If This is the New Leica Mini M, Who Would Buy This?

June 2, 2013 by spike | Leave a comment

Leica has been teasing the launch of a new Leica Mini M later this month. Now details and pictures are showing up on the web in advance of the launch, purporting to be the details of the new camera. (I snagged this photo from Engadget.)

Is it real or is it Photoshop? I can’t say. But if it is real, all I can ask is, “what the hell were they thinking?”

I mean, plenty of people who don’t have a Leica M series camera would love to have one – me included – but they’re just financially out of reach for many of us. So a smaller – and presumably cheaper version would have great appeal.

But first off, rather than Leica’s interchangeable lenses, this one has a fixed lens – and a dark one to boot. 28-70mm and F/3.5 – F/6.4. Inside will be a 16 megapixel APS-C size sensor, which does make sense.

Here’s the kicker – the price, rumored to be 2,450 Euros, approximately US$3,150. Three thousand smackers for a lens that will spend most of its time at F/6.4? Who the hell will buy this, aside from Chinese billionaires who buy Leicas by the truckload just to impress their friends? Yes, it’s much cheaper than a Leica M – but apparently it will have little in common with that camera besides the red dot.

Anyway – there’s one thing about this photo that suggests it could be a fake and that’s the focal lengths listed on the lens. No one puts the full frame equivalent on the lens – they put the real numbers and leave you to work out the details on your own. I don’t think even Leica would put out a camera with a fixed lens that has a full frame equivalent of 42 to 100mm. It makes no sense.

Oh, by the way, someone has already reviewed it, even though no one knows for sure what it is. “So if you want a small light, extremely high quality, unobtrusive camera, look no further.”

Another web site asks, “Is this going to be the Mirrorless Leica System That Was Promised?” Am I missing something here? Is the Leica M a DSLR? Does it have a flip-up mirror inside?

In another 10 days, all questions will be answered.

Posted in Gear, Leica

Yahoo Flicks the Fickle Finger of Flickr at its Followers

May 22, 2013 by spike | Leave a comment

Gosh, photographers sure are an angry bunch, aren’t they? Last week everyone hated Adobe. This week it’s Flickr. I didn’t agree with the anger that people were spewing forth at Adobe but with Flickr, it seems to be well-justified.

Flickr was way overdue for a change. The whole site was very 2008 and they seemed to just sit there twiddling their thumbs while other sites left them in the dust. So a radical redesign was needed and I quite like the way the site looks now. Giving users 1 terabyte of free storage is also a massive step forward.

But one step forward, two steps back as they say. The new pricing structure makes no sense at all and spits in the face of all the people who invested time and money in the site over the past decade.

(The above image is from Trey Ratcliff.)

The switchover has been badly handled. If you look at Flickr’s FAQ page, you can see it has been only randomly updated, so that all of the old Flickr Pro info is still there, even though one can no longer subscribe at that level. Apparently going forward one can only renew an existing Pro account if it was set up before the change to be automatically renewed. And tell me who the hell is going to subscribe at the $500 a year level? Pay $500 to add a second terabyte of data? Or just get a free second account for that extra terabyte?

And then of course there’s the above quote from Yahoo CEO Melissa Mayer, “there’s no such thing as professional photographers anymore.” While I don’t think there are publicly released numbers, Flickr is apparently saying that their conversion rate was poor and the number of Pro accounts they had was relatively small. Even if that is the case, is it wise to blatantly insult such a huge portion of your audience, especially the audience that was paying to support the service all these years?

Others are upset that Flickr will now be running context-based ads alongside the photos. There’s at least two different sides to this story. There’s Yahoo’s side, that all this software and infrastructure costs a lot of money that they have to recoup one way or another. And then there’s the user side, which is well aware that Google offers profit sharing to content creators on YouTube, some of whom are getting rich via the revenue sharing they get for the ads Google runs with their videos.

For me, it’s not such a big deal. To be successful on any of these services, one has to be very active – not just posting photos but also liking and commenting on other peoples’ photos and participating in forums, and it’s just something I have never had the time to do. I post to my Flickr account very randomly (so randomly that the cover photo on my page, thanks to the new layout, isn’t mine, at least not until I get around to updating it, which will take some time). I’ve had 52,000 views total on 1,700 photos, which is either respectable or horrible depending on your point of view. (I’ve had almost 25,000 views of far fewer photos on 500px and even there I’m not that active but the site is set up far differently, making discovery an easier process, meaning more people do it.)

Well, Yahoo also just announced that they’re buying Tumblr and one result is thousands of Tumblr users rushing to WordPress. If Yahoo is attempting to stop the bleeding and get back some of the cool, they’re so busy shooting themselves in their feet that they might never get there. Will the outrage subside or will Yahoo end up having to backtrack on some of these poorly thought out changes? Time will tell.

Posted in Flickr, Uncategorized

Adobe Photoshop CC

May 11, 2013 by spike | Leave a comment

In case you haven’t read it elsewhere already, this week Adobe announced that Creative Suite 6 (aka CS6), the product set that includes Photoshop and Lightroom, will be the last version of CS. Going forward, there will only be Adobe Creative Cloud (Adobe CC) and all of the products (with the exception of Lightroom) will only be available via a subscription model. This has caused an uproar in some segments of the online photography community and, frankly, I’m at a loss as to why.

Here’s one example, from a photography blog that I (mostly) like, Sound Image Plus:

Well as far as I’m concerned they can ‘Go forth and multiply’ or words to that effect. CS6 is the last time they get any money out of me. I will have nothing to do with a company that tells me how I should work. I will have nothing to do with a company that forces me to do something I do not want to do. They can stuff their ‘cloud’ where the sun doesn’t shine, I want nothing to do with it.

Why the vitriol?

First of all, I don’t see how this is dictating how one should work. The difference between CS6 and CC is that instead of buying a box of discs in a store, you’re downloading stuff to your computer. You’re not working through a browser, you’re not working through some cloud connection, you’re working off software that has been installed to your hard disk, just like every version of Photoshop in the past. The major difference is that when the software starts up, it will check to see if your subscription is still valid and if it isn’t, it will not run. Otherwise, your workflow remains the same.

The drawback in this model, I suppose, is that if I bought CS6 and never purchase an upgrade, CS6 will run forever without my spending another dime. If I subscribe to CC, it will not run forever, it will only run as long as I keep paying.

For me, the advantages of CC outweighed the disadvantages. The biggest advantage for me was that I could get one subscription and install that one subscription everywhere I work. A Lightroom license gives you both the PC and Mac versions but a Photoshop license does not. So when I wanted to get into Photoshop, if I wanted to run it both on my desktop Windows PC and my laptop MacBook, I would have had to buy it twice – at $699 each (currently discounted down to $601 on Amazon). So that’s $1,200. But with Adobe CC, and because I owned an earlier version of Photoshop, I was able to subscribe to the Photoshop-only portion of Adobe CC for $20 per month, $240 per year, and get both the Windows and the Mac versions. So I saved almost $1,000.

CS6 is offered in a bewildering number of packages at a variety of prices. On the low end, the “Design Standard Student and Teacher Edition” retails for $449. On the upper end, the “Design and Web Premium” edition lists for (gulp) $1,899. My understanding is that if one goes for the full Adobe CC package, that’s what you’ll get, at a cost of $600 per year instead of $1900 per pop.

So at the end of a year, if you don’t renew your subscription, you’re out $600 and have no software to run (your files and projects all remain). Versus spending $1900 and having something that would run forever. But I don’t need all those bits – and Adobe has various levels of subscription packages ranging from a Photoshop-only package to the whole shebang.

Some think that Adobe is doing this as a way to combat piracy. That’s just ignorant. As Adobe themselves have admitted, since the software is downloaded to your computer, hackers can and will be able to get at the underlying files, work out an installation package and a hack – and I think that’s already happened. (As someone who occasionally earns income as a photographer, I decided early on that if I don’t want people pirating my work, it would be unethical for me to pirate other peoples’ work – and that goes for the tools I use as well.)

Clearly Adobe expects to make more money this way. They’re not in the business of losing money and they have to increase their revenue every year, just like any other company.

At the end of the day, this is Adobe’s product and they can price it and sell it however the hell they want and the market will decide if it’s right or not. If the model works, if they’re making money, this will continue. If it doesn’t, it won’t. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it, don’t subscribe to it, download Gimp for free and work with that instead.

Me? I think that all this noise is coming from a vocal minority and that the majority of people will see the advantages and fall into line. I think this is merely the next evolutionary step and not the final state. Some day in the relatively near future, when bandwidth gets even larger, when internet connections are even more ubiquitous, when browsers become more advanced, you will no longer download this to your computer, you will work through a browser.

So me, my biggest complaint was that it took Adobe forever to get CC to Hong Kong (my subscription is through the US) but hopefully they have now worked that out. Their web sites still suck though.

Posted in Adobe

Who Do You Trust?

April 25, 2013 by spike | 2 Comments

Almost all photographers suffer from GAS – Gear Acquisition Syndrome. We buy cameras, lenses, tripods, flashes, bags, filters … the list goes on and on and who knows where it will stop?

Most photography blogs are really good for giving you GAS too. Bad reviews seem rare to me. Now in part that’s because most equipment from the bigger companies is rarely bad. Some stuff is better than others of course but to a certain, general, vague extent, it’s all good.

But then there’s that other extent, where it’s all GREAT!!!!!! I suppose some people get excited by everything, but some want to keep their suppliers happy and others want you to like it so you’ll click on an associate link and buy it. Some people test more thoroughly and scientifically than others. I suppose at the end of the day it’s where it needs to be – read as much as possible and make up your own mind.

Today’s case in point is the relatively recent Fuji X100s. I read all the reviews of this camera with great interest because if I could afford one, I’d buy it today. But I can’t afford one.

Now Zack Arias is a respected professional photographer. He makes great photos. He loves his new Fuji X100s.

Fuji is the new Leica and the x100s is the greatest camera I’ve ever owned.

The DSLR is dead to me.

Would I use the x100s at a wedding? Hell yes I would. Wouldn’t think twice about it. Would I shoot it on a magazine assignment? Yes. Portrait shoot? Yep. Promo shoot? Yep. And have.

I’m tellin’ you though. From my heart. The x100s is my desert island camera.

I love the X-Trans sensor. It’s sharper than my Canon full frame sensors.

My gosh, that’s a pretty powerful endorsement. And the photos that accompany his review are also amazing.

And he’s not the only one.

From the I-think-very-popular Fro Knows Photo:

As much as I loved my Fuji X100, the X100s is that much better and is quite possibly the best camera I own.

I’m not sponsored by Fuji. I have nothing to gain by singing their praises, but man, I am shouting from the mountaintop because the Fuji X100s is amazing.

For me, it’s the perfect camera.

If you search around, you’re going to find a whole lot more reviews like those.

So maybe I’m feeling a bit of sour grapes. Because, as I said, I think I’d like to have one but I can’t afford one. Is it something I truly need or is it GAS? I suspect it’s more the latter. But, under the heading of “seek and ye shall find,” there is at least one person with a web site not jumping on the Fuji bandwagon any time soon. Diglloyd.

Here he writes:

Sure it has a faster AF and higher resolution sensor, but most of the design warts seem to have been cemented in, with no real improvements in usability.

I know the Fuji X100s has all the right checkbox-list of features in the marketing materials, but these days I’m looking for intelligent design; sensors are getting so good that what really makes the camera is the ease of use and well thought out features: less is more and more is less. Good design is about the right overall feature set with every little detail nit-picked and forced through a rigorous usability filter. The X100s fails miserably in this regard.

And here he writes:

Fuji ostensibly designed this sensor to avoid moiré. But the cure is worse than the disease: more digital artifacts, not fewer

The lens looks to be poorly corrected at closer range, exhibiting a glowing halo effect.

I expect to see more negative posts from him in days to come.

So who do you trust? Do you trust the guy who says it’s the greatest camera he ever owned or the one who says it fails miserably? Arias’s photos are great but he’s a great photographer and I think there’s a dozen other cameras out there that would have given him the same results. Diglloyd takes close-up shots of burlap bags and tree trunks to illustrate his concepts, which they do, but who takes those kinds of photos in the real world?

Of course the truth is likely somewhere in between. The X100s is the bestest camera ever this month and next month everyone will jerk off to the spec sheet for the Ricoh GR.

Me? I’m hoping to get rid of this GAS. Or maybe get a raise at work …

Posted in Fuji, Gear

A Big Bunny

April 21, 2013 by spike | 1 Comment

Standing guard in front of Tai Om Village, much like the Colossus of Rhodes, no? Except probably unlike the Colossus of Rhodes, a minute after I took this photo all the village dogs came over and took turns peeing on it.

Here’s a crop that shows how well the sensor from the Sony RX100 performs.

All of the RX100 photos I’ve been posting have been from RAW – though honestly, to my eyes at least, I’m not seeing a huge difference between the JPGs and the RAW files.

Posted in Hong Kong, Sony