Category Archives: Hardware

Stuff

Pentax Q

Cameras

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.

500gB iPad

iPad

It’s happening.

The two biggest disabling issues making it impossible for serious photographers to use the iPad as a portable photo processing device are the paucity of good photo processing apps and the iPad’s low storage capacity.

The former issue is being rapidly resolved as new processing apps geared to touch screens seem to be appearing wekly.

The latter has finally been addressed by some clever people at Hitachi.

Click the image for the Hitachi site.

The device, priced at $200 and available in 4 weeks, will behave as a wireless hard drive for your iPad. So, if it works as advertised, that means that you should be able to download your RAW files to the device and then process the images from your iPad. Whether direct download from a USB card reader to the G-Connect is possible is unclear, but if it is and if delivers as promised, I’ll be in line.

Given that the primary (only?) reason to buy a 64gB iPad over the 16gB one, a poky 48gB storage increase, is if you want to store lots of videos or RAW files on your iPad, why not get this device instead? The price increase is the same, the weight penalty minor – it’s likely little larger than a notebook HDD – and you can use it as a wireless disk with any computer.

Leica 25mm f/1.4 Summilux MFT

Hardware

Strange.

The newly introduced 25mm f/1.4 Leica Summilux.

When you wanted a really fast lens for the Panasonic G range of cameras the usual resort was to the 20mm f/1.7. That lens mightily underwhelmed when I used it, showing very slow focus, awful flare control and lots of other issues, which you can read about here. I returned mine.

Now along comes the Leica-branded 25mm f/1.4 MFT lens at a rumored price of $1,000, making it the costliest MFT lens yet. The design and pricing raise several questions.

First, a 25mm f/1.4 has the same depth of field as a 50mm f/2.8. If you have used the latter on a full frame camera you will know that f/2.8 is too slow to really isolate a subject from its background. The 50mm FFE new Leica lens for MFT will be no different. So if you are buying this lens to isolate subjects you will be disappointed. Now a 50mm f/1.4 really does isolate – but that would mean the 25mm would have to be f/0.7. That is not going to happen. (Depth of field is solely a function of focal length and aperture; the size of the frame exposed is irrelevant. A 105mm lens on a 4×5 camera has the same depth of field as the same focal length on an MFT one).

Second, the lens has no OIS shake reduction. OIS adds two stops of safety so 1/30 at f/1.4 without OIS is the same as 1/8 at f/2.8 with OIS. The sole beneficiaries here will be Olympus MFT Pen users where OIS is built into the body, though I suspect any Pen body will be overwhelmed by this big lens. No Panny MFT body includes OIS – it’s in selected lenses.

Third, there’s no indication of how quickly this lens focuses. It will have to be fast and accurate to justify the astronomical price tag.

Fourth, you can buy a 50mm f/1.4 for your Canon for $450 or your Nikon for $400. Sure, you lose the compactness of an MFT kit, but that’s an enormous price difference.

Fifth, by MFT standards, the lens is huge. Who wants that when one key reasons to use MFT is compactness?

Finally, the new 16mp sensors found in the Panny GH2 and in the upcoming G3 add a rumored two stops of grain reduction. So your poky f/3.5 lens just became the equivalent of an f/1.7 by simply setting your ISO 4x faster for the same level of noise as before. And a G3 body at $600 still leaves $400 in change from the Leica-branded optic.

So I confess I’m unsure who this lens is marketed to. It’s too costly, lacks OIS, too bulky and you can do a better job with background blur in a few seconds using Photoshop’s tools. I doubt Panny will sell many.

I would much rather see Panny fixing what ails the 20mm f/1.7 and maybe making a good 45mm (90mm FFE) fast portrait lens. A 20mm f/1.4, say, with OIS, proper flare control and fast focusing at $600 would get my attention.

Snapseed

iPad

Adobe, where are you?

Click for the Snapseed site

This $5 iPad app shows the progress being made in touchscreen photo processing apps. (Warning – I have not used it). Check out their video by clicking the above picture. The app uses the touchscreen technology well and the app is very much more than a toy. It includes area selection and smart masking for application of processing to selected areas. Check out the Selective Adjust video. The automasking is just the sort of magic the iPad is all about. Night and day compared to any other masking scheme I have seen, and entirely intuitive, Well done, Nik Software. Every user of digital sensors knows about their propensity to burn out highlights and this is just the ticket to fix those.

In its usual manner, Apple is squeezing the margins and disappointingly refused to increase the maximum storage when they release iPad2, the largest still limited to a modest 64gB. It’s not a hardware constraint. Tear downs of iPad2 disclose there’s lots of room in there for more flash storage. And given the rotten state of competitors’ offerings, Apple has no incentive to add storage at the present time.

Still, that will eventually come, and it’s important for photographers who want to work with RAW files rather than with compromised JPGs. What use is you super-duper DSLR with its phenomenal data capture if you are going tp throw most of the goodness away by working with compressed JPGs?

More flash storage is on the way. Intel is making huge strides with flash storage technology. The SSD recently installed in my HackPro used 32nM spacing (1nM = One billionth of a meter); it’s already obsolete, the current offering using 25nM, at a lower price. Once they cut that to 12nM, storage per unit area will quadruple and per unit volume it will be eight times as much. So help is on the way. With the typical RAW file coming in at some 15mB, 1000 RAW originals will need 15gB of storage or some 235 times the current maximum. With storage densities doubling annually we are 8 years away from that number. It wouldn’t surprise me to see it reached sooner, driven in large part by a burgeoning mobile computing market.

By that time, Intel’s high speed connectivity technology (which Apple would have the world believe is their invention, naming it Thunderbolt) will be the standard on all devices, mobile or not, so downloading your processed pictures from the iPad to your work computer will take seconds. Right now low USB transmission speeds are a huge bottleneck.

Meanwhile, where is Adobe in all of this? They own the serious/professional photo processing market though two outstanding applications, whether you are a Mac or Windows user. Lightroom and Photoshop. (Aperture’s market share is a rounding error). But Adobe’s poky touchscreen offerings for the iPad are underwhelming. Let’s hope they get on it before their faster, smaller competitors take the market from them. Why do I care? Because I want the functionality of exporting to LR or PS on my desktop and I sure as heck do not want to learn any new, big, complex apps which may replace it. I would rather be taking pictures.

I would rather be taking pictures. The Bubble. G1, kit lens.

A magic moment in a child’s life, spotted in San Francisco’s west Mission District.

The Logitech MX900 mouse

Hardware

The best yet.

It seems quixotic to write about a mouse which was mostly sold in England and which has not been made for many years. But the Logitech MX900 mouse is the best I have used yet in terms of comfort and functionality. It was recommended to me by UK photographer Roy Hammans whose work I have been lucky to feature in these pages. Roy has been using his for years and continues to do so. I can see why.

When he recommended the mouse to me – I was grumbling to him about the ergonomic disaster that is Apple’s MagicMouse – I set about trying to find one on eBay, but without luck. All the ones listed were for sale in the UK. So I settled for the Razer Death Adder corded mouse and reviewed it here. That’s a fine product and I continue to recommend it.

But the MX900, despite some quirks, is better.

Logitech MX900 mouse.

It’s a wireless Bluetooth mouse which I thought would be a major knock against it after many years with Apple mice which would constantly lose the connection. Indeed, their latest mouse, the Magic Mouse, is by far the worst in this regard of any cordless Apple mouse I have used. Yet, after a couple of weeks with the MX900, it has not lost the Bluetooth connection once. So it looks like poor engineering on Apple’s part is the cause.

From an ergonomic perspective, the MX900 is better than the Razer. The latter is designed for ambidextrous operation, meaning the casing is symmetrical. By contrast, the MX900 is unashamedly designed for the right hand, is asymmetrically shaped, and is useless for left handed operators. I am unaware of a left-handed version ever having been made. Because the MX900 contains two AA batteries, its heft is greater than the Razer’s and it will not be right for small hands. It’s solid and large and you will not find it garnering design awards from the Museum of Modern Art.

So what are the quirks of the MX900?

Well, first, it uses rechargeable NiMh batteries, necessitating that it be placed in the charging cradle after use. You can use regular alkaline AA cells but as there is no on/off switch these last no more than 5 days in my experience.

Logitech MX900 in its charging cradle.

My cradle makes no provision for a separate power supply, so I simply connected it to one of the powered USB side ports on one of the Dell displays connected to the HackPro, whence it derives sufficient power to keep the batteries charged. If you like you can use Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable NiMh batteries, which are distinguished by their low discharge rate when stored, compared to regular rechargeable cells. You do not need to buy a new charger for these if your existing charger is fairly recent, as Sanyo points out on its web site.

If the charger is just so much more clutter on your desk, simply keep a supply of charged NiMh cells and replace when necessary. This will mean more wear and tear on the battery door, but the mouse works fine even if the door is missing, and there’s no risk of the batteries falling out.

I use Eneloops and the Logitech charger works well with them. The mouse lights up a bright red diode on top when the batteries are low.

Second, there are no drivers to be found for use of the MX900 with a Mac. The MX900 has five buttons in addition to the left, right and scroll wheel ones, and you cannot use these in its native state. And you want to use those as they are incredibly handy. Accordingly, I downloaded and installed SteerMouse which supports the MX900 and allows everything to be programmed. Free to try for 30 days, $20 to buy. Cursor movement with the SteerMouse driver is exceptionally smooth.

Here are my settings for the buttons:

Here is the button identification:

‘Middle Button’ is a push on the scroll wheel.
Button 4 is the rear side button.
Button 5 is the front side button
Button 6 is the rearmost top button
Button 7 is the foremost top button, ahead of the scroll wheel
Button 8 is the top button just behind the scroll wheel – this opens a Finder window

The ability to program a button – Button 8 – to open the Finder is tremendous. Apple has never allowed this in its System Preferences and the key stroke sequence I have programmed is the one which opens a new Finder window under Spotlight. The Razer’s software did not permit this and, indeed, this is the first mouse software (the credit goes to SteerMouse) I have owned which does. It’s a great value added for my way of working which sees constant trips into the Finder.

Finally, by pressing Button 5 for the Desktop, I can drag and drop images with a single left click into other applications, touching Button 5 again to exit the Deskrop, something the Razer’s software does not permit.

Third, as with the Razer, there is no sideways tilt permitted with the scroll wheel, so if button operated horizontal scrolling is a requirement, this is not the mouse for you. Also, as with the Razer, the scroll wheel click and the screen display jumps in small vertical increments rather than moving smoothly. This is the sole advantage I think an Apple mouse has over anything else, the Apple product being distinguished by stepless, smooth vertical scrolling.

You can download the MX900 manual by clicking below:

Click to download the Logitech MX900 manual

OK, so the MX900 mouse is discontinued. That means you will have to find a used one. The replacement, the MX1000, is also discontinued. It was Bluetooth also, but used a custom flat battery, harder to replace when it eventually fails.

The MX1100 is the current model, selling for some $53 at Amazon US. I cannot find it at Amazon UK, but eBay UK lists the MX900 often. Unlike its predecessors, the MX1100 eschews Bluetooth in favor of 2.4gHz wireless technology. The design requires a small dongle to be inserted in an USB socket on your computer and has the advantage that the mouse is recognized immediately, unlike the waiting involved with Bluetooth devices. That’s the same technology used in the Microsoft 6000 which I also reviewed here. I eventually gave up on that otherwise fine mouse as it suffered from random cursor jerkiness which I simply could not cure, even after trying a variety of drivers. I rather suspect the cause is radio interference as the 2.4gHz band is used by many household appliances – cordless phones, baby monitors, hearing aids, you name it, and a neighbor can disrupt your environment without knowing it.

I liked the MX900 so much I ended up buying two on eBay at a shipped cost of $20 each. Hopefully my long search for the right mouse is now at an end. The Razer went back to the nice people at Amazon for a refund and my two MightyMice were sold, with great relief, on eBay. Remind me never to buy another Apple mouse and ‘Thank you’, Roy, for the great tip.

Update: For details on the later Logitech Revolution mouse, click here.