Category Archives: Photography

Bartlett Lake, AZ

iPhone, Motorcycles, Photographs

In the Tonto National Forest.

Bartlett Lake is 35 miles northeast of Scottsdale and is deserted on weekdays. The ride through the high desert is lovely, and while the 20 mile approach road through the Forest has seen better days the gentle sweepers and absence of traffic make for a fine opener for the 9 month motorcycling season here, now that daytime highs have dropped to the low 90s.



No traffic in sight.


The map view in Lightroom.


The Last Stop is the only dining place at the lake. Usual burger fare.
Note the matching 1975 historic registration plate on my 1975 BMW R90/6,
now in my 29th year of ownership and a delight to ride.

Boat and JetSki rentals are available.


This was the first occasion on which I aired out the camera in my ‘new’ iPhone7. In contrast to the 8mp files from the excellent camera in the iPhone6, iPhone7 files are 12mp and what little grain there was in iP6 images has disappeared, the crazy azure skies have been tamed a bit (if not quite enough) and resolution is everything you would need for the largest of prints. An incredible technical accomplishment.

The miserable CEO of Apple, Tm Cook, a man devoid of original ideas, claims that one of the justifications for the crazy pricing of the latest iPhones is that you get a great camera thrown in. Well, there’s no question the camera is fine (albeit with the world’s worst ergonomics) but I’ll stick with a separate SLR when conditions get challenging. But for a day-to-day snapper the camera in the iP7 is exceptionally good.

The 2018 iPad

iPad

Same size but faster.

With consumer protection laws having been destroyed by the current Pig Administration – along with civility, discourse, integrity, diplomacy, science, education and the environment – it’s little wonder that Apple gets away with its multi-layered planned obsolescence strategy for its older devices. Leading the charge is iOS which magically makes all older phones and tablets from Cupertino suddenly behave as if they are slogging through frozen molasses.

That symptom had very much affected my 4 years old iPhone6 which I upgraded to a used 128 gB iPhone 7 for a modest $345 after selling the iPhone6. The speed gains from the A10 CPU in the iPhone7 are very significant indeed. Why, it now performs as fast as the iPhone6 did four years ago.

A like infection of molassesitis also affected my iPad Air which, believe it or not, is approaching its fifth anniversary and after daily hard use remains as good as new. Except for the speed, that is. It’s now awful.

So it’s off to the local Apple Hipster Store to be met by a 14 year old sporting colored hair and tattoos, passing as an Apple salesperson (gender unclear) to pick up a new 128gB 2018 iPad. The ‘Air’ moniker seems to have been dropped and the top priced models are, Apple assures us, ‘Pros’. Uh huh.

Here are the comparisons of the current models:

A glance at pricing is an eye opener. I’ll focus solely on wi-fi versions as anyone with an iPhone can simply tether the iPad to the phone’s cellular service and get cellular connectivity. No need to spend an additional $130 on cellular circuitry in your iPad, incurring additional monthly fees in the process.

The costliest iPad, the 12.9″ iPad Pro costs $1149, which strikes me as an awful lot of money. By contrast, the 9.7″ regular iPad, albeit with 128gB rather than 512gB of memory and a marginally slower A10 CPU (same as used in the iPhone7) is just $429. No prizes for guessing which one I chose. Buying used makes no sense here as few recent iPad models are available used. People hang on to these devices a long time. My old iPad Air will sell for $180, making the upgrade cost just $249. That works for me.

So if ever the word ‘bargain’ can be associated with Apple hardware, I do believe the 2018 iPad qualifies.

With a 9.7″ screen, the same size as in the original iPad Air, size is perfect for anything from book reading to stock analysis or movies. And it fits travel luggage just fine.

How do the CPUs compare? Geekbench data show the following:

The 163% CPU speed gain on single core operations (which dominate use) is comparable to the speed gain of the iPhone7 over the iPhone6.

One reason Apple’s iPad sales have been so weak is that the device is very long lived and very well made, retaining high resale value unlike your Android or Amazon Fire piece of junk. Further, Little Johnny in the classroom does not mind too much if he has to wait a few more seconds for his iPad schoolbook to open. His major upgrade reason is that he just dropped the device on the floor. The life expectancy is high even in LJ’s uncertain hands and his affluent folks are welcome to pony up an outrageous $99 for the Apple Pencil so that he can scribble away to his heart’s content. Until he loses it, that is.


Now that’s what you call a downward trend.

iPad sales have pretty much flat lined since 2014 when the original iPad Air hit the market. For far too long the device was overpriced and seriously lagging in hardware compared to its iPhone siblings. Now Apple seems to have woken up, slashed prices at the lower end (my iPad Air ran some $600 5 years ago – call it $700 in today’s money, and with just 64gB of memory) and brought the innards up to speed – a far better camera (though, really, only folks with plastic pocket protectors use an iPad for photography), a speedy CPU and lots more memory at non-gouge prices. Add the fingerprint sensor in the 2018 model I bought and you have iPhone-like speed and functionality.

Mercifully the 2018 iPad retains the coaxial headphone/earbud socket and dispenses with face recognition, the latter an idiotic technology and the ultimate solution looking for a problem. What on earth, pray Apple, is wrong with fingerprint recognition? How about redirecting some of those vast R&D monies wasted on face recognition on making Siri actually work? Or improving voice recognition?

Fingerprint recognition works fine on the 2018 iPad though the nice haptic feedback found in iPhone7 is sadly missing. The Home button on the iPad is still a mechanical micro switch, not a zero wear touch sensor. That said, after 5 years of daily use the Home button on my original iPad Air continues to work well. Also missing is ForceTouch, a nice iPhone7 feature Apple appears to be discontinuing (Hint: It’s called Margin Greed).

I’m looking forward to a happy 5 years with the new 2018 iPad, and to an Administration which will once more honor Consumer and Human rights. Meanwhile I console myself with the thought that the 2018 base iPad may actually be a bargain. And iOS 12, which I just installed, does not cripple performance. In fact, it works well.

AF and AFD Nikkors

Nikon lenses

A curious bunch.

Before Nikon migrated to AF lenses with built in linear focus motors – the AFS series – they marketed the AF and AFD ranges which used a screwdriver linkage in the lens for focusing, the actual focus motor being in the body of better film and digital Nikon SLRs.


The Nikon screw drive motor coupling on the body and in the lens mount.
The film era F100 works well with these and just as well with the latest AFS optics.

While a seemingly Rube Goldberg solution it has proved to be solid and reliable with millions of lenses made. The line started around 1986 and one or two are made to this day.

What is odd about the AF and AFD lenses (the later AFD versions added an enhanced metering chip for better results with flash; otherwise all else was identical) is just how much construction quality varied across the line. I have a half-dozen:


My small AF/AFD collection – 20/2.8, 50/1.8, 85/1.8 and 80-200/2.8 ED IF rear row;
35-70/2.8 and 24-120 f/3.5-5.6 front row.

The mechanical stand-outs here are the 80-200 and 35-70. The former is a two ring zoom, the latter a push-pull design which wears less well, the action becoming sloppy with age. Both are fabulously made and optically as good as it gets. The 80-200 is still sold new at over $1,000, my mint sample running me just $476. The limited range 35-70 is long discontinued (1987-2005) and is often found for under $200. Both are wonderful bargains.

The mechanical quality story with the others is quite a bit different. All these optics have proper aperture rings, a feature sadly deleted from the latest AFS line where apertures are set using one of the command dials on the body of the camera. The 50/1.8 is a piece of garbage. Cheap materials, rattling internals, awful controls. And dirt cheap at $70 used, mint. The 20mm ($230) and 85mm ($270) are mechanically so-so, but focus fast with the 85mm especially pleasant to use in the portrait studio where acquiring focus on the subject’s eyes is a piece of cake with AF especially fast.

And the 24-120mm is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. It comes with fairly pronounced barrel distortion, rather wobbly construction, an unspectacular f/5.6 at the long end yet it’s invariably found on my D700 or F100 when I want to lug only one optic along. The 24mm comes in especially handy for architectural images and the barrel distortion is easily removed in LR. At well under $100 for a mint one, it’s hard to pass by.

Where Nikon did not compromise is in the optical quality of these lenses. All are at least as good as their MF predecessors with the 80-200 considerably better (and bulkier) than what came before. It’s a weapon, not a lens. The 85mm, with its chintzy external plastic, can almost match the classic 85/1.8 MF at full aperture, equalling it at f/4 and below. And even that piece of garbage, the 50/1.8 is almost as good as the classic 50/2 MF – it’s 1.5 stops less sharp at f/2 compared to the old MF optic, but usable wide open even in the extreme corners. Finally the 20/2.8, which scarcely needs AF owing to large depth of field, is almost as good as the classic 20/3.5 UD MF …. made 21 years earlier.

If MF is not for you, or you are just feeling lazy, none of these economically priced AF/AFD Nikkors will let you down. Just make sure your body comes with the screwdriver coupling or AF will be lost. Sadly, none of these will AF on the new FF Z6/Z7 mirrorless bodies, which lack the screwdrive motor in either the body or the related adapter.

For an index of my Nikkor pieces click here.

The 2018 iPhones

iPhone

Victimhood.


The ‘cheap’ iPhone Xr starting at $750 + tax.

Despite a new battery my iPhone6 is becoming very sluggish. Apple makes sure this happens with its older devices by loading them up with ever slower code in its unending pursuit of planned obsolescence. My original iPad Air is suffering the same symptoms.

So announcement of a new series of iPhones sort of catches my attention. While I want a new iPhone like a hole in the head, the operating realities of my current one leave me no choice but to upgrade. And as 50 of my 64GB remain unused, it’s not like it’s a memory issue.

The sad truth is that the technological edge of two manufacturers – Apple and Samsung – has landed consumers with an inescapable oligopoly. Your choice is the Sammy with the insecure, rat infested Android OS or Apple’s ‘my way or the highway’ iOS. And as I would rather keep my credit card out of Ivan’s hands when he next goes on a free shopping spree, I am pretty much tied into iOS.

Now I am not obsessed with the need for an edge-to-edge screen and am most certainly averse to shelling out a minimum of $800 for a new iPhone, you know the one without a headphone socket and that ridiculous face recognition technology replacing the excellent thumbprint sensor on my iPhone6, which has yet to let me down. But, sadly, $750 + tax is the lowest point of entry to the new iPhone universe, with costlier models (one is appropriately named the ‘Xs’ which will be immediately read incorrectly by the 99.999% of the populace without an education in Latin) adding unnecessary OLED displays in lieu of LCD ones and adding more costly storage when none is needed in the age of the cloud. That’s monopoly pricing power for you, albeit you must respect Apple’s pun in the name.

But a friend points out that, given my modest needs, an iPhone7 will do just fine and he pointed me to the web site ‘Swappa’ (doubtless run by chaps in Sicily) as an alternative to the slime pit that is eBay (full disclosure: my last two iPhones were sold on the slime pit to Russkies!):


Clicka da image to goa to de Swappa.

Here you can sella your olda iPhona and buya a later, if discontinued, replacement for a whola lotta lessa dan de latest iPhone from da gender challenged boy in Cupertino.

So I’m thinking I mighta giva da Swappa a chanca befora shelling out $800 on the latest and greatest. My friend upgraded from an iPhone 6 to a 7 and noted a large speed increase, so that upgrade path seems rather appealing. After sale of his iPhone6 his net outlay was very low indeed. Sadly, however, the iPhone7 deletes the headphone socket, meaning yet another adapter is required.

CPU speed? Check this Geekbench chart. The iPhone7 offers the best bang for the buck over the iPhone6 on CPU speed with a speed gain of 147%. Thereafter, later models are pretty much hitting the law of diminishing returns.

The ‘new iPhones’ are nothing but a bait and switch from a disingenuous Apple. There are zero compelling new features for the outrageous 25% price increase. How long will it take consumers to realize that they are being conned? AAPL’s unit sales of iPhones were up just 1% last year with all of the large revenue gains resulting from the high price increases on the iPhone X. How much longer can Apple get away with this ‘no product upgrade’ strategy for a 25% increase in price?

Update:

I bought a mint, boxed 128GB iPhone7 from an established Swappa seller for $429, shipped. I get 81% of the speed of the iPhone X for 54% of the cost and will happily resell my iPhone6 on the Swappa site once all is said and done. It will be a cold day in hell before I lay out $1000 or more on a cell phone. (The iPhone7 is still being sold new by Apple. The price I paid is $180 less than they are asking and, if needed, I can have the battery replaced for just $29 through 12/31/18 – Apple’s ‘guilt price’ after they were caught cheating on battery lives. Replacement sky-rockets come 2019, with Apple hoping no one notices).

The iPhone7 is indeed much faster than the iPhone6. No more grinding waits while it processes ever more bloated code. And the haptic feedback is well implemented and a ‘nice to have’ feature as is ForceTouch which Apple just discontinued on its latest iPhones, ever in search of greater margins. (You push down on an icon for more options – for example accessing bookmarks in Safari). The iPhone7 is a recommended upgrade for owners of the iPhone6 and earlier models.


No comment.

I got 4 years’ hard use from the iPhone6. Not bad.

A bigger Panny?

Micro Four-Thirds

Let’s hope.

The Panasonic GX7 has been my ‘go to’ snapper for the past five years. It’s hard to imagine a small body and outstanding lens line-up being improved for street snapping. Mine started life with the 14-45mm kit zoom from the ground breaking Panasonic G1, an outstanding lens if a tad roughly executed. That gave way to the Olympus 17mm MFT optic which was eventually replaced by the slightly bulkier Panasonic 12-35mm pro zoom which brought a fixed f/2.8 maximum aperture and greatly improved mechanical quality over the original kit zoom. Mounted on the GX7 it makes for the perfect combination, adequate for 95% of what I snap.

In recent weeks the market has seen the announcement of two very credible Nikon full frame offerings and a distinctly underwhelming Canon body (tired old sensor, no full frame 4K recording and – wait for it – no IBIS) which we need not dwell upon here. The Nikon Z6 and Z7 promise to integrate well with old Nikon lenses, except for the first AF/AF D series where AF is lost. But for this heavy user of old ‘metal era’ MF Nikkors, some of the finest lenses ever made, it’s a very tempting proposition, adding IBIS and preserving EXIF data recording with chipped lenses.

But there’s another exciting rumor making the rounds and that is the possibility that Panasonic may introduce a full frame mirrorless body.

Little is known of this rumored body but the potential is thrilling. Whatever lens mount Panny elects – maybe Leica M given their technical association with Leica these many years – you can bet that the flange-to-sensor distance will be very slim as there’s no space needed for a flapping mirror. This makes adapting of other makers’ lenses a simple matter. And Panny, being smart, would likely market an adapter for its superb MFT lenses working in MFT format mode, extending their utility value. After all, the magic of MFT is not in the small bodies but in the small lenses that they sport. No FF lens will ever overcome the rule of physics – they will always be larger to cover the full frame. If Panny does not market it you can leave it to the aftermarket to quickly come up with a Nikon F lens adapter. And Panny has class leading video in its Gx series MFT bodies so the opportunity to take on the full frame pro market is very appealing.

Let’s hope this rumor comes true as no one knows more about making mirrorless SLRs than Panasonic. Either way, the modern snapper has never had a better choice of hardware.