Category Archives: Hardware

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Tomorrow’s viewfinder

Cameras

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

The Panasonic LX-3

Panasonic

A reader review.

A friend of the blog has migrated from the Panasonic LX-2 (I still use the LX-1) to the newer LX-3 which makes a couple of stellar changes from its predecessor. First, Panasonic has come to its senses and stopped the lunatic pixel race, opting for fewer pixels with the welcome result of improved image quality. Second, the lens has been stretched to a 24mm focal length at the wide end (35mm full frame equivalent) with less at the telephoto end. This may well be the widest focal length on a pocket-sized point-and-shoot digital and the reduced telephoto range allows for faster apertures across the range. I suppose the addition of HD video will appeal to many, also.

He writes:

“Thomas suggested that I provide some comments on the Panasonic DMC LX3 camera; he has written extensively about the earlier LX1 model.

DP Review has selected the LX3 as the best of the “enthusiast” pocket cameras, and rightly so. In this model, Panasonic has finally listened to the many complaints about the megapixel horsepower race and provided a reasonably large sensor without increasing the pixel count. They have also added a new Leica-designed 24-60mm f/2 lens and HD video at 24 fps. The result is a truly useful camera, with the best image quality you will get short of a DSLR, and that still fits into most pockets. There are numerous clever features, including the ability to shoot all three aspect ratios at once – very useful, if like me, you shoot for HDTV and publication at the same time.

While Thomas and I have found it desirable to glue accessory shoes for optical finders onto the earlier models, the LX3 comes with a hot shoe and an optional optical finder. I have yet to see one of the new finders, but the 28mm Voigtlander finder that I have been using on the LX2 works well enough if you ignore the bright lines.

There has been a lot of excitement recently about the quality of video shot with the new Canon 5D Mark II. It is outstanding, but I would say that the LX3 comes fairly close at 10% of the price and a fraction of the size and weight. It boils down to what your purpose is. For my daughter, who is a professional, I bought a 5D. For my personal use (and age!) I am happy with the LX3.

There are always reservations about any model. With the LX3, the problems are the 60mm maximum focal length – some cropping will be inevitable, and you will need another camera for sports and birding. There is no external mic input for the video, and the sound is mono. As on the previous models, the mode dial turns too easily; I jammed some tape underneath to provide a little more drag. For me, the f/2 wide angle and the image quality easily justify accommodating to the limitations.”

LCD screens

Displays

The best review site.

A reader kindly pointed me to a UK site which has the best LCD screen reviews – or more specifically, TFT LCD screen reviews – that I have come across.

It’s called TFT Central (OK, no prizes for a catchy name) but the reviews focus on objective measurements rather than subjective pap – none of that “It looks great to me” rot.

That same reader mentioned that he had added a Hewlett-Packard LP2475w 24″ screen to his white iMac 24″ as a second display and mentioned that, if anything, the HP screen is possibly better than the one in the white 24″ iMac. High praise indeed. The maximum brightness of 400 cd/sq.m. is identical to that of the white 24″ iMac – meaning brighter than you will ever want. It doesn’t hurt that the HP has height adjustment (are you listening Apple?) and a built-in 6 port USB hub. Are these boys thinking or what? Anyway, for those looking for better LCD displays for their photo processing, check out the site.

If this sort of thing turns your crank, check here for an explanation of the different LCD panel technologies used – the iMac 24″ and the HP referenced above use the same state-of-the-art technology, named S-IPS or H-IPS. Which just goes to show how ahead of the market the 24″ iMac was when introduced in late 2006!

The curse of black

Cameras

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!

It was 25 years ago today ….

Macintosh

…. and it’s still the only Superbowl ad anyone remembers.

To this day, this inspired piece of anti-Big Brother propaganda convinces consumers that their PC maker of choice is a struggling start-up fighting the forces of evil, when in reality the company has $28bn in cash, 50% operating margins, a $100bn market capitalization and a presence in just about every country and seemingly on every Main Street on earth. Heck, IBM is smaller than the eponymous fruit company now.

You can fool all of the people all of the time and, no, I will emphatically not be watching the Superbowl with its hopped up, hyper-thyroid, cortisone injected ‘athletes’ any more this year than I did 25 years ago. I will, however, be watching the ads, as usual, to see how consumer trends can benefit investing strategy.