Category: Links

Riffing in the key of Ricoh

Gregory Simpson explains how he found himself to buy a Ricoh GRX.

And, truth be told, when Ricoh released the GXR in late 2009, my impression was one of disinterest. Although I found the idea intriguing (a user replaceable sensor), I didn’t much care for the execution — I simply had no need for any of the camera’s available lens modules.

I you read the other writings from Gregory, you’ll realise he is not a big fan of digital. Yes it is a tool, but the trend of treating digital cameras like consumer electronic let him (and other photographer) disappointed. But…

In actuality, my interest wasn’t fully aroused until a second year passed and Ricoh released yet another new module for the GXR — one with a new sensor designed specifically to take advantage of M-mount lenses.

Read the rest.

A strange copyright case

DPReview has a report of a strange copyright case where a picture has been found infringing on another picture because they have a red bus on a monochrome background of the London Big Ben and Parliament. Not the same vantage point nor even the same bus. The bigger problem is that the court found it infringing. Read it and now worry. A very unfortunate precedent.

A few thoughts on time stamps

George Jardine (a Lightroom export) wrote A Few Thoughts on Time Stamps, how he manages time stamps and deal with timezones.

It is a personal thing, and my personal choice is using UTC in the camera and timezone in the library to have the local time (local to the location of the picture). This raise a problem in Ligthroom, but it works in Aperture. And it matches with geo tagging using GPS traces.

The Online Photographer: Shooting with a Fuji X100

The Online Photographer has a guest post by Robert Plotkin: Shooting with a Fuji X100.

Plotkin has a lots of gripes against the focusing system:

The imprecise focusing takes an unusually long time. It is like waiting for a cashier to incorrectly manipulate an abacus and hand you the wrong change.

He also have issues with the usability. But in the end:

Shooting the Fuji X100 is like driving a vintage Ferrari: bugs in your teeth, pebbles ricocheting off your goggles, double-clutching straight cut gears, applying opposite lock to correct a slide — and coming out of the corner neck-and-neck with a soccer mom in a black Escalade of an SLR.

Read it thoroughly. I still want to get one.