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Fuji X100 – deeply flawed

Fuji

DP Review confirms my worst suspicions.

DP Review, a subsidiary of Amazon, publishes the best equipment reviews on the web. OK, second best. If you want no punches pulled, tell it like it is, I-paid-for-the-hardware-with-my-own-money-and-accept-no-advertising real world use tests, you come here. And though you may not call DP Review’s photography memorable that hardly matters, for they know how to test gear. Thus DP Review will do, as you sure as heck will not be seeing a review of the X100 here.

So when they published their Fuji X100 review yesterday, my worst suspicions were confirmed. Here are their conclusions:

Click above to go to the DP Review of the Fuji X100

This is somewhat cold comfort for me, as I bought, and resold for a profit my X100 in its unopened box, after growing concern that the thing was deeply flawed, especially in the one area of most vital need for a street snapper. Fast focus. And DP review confirms that it is not good in that regard. For “…. mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras” in the ‘Cons’ above, you can read “…. the Panasonic G1”. And for “Autofocus not quite as fast as ….” you can read “It sucks compared to ….”.

Stated differently, this appears to be a camera with an excellent lens and sensor which is so flawed elsewhere as to be virtually unusable. Quite how something so unfinished ever made it past quality control and acceptance testing beats me. Fuji’s early web site attempts for this much hyped camera suggest that they need some photographers on staff. How else could this alpha test model ever have seen the light of day?

I’ll put my profit toward the price of the Panasonic G3 which I have on order.

Oops, I almost forgot. Yes, the X100 is ‘pretty’. That will really improve the pictures it takes while you wait the seven seconds for it to write your last snap to the card. How could I have overlooked that? It’s generally not fair to judge gear based on someone else’s review, but when the review source is credible and the review stinks, it makes sense to do so.

The Panasonic G3 – Part I

Micro Four-Thirds

The best street snapper yet?

With today’s announcement of the Panasonic G3, scheduled to ship in June, Panasonic may have created the best street snapping camera yet. What follows is largely viewed from that perspective.

Some history. The Panasonic G1 was the first Micro Four-Thirds camera. Like the first iPad, there was so little wrong with the design that there have been few compelling reasons to upgrade. The GF1 and GF2 bodies deleted the eye-level finder, rendering the body largely useless for serious photography. The short lived G10 used a cheapened EVF and was discontinued shortly after release. The G2 added a movie mode and a touch screen – the latter the ‘push’ rather than the true touch type in the iPad and iPhone. A solution looking for a problem. The costly GH1 and GH2 bodies added sophisticated movie modes with the GH2 sporting the second sensor design in the G range, all the others having shared the one from that original G1. That sensor brought more megapixels and reviews suggest that the noise levels are now down to those in APS-C cameras.

The Panasonic G3 – complete with strange model designation.

While the G3 does not get rid of the faux prism hump, it is nevertheless of great interest to street snappers. My G1 has seen more pictures taken with it in my 21 months of ownership than any camera I have ever owned, and I have been banging away for some 50 years now, since I was a kid. My shot counter shows well over 10,000 exposures. So any improvements to the G1 make my radar screen. Nearly everything I have been reading about the G3 suggests it’s worth upgrading to one, especially as I now have no back-up camera, my Canon 5D gear all sold in favor of the smaller, lighter Panny and its three lenses – the Oly 9-18, the 14-45 kit zoom and the 45-200 Panny, all superb and all very light and small.

Here are the major changes in the G3 compared to the G1:

  • The body is smaller, the unnecessary hand grip slimmed down. Smaller is always better.
  • The battery is smaller at 7.3mAh vs. 9 mAh, or 20% less. As I routinely get over 400 exposures on a charge with the G1, getting ‘only’ 320 is hardly an issue.
  • The EVF eye proximity sensor is gone – this would switch off the LCD when the camera was raised to eye level. No problem. The only time I use the LCD it when formatting an SDHC card; otherwise it remains folded with the screen in to the body.
  • The focus mode dial top left is gone. I use AF all the time so I don’t care and there’s still touch manual focus when the shutter release is part depressed and the focus mount is touched. Apparently the MF enlarged area now appears in a window so that should make this even more useful.
  • The AEL/AEF lock button is gone. Not good, but there are two programmable function buttons in its place where the AEL function, which I use quite a bit, can be assigned.
  • All the dumb-as-it-gets scene modes have disappeared from the mode dial. Hooray. Let’s also hope they made the click stops more robust.
  • The single shot/motor drive/delayed action lever has disappeared and is now a menu choice. I use single shot only so it does not matter.
  • The mode dial now has two Custom settings – wonderful. I will set one at ISO 400, the other at ISO 1600.
  • As with the G2, the thumb wheel is on the rear, not on the front as with the G1. I cannot tell you how frustrating the placement of the one on the G1 is – I am still frequently depressing it accidentally, going into +/- exposure mode, when all I want to do is change the aperture (I snap only in aperture priority mode).
  • The square format mode has been dropped (no problem) but there’s still a choice of 4:3 or 3:2 – the latter essential for one brought up with 35mm Leicas. That’s all I use.
  • The body is rumored to use an alloy frame, replacing the plastic one. Nice, I suppose.

Sadly, no blue model is available, the silly choices being white, red or brown. All ‘Yecch’ colors. Black is the way to go.

As with all previous Panny MFT bodies, there is no OIS shake reduction. That’s built into select Panny lenses. Only Olympus MFT bodies have in-body OIS.

There’s some sort of setting to blur backgrounds which I have yet to understand. No matter – I simply use Auto Blurâ„¢.

The simplified mode dial on the G3.

But the most important changes are under the skin. First, Panny claims that the speedy autofocus in the G1/G2 is now even faster, and comparable with that found in most DSLRs. This may actually make that slow focusing dog, the 20mm Panasonic lens, useable. I returned mine after a trial run which delivered 30% of my pictures out of focus. For comparison, the kit lens has a focus failure rate in my hands of maybe 1%. Second, the new 16mp sensor, likely a variant of the one found in the costly $900 GH2 body, has been installed. That probably means one to two stops less noise and should substantially clean up noise at 1600 ISO. My G1 with kit lens ran me $640, whereas the G2 is $700.

I have ordered a black body only for $600 and will write more when I have had a chance to wring it out. The learning curve should be low, owing to the similarity in the bodies, and I already know my three lenses are just fine for what I do, so I’m optimistic that things should work out well, with the G1 moving to the role of back-up body. Mechanical noise? No way of telling until I try it, but let’s hope it’s the same or less as in the G1, which is a very quiet camera. Indeed, the low frequency of the noise emitted by the G1 puts any M Leica to shame.

Part II is here.

No more black market

Fuji

My days as a spiv are over.

Let me step back. The sole reason I ordered the Fuji X100 from Amazon some three hundred years ago was that it was an affordable digital Leica M2. The latter, fitted with a 35mm Summicron lens, was the street snapper’s ideal in the last decades of film. The X100 promised to be its equivalent in a digital era. Make no mistake. The marketing materials, the sales pitch, the schtick, it was all about being a poor man’s digital Leica. Right down to the branding which had it putting that finderless toy, the Leica X1, to shame. Made in Germany, that one you know. Uh huh. Maybe Fuji should have named its offering the M900 to confer greater credibility? And maybe an even more ridiculous price?

For those not attuned to the finer subtleties of the English tongue, the definition of a spiv is attached for reference:

The genus saw its best (or worst) days during the second world war and in bombed out London could pretty much get you anything your heart desired …. at a price.

Now like most, I’m one of those chaps who prefers not to pay full retail but had you told me that I would be a black market merchant a few weeks ago I would likely have shown you the exit. But two things happened.

First, after a spot of reading I determined that the Fuji X100 would simply be a replay of the Panny 20mm when it came to focus speed. Those few souls afflicted with the street photography bug who can actually take a picture reported that the camera simply did not focus fast enough. That’s not to say the Fuji X100 is not beautifully made, nor is it to allege that it has poor image quality. By all accounts it comes up aces on those metrics. So it has appeal to many, me included.

However, I do not buy cameras solely for looks, and IQ from the smaller sensor in the Panny G1 is perfectly fine for large prints. But, most importantly, the G1’s focus response with the kit zoom is fast and the forthcoming Panny G3 suggests that whatever ails that tiny sensor is about to be fixed. And I can continue using the excellent kit zoom from the Panny on the G3 if the latter delivers.

So by the time Amazon despatched the X100 I had made up my mind to return it, sight unseen. While not chump change, $1200 is not something I am about to lose sleep over, but I just could not bear the prospect of yet another huge learning curve concluding in blurred street snaps as with that Panny 20mm.

Wait a minute, I hear you say. You sold the thing without so much as trying it? What qualifies you to make any conclusion based on hearsay? Simple. The economics of the risk/reward equation do not solve. It would take several hours of my time to get familiar with the camera and its software, hours worth considerably more to me than the modest cost of the hardware. At best I reckoned there was a 30% chance of the camera meeting my needs, specialized as they are. So the economics do not remotely solve. Had the odds of the X100 being a fast focuser been better, I would have opened the box. Elementary, my Dear Watson.

Now that X100 was scheduled for 2-day shipping from Amazon and it was not lost on me that new samples were selling for $1600 owing to the supply backlog. Well, would you leave $400 on the sidewalk were you to spot a like sum lying around? I thought so. Heck, nor would Bill Gates. So I determined to advertise the camera and make my first and likely only black market profit.

Well, as luck would have it, Amazon cocked up delivery royally and the package got stuck in Utah for two days. That’s what happens when residents of a state forswear alcohol. By the time the thing arrived, the black market premium had eroded to $175. Thanks a lot, Amazon. Anyway, it’s winging its way to a happy owner as you read this and I have $175 toward the G3 – and no learning curve in my future. And a 15% gain on no cash out is not so bad, either.

I got an interesting lesson in supply-demand dynamics and some happy user paid a modest premium for unobtainium.

But my days as a spiv are most certainly over. And I don’t even dress flashy, like.

A wireless remote for the Panasonic G range

Micro Four-Thirds

Cheap and effective.

For a delivered price of $20.98 you can buy a wireless remote for any G-series Panasonic camera on eBay, shipped from Hong Kong. Mine took two weeks to arrive, complete with transmitter, receiver, a cord for the latter and the requisite two batteries. The 23A battery goes in the transmitter/trigger and the CR-2 in the receiver. The short cord goes from the receiver to the socket on the G1. Note that the CR-2 battery is wrapped tightly in plastic which must first be removed. The receiver itself fits in the flash shoe on my G1 but has no contacts of its own. If you are using the flash shoe for something else, like an external finder, or if you are using the in-camera flash, you can Velcro the receiver to some other convenient point on the camera’s body.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

The uWinKa wireless remote. Cord connections from/to the G1 circled.

I tested it at home and it still worked fine from 50 feet away and through several walls, so the claimed range of 100 feet is believable. Flashing LEDs on the remote (taped off in the picture) confirm operation, as does a flashing LED on the trigger. The only thing you have to do is to remember to power up the receiver (camera end) with the on/off switch. There’s a choice of 16 code settings, changed with microswitches on the bodies of both devices, in the event of interference from other RF devices. Both receiver and transmitter are very small, in keeping with the scale of the Panasonic G1. Weight is negligible.

The trigger has a two position switch which is appropriately stiff on mine to preclude accidental switching – instant release or five second delay – which you can use nicely with the 3 or 10 second delay on the G1 to give you a choice of 5, 8, 10 or 15 seconds. The claimed delay is 3 seconds, but mine delivers 5. There’s also a Bulb option. You are meant to hold the button on the trigger for 5 seconds and the shutter should remain open until the button is pressed again. I could not get that to work. Hardly an issue. Finally, a brief press on the trigger button will focus the lens but not release the shutter. That worked for me. There’s an extendable antenna on the transmitter for longer range use. It’s extended in the picture, above. There’s also a release button on top of the receiver but I can’t say I have found a use for it, though it works fine.

All except the Bulb option works perfectly. The only hitch I encountered was that I had to reverse the provided cable from receiver to camera to make it trigger the shutter. The behavior is repeatable suggesting that there’s a diode in the small box in the connecting cable which transmits current in one direction only. The cable bears no directional markings so if yours does not work simply reverse it. While I haven’t tried it, I would be prepared to wager that this device will work fine on any camera which has a three pole mini-coax socket on the body. Try at your own risk.

The accessory shoe for mounting on the camera is flimsy; you can remove it by removing the one black Philips screw retaining the bottom cover and then the two chrome ones retaining the shoe from the inside. Use a fine flat file to ‘machine’ down the retaining prongs thus exposed (they are unnecessary should you decide to restore the shoe, as the two retaining screws prevent rotation in any case), thus procuring a plane base, and use industrial strength Velcro to stick the remote to some convenient flat part of your camera instead. One warning – Velcro adhesive refuses to adhere to the rubberized body on my G1!

Or, as the French might so elegantly put it, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. That one,, for the 5D, is quite a bit larger than the one profiled above.

The new iMacs – 2011

Macintosh

Still a poor choice for photographers.

From a reading of the specs of the latest iMacs, the reasons to upgrade are:

  • You do a lot of moving of large video files. The new Thunderbolt connector is 10x faster than USB but peripherals using it are rare and only just coming to market.
  • You need three displays. Existing iMacs can support two (iMac + 1 external). The new ones can support three (iMac + 2 external) using Thunderbolt. Once again, the only displays currently using Thunderbolt are the overpriced and glossy-only ones from Apple which simply cannot be properly calibrated for serious photography use. Once it becomes available, a good Dell matte display will be half the price of the add-on Apple one, the latter too garish/bright/contrasty, just like the display in every iMac since they went all glossy four years ago.

The modest CPU and GPU speed increases are not a compelling reason to upgrade.

Further, AAPL still has issues with graphics cards overheating (which killed both our white non-glossy iMacs and made me build the Hackintosh – these were the last iMacs with a screen that could almost be properly profiled for photography use). Still? Well, yes. Why do you think the iFixit tear down shows that the graphics board in the latest iMacs is removable, rather than integrated on the motherboard? Because they expect to replace many, testament to the poor cooling of the part in the tight confines of the box. Form over substance design continues at Apple. Plus, as you need to remove the motherboard to access the removable GPU, you need to be very skilled or very lucky. And then where do you get the replacement? It simply does not solve.

Click the picture for the iFixit teardown of the latest iMac.

If you need a good photography machine and must have Thunderbolt, the best bet is to wait for the Mac Mini to add that connector and hook it up to a couple of proper displays from Dell. Or for higher speed, build a Hackintosh.

Save your money unless the above are compelling reasons for you.

The single best thing you can do to make your iMac significantly faster is to add a Solid State Drive for the OS and applications. It can sit externally – internal installation is sheer hell – and you tell System Preferences->Startup Disc to make the SSD the one to start from. Install OS and copy over apps and you are set. You continue to keep data on your existing internal HDD which is big and cheap. The SSD is small and costly but it dramatically increases start-up speed and application loading. I added an Intel SSD (only 128gB) to the Hackintosh and the difference is night and day. I use maybe 50% of it – OS + apps only. Far more real world performance increase than newer CPUs or GPUs. It cost me $225, and prices continue to fall. Once you have used an SSD there’s no going back. Also, an SSD has no moving parts – always a good thing.