I came across some directions on the web addressing the determination of the true number of times the shutter on the Panasonic G1 has been activated. I say ‘true’ as many users reset the camera’s otherwise sequential numbering of frames from time to time, thus losing track. I do not do this, but it’s interesting to see how many times the shutter has really been fired, especially if you go with the rule of thumb which has it that point-and-shoot digitals last 20,000 exposures, pro-sumer cameras like the G1 maybe 50,000 and pro-gear (Canon 1DS, the big Nikons, etc.) 200,000.
The instructions I found were wrong. Here are are the correct ones:
1. Set camera to single shot mode.
2. Switch camera off.
3. While depressing the ‘Display’ and ‘Film Mode’ buttons, switch the camera on.
4. Hold those two buttons down for 5 seconds.
5. Now press the ‘Menu/Set’ (center of the arrow quad on the back) and the left arrow button on the back simultaneously and, while holding them depressed, press the ‘Film Mode’ button twice.
6. You will see the following display on the LCD screen:
G1 activation display.
VER denotes the software version the camera is running – 1.50 in my case. NO. is some sort of internal Panasonic ID number. It bears no resemblance to the body’s serial number on the baseplate label. PWRCNT: indicates the number of times the camera has been switched on. SHTCNT: indicates the lifetime actuations of the shutter. STBCNT: is the number of times the flash has fired.
To return the camera to normal operation press the ‘Menu/Set’ (center of the arrow quad on the back) and the left arrow button on the back simultaneously and, while holding them depressed, press the ‘Film Mode’ button twice.
The highest frame count I note from my G1 downloads into Lightroom3 is ‘90388’ which, adjusting for Panny’s strange numbering scheme, means I have released the shutter 9388 times. By contrast the body reports 9407, above, suggesting 19 frames were exposed before I bought the (new) body. Stated differently, my G1 has used up maybe 20% of its useful life. At 50-60% sale beckons – there is useful remaining life and resale value, but the probability of failure has risen significantly.
This is a useful test if you are buying a G1 and want to independently confirm the number of shutter actuations as part of determining likely remaining useful life. You can bet that in today’s world labor costs make repair prohibitive. When the camera fails, it’s recycled.
Generically, machine failure curves look like this – things fail when new and old, reaching peak reliability in middle age:
Machine failure curve.
Warranty them for early use if the economics solve, and sell them in late middle age.
This may work on other G series Panasonic bodies. I have no idea; try this at your own risk.
There are only a couple of meaningful comparisons for the Fuji X100 if the camera is intended for candid street photography. These include the Panasonic G1 (which I use) and the Leica M9 (which I will never use). While the Panny uses the much smaller MFT sensor, and the Leica a full frame 35mm one, all three share small size, fast response and great viewfinding systems.
Chrome finish:
Thank goodness. Black is for poseurs. Chrome looks amateur and no one will take you seriously on the street.
Interchangeable and zoom lenses:
First let’s get the interchangeable lens issue out of the way. You don’t need it. Street snaps are made, for the large part, with 35-50mm FFE lenses and the Fuji’s 23mm APS-C lens (=35mm FFE) is in that sweet spot. If you think you need an interchangeable lens on the Fuji you are looking at the wrong tool. I have been around the world with a Leica M2 and a 35mm Summicron lens and it met my street snapping needs 90% of the time. The other 10% did not justify lugging extra gear. I did not use it for landscapes, pictures of dangerous wild animals or macro close-ups. Both the Leica and the Fuji are useless for all three and useless for you if that’s your subject matter. Get a DSLR.
Oh! so you want a zoom lens? Never mind the added bulk, the smaller aperture and the greater weight; you can avoid all three as the X100 comes with a zoom built-in.
Here is the zoom device which comes with every Fuji X100, a bargain at under $300. It’s what is known in the trade as an ‘optional accessory’:
Fuji X100 zoom device by Allen Edmonds.
You wanna get closer? Walk!
The Fuji does not include OIS anti-shake technology, which is a shame (it never hurts to keep the camera steadier) but adding it would likely increase bulk and weight. Tough trade off, but I would rather have it included at the cost of an ounce and a millimeter or two.
Is the X100 for you?
Easy to answer. Go to your photo library and summarize your pictures by focal length. I have just shy of 10,000 snaps on the G1 and just over 22% or 2,258 of those have survived the cull. Of those some 1,500 or 70% of the total survivors were taken at 16-18mm, which is the same as a 35mm FFE lens, like the one on the X100. If you end up with similar data, the X100 is for you.
Shutter sound and responsiveness:
This video gives you an excellent idea of both shutter sound and responsiveness. It’s unclear whether there’s a focus delay here, and M9 users can add 2-3 seconds for that as the camera’s manual focus renders it largely unsuitable for modern, super fast response street work – people are much more hip to cameras than in Cartier-Bresson’s day. If focus delay is missing from the video then responsiveness will be slower than this shows:
Shutter sound – with electronic shutter sound off (refresh the page if the video is not visible):
That sounds like a very quiet between-the-lens shutter (think Rolleiflex TLR) which is almost too quiet for street work where you want to hear the shutter to know whether you have caught the moment. The Leica M2/3 were if anything too loud (the M9 is louder still) and it remains to be seen whether the X100 is too soft. You can switch on an electronic ‘beep’ but it’s so objectionable only a boor would consider doing that. You know, the sort of jerk who would think nothing of using his motor driven DSLR in a quiet church and whose wife hails from Texas and is named Mabel.
Size and weight:
Sizes are in millimeters (L x H x D) and include a 35mm f/2 Summicron on the M9 and the 20mm f/1.7 pancake on the G1. Weights exclude lens hoods, which are a total waste of space and function with modern optics – shade the lens with your hand in critical situations, which occur 2% of the time:
Fuji X100: 127 x 75 x 54. 15.6 ozs, best as I can tell.
Leica M9: 139 x 80 x 71.5. 28.8/31.8 ozs (heavier with chrome finish lens)
Panny G1: 124 x 84 x 70.5. 20.5 ozs.
So the Fuji is marginally smaller than the G1 and half the weight of the M9.
Size of the X100 looks about right. It’s no more pocketable than the M9 or G1, but just right for steady hand holding.
Camera strap and lugs:
What do you wanna bet that the X100 will come with one of those ghastly garish manufacturer straps emblazoned with the word FUJI multiple times in 96 point type and just waiting to slip off your shoulder? Like me you will be ordering an Upstrap and installing it on the side lugs, which look like they could have been moved around to the front a bit more for better balance. Hard to judge, but that 8 element f/2 lens will not be light and will make the body want to tip forward. Let’s hope these lugs do not self-detach as was the case with the first batch of Panny G1 bodies.
Battery:
The X100 uses an NP-95 Li-on rechargeable battery. This is a small unit (1800 mAh) and Fuji states it’s good for some 300 snaps. Mercifully, it’s used in other Fuji digital point-and-shoots and retails for some $20, so a spare or two will be called for, given that an 8gB SDHC card will hold some 600 images, good for an intense day’s street work.
Controls:
One of the most promising features of the X100, shared only with the M9 in the digital camera world, is the provision of manual, analog dials for shutter speed and aperture. The X100 also adds +/- 2 stop manual exposure override. The number of times I have messed about with the G1’s push-and-turn front dial to manually override exposure and completely erred because I forgot to reset the thing is legion. Face it. Humans are analog devices. We respond to dials, clicks and turns far better than to digital electronic displays, beeps, flashing lights and push buttons.
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The X100 needs some sort of adapter to fit a clear 49mm protective filter to the lens (How dumb is that? What’s wrong with threading the lens?) so those who baby their gear will have to get one of those. Me? Like Rhett Butler I don’t give a damn. My hobby is making snaps not babying my gear for display in the china cabinet. If you have to baby it, you cannot afford it, be it a Leica, a Porsche or an X100.
Sensor sizes and pixels:
Sensor sizes are in millimeters, pixel count in megapixels:
Fuji X100: 25 x 17 (APS-C). 12.3.
Leica M9: 36 x 24. (FF). 18.0
Panasonic G1: 18 x 13.5. (MFT). 12.1.
If you use the G1 in classical Leica 3:2 aspect ratio, as I do, the pixel count drops to 10.8 owing to masking of part of the sensor area.
Do the math and the pixel density for the Fuji is approximately twice that of the M9 but 35% less than that of the G1 (in 3:2 mode). Time will tell if this is a good thing, though too many pixels tend to hurt resolving power. As the Fuji probably uses the same Sony sensor used in Nikon’s APS-C DSLRs, chances are that it will be fine, as the Nikons have a great reputation for definition.
Viewfinder:
The Leica M cameras have the best optical viewfinders I have ever used. While my M6 flared like crazy into the sun, making the RF patch unusable, the M2 and M3 were superb and I have read that the M9 is as good in terms of flare resistance. The M2 got it right for absence of clutter. You only saw one frame at a time – 35mm, 50mm or 90mm. The M3 showed the clunky 50mm frame at all times plus the 90mm or 135mm when those lenses were fitted, and needed bulky lens attachments for the 35mm lens. I used my M3 with a 35mm ‘bespectacled’ Summaron for aeons and now wonder how I managed to do that. And every other rangefinder M body cluttered the view with multiple frames, typically two per lens, plus the RF patch, of course.
Paris 1976 with the Leica M3 and the clunky ‘bespectacled’ 35mm Summaron.
The Leica M has very neat parallax compensation in the finder system. As you focus closer the frames move diagonally toward the axis of the lens and viewfinding remains more than acceptably accurate down to the minimum focus distance of 39″.
How the X100 does this remains unclear. The camera has three finder systems. The traditional LCD screen on the back (useless for street snapping), an optical finder in the same relative position as the Leica M and an eye level EVF switchable with the optical. I would assume the latter relays the signal from the sensor and, indeed, when activated with the front panel switch, the optical finder’s front is blanked off, so I would guess the eye level EVF offers accurate framing, as does the LCD. Whether the frames viewed in the optical finder offer parallax compensation is presently unclear but likely not a big deal given that the typical street snap is framed at 7-15 feet from the subject, where parallax is negligible. The Panny G1 offers two finders – the LCD and the eye level EVF, the latter 100% accurate and excellent except with bright highlights where it burns out easily. In poor light the G1’s EVF blows the M’s optical finder out of the water, and absent some grain and delay at very low light levels is the best low light finder I have yet used. It leaves pure traditional optical/prism finders, like in the Canon 5D, in the dust.
The X100’s eye level EVF promises the same 1.4 megapixel resolution as the G1’s EVF, so things look promising here. How responsive and grainy it will be remains to be seen.
The X100 seems to offer an in-EVF finder DOF device of some sort. Frankly, if you are in the business of judging DOF while street snapping then you are in the wrong business. Learn your gear’s DOF, memorize it and forget about finder aids.
Focal length and DOF:
DOF is a function solely of focal length and aperture at a given subject distance. A 50mm lens at a stated aperture will have the same depth of field at the same subject distance whether you are using a fingernail-sized sensor in a point-and-shoot or a 4″ x 5″ sheet film camera. Sure, diaphragm shape can alter the look of out of focus detail, but it will not change depth of field. So it’s instructive to compare effective focal lengths and effective apertures at full aperture for the three cameras considered here, equating all to a 35mm f/2 FFE lens.
The M9 obviously has an FFE of 35mm.
The X100 will have the DOF of an f/2.8 35mm lens on an FFE body.
The G1/17mm f/1.7 pair will have the DOF of an f/3.5 35mm lens on an FFE body.
So the M9 offers the shallowest DOF fully open and the G1 the deepest. Not a lot to choose but it remains to be seen whether the X100’s lens is good enough to be used fully open. For what it’s worth, I use the 14-45mm kit zoom on my G1 and at 18mm (35mm FFE) where I use it most it has an effective aperture of f/6.3 or so, leaving way too much sharp and detracting from the subject.
RAW:
I am uninterested in taking digital pictures in anything but RAW format. As a street snapper I have not the time for the niceties of exact exposure measurement, a subject providing one opportunity as often as not, and that a fleeting one. RAW comes into play as it offers far greater processing flexibility to fix the inevitable mistakes. The X100 will ship with SilkyPix RAW conversion software, just as the G1 does. Well, in a word, SilkyPix sucks. Only when Adobe came along with their RAW converter for Lightroom and Photoshop did the G1’s RAW images come into their own, and there will likely be some delay after the release of the X100 before Adobe has added X100 RAW to its application software. Think of it as the cost of early adoption.
Build quality:
Really not all that important. If it holds up for 10-30,000 exposures that’s all you need, as it will be obsolete by then and something better will be available for less. The days when you bought a camera to hand down passed with your father’s Chevrolet.
Speed:
When it comes to street snappers, you can’t have too little weight, bulk or too much speed.
So Fuji finally posts some sample images from the X100 on its site and, boy, are they real stinkers or what?
Not only is the quality of the photography simply execrable (flowers? FLOWERS?), they look like poorly exposed and processed low quality JPGs. Click the picture below to go to their site:
Click picture for Fuji’s site with originals.
The images include one of a US Mailbox at f/2, with so inappropriate a background that all the burned out highlights make the lens OOF rendition look very poor. They couldn’t even be bothered to get the orientation of the downloaded image correct! Another, the snap of the tree in snow through a barn door, could hardly be exposed or processed more poorly. It looks like something from the days when you used a printing paper two grades too soft with an overexposed original which had burned out whatever goodness ever existed in the highlights.
I mean, gimme a break here. You spend major money developing a camera that every serious photographer cannot wait to get his hands on. You generate major pre-release buzz. You finally provide what looks like a real viewfinder in a digital camera which actually sports analog dials for us analog humans. How much would it take to give away half a dozen of the bloody things to crack photographers at Vogue/Harpers’/National Geographic and have them provide you with a few images, gratis, free and for nothing, that actually do your creation justice? Doesn’t it read ‘The Professional’s Choice’ in the masthead? Instead, Fuji, you have Messrs. Ito and Nakamura or whoever, snappers who have yet to learn the difference between exposure and dropping their underwear in public, make your sample photographs for display to the whole world? Is this the first impression you seek to make?
Let’s hope Fuji’s photographic talent and processing technique are inversely proportional to the quality of the images its new camera is capable of producing.
Now pretty much confirmed at $1,200, with March delivery in the US. I am on the pre-order list at Amazon but, goodness, am I tempted to hit the ‘Delete’ key or what? $1,200 is not chump change, even if it does leave $8,800 change from an M9 with a 35mm Summicron.
Ask a photographer what’s in his kit bag, the gadget he simply cannot live without, and you will be regaled with tales of exotic lenses, funky folding tripods, strange exposure measurement devices, bunches of filters and so on. Not a one of them materially improves photo opportunities for the street snapper. No, the best tool for the street snapper does not reside in his gadget bag. Among the attributes of this tool are:
It’s as fast as you like
It increases your range by a factor of four
It expands your area of coverage sixteen times
You can take it anywhere, and ….
…. choose it right and there’s little fear of material loss.
That tool, of course, is the bicycle.
First, let’s have a reality check. I have friends with more money than sense who think nothing of blowing thousands of dollars (thousands!) on a push bike. Carbon fiber this, titanium that, forged by Italian artisans and cooled in Alpine goat cheese, these high tech toys are masterpieces of the engineer’s art. The Leica M9 of the cycling world and about as likely to help you win the Tour de France as the M9’s owner is to take a good picture. For our purposes, snapping street pictures, they are not only useless (the bike and the M9), the chances are that you will be walking home once your Rolls Royce on two wheels is pinched and recycled quicker than you can say “Duh!”. $5k for a bike and $10k for the M9 is not my idea of a relaxed outing.
So the criteria for BikeCam are simple:
It must be throwaway cheap. If you are going to worry about theft when you park it it’s the wrong bike.
It must be bought well used and preferably with some rust, dents and wear and tear showing. See above bullet.
It should have a comfortable, broad saddle that you sit on rather than one which has you questioning your gender every time you mount up. BikeCam is for riding, not posing.
When you track down your used steed, immediately change the ridiculous knobbly, off road tires for cheap, smooth road tires. The knobblies are like urban SUVs – poor ride, noisy, redundant and unstable.
It helps to swap the brake pads for the softest kind there is, to obviate squealing. BikeCam is stealthy. Toe in the pads so that their leading edges are slightly closer to the rim than the trailing ones to further cut noise. Do it the other way and you will get squealing and juddering.
Forget about choosing between alloy and steel frames. At this price level you get what’s available on CraigsList or at the local Goodwill store.
Get the cheapest, most colorful lock cable that you can find. Mine cost $9. Don’t fool yourself that your cable will confer any significant security whether it costs $9 or $90. The determined thief will steal your fancy bike (cable cutters take all of five seconds to deploy and operate) and, given two bikes, the Italian $10k masterpiece with the fancy lock and your $50 street fighter with rust and dents, which do you think he will choose? We are talking deterrence, not security, here.
If the wheels don’t run true when you test it – evidenced by oscillating pressure feedback when you work the brakes – thank your lucky stars. Do as I did on my last BikeCam purchase, use this to knock the price down another $20 and apply some of the savings to a $5 spoke wrench. Look up the web and spend 10 minutes per wheel getting them to run true. Nothing could be simpler and your brakes will work better than 90% of all other riders’.
Avoid bikes with sprung front or rear suspension. Poor physics, these increase pedal effort and are just one more thing to go wrong.
Gears are your choice but if you get a geared bike make sure the gears say ‘Shimano’ on them. That’s the Toyota of bike gears, meaning they start in the morning.
Do your own tune up. You’re going to pay some drop out with tattoos and a drug habit to oil the chain for $150?
Whatever you do, never buy a new bike from WalMart. You will be returning it in a week.
The author has two steeds which respect these buying criteria.
BikeCam1 came from a bike rental shop which was replacing last year’s models – a great place to shop, for not only will the bikes come with all the scratches and bruises you need, they will also have been regularly maintained and are ready to ride. BikeCam1 sports a heavy steel frame, nice Shimano twist grip shifters, came with a comfy saddle and no one is going to steal it. Add to its cosmetically challenged woes that it comes from an era when it was fashionable to paint frames with matt finish instead of gloss enamel, and you can be sure that no self respecting thief will go within a million miles of the thing. All in cost $40, this mountain bike is a steel frame Giant made in Korea and I have put hundreds of happy miles on it with no problems.
When it comes to BikeCam2, I went completely over the top with my spending. It’s a light-as-a-feather alloy frame Raleigh (yes, the British Raleigh from Beijing), came with wheels so out of true that the brakes barely worked and included one of those Blitzkrieg front lights which the Luftwaffe would have killed for back in 1940 when they were trying to hit something in London at night. Appropriately enough the seller was a German exchange student at Stanford. The light alone is worth more than I paid for the bike, a princely sum of $50 after the obligatory $20 discount for the wobbly wheels, the latter gorgeous Weinemann German alloys, like on my old BMW motorbike with its spoked wheels. A few minutes with a spoke wrench had them running so true that I challenge you to measure more than 2 thou runout at the rim – which is less than the misalignment of the glass screen to alloy frame on my iPad. I left the corrosion in place to make sure that no one would look twice at my steed. This one came with a very tall 22″ frame, making it even less pinchable (thieves generally seem to market to the short and fat, or so I tell myself) and when I replaced the silly off road tires with a couple of Korean Kendas from Amazon my all-in investment, including a $9 cable from Walgreens, blew the roof off at $110, meaning about the price of three useless filters in your gadget bag.
BikeCam1 and BikeCam2 can frequently be found on any one of a number of municipal transit systems which look favorably on bike toting passengers and rather than going on any more about it, how about some snaps facilitated by these wonderful photographic tools which so greatly expand scope and opportunity for any street snapper?
The author on BikeCam2.
A little harder and I think we can move these.
Not quite the gear for street snaps.
How not to see a city.
White. Trash.
Shadows.
Lafitte.
The pinch.
The bike.
All snaps made from the saddle of BikeCam2 on a Panasonic G1 with the kit and 9-18mm Olympus zoom lenses, at ISO320.
I mentioned earlier that I had subscribed to one of the first Kickstarter projects, a machined watch band/holder for a sixth generation iPod Nano, turning the iPod into a neat watch. Kickstarter raises small amounts of capital from interested investors using the web and puts the monies to use in building entrepreneurs’ projects once sufficient funds are raised.
I subscribed to the Luna-Tik watch band project for kicks, and because I had a sixth generation iPod nano lying around largely unused; my iTunes mostly reside on an iPhone when portability is required so the iPod, a gift, remained unused.
A later Kickstarter project I also subscribed to is raising money to publicize the works of a newly discovered 1950s street photographer, Vivian Maier, and I think we can expect many more like this. It’s an effective fund raising mechanism as it can reach large potential audiences of prospects at low cost and make books etc. of the works of photographers affordable, where the cost of a speculative print run would be high and the outcome too speculative. Cartier-Bresson can sell advance print runs. You and I cannot.
The Luna-Tik just arrived and a few words on its form and function follow.
The iPod Nano is an awful device for photo display owing to its diminutive screen size but is just right as a modern, large, macho watch. The two piece alloy case is beautifully machined and the soft rubber wrist strap has a large range of adjustability, meaning anything from our 8 year old to generic American-obese fits. Four recessed Allen head screws hold a hidden inside threaded post and as the latter is not captive – meaning it rotates freely – two Allen wrenches are provided to allow the screws to tighten the casing around the Nano, one wrench acting as a counterhold. A captive inner post would have been a better idea, making assembly easier and requiring but one Allen wrench, but this is a minor criticism. The whole thing took our 8 year old five minutes to figure out and assemble.
The Luna-Tik and the iPod. The clock face can be changed to a white background in ‘Settings’.
Note the movable strap retainer just above the watch face, set for maximum strap excess for small wrists!
Fit and finish is 1950s Leica quality, meaning beautiful machining and finish, with no sharp edges. The seam is about 5/1000th inch misaligned on mine and you can actually see that in the photo above; there is insufficient play to get perfect alignment before snugging up the Allen screws. A bevelled edge at the seam would have done a better job of hiding the inevitable Chinese mass production imperfection, as well as making the bevel a design feature, much as a bevel is used in the iPad’s frame. My iPad’s alloy frame, for reference, displays a variation in the relative positioning of the glass touch screen of 3/1000th inch around its periphery. For both the Luna-Tik and iPad that’s still a lot better than the fit and finish of all but the best Leicas, the engineering quality standard – meaning M2, M3 and M4 models made 1954-1965, after which quality control went to pot and prices went ballistic. (Earlier screw mount bodies were positively awful by comparison as the many I owned attest).
The generous length rubber wrist strap on the Luna-Tik comes with a movable retainer so that excess strap length can be clipped in position just so. Way superior to the usual loop retainer. Both the iPod’s volume buttons and power switch on one side and the recharging/data port and earbud socket on the other are easily accessible and the whole thing, once assembled, oozes quality and contemporary looks. The ‘watch’ is large, immediately qualifying the wearer as a Formula One groupie.
Future Formula One Champion Winston models the Luna-Tik, while racing on the iPad.
The white watch face is on display here. Strap retainer function is just visible.
Congratulations to the inventors at Minimal, Inc, for a great product. If you want one you had better rush as the iPod Nano sixth generation will be replaced soon by this year’s design. There may be cheaper alternatives to the Luna-Tik but I doubt there are any which are better made. There’s a neat informational video here.
This model of iPod was conceived with watch use in mind as it can be set to come up with the analog watch face when powered up. Handy. The inventor is contemplating adding a Bluetooth earphone option which will make for a neat wireless mobile music system.
Disclosure: I own one Luna-Tik, have no interest in Minimal, Inc. and love entrepreneurs.
