Hurrah! DPReview Posts Fuji X Pro 1 Review.

DPReview has posted its review of the Fuji X Pro 1 aaaaaand pretty much everything that one could expect from a full review has come true.

They love the image quality, the dynamic range, the detail, and the ISO performance. They hate the operational quirks and the autofocus. They also measured something that I wasn't expecting, that all ISO settings are 1/3 to 2/3 low. I assaulted the Olympus E-M5 for having a similar problem — I actually suspect that Olympus did it on purpose to game tests — and the Fuji won't get off easy, either. Having accurate ISO measurements is important. If your camera does not have them, don't fuck around with the sensor, simply rename your sensitivity levels.

This also means that cameras from Sony don't perform quite as badly in comparison, since both the NEX-7 and NEX-5n measure higher, with the NEX-7 measuring 1/3 stop higher than nominal. That means that the NEX-7 is actually exposing a full stop more per ISO setting than the X Pro 1.

That difference is enough to make the Olympus look bad in comparison, which is why I suspect that Oly did it on purpose — also because Oly's last big camera, the E5, was wildly inaccurate, with measured ISO settings being a full stop below nominal. But the Fuji doesn't need to worry about this. It looks fine in comparison! It's still much better than the NEX 7. There is no reason to be inaccurate, so why not be?

Regardless, the camera came out with a mostly good review. If Fuji can fix the AF issues, which may require updated lenses, and functional issues that can likely be done in firmware, they will have a world-beater.

First Review Of Olympus 75mm Lens

The new Olympus 75mm lens, one of a new breed of lenses where they won't include a lens shade and then try to sell it for $100, has received its first review. The early sample photos of the lens are born out in tests. It is awesome. The lens shade deal, something that Olympus did with the 12mm, pisses me off almost enough to simply not buy the lens. The only thing keeping me from doing that is the guarantee that cheap, aftermarket shades will be, if not already are, available.

Sharpness across the frame is fantastic. Aberrations, distortion, and vignetting are low. Build quality is top-notch. An amazing 150mm equivalent focal length. All for $900. This is the first Olympus lens that is an absolute must-have. The 12mm was a disappointment, the 45mm was good for the price, but not great. Every other great Olympus lens is for 4/3 and not Micro 4/3. Olympus has finally delivered, and done so in a big way.

Micro 4/3 now has some really excellent lenses at all focal lengths. The Panasonic 7-14mm, which is going to get an update soon; the Panasonic 14-45mm is the best kit lens on the market; The Olympus 12mm is expensive but, in fairness, it does better than Canon or Nikon's 24mm primes; The Pansonic 20mm prime is amazing; Voigtlander and Panasonic make excellent 25mm lenses; the list goes on. It's not a pretty mess, with no company producing a full compliment of good lenses, but between them all, the system is pretty solid.

Why Is The Used Camera Market Absolutely Retarded?

I am, or should say was, on the hunt for a used Panasonic GH1. I love the GH2 for video, but the photo quality out of it leaves a bit to be desired. The lower-res sensor of the GH1 was always noticeably better with the blue channel. My quest came to an abrupt end when I saw how much people were trying to charge for the damned thing. One flaming assface wanted $1,400 for the body only. Average price on eBay was in the neighborhood of $400 body-only. I was blown away.

The GH1 is over three years old. Everything about it has been surpassed. $400 will almost buy you a new GX1, G3, NEX 5n, NEX C3, Nikon D3200: the list goes on. The point being that $400 buys you a fair hunk of any camera aimed at the lower-level enthusiast market. Yet resellers, and even a few customers, seem to think that this is a completely fine price.

The GH1 isn't an anomaly, either.

Leica haters will frequently rant about how ridiculously expensive Leica gear is in the secondhand market. Lenses can actually increase in value. It's not just Leica, though. Leica may be the most heinous manifestation of this, but smaller, less prestigious companies head in the same direction. The Panasonic GF1 is still being offered for $400 on eBay. $400! Anything that is even remotely considered desirable has a price far in excess of what common sense says it should have. Nikon D2H, nearly a decade old: $1,000. Canon EOS 20D, 8-years-old: $1,000.

There appears to be two elements to this: customers who are willing to pay far too much, and stores who are willing to charge too much, even in the face of no sales. I've noticed that electronic markets that are just slightly out in left field seem to frequently suffer from this. Unlocked cell phones that are many years old are being offered for hundreds of dollars. Smartphones from one or two generations ago that never sold well will continue to list for full price for months upon months, then suddenly plunge in price when the retailer seems to  have an epiphany about the way business works; you need a customer.

This is actually one of the reasons why I don't like an industry predicated on small retailers. I also think that I'm not alone in this hatred and it is the reason why these markets are being devastated by the Internet. Small resellers are very reticent to accept price drops. They clog the market with inventory, prevent customers from buying, and hamstring corporations who are interested in getting product into people's hands. Unfortunately, large retailers aren't much interested in small markets. Used unlocked cell phones and used cameras are relegated to the tiny shops, run by people who seem to think that a five-year-old camera is worth 90% of what it was when it launched.

This market makes sense when talking about Leica because Leica is more an aspirational product. It's part camera, part jewelry. It's an objet d'art. That's totally fine! There's a lively market of people who all accept the value of Leica. Used lenses move quickly, bodies sell well for the price. It's not simply about the photos. It's about the experience of taking them, and that has a great deal of value. Fucking Panasonic does not have an experience. They sell their crap at Wal-Mart.

Likewise, this sort of behavior made some sense back in the days of film since major technological developments didn't happen every year. A Pentax K1000 would produce identical photos to the Pentax MX. The solid-state revolution had yet to take hold, and cameras didn't become obsolete every year. Well, now they do. A camera from five years ago will still take fine photos, but when a camera can be bought new that does everything much better, the value equation gets wildly shifted toward the new cameras. The older camera must be much cheaper to make up for the performance difference. This is a reality that home theater, computer, and car companies have had to deal with for many years. Every year pushes the boundaries of speed, processing, ISO, and size. Cameras are obviated very, very quickly. They are no longer a rare thing. They are no longer valuable.

If only someone would tell the people that are selling them.

The Nokia 808 Hurts Me

Reviews for the Nokia 808 PureView are trickling in from major websites and the conclusion that nearly all of them reach is the same: the 808's camera is truly amazing, everything else makes the phone unpurchasable.

This is depressing for an old Nokia fan like me. I owned the Nokia brick in the late 90's. I jumped through various phones, with even the downright bizarre 3650 and 7380 crossing my hands at one point. I owned the N93 — one of the first super-imaging phones — and finished up my love affair a couple of years ago with the N86. By then, it was apparent that Nokia, for whatever reason, was incapable of competing with Apple and the rising Android threat. The colossal disappointment that was the N97 was the final nail in the coffin.

If Nokia had chosen Android, I would have jumped on board. I just cannot see through to using Windows Phone. Microsoft has proven itself to be too corporate, too litigious, and too myopic to be a company that I can support. Google is far from innocent in these regards, but they are at least better; they at least try.

So I don't know what Nokia's internal state is. I don't know what the relationship with Microsoft is. I don't know what their market research data shows. Truly, I don't know anything about Nokia's operations. All I can say is that I, this one person, is not buying Nokia products because and only because Windows Phone is on them. And that hurts, because I want this camera phone but bad.

Fuji's Lens Roadmap Is Impressive

The speculation can come to an end! Fuji has announced its lens roadmap for the rest of 2012 and all of 2013 and it is impressive indeed. The odd fixed aperture f/4.0 lenses are no more, replaced with zoom lenses with variable apertures that go all the way down to f/2.8 in the 18-55mm "kit" zoom. The 10-24mm maintains the fixed f/4.0, which considering the competition is rather expected. They are definitely taking advantage of the X Pro 1's exceptional low-light performance and being somewhat conservative in the speed of their lenses. This could be an excellent decision if they instead focus on sharpness and evenness across the frame.

With the lenses confirmed, I think that being somewhat effusive is called for. Sony's NEX system has been around for well over a year with only a single good lens. Micro 4/3 is nearing its fourth birthday and only in the last few months has it finally started releasing some good glass. Fuji's X Pro system will be less than a year old and have eight, count'em eight, lenses available. And if current lenses are any indication, they will be high-quality glass ready for even top-pro applications. Other camera companies should be ashamed.

I wish that the X Pro 1 wasn't such a mess in some truly critical ways, because I would jump on that train in a heartbeat. But as it is, I already have a lot of Micro 4/3 gear, the lenses are finally up-to-snuff, and the new Olympus E-M5 is, FINALLY, the camera that I wanted two years ago as a follow-up to the GF1. Granted, it's how good the GH3 is that will be the final deciding factor in whether I stick with the system, but the E-M5 is a great start.

This is about Fuji, though, and they deserve congratulations. A fantastic start to a nascent system.

Fuji Accelerating Lens Development

Fuji is apparently amping up its lens design in response to the huge success of the Fuji X Pro 1. The rumored lenses generally sound excellent, especially the rumored 14mm lens. As far as I know, that would be the widest-angle prime APS-C lens available. Canon's 10-22mm and Nikon's 10-24mm are available but are zooms, and neither of them are terribly impressive. A max-aperture of f/1.4 is possible, but this is doubtful. Currently, Nikon's 14mm FX prime is only f/2.8 and costs nearly two grand, and Canon's equivalent lens is $2,400! The APS-C sensor size will allow for smaller, and thus cheaper optics — as evidenced by the Pentax 14mm f/2.8 which costs $950 — but they would need Jesus designing and building their lenses to get a 14mm f/1.4 lens for a reasonable price.


The second piece of big news is the likelihood of a zoom lens. It obviously wouldn't be an extreme zoom, and would instead by a walkaround lens of 18-72mm with a constant f/4.0 aperture. The constant f/4.0 is a disappointment for such a conservative focal length, especially considering that Fuji will likely want at least a grand for the lens. f/3.5 would have been desirable considering that both Nikon and Canon have kit zooms that drop to f/3.5 and higher-end APS-C zooms that are f/2.8 constant. I doubt that this zoom will sell very well.


Further down the line brings more zooms, all, curiously, with an f/4.0 constant aperture. The 72-200mm sounds interesting, and the constant f/4.0 would be competitive, but I seriously doubt that it's going to very good. I also seriously doubt the successful implementation of the quasi-RF ergonomics with a 200mm lens. The 28mm pancake sounds exciting and will join Canon's new 40mm f/2.8 pancake in the long-belated chase of the exceptional Panasonic 20mm. The 23mm f/2.0 is just a 35mm equivalent that should have been available at or near the launch. 2013 is rather late.


Other than that, the X Pro 1 lens selection will be essentially complete for general applications after only eighteen months on the market. That is an exceptional achievement for a company that, until recently, had been reduced to even less than an also-ran. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. We must wait to see how the lenses actually perform. But here's hoping.

Nikon D800E Bests D800 In... ISO Performance?

DxOMark has run the venerable Nikon D800E through the ringer and it has come out on the very top of the digital camera heap. This is quite odd considering that it's the same camera as the D800, it only has one extra layer over the sensor.

The D800E is an odd sensor. One would expect a company to simply remove the AA filter if it wants to eliminate the AA effect. But apparently this would have been difficult, requiring two distinct manufacturing lines. Nikon's solution is to have a line that makes the standard sensor and another line that makes the AA filter sandwich. The sandwich has three parts, two of which are diffractive. One filter diffracts horizontally, the other vertically. The last step in that sandwich is switched from the vertical filter to another horizontal filter that acts like a de-diffraction filter.

With all of that optical jiggery going on, one would expect, if anything, a slight drop in ISO performance since no filter, no matter how perfect, will not transmit 100% of received light. Somehow, the D800E actually exceeds the D800. The only thing that I can think is that the act of diffracting a a serving of light over a larger area results in more light being lost to areas on the sensor that cannot collect photons, perhaps even off the edge of the sensor.

Also, it could just be variations between camera examples.