Personal ramblings on photography
Tim Bray wrote a love letter to Fujifilm:
He starts with the conclusion:
It’s the best camera I’ve ever used: Light, wonderful in the hand, perfect controls, astounding lenses, pleasing pictures. So if you were thinking of buying a Serious Camera, this is totally one of the ones you should look at. Or maybe the X-E2; more on that below.
I’ll let you read the rest.
As an X-Pro1 owner I can tell that almost everything applies to it too.
Two recent articles on cleaning (old) cameras:
Japan Camera Hunter: Classic Camera Cleaning Guide.
Petapixel: How to clean up your old camera.
Both have similarities in techniques, which is absolutely not surprising. I haven’t had the time yet to try these out, but if you needed a starting point to clean your collection of film camera, here you are. Digital cameras are not covered.
I wouldn’t mention yet another “compact” camera, but this one coming from Nikon show an interesting reverse trend: The Nikon P7800 comes with an electronic viewfinder on addition to the back LCD.
Fuji announced the Fuji XF23mm f1.4 for the Fuji X series (like the X-Pro1)
This lens will provide a fast 35mm-like lens ; one of the favourite field of view of street photographers.
Jorge Ledesma call the Thinktank Retrospective 5
The Best Street (Casual) Photography Bag for the Ricoh GR and Companion.
I’ve tried quite a few bags, too many to name, but let me tell that the Thinktank Photo Retrospective 5 has stolen my heart and the hearts of my two primary photographic tools — the Ricoh GR and the Pentax K5 IIs. Its like this: you know how you fall in love with a certain comforter and that’s what you like to sleep in all time. Well, its like that for the GR/K5IIs and the Retrospective 5. I can’t think of any other bag that has all the features that one needs to have while on the field photographing.
While I don’t have a Ricoh GR, I bought this bag over a year ago to use with my Fujifilm X-Pro1 – after having bought the Retrospective 30 – and I love it. It even fits the 5DMkII with the 24-105 or the 40mm pancake.
I previously said the Leica X-Vario was a disappointment solely based on the price and the slow zoom lens (and the lack of viewfinder). I think I shouldn’t be commenting on gear like that.
We see some positive reviews flourishing, mostly based on image quality and ergonomics, two of the main reason to use one camera over the other.
Jonathan Slack, a Leica loyal (his words): The Leica X Vario – previously known as Paula:
Despite the yawns from some of the more technically minded on the internet this is pretty much a unique camera – being the only currently available APS-c sized camera with an integral zoom lens (the Canon G1x sensor is rather smaller).
[…]
So it seems to me that at the very least Leica have produced an interesting modern take on a popular design strategy.
And conclude:
However, over the months I’ve rather fallen in love with the simplicity of the X Vario – the logic of the controls is hard to fault, the image quality is really excellent and the fact of it being a simple one-stop package is really compelling.
Simply put he turns this one as the camera he has with him when he doesn’t have any other.
And if someone want to loan one to me, I’ll be sure to be fair with it.
Two week ago, Leica started teasing us with the Mini-M.
The Phoblographer has the scoop, just confirming the rumors, and that is a disappointment.
The Leica X Vario will cost over $3200 (more than the Sony RX-1) a little more than $2800, roughly the same as the Sony RX-1. And I had two hypothesis of what it could be, and both were wrong. One was closer thought, but I was expecting a fast prime not a slow zoom lens. No viewfinder (there is the port for an EVF). Nothing. In short you can find a camera that has the same feature set, a faster lens, that can be changed, for much less money. There claim that it took Leica M as a role model is absurd.
The only thing that can be outlined is Leica still continue to push DNG for the RAW files. And they should be commended for that.
Leica is now in the market of making expensive luxury cameras, not performing and robust cameras. I am sure that if a photographer had only this camera he could make it work and take awesome picture, but for the money, I’d recommend something else.
(I haven’t seen the camera, this is all based on paper specs)
Update B&H has it in pre-order, adjusted the price mention to reflect that.
Leica is teasing us with the Mini M. We don’t know anything yet but two speculations:
We’ll see, but let’s hope Leica goes with a better differentiation than the X2, more in line with the Leica M.
One thing that I’m certain of is that it will not be a film camera.
Kodak announced the plan to sell the film and imaging division to the UK Kodak Pension Plan in a move to settled debt and going toward exiting chapter 11
The question is whether the pension plan will deal with this asset as the film business or just as financial value? One would think the Kodak Pension Plan knows about Kodak business at its heart…
Time will tell, and I want to be hopeful.
Back in December, Cosina announced they discontinued Zeiss Ikon camera bodies.
Now it is Hasselbad to announce the discontinuation of the V System after over 50 years, having manufactured the last 503CW body.
This was bound to happen. The question remain: if no more film camera is being made, will the used market be enough to supply the demand?
