What a scam.

It’s five years since I sold my first – and last – Leica and sadly the former German masters of design have given me no reason to regret that decision.

You thought $7,000 for a camera body with no lens, no autofocus lenses available and a sixty year old viewfinder design, allied with a noisy shutter was a lot?

You are a piker.

Because for a mere $1,000 extra you can have the 2 cent red paper dot on the front (you know, the one that says you are rich and screams ‘steal me and my owner’s wallet’) removed and the word ‘Leica’ engraved in script on the top plate like they used to do twenty years ago. And lest we forget, Leica has made the LCD glass tougher than the one made of pure cheese on the ‘base’ model. Such a deal.

Here’s the latest blurb from the antiquarians at Leica Camera:

Hey, but “Hang on a minute”, you say. I get one of the smallest cameras out there. The factory says so.

Uh huh. And for a bit less you can get a Panny G3 whose modern sensor will rival the M9’s dated Kodak one (so much for a ‘lifetime camera’), offers auto everything, is super quiet and comes with a great choice of lenses, some even branded (if not made) by Leica. No red dot at those prices, though. But you do get a pro-quality movie mode to compensate. As a point of reference, the red outline of the M9 is superimposed on the G3 body below.

And you can buy 13 of those for the price of one M9P or a mere 11 for the price of one regular M9. That way, when your Panny blows after 50,000 exposures you recycle it and pull the next one out of its box. Better still, get smart, buy one, and upgrade to a G4 in 18 months. It will be even better.

As for logo removal, my roll of black electrician’s tape should last the next five generations in Dr. P’s lineage.

A fool and his money are easily parted.

Aptly named.

Some wag at Pentax must have named their new forthcoming toy camera, for the ‘Q’ designation is nothing less than a loud Question as to who on earth needs this?

The Pentax Q. Or is that Q?

It’s truly depressing to see Pentax make a camera with a minuscule digital sensor and interchangeable lenses. The very thought of the mistaken market research that went into the decision to commit significant amounts of capital to engineering and producing this camera and its five lenses for a market which does not exist boggles the mind.

Look at the specs. The sensor is one eighth the area of the MFT ones found in Panny and Oly offerings. The lens still sticks out a lot. There’s no eye level finder but you can blow another $250 on top of the $800 for the camera to buy a bulky optical one, limited to one focal length. To make matters worse, the standard lens has a full frame equivalent length of 49mm – way too long for most snaps and the zoom alternative destroys what compactness the body offers.

This is what happens when you design cameras by committee and market research – both functions doomed to report the past and incapable of encouraging original thought. Heaven forbid that Pentax might actually ask photographers what they want. That advice would be free and on point. The folks at Pentax obviously do not read their Santayana, denying the wisdom of “Those who deny history are doomed to repeat it”, having made an almost identical error with their short lived, overpriced and ill considered Pentax 110 film camera. This was another toy, using a truly ghastly film format but engineered at a level way in excess of the capabilities of the medium. And while I’m at it, who on earth designed that execrable extending flash in the Q? My boy can do better with Lego bricks.

Pentax’s previous exercise in stupidity, the 110 film camera.

If I were Pentax, a business on its last legs and likely not here for the long term, I would take one last great risk and return to my roots of truly original design. Spotmatic or ME Super, anyone? Forget the me-too DSLRs, Pentax. You have little to offer there. You are RC Cola to Coke, doomed to remain on the lower shelf, scraping for pennies. What Pentax could have done, given the company’s undeniable design skills, is take a hammer to Fuji’s poorly executed, over-priced and over-engineered X100 and made a fixed focal length APS-C or MFT snapper, with a proper EVF or optical finder, a speedy wide angle f/2 or f/1.4 lens and sold the thing for $500. Don’t these people realize that there is an enormous demand from decent photographers (meaning they can take good pictures, not that they are moral!) who are sick and tired of lugging bulky DSLRs around and just want something small, sharp and super-responsive, at a reasonable price?

Pentax Q lenses – two ‘Toys’, a fisheye and a bulky zoom, plus the standard one.

To compound their silliness, Pentax is offering two self-described ‘Toy’ lenses where you will be able to pay hundreds of dollars when you could just buy a piece-of-crap Holga for $10. Better still, forget the $10 and mess up your image in Photoshop. Why, you don’t even have to wait for the processed film to come back that way.

And finally, they are making a fish-eye which, I predict, will sell no more than a dozen world wide. Sure, every snapper really needs one of those.

The picture below shows the size of the Pentax Q (red rectangle) superimposed on the Panasonic G1 (my current snapper) and G3 (on order) – you get a picayune sensor in exchange for a very small reduction in bulk. The thickness dimensions vary little:

Pentax Q outline superimposed on the Panasonic G1.

Pentax Q outline superimposed on the Panasonic G3.

That equation does not solve for this photographer.

Innovation from Hasselblad.

The newly introduced Hasselblad H4D-200MS digital camera body is not for everyone at almost $50,000. However, for the working professional who needs to make barn-sized prints for a living, the price of entry is easily recovered.

Click the picture for more.

The body is a modified variant of the existing H4D-50 which makes six consecutive pictures of a subject, shifting the sensor in between, thus exposing all photosites (digital receptors) to equal amounts of light. The camera then merges these six images into a 200 megapixel whole. Commendably, the regular camera ($31,000) can be upgraded by the maker. The loss of some 100 megapixels (6 x 50 = 300) presumably arises from the process deleting duplicated data points.

A 200 megapixel file size (200 megabytes) is nothing to laugh about. You will need high speed data processing power to manipulate such files and a lot of storage to back them up. Further, the technology can only be used with stationary subjects, but for the contemplated billboard-sized results, subjects will likely include product advertisements, food shots for the sides of trucks and so on. These are largely static so that hardly seems a limitation.

Fuji, the owner of Hasselblad, deserves congratulations on this innovative camera.

London’s Tate Gallery uses this technology, and you can see more by clicking the picture below. The difference is readily visible in the small reproduction below, but on their site you can really zoom in to see what this is all about.

Click the picture to go to Hasselblad’s comparison page.

Can you say ‘Blah’?

When it comes to changes in cameras my primary area of interest is the advanced amateur/semi-pro gear. It’s what I use and fits nicely as regards features and cost between the mind-numbing array of point-and-shoots and the heavy duty and very costly pro gear.

For the advanced amateur user 2010 was a disappointing year for hardware, with by far the greatest let down being the Panasonic GF2. Where the world was expecting Panny’s design genius to deliver a camera with a proper offset optical or electronic viewfinder, what we got instead was a warmed over GF1.

Still sporting the useless LCD finder, with a clip on low definition/high noise EVF option (you might as well get the G1/2 as the size is much the same with one of these clunkers and the G1/2 EVF is a whole lot better), the camera addds little to the GF1 for the serious user.

No less disappointing was Panny’s G2. Adding a touch screen to the immensely capable G1, which I use and love, is not my idea of progress. Excuse me, you are going to ponce about touching the hard-to-see screen to do stuff while taking pictures? I don’t think so.

At the upper end of the spectrum for the truly insecure nouveau riche came the Hasselblad Ferrari. Or is that Ferrari Hasselblad? I like both marques as well as anyone but, please, you need to tell the whole world that your ship just came in?

Hair piece and gold chains not included.

No, by far the most exciting camera of 2010 is one which will not be available until 2011 – the Leica for the rest of us, the Fuji FX100.

Promising a dual optical/electronic finder, a fast six element wide angle fixed lens, an APS-sized sensor and looks that are just right, this is an exciting machine. Aperture priority, shutter priority or full exposure automation come standard. Let’s just hope it lives up to its promise. Why, even the textured body covering reminds me of my film rangefinder Leicas.

As for 2010, it was strictly a year of blah.

Technology continues to amaze.

Two press releases from Panasonic today, detailing the features of their latest superzoom, the FZ100 and their newest ‘luxury’ compact the LX5 shows how the state of the digital hardware art continues to progress.

But does it make toast and coffee?

[column width=45% padding=5%]

The FZ100 offers a startling zoom range of 25-600mm (FFE) in a one pound body, movie mode and built in flash. The multi-position LCD from the G1 is included, as is 11 frames per second sequential shooting and a 15 megapixel sensor. You get all of this for $500. Whether anyone will ever get sharp pictures at 600mm absent a tripod (how many buyers will spend the necessary $200+ for a really sturdy one?) is debatable, but it’s an awful lot of camera for awfully little money.

At the luxury compact end (meaning you pay up for a Panny lens with a Leica sticker) the LX5 is no less impressive. The camera’s ‘Leica’ lens retains its f/2 maximum aperture but the zoom range is now a truly useful 24-90mm and you can now fit the so-so clip on EVF designed for the GH1.

[/column]

[column width=45% padding=5%]

That adds bulk and ugly, but you can see how the design experiences from the G1 range are reflected in both cameras.

Which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that the GF2 – a GF1 with the much better G1 EVF – will be here any day soon. A Leica shaped body with superior G1 range lenses and, finally, no faux prism hump.

So until that super zoom adds an f/2 aperture and a big sensor, the GF2 may be the next to see a home chez Pindelski. But the days of interchangeable lens DSLRs are surely numbered.

[/column]

[end_columns]