Category Archives: Hardware

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Frustration

Hardware

More of the same, masquerading as new.

It’s frustrating to see the lack of innovation from Samsung in it’s new ‘small body’ mirrorless camera, the NX100.

The NX100 underwhelms.

The only substantive change the NX100 makes compared to the aging Panasonic GF1 is that a slightly larger APS-C sensor is used. Otherwise it’s the same as the GF1, missing the one feature street snappers are screaming for: a proper viewfinder. Add a ridiculously bulky lens on what is purportedly a compact snapper and you have the worst example of ‘me too’ thinking to come out of the far east in quite a while.

Panasonic can redefine this category in a trice and make a lot of money doing it. Reengineer the excellent EVF from the G1 into a GF2-sized body, delete the silly pop-up flash and movie modes and sell it with that sweet little 20mm compact standard lens and you have a recipe for success.

The new Kindle

Hardware

A mixed bag and mostly disappointing.

When Amazon announced the latest version of their Kindle monochrome book reader I took the bait. At $139 ($189 with 3G) the cost is low enough to make acquisition an impulse purchase and, indeed, I expect the device to be free in a couple of years with your first purchase of x books from Amazon.

iPhone 3G, Kindle, iPad indoors in indirect natural light.

First, let’s be clear. The Kindle competes with the iPad in only one regard and that is as a single purpose book and periodical/newspaper reader. Its use to photographers is extremely limited as it cannot display color, has a small screen and is mostly useful if you upload your PDF instruction books to it. The bulk of the device is so low and the weight even lower, that it makes sense to take the Kindle with you in preference to the various instruction books for your picture computer, aka the modern digital camera.

Amazon ships the Kindle pre-registered in your name, a nice touch, and adding your wifi network at home is a matter of moments. There’s a nice pre-loaded instruction book (why does Apple make you download that for the iPad?), the recharger is minuscule and a nice long USB/recharger cord is provided to charge the device. Mine came 50% charged and power consumption is so low (the Kindle’s display is always ‘on’ – switching it off merely switches off wifi and the related power drain) – that you can expect days of continuous use on one charge. When ‘off’ the screen displays a portrait of one of any number of famous authors. A nice touch.

So while the Kindle does not compete with the iPad, there’s no denying that it’s hard not to make comparisons and, in a word, the Kindle is plain awful when thus judged.

The feel is ‘throw-away-plastic’ rather than ‘Leica-fixit-when-it-breaks’. The ergonomics are simply foul. Lots of tiny buttons, awful placement of the ‘back’ button right below the five way controller, no touch screen (I kept touching mine, after so many happy hours with the iPad) and, worst of all, the page forward and back buttons – which are duplicated along the long sides – could not be placed worse. Every time I pick the Kindle up I do so by spanning it with my hand to grasp the long sides, thus avoiding actuating any of the keyboard buttons. This immediately causes pages to flip and I lose my place. Horrible – did anyone actually try using this ergonomic horror? Further, every time you change pages you get a disconcerting ‘flash to black’ like with an old fashioned mirrored SLR or DSLR.

The Kindle’s screen technology when used indoors is equally poor. The background is a light gray, the contrast is accordingly low, the screen is small and unless you have direct light shining on the screen it’s an eyestrain to read. Look at the picture above. Awful.

Many make much of the Kindle’s low 8 ounce weight compared to the iPad’s 24 ounces and, frankly, that’s nonsense. The iPad weighs no more than the average book, you do not hold it elevated but rather supported on a lap or in bed (just as you do with a book) and holding the Kindle aloft is simply a pain in the you-know-what, but you find you have to do that to get close enough to the small screen. The iPad’s weight is not an issue. Don’t be told otherwise. Or, if you prefer, return to your 48 oz. netbook or 80 oz. MacBook. That’s weight.

So why would anyone buy a Kindle? You only need look at the next two snaps and you will likely buy one. These show the iPad and Kindle in direct sun.

Kindle in direct sun. The grey background does a lot to reduce eye strain in bright light.

iPad in direct sun. Useless.

Here you can see the two best and worst features of the devices – the Kindle screen just gets better as the light intensity rises and the iPad not only sucks in the sun, it’s made impossible to use by the Chief Fetishist’s insistence on glossy screens only for all Apple’s devices. So at $139 if you live in a place with sun and like reading outside (meaning CA, Florida, southern Spain, France or Italy, I suppose) buy one. The $189 version is a waste of money, though that’s what I got. You simply load up your books at home using wifi. 3G, I thought, would be nice for on the road download of newspapers, but as Amazon and the publishers idiotically insist on charging you yet again even if you already have an iPad or desktop subscription, and because the Kindle version of the WSJ or NYT is severely edited, 3G makes no sense unless you get an urge to buy books from the Kindle Store when in an area without wifi. Worse, while you can access a mere couple of dozen famous blogs, Amazon wants to charge you for that too! Why on earth would I pay for something I can get free on multiple other devices? Mr. Bezos, what have you been smoking?

There is one reason, however, to get the 3G model. For the occasional beach or outdoor reader, 3G allows you to use Whispersync to pick up a book where you left off on your iPad or iPhone or other Kindle device. And as the 3G service has no recurring monthly cost (unlike with the iPad) you can just about convince yourself that it makes sense, if you try hard. Of course, the 3G service is from AT&T so better first decide if your place of contemplated use can get AT&T reception. If not, the Kindle falls back on the even slower EDGE system, which is better than nothing and has good US coverage.

The book shown on the screen, by the way, is Barbara Tuchman’s splendid ‘The Guns of August’ detailing the ‘outbreak’ (meaning unilateral unprovoked German aggression and the usual German atrocities) of WW1, each device at the same page owing to Amazon’s excellent ‘Whispersync’ technology which keeps all books you are reading using the Kindle or a Kindle app in sync. That’s the only other feature to like about the Kindle.

Bottom line? It’s no bargain. $139 if you like to read in the garden on sunny days or at the beach.

Update September 27, 2010:

Thank goodness for Amazon’s 30-day money refund policy. Today is my thirtieth day with the Kindle and after daily use throughout that period I am returning it. It simply got more and more frustrating to use, especially in its inability to allow the user to reset the last page read when trying to reread a book, rendering synchronization between devices inoperable.

You can see my review at Amazon by clicking here. The many ill informed comments – which I refute strongly – show confirmation bias at work. You bought it so you have to like it ….

An awesome viewfinder

Micro Four-Thirds

The G1 finder shines.

Just how good the electronic viewfinder in the mirrorless Panasonic G1 really is was brought home forcefully to me when I spent a couple of days snapping away on the central California coast earlier this week. I had with me both the Canon 5D and the G1 and was reminded time and again why I prefer the EVF in the G1 to the traditional mirror/prism construction of the 5D.

The EVF in the G1 is not perfect, true. In bright light it will wash out highlights immediately, but no matter how bright the light you will have no difficulty reading the display data – aperture, shutter speed, etc. But things get even better in poor light. In the image below, the light was exceedingly poor – look at the exposure data. Yet the EVF adapted the image to show it in daylight brightness – much as you see it here – and composition was a breeze. In this sort of lighting you can actually read the Canon 5D’s display data, which is nice, but the G1’s is every bit as clear plus you get to see what you are photographing which, for photographers, is a nice feature ….

Inside Mission Carmel, CA. G1, 9-18mm Olympus MFT lens at 18mm, 1/8, f/5.6, ISO 1600.

I was lucky to get away with it at 1/8th second hand held and even at ISO 1600 there is no shortage of detail.

The Mission Carmel was founded June 3, 1770 and includes a working K-8 school. It is about as spectacular an example of California Mission architecture as you will find and quite beautifully maintained. Recommended, regardless of your religious views, or lack thereof.

Adobe Photoshop Express

iPad, Software

A useful iPad app.

I’m not sure what they are putting in the water coolers at Adobe Labs HQ in San Francisco, but they should definitely stick with the program.

First we got a really value added, fairly priced upgrade to Lightroom 3, many of whose enhancements I have written about here – film grain, superior RAW conversions, outstanding flexibility to remove lens aberrations and distortions – and now, at no cost, an iPad app named Adobe Photoshop Express.

The price is right!

It’s an inspired piece of programming which really ‘gets’ the touchscreen interface and one of the best efforts yet to make the iPad into a photo processing platform. Sure the controls are limited – basic exposure, sharpness, effects, frames, monochrome conversions and so on – but all the ‘sliders’ for the controls dictate that the user merely slides his finger across the screen to change things. Surely this is the future of photo processing? Further, sign up at Adobe and if you can get comfortable with access rights (theirs not yours) to your pictures, then you can sync your snaps to your desktop or laptop via their servers.

Here’s a simple snap of our son with a neat frame added – this is a screen shot as I do not have an Adobe online storage account:

Winston at Point Lobos. My ‘equipment man’.

Very worth while looking into and it seems some of the earlier bugs have been stomped on as I have had no issues with my version. And what have you got to lose?

The Leitz close-up gizmo outfit

Hardware, Leica

A new high in strangeness.

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.

If the 20mm Russar and 400mm Telyt were odd ducks in my lens tool kit over the years, this one takes the biscuit.

It’s the Leica close-up kit marketed in the 1950s which I owned for many years. I say “owned” rather than “used” because it was much more fun to assemble this collection of hardware and play with it than it was to use.

The Leitz close-up kit.

What you see in the neat fitted box is my Leica M2 attached to a Visoflex I mirror housing. The housing is attached to the Leitz Focusing Bellows I fitted with a 135mm f/4.5 Hektor lens head and a compendium lens shade – the latter extendable at will for very effective shielding of the lens. There’s a fine 45 degree right-way-round prism finder lower left. An excellent Leitz ball and socket head is lower center. These are beautifully made and I continue to use a variant on my monopod with the Panasonic G1. Highly recommended if you can track one down on the used market – exceptionally engineered, very secure when tightened owing to the design of the ball and indestructible. Attach a QR plate and you are done.

It’s hard to put into words how beautifully engineered everything in this kit really was. Every component speaks to the very height of the machinist’s art and confirms that Leitz’s quality and finish had only one way to go once the fifties ended. Downhill.

The lens fitted to the assembled Visoflex I and Bellows I

The idea of a continuous focusing range from infinity to life size was not new at that time – large technical cameras with long extension bellows had been doing that trick for ages – but seldom had it been executed as elegantly as here, especially in the 35mm film format.

The fitted case also accommodated a dual cable release with adjustable pin lengths. The idea was that the longer pin would raise the flapping mirror in the Visoflex I and further pressure on the plunger would then trip the camera’s shutter. It worked well.

Double cable release attached to the Visoflex I.

Everything was designed just so, right down to the bracing blocks in the lid of the case which made absolutely sure that your precious gear would not flail about in transit.

Truly a fitted case.

A second finder in the kit provided a reverse waist level view and, as you can see, the mirror in the Visoflex I was well oversized, for better function with long lenses.

With the waist level viewfinder in place.

In practice the 45 degree finder was far superior, offering an unreversed image at chest height, and included eyesight adjustment. Perfect.

Focusing, however, was far from perfect. The plain ground glass screen in the Visoflex I had no focusing aids and lacked a fresnel lens, so light drop off to the edges was severe. You simply opened the lens up to its modest f/4.5 maximum aperture (nope,no click stops here) and then racked it back and forth either side of what you though was sharp until it looked as good as you could get it. Then, fingers crossed, you pressed the button or rather you depressed the plunger on the twin release, trying not to forget to stop the lens down first. Of course, as the lens was completely manual things went dark really fast, so that handheld photography was pretty much out of the question. Definition at f/4.5 was iffy and depth of field so shallow that only the very lucky tried to use this apparatus hand held.

The compendium lens hood just went to prove that the engineers and designers at Leitz, Wetzlar had spared no expense. Like everything else in the kit it was beautifully made, slipped into the front of the bellows focusing rack on two chromed rods and clipped neatly to the front of the Hektor lens head in the groove provided.

The compendium lens hood for the Visoflex I.

The Hektor lens head was ordinarily sold with a coupled rangefinder focusing mount but for use with this kit the head was detached from the rangefinder mount and inserted into an adapter tube for fitting to the Bellow. Leitz wallowed in an orgy of adapters for seemingly everything in those days and various other lens heads had to use specific types. However only the rare 125mm f/2.5 Hektor and the 135mm Hektor and, later, Elmar and Tele Elmar kens heads would focus to infinity. You could also fit the 200mm and 400mm Telyt heads if you could find a second tripod to support the whole thing. The 135mm Hektor was a decent pre-war four element design and gained anti-reflection coating during the war years, being replaced by the more capable Elmar and, later the even better Tele Elmar which was the last 135mm rangefinder lens Leitz made with a detachable head. The even later 135mm Apo-Telyt-M was strictly for use on a Leica M body, with a fixed head. It was quite superb for its intended purpose, as my copy testified, provided your Leica M’s rangefinder was properly calibrated. Many were not and only the M3 with its nearly life-sized finder could really do the lens justice at full aperture and close focus distances when it came to dead on focusing.

The Hektor lens head fitted to its intermediate collar.

It’s some reflection on how times have changed when this sixty year old gear is compared to a modern full frame DSLR. My Canon 5D fitted with the Canon 100mm f/2.8 EF Macro and a ring flash offers focusing from infinity to life-size in a standard focus mount – no bellows needed! – is auto focus and auto aperture, delivers quality which will knock your socks off, and is easy to use handheld. There’s even a costlier ‘L’ version available with anti-shake technology. As these things go it’s also relatively compact, if not lightweight. None of that could be said of the Leitz outfit but the craven functionality of the Canon gear lacks everything the Leitz hardware possesses in spades. Sheer physical engineering beauty.

I have taken more great pictures with the Canon gear than I can recall but cannot recall having taken one half decent picture with the Leitz outfit – which is why you see none her.

But it sure was nice to look at. I bought and sold mine, after many years of ownership, for a song.