I gave the Panasonic GF1 at reluctant pass in the end because reports on its image quality did not suit my exacting needs. Well, that and the rumours flying round that Nikon and Samsung, among others, were going to join this club. Samsung has since confirmed, and Olympus in the meantime not only came out with the EP-2, but is now hinting at an EP-3. Will this cure the focus slowness of its predecessors? Will it include a viewfinder? Can the Samsung product usurp the big(ger) boys? And, where is the Nikon gun to scare off its competition? The suspense is killing me. Who would have ever thought that a female could be such a geek?
I have registered with Olympus to be the first to know when its new camera is announced. You can: register here too and I would encourage this to urge the game along.
In the meantime, if something up to my picky requirements does not come out soon, I shall have to put my luggage in the hold, and carry the NIkon D3 on board as I am off Ryanair-ing off to write about life on a Spanish mountain in the third week of March! Problem is, aiming that beast at locals puts them more than slightly on edge. If Henri Cartier Bresson was taking photos today I think it fair to say, he would have embraced the Four Thirds just like I hope to be able to.
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Hope Santa brings me "Four Thirds" what I want
Well, I have just sold my traveling gear - the Nikon D40X and its lens, the 18 - 200 mm VR thing one. Why? Because they did not QUITE suit me for some time. Good, but just a little short of my needs all round. A little bit too bulky, a little bit not-resolving-fine-detail-enough, a little too much zoom creep, a little too many blown highlights. I am hoping this new four thirds revolution will bring out the camera I think all us traveling photographers want. Small, well-built with a VIEWFINDER, great image quality, just one great zoom lens like 20 - 200 mm or some such to start with, and please, nippy focus. And leave out the video function while you are at it.
Yesterday I popped into our local camera store and what an empty depressing place that was. One morose assistant lurked at the back and through the staff door I could see a frowning manager making tea. The last time I went into a camera store, about eight years ago, it was packed. Queues of people usurping us professionals in their eager quest to get a digital compact. The place was crammed with the little bleeders, and all horrible too. Sorry, but a brief affair with a Canon G5 around the time of the millenium when all our computers were supposed to blow up convinced me firmly that they were genuine focus-hunting rubbish.
About then I discovered that ordering my equipment via the internet was a much simpler and more agreeable process, not to say cheaper. Said camera store in fact has an online facility too and you do wonder why and how it keeps its high street venues open. The morose assistant made no effort to assist me and in fact shrank even further away as if trying to disappear into the display cabinets. So what was I doing there? Well, this time, as I am desperate for Santa to bring me EXACTLY what I want, I thought I had better physically handle the affordable options on offer so far.
This is my hands on assessment of the situation. The Canon G11 (no not a Four Third but kind of comes into the picture I wrongly thought) handles like a light, uninspiring object of no desire. It did not help that morose assistant did not know if there was an option to turn on a feature that would show where the focus is and if you could choose the focus point and if you could hear that reassuring little noise that announced desired focus achievement. "I don't think you can", he guessed. I suppose he also wanted me to guess my results as he did not see fit to allow insertion of a memory card. I pointed, clicked the shutter button, and had no idea if the camera had focused or what the result of my click produced. I turned the camera over a few times, pushed a few buttons, and handed it back to him.
The next one was the olympus E-P1. Cute camera, nice weight and feel, but forget the focus big time. There will be no candid street photography with little fellow and all I can say is the E-P2 better come out real soon, and oh, what about a view finder while you are at it? This brings me to the Panasonic GF1. Loved the feel of it, in fact, I loved it! My fingers fluttered over its firm bodywork. Could it be? Yes? BUT. No viewfinder. It is however available as an optional extremely expensive accessory that you stick on the top which seems a bit of a cheat if you ask me. Still, I was ready to give this a go and part with some money. Two problems however. The store did not have one of these thingy me bobs on the premises, and no, they could not order one in for me to try. They also did not have the lens that I wanted for this gorgeous little object of desire, the 14 - 140 mm, maybe because they told me it does not exist.
Luckily the Panasonic brochure informed them otherwise. After agreeing that it did exist, but that they had not mentioned it because it was specifically for video shooting, they could not tell me what its length and weight is, only that it is about the same as the lens on the camera. Nooooo! We photographers want to buy this camera because it is small. We want to know exactly what weight each bit of it is and how much each different lens protrudes from cute little body. So camera store - for your information, the 14 - 45 mm lens on your display model weighs 195 grams and is 60 mm long. The 14 - 140 mm weighs in at 460 grams and is 84 mm long which in my book is not "about the same". Oh, and another thing, you can use it for photos too.
I had suffered enough. Those thirty minutes could have been agreeably wasted indulging my passion for Kentucky Fried Chicken and downing a paper cup of scalding coffee while surfing the world wide web on my iphone. So it is back to the internet for me and reading reviews from others who know what they are talking about, like Thomas Hogan, who is also on this Holy Grail. In the meantime, I wish I had held on to my Nikon D40X for a little longer...
Yesterday I popped into our local camera store and what an empty depressing place that was. One morose assistant lurked at the back and through the staff door I could see a frowning manager making tea. The last time I went into a camera store, about eight years ago, it was packed. Queues of people usurping us professionals in their eager quest to get a digital compact. The place was crammed with the little bleeders, and all horrible too. Sorry, but a brief affair with a Canon G5 around the time of the millenium when all our computers were supposed to blow up convinced me firmly that they were genuine focus-hunting rubbish.
About then I discovered that ordering my equipment via the internet was a much simpler and more agreeable process, not to say cheaper. Said camera store in fact has an online facility too and you do wonder why and how it keeps its high street venues open. The morose assistant made no effort to assist me and in fact shrank even further away as if trying to disappear into the display cabinets. So what was I doing there? Well, this time, as I am desperate for Santa to bring me EXACTLY what I want, I thought I had better physically handle the affordable options on offer so far.
This is my hands on assessment of the situation. The Canon G11 (no not a Four Third but kind of comes into the picture I wrongly thought) handles like a light, uninspiring object of no desire. It did not help that morose assistant did not know if there was an option to turn on a feature that would show where the focus is and if you could choose the focus point and if you could hear that reassuring little noise that announced desired focus achievement. "I don't think you can", he guessed. I suppose he also wanted me to guess my results as he did not see fit to allow insertion of a memory card. I pointed, clicked the shutter button, and had no idea if the camera had focused or what the result of my click produced. I turned the camera over a few times, pushed a few buttons, and handed it back to him.
The next one was the olympus E-P1. Cute camera, nice weight and feel, but forget the focus big time. There will be no candid street photography with little fellow and all I can say is the E-P2 better come out real soon, and oh, what about a view finder while you are at it? This brings me to the Panasonic GF1. Loved the feel of it, in fact, I loved it! My fingers fluttered over its firm bodywork. Could it be? Yes? BUT. No viewfinder. It is however available as an optional extremely expensive accessory that you stick on the top which seems a bit of a cheat if you ask me. Still, I was ready to give this a go and part with some money. Two problems however. The store did not have one of these thingy me bobs on the premises, and no, they could not order one in for me to try. They also did not have the lens that I wanted for this gorgeous little object of desire, the 14 - 140 mm, maybe because they told me it does not exist.
Luckily the Panasonic brochure informed them otherwise. After agreeing that it did exist, but that they had not mentioned it because it was specifically for video shooting, they could not tell me what its length and weight is, only that it is about the same as the lens on the camera. Nooooo! We photographers want to buy this camera because it is small. We want to know exactly what weight each bit of it is and how much each different lens protrudes from cute little body. So camera store - for your information, the 14 - 45 mm lens on your display model weighs 195 grams and is 60 mm long. The 14 - 140 mm weighs in at 460 grams and is 84 mm long which in my book is not "about the same". Oh, and another thing, you can use it for photos too.
I had suffered enough. Those thirty minutes could have been agreeably wasted indulging my passion for Kentucky Fried Chicken and downing a paper cup of scalding coffee while surfing the world wide web on my iphone. So it is back to the internet for me and reading reviews from others who know what they are talking about, like Thomas Hogan, who is also on this Holy Grail. In the meantime, I wish I had held on to my Nikon D40X for a little longer...
Friday, 25 September 2009
Come on Nikon!
Here is my Nikon moan. They release too little too late, and then of course there is the price. When I became a D3 user, I found I owned a group of lenses whose flaws were more and more apparent, but there were few alternatives in my line of work. Gradually I was able to update some of them - the 105 micro (whose focus still hunts!), the 24-70 mm F2.8 zoom (which has not VR!), and I even acquired a new lens for me, the 14-24 F2.8 mm (which can be very effective). But my main lens is the 70-200 mm F2.8 VR and it is far from satisfactory. On the D3 is suffers from extreme vignetting, which luckily happens to be ultra-fashionable at the moment. I have reluctantly continued with it for the last two years as there was nothing else to take its place. Now there will be come this November, and at such a price for me that I shall have to swallow hard in these recession times.
Add to the above the need for a SMALL camera capable of taking professional photos at fast focusing speeds. Where is it? A digital equivalent of the old film Contact T2 (the T3 was not good), only with added zoom ability. After using a D40X and 18-200 mm VR lens while traveling for some years, I have had enough. When they came out, these two together were just about at the bottom end of acceptability re using the photos professionally, that is to say, if the content was good enough, I could overlook the lower resolving power of the combo and the slightly too slow focusing speed. However technology has advanced and this is no longer the case. Simply put, clients expect photographers today to keep on top of the digital game.
Due to the fact that the D40X depends on the lens to focus, it does not work with my DX 10.5 mm fisheye. Neither does my D3. Well, it does on both, but not in a way that is acceptable. Trying to manually focus on the D40X is very hit and miss and I did not buy a 12 million pixel FX camera to couple a lens with it that produces an image of circa 5.5 million pixels. This conundrum is at the very heart of my dilemma. I do not wish to buy any more DX lens as I have gone down the FX route and the small nikon cameras only work with the latest DX lenses so I need to get rid of my old ones.
I sold my 18-200 mm VR lens to a happy enthusiast as it has been superseded by a newer model without the dreaded zoom creep it suffered from. However, I have read nothing any where that mentions any other improvement in this lens, i.e. faster focusing and better resolving power of detail. So I am left with a D40X and no usable lens for it. I am about to travel again. Any lens I buy I wish to use on my D3 as well. Actually, the lens I HAVE to buy is the new FX 70 - 200 mm which in my opinion is two years too late in any event. I am trusting that it will be of the expected quality. I say this for the one I presently own is going on ebay before its price tumbles too much. I can not travel with it anyway.
And this takes me back to my main gripe. Where is that SMALL prosumer camera? Like the D40X, its replacement, the D3000, has no inbuilt focusing motor and so buying the camera would present me with the same conundrum. There is no point, and in addition, although the D3000 is light, it is not as light as the D40X. Quite frankly, I would like something even lighter than the D40X anyway. Something that is inconspicuous and fits neatly in large pockets; something that does not lose its lens cap, lens hood, and extend like a zoom-creep snake in my handbag.
Yes, the ideal travel companion would be around 10 million pixels, possess superb image quality and produce fast, up-to-date focusing. That would service me well. Together with my 12 inch G4 powerbook (what a gem!), a few basic outfits and toiletries, and a featherlight cabin bag, I would like it to weigh less than ten kilos and thus allow me to travel for two weeks with no need to check in hold baggage. Hold baggage is now a chargeable item, makes a mockery of web check-in, and also necessitates earlier arrival at the airport. Web check-in is very convenient and dare I say it? If your luggage happens to creep over ten kilos, no one gets to find out.
So what to do? Well, I have found myself hunting around the photography sites for a camera from ANOTHER MANUFACTURER! Yes, this "Nikon Professional Services" member is looking elsewhere. If I can find what I so desire with a fixed lens, then my loyalty to Nikon is no longer required. And who knows? In time, I may even jump ship altogether. Unless of course they come out with the lens that I , and my fellow professional Nikon users, have been requesting for many years. Please, please, please, a 35-135 mm F2.8 lens, and if that is truly too difficult, then make it F4. No F4.5 to F5.6 or the like... please?
Add to the above the need for a SMALL camera capable of taking professional photos at fast focusing speeds. Where is it? A digital equivalent of the old film Contact T2 (the T3 was not good), only with added zoom ability. After using a D40X and 18-200 mm VR lens while traveling for some years, I have had enough. When they came out, these two together were just about at the bottom end of acceptability re using the photos professionally, that is to say, if the content was good enough, I could overlook the lower resolving power of the combo and the slightly too slow focusing speed. However technology has advanced and this is no longer the case. Simply put, clients expect photographers today to keep on top of the digital game.
Due to the fact that the D40X depends on the lens to focus, it does not work with my DX 10.5 mm fisheye. Neither does my D3. Well, it does on both, but not in a way that is acceptable. Trying to manually focus on the D40X is very hit and miss and I did not buy a 12 million pixel FX camera to couple a lens with it that produces an image of circa 5.5 million pixels. This conundrum is at the very heart of my dilemma. I do not wish to buy any more DX lens as I have gone down the FX route and the small nikon cameras only work with the latest DX lenses so I need to get rid of my old ones.
I sold my 18-200 mm VR lens to a happy enthusiast as it has been superseded by a newer model without the dreaded zoom creep it suffered from. However, I have read nothing any where that mentions any other improvement in this lens, i.e. faster focusing and better resolving power of detail. So I am left with a D40X and no usable lens for it. I am about to travel again. Any lens I buy I wish to use on my D3 as well. Actually, the lens I HAVE to buy is the new FX 70 - 200 mm which in my opinion is two years too late in any event. I am trusting that it will be of the expected quality. I say this for the one I presently own is going on ebay before its price tumbles too much. I can not travel with it anyway.
And this takes me back to my main gripe. Where is that SMALL prosumer camera? Like the D40X, its replacement, the D3000, has no inbuilt focusing motor and so buying the camera would present me with the same conundrum. There is no point, and in addition, although the D3000 is light, it is not as light as the D40X. Quite frankly, I would like something even lighter than the D40X anyway. Something that is inconspicuous and fits neatly in large pockets; something that does not lose its lens cap, lens hood, and extend like a zoom-creep snake in my handbag.
Yes, the ideal travel companion would be around 10 million pixels, possess superb image quality and produce fast, up-to-date focusing. That would service me well. Together with my 12 inch G4 powerbook (what a gem!), a few basic outfits and toiletries, and a featherlight cabin bag, I would like it to weigh less than ten kilos and thus allow me to travel for two weeks with no need to check in hold baggage. Hold baggage is now a chargeable item, makes a mockery of web check-in, and also necessitates earlier arrival at the airport. Web check-in is very convenient and dare I say it? If your luggage happens to creep over ten kilos, no one gets to find out.
So what to do? Well, I have found myself hunting around the photography sites for a camera from ANOTHER MANUFACTURER! Yes, this "Nikon Professional Services" member is looking elsewhere. If I can find what I so desire with a fixed lens, then my loyalty to Nikon is no longer required. And who knows? In time, I may even jump ship altogether. Unless of course they come out with the lens that I , and my fellow professional Nikon users, have been requesting for many years. Please, please, please, a 35-135 mm F2.8 lens, and if that is truly too difficult, then make it F4. No F4.5 to F5.6 or the like... please?
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