Well overdue

Take any consumer or better DSLR and you will find it comes with a more than decent lens. Computer design and mass manufacture has made these multi-element wonders but distant relatives of their generally awful forbears.

So worrying about the lens is not the primary matter of concern for the buyer of a good camera.

Ease of use is the decider, I suspect.

And as Apple testifies with its ghastly glossy monitors, first impressions are key to a sale, be it of computers, cars or cameras. No matter that the thing appalls you after a week of ownership. Like that over bright AV system, it looked good in the store.

With cameras, as with people, the eyes are the mirror of the soul, and for a photographer that means the first real feel he gets for a camera is by peering through the viewfinder. Mercifully, with full frame DSLRs, the view is every bit as big and bright as it was through your Nikon F of yore. However, the tradeoff for the (D)SLRs excellent viewfinding is greatly increased bulk, weight and noise, the latter due to the flapping mirror mandated by the design.

This user is cursed with mediocre eyesight. Thus it’s hardly any wonder that some 30 years of my life were spent pressing the button on a Leica M. All it took was one look through the magnificent finder of the M3, or even better, the M2, and you were sold. And the only place you can enjoy a like experience in today’s world is with the M8, at egregious cost. Even if you are Bill Gates, the thought of dropping a $7k camera+lens is going to inhibit your use. It’s the same reason no one drives his Ferrari in anger. So these jewels get little use in the real world.

That’s why I think whoever gets the viewfinder right – the sharp end of the user’s decision process – will be on to a good thing. It will not be Leica – they lack both the electronic skills and the necessary money.

I do think that company will be Panasonic. Recall the press release I referenced here. You have to realize that the Japanese, those masters of modern design, adulate the Leica rangefinder camera. They are leading collectors of the marque and it’s no wonder that a nation with such a refined sense of style and design would find the Leica M as something to look up to. And the Japanese are too smart to deny that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. As much is obvious to a between-the-lines reading of that Panasonic spokesman’s quote.

So, Panasonic, make that electronic viewfinder bright, blur free and with that fabulous suspended frame defining the field of view floating freely in space. And leave a bit of room around the frame so that the user can literally see what’s coming. Then we will have the best of all worlds. A zoom EVF with suspended brightlines, a slim and small mirror-free body, an offset eyepiece for added stability, no viewfinder hump and nothing more than a whisper when the button is pressed. Then the M2’s sublime design will have come full circle, though its replacement will be a mere fraction of the cost. Heck, give the thing a manual wind-on lever. That will stop gratuitous snapping if nothing else will.

The Leica M2 finder – Panasonic’s design brief. The best yet

I never could fathom this one.

When I was a kid, cameras and stereo gear came in chrome. The engravings were in black and everything could be made out from a distance. Especially useful when trying to make out the settings on your amplifier or what have you.

Then, some time in the 1970s, black was declared cool (that seems to be a renewed trend now, with as little substance as last time) and the sad result for users was that their coolness was accompanied by a general inability to tell what anything was set to without a lot of squinting and eyeglasses on the head.

In their mass market models, some manufacturers bucked the trend and you see all sorts of jolly colors in digital point-and-shoots today and I, for one, love the trend. But there’s little color available in the better gear, a recent exception being the Panasonic G1 which comes in a couple of jolly colors. Now Pentax has joined the movement:

I’ve always liked saddle leather brown. Maybe Canon could be persuaded to do a custom 5D Mark II? Nah!

Amusing writing.

There’s an amusing piece by Anthony Lane on the cult of Leica in the September 2007 issue of The New Yorker, a magazine renowned for using three words where one would do.

Click the picture to read.

The new Leica M?

Call me dated. Say I am out of touch. Ridicule my love of the mechanical age.

I have no problem with any of those accusations as all are true.

So when I wrote a while back, not a little intrigued, of the Panasonic G1, it was for no other reason than that this photographer’s schnozzer sensed a possibility in the making.

Revolution? Why, yes. A modern Leica M for the digital set because, whether you like it or not, we are all members. Meaning small, fast, quiet and with large aperture lenses for low light work.

And we all know who designs the lenses for the best Panny designs, don’t we? Can you say Leica?

These thoughts were brought to the fore when DP Review published its analysis of the Panasonic G1. To cut to the chase, it’s not ready for prime time any more than the L1 (which at least looked like a Leica M) was. But you have to respect where Panny is going with this.

Meaning they are inching closer to the Leica ideal – small, quiet, fast, unobtrusive.

Now all they need to do is throw the design book out of the window and …. take a hard look at the form factor of the Leica M – but 33% smaller this time. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a viewfinder that works in something less than California sunshine.

Still waiting.

Modern DSLRs are superbly competent, have great lens choices, come in a variety of sensor formats and enjoy minimal shutter and focus lag. They come from any number of manufacturers and share two bad features – they are bulky and noisy. The Mark II and Mark III variants do nothing to fix this and are very much in the land of diminishing returns, but it’s nice to see that Canon now has two full frame manufacturers to compete with – Nikon and Sony/Minolta. Best of all, by introducing the 5D Mark II, Canon has done a real number on the resale value of the Mark I and I expect you will be able to find lightly used Mark I bodies in 2009 for under $1,000.

Street and advanced casual snappers want something small, fast and quiet in their pocket when not hauling around the DSLR and they want a decent sized sensor, not one of those ridiculous fingernail sized things found in nearly every compact digital. They want instant on, couldn’t care less about the LCD screen, want an optical viewfinder and auto focus. They want a proper buffer so that snap-to-snap times are very short and they want a semi-wide angle non-zoom lens which suffices for most of the work the camera will be expected to do.

In other words, they want a digital Leica without the antiquated feature set, bulk, dated manual focusing and overpriced lenses of the Leica M8.

Well, we are not much closer to getting that in 2008 than we were in 2007.

Sure, the Sigma DP-1 is a compact with a large APS-C sensor capable of big, noise free enlargements. But everything else about it is wrong. The fixed focus length lens extends and retracts (why, for goodness sake?) making start-up times ridiculous and the whole thing sports what must be one of the worst user interfaces ever. The lens is also ridiculously slow for what you get.

The Panasonic G1 has some promise, dropping the SLR mirror, adding a competent electronic viewfinder for through-the-lens viewing, but pointlessly retaining the SLR form.

And that’s about it. The Panasonic LX-1, now in its third iteration, does some things right (so-so shutter lag, quiet, small, Leica optics) but has a lousy, small sensor and the lens extends and retracts. At least they now include an accessory shoe in the LX-3, meaning you no longer have to glue on your viewfinder the way I did.

Here’s what mystifies me. Given the sheer number of DSLR users, each wanting something small, simple and fast for fun use, why can none of the world’s camera makers get it right and put out a minimally featured digital point-and-shot with a fast 35mm f/2 non-retractable fixed focus lens, a big sensor and no shutter lag. How hard is that? They could sell these for $500 all day long.

So the Camera of the Year award goes to …. no one. The big manufacturers continue to refine their DSLRs to ridiculous extremes and continue to miss a vast, unserved sector – the very users of those DSLRs who no longer need to upgrade to 10 frames per second or 600mm f/2.8 lenses with IS.

The ideal digital snapper has to borrow the best features of these.

Take the lens and lack of shutter lag from the Leica, the electronic viewfinder and mirrorless/prismless design of the G1 and add the Sigma’s big sensor and you have a winner. Come to think of it, make two versions – one with a 35mm f/2 and the other with a 75mm f/2 lens. The size should be somewhere between the Leica M (too bulky) and the LX-1 (too small). Forget about Live View, face detection, wifi, interchangeable lenses, IS and all that other nonsense, sell them stripped and bare and photographers will make a line at your door.