Category Archives: Hardware

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Elitism

Cameras, Motorcycles

Guilty as charged!

I am an unashamed elitist, a status too often mistaken for snobbery. The two are unrelated. To misquote Wilde, the snob knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The elitist, by contrast, focuses solely on value. Scratch an elitist and you will find an engineer.

I was struck by this realization when thinking of the choices I have made in machines over the years. Before we get to cameras, let’s look at some other daily possessions and the brands involved.

In the kitchen you simply cannot beat GE appliances. Not some fancy marque name, just your basic GE (and still made by GE as their disaster passing for a CEO failed to sell the home appliance division). Bog reliable, no instruction book needed and parts easily available when they do eventually break. But let’s face it, they rarely do. The GE fridge is the very touchstone of reliability.

With the mundane behind us, let’s focus on the essential. Motorcycles. For as long as I can remember I have ridden BMW motorcycles. Air cooled twins, water cooled flat threes and fours, oil cooled twins, faired, naked (the bike, not me), carburetted, injected, with or without sidecar, fast, slow, I loved them all, but only my first – a 1975 R90/6 air cooled boxer – remains, and is much loved. It had style where the others had function. Riding that old BMW reminds me that it’s the journey, not the destination, which matters.

In watches, I would love to tell you that I have always worn a Patek, but that would require that I had done a far better job of choosing my parents. Let’s face it, Polish refugees who had the poor sense to choose England over America as the land of the future – we are talking 1947 here – for their kids aren’t going to be troubling the Nobel Committee any time soon. Econ. 101 was plainly not on my parents’ curriculum. Add a curious predisposition for keeping their wealth in a Polish bank despite six – 1933-1939 – years’ warning that maybe moving the lot to Switzerland might make sense, their belief in the League of Nations and in the power and goodness of America saw them lose the lot to the invading hordes. So, to cut a long story short, I can claim to have worn nothing but a Patek since 1996. For nigh on twenty years, every time I was about to get one, the price had risen that bit faster than my disposable income. Well, it inspired me to try harder, I suppose.

I was a long time woodworker. Relaxing like nothing else, very challenging (metalwork is child’s play by comparison) and a perennial source of dissatisfaction. You can always do better. And I say ‘was’ because the onset of tendonitis – meaning my wrists hurt like hell when stressed – dictated disposal of my tools and conversion of the woodshop to a home theater. But I did keep one or two for the odd occasion and they all say Makita or Panasonic on the body. The Japanese make lovely, well adjusted and light tools which take an incredible beating and remain in perfect order. By contrast American tools – they used to be made here – try to impress with weight and the heck with the fit and finish. De Walt and Porter Cable have a lot to answer for when you look at just how shoddily the average American home is put together. As for the cheap and cheerful Chinese imports, whether from Taiwan or PRC, well you get a kit which has to be repaired and tuned before it works. Not a great use of valuable time.

Though I’m lousy at it, I do enjoy cooking and the pots and pans have always said All Clad. You can bury me with those. Good weapons too, in the event of a burglary. The chef’s knife is a Sabattier because if you want to cut well, use what the world’s most food obsessed nation swears by. Leave the guns to the Germans.

And speaking of Germans, when it comes to cars, few would disagree that the best cars made from 1975 through 1990 came from Stuttgart. Mercedes had the market cornered in execution, quality, longevity, resale value and safety, and Americans – me included – were happy to pay a premium for the three pointed star. Sure, the budding Andrettis swore by Porsche, the gold chain set by BMWs and techies by Audis, but Mercedes was the car for the rest of us. Masochists, by the way, opted for Jaguars. Then, two momentous events changed everything in 1990. The accountants took over Mercedes Benz and dictated that cars need only last two years. Greedy, over-leveraged Americans no longer bought cars, they leased them for two years then traded in for the latest variant. So, as leases were only 2 years long, no one cared if the knobs, dials and button failed on Day 731. It was someone else’s problem. The other event, which the dumb Germans made light of, was Toyota’s entry with a new luxury brand aimed directly at Mercedes. The Lexus LS400 introduce in 1990 cost 25% less than the top of the line Mercedes and outperformed it in every regard. My last Mercedes was the 560SEL, maybe their most glorious sedan creation and my first Lexus which I drive to this day is a 2000 LS400. MPG? How about 14 vs. 27 on the freeway. Horsepower? 238/290. Comfort? Identical. Noise? Lots/none. Repairs: Constant/none. So Lexus was this elitist’s choice.

Computers? Apple. If you have to ask, you just don’t get it.

Home electronics? It really doesn’t matter. Nearly everything made is dead reliable and dirt cheap – premium prices generally add never-used features. So brand no longer matters. No one buys a Sony because it’s a Sony any more, as Sony is finally learning. This is the Era of Price.

Furniture? Unless you are into antiques, see ‘Home electronics’ above. I despair at how good cheap imported furniture is (as do the last two remaining US manufacturers in North Carolina) and how much better than even my best woodworking efforts.

Long time readers will experience no surprises when it (finally!) comes to photography.

Cameras :

Ultra small: Then nothing, now Panasonic LX1
Small: Then – Leica M, now Panasonic G1
Medium: Then Rollei, now Canon 5D
Large: Then Crown Graphic 4×5, now fughedaboutit

Printers:

Then Epson, now HP – because it does big prints using dyes, which I love and they don’t fade like the old Epson’s dyes.

Tripods:

Then Gandolfi, now Linhof

Lenses:

Then Leica and Zeiss, now Canon (how I wish Leica would fully automate their wides in a Canon DSLR mount!)

Studio light: Then Novatron, now Novatron (proudly and very well made in Dallas, Texas – at least mine was)

So, there you have one elitist’s choices. Notice how the photographic ones need no explaining, telling their own story. It’s when you get to kitchen tools that you are forced to expound at length, it seems.

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!