORTUNATELY, this has nothing to do with Panasonic! The GH2 must be the most hacked digital camera on Earth. The enthusiast community that has developed around the GH2 is enormous and includes some of the most illustrious names in film production. Every software flub that Panasonic did, either by purposely crippling the camera or simply being stupid, has been corrected by the online community, providing video quality and resolution that is only bettered by the likes of ARRI and RED.

Combined with a growing lens collection that works wonders with film, I doubt that I will leave the Micro 4/3 system anytime soon. My amount of video production is only going up, and with the community around the GH2, it is simply to valuable to abandon. That said, this has nothing to do with Panasonic. It has everything to do with the things that Panasonic is not doing. That is bad. Canon did the same thing with the 5D Mark II. That camera was turned into the second coming of Christ by no action of Canon, but by all of the professionals who jumped all over what the 5D could do.

I expect Panasonic to actually have a part in making its market vibrant and viable. Having the core of your chosen system be a company that is either disinterested or incompetent is no system to be in. But, as it stands, it's the best system that there is.

A Girl Reading

From fō-tō-gră-fē Photographs

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?

A Latte Art Heart Swirl

From fō-tō-gră-fē Photographs

More Thoughts On The Canon G13

Canon has yet to announce the G13, but rumors of a fundamentally different camera have been bubbling for some time. Combined with a new statement that Canon has no interest in entering the small-sensored ILC market, and the unavoidable fervor created by both the Fuji X100 and X10, I think it highly likely that Canon is going to make a larger-sensored, fixed-lens camera of some sort.

The driving factor behind that determination is that Canon, as the largest imaging company on Earth, cannot and will not leave a market untouched. That said, they may be smart enough to realize what I and many others have: the compact ILC market is where enthusiasts who already own SLR cameras go for decreased size. The point-&-shoot crowd wants a camera with a button. They do not want a system. Nikon's V1 and J1, I suspect, sold so well because Nikon fans simply bought the newest Nikon to fill out their bag. Moreover, Canon's entry-level SLR cameras are already super-small. Simply paying some, any, attention to their EF-S lenses may be enough to keep their market happy.

As such, I find it reasonable to assume that something is in the works at Canon that will have a large sensor without an interchangeable lens. I doubt that they will go up to a full APS-C, not just because the optical design would be difficult, but because Canon is stupidly conservative and would not want to step on the toes of their low-end SLR cameras.

I also doubt that they will go with a sensor in the 4/3 range. While many people supposed that Nikon didn't choose that sensor size because it came too close to their SLR cameras, I think that they also wanted to avoid, for lack of a better term, legitimizing the sensors inside of Olympus and Panasonic cameras. Canon would have no issues having a similar sensor size to Nikon, and as such, I think that the new G13 would have a 1"-ish sensor.

That is, of course, if the new G13 has this sensor. I feel confident that something like this is in development, but there is no guarantee that the G13 will be that camera. Canon might wait until next Christmas to put this camera out, and a G13 would likely come before that. They might launch a new line aimed at enthusiasts similar to the X100. They may also announce the camera at Photokina and then just not release it until November. All of these options seem feasible.

All I know is that Canon better act soon. The P&S to own is currently made by Fuji, and if Fuji can use that as a bridge to get people into their upcoming ILC system, Canon could see noticeable market erosion in the high-end P&S arena.

Now is the lack of a mirrorless camera a bad idea? That's an entirely different post.