The Online Photographer

The Winner! TOP Camera of the Year 2013

All the nominees again:

Canon SL1
Ricoh GR
Nikon Df
Nikon Coolpix A
Olympus OM-D E-M1
Panasonic GX7
Panasonic GM1
Sony A7r
Sony A7
Sony RX10

(Play this now) And the winner....

  The Olympus OM-D E-M1, TOP Camera of the Year 2013

I was sorely, sorely tempted to give the nod here to the Sony A7r with its Zeiss 35mm ƒ/2.8. That one's got the buzz—it's the camera that people are coveting this year, the one that offers all that promise. The stuff gear dreams are made of. I love what I've seen of that 35mm lens, and I'll bet I could write a very good defense of a camera that has the right lens instead of a lot of lenses.

2013 Runner-Up: Sony A7r with Zeiss Sonnar FE 35mm ƒ/2.8

But I've got two full-frame (FF) cameras in the house, and I hate to say it, but I think I'm kinda getting over FF. When all is said and done I just don't think it gives me enough extra to warrant all the fuss. This isn't some big decision; it's just the way my feelings about it have evolved. It's a little like all those people in the old days who argued that 4x5 was so very superior to 6x6. Well, yeah, kinda, a little, maybe—but I can make do.

Nothing against people who prefer FF; I can see the sense in that, too.

The Achilles heel in the end is that the A7 system has, um, three lenses. And with Sony's spotty record of filling in lens lines...I just can't bring myself to call it the CoY. Quite. Try as I might.

...And yeah, it is awkward, at the very least, to give the palm to the E-M1 when the E-M5 was our CoY a year ago. That is just unBALANCED. And opens me to charges of being an Oly fanboy, which I'm not. But that's an accident of the sequence of events...rather than not give our CoY award to the E-M1 this year for the sake of evenhandedness, what I ought to do is go back in time (sorry, Ctein) and yank the award away from the E-M5 for last year! There were so many deserving contenders, and now the E-M5 is eclipsed (sorry, E-M5 owners, but it is. Don't think I'm not sympathetic; I bought one too.) I wish I could change the past and give CoY 2012 to the Fuji X-Pro1. That would restore the proper balance of nature, not to mention brand impartiality. But of course I can't do that. It's a little too late to be revising CoY '12.

It galls me not to give a pat on the back to Nikon, for listening to its customers and thinking of those who want a camera with more old-fashioned controls. It pains me not to give the award to Sony, which deserves a big fat sloppy kiss for all the fun stuff it's given us lately and for how hard they're trying. (If anything, at the moment, I'm a Sony fanboy. And that Zeiss? Hit me where I live why doncha, pluck at my heartstrings—I went through photo school with a Zeiss C/Y 35mm ƒ/2.8.)

The GX7 is near and dear to my heart for being a Great Leap Forward from a series of cameras I've owned and loved, and for being more Leica-like than any current Leica. (Sorry again, but it is. Although maybe it's not quite as Leica-like as the X-Pro1.) In fact, the only thing wrong with the GX7 is the E-M1, in the same way that the only thing wrong with the Coolpix A is the GR.

The E-M1 wins the old-fashioned way: by being so good. If this were a footrace, the E-M1 would be Usain Bolt. No matter how admirable the other guys, you just can't deny the freaky fast dude who flies across the finish line half a second earlier than everyone else.

The E-M1 is what I wanted the E-M5 to be...and reluctantly concluded was not. A few brief points:

• It's really nice to hold. Ergonomically this is the best camera I've used in many years. The size and weight are just right—not too big, not too small; not too heavy, not too light. The handgrip is really great to grip (never mind how it looks). I love the way the two main dials fall to thumb and forefinger (if Olympus ever changes this, the responsible party should be boiled in lens lubricating oil). That funky little thumb lever that switches to ISO/WB is a fantastic solution.

• The image quality is really special. Pixel-by-pixel comparisons be hanged, the pictures just look great to me. They nourish my enthusiasm for lovely-looking photographic images. 'Nuff said. (Well, a little more needs to be said: I don't think it's better than the E-M5. But it's as good, which is enough. YMMV.)

• With a weatherproof lens, you can hold the whole shebang under the kitchen faucet. No, I haven't done that yet—I make it a policy not to tempt fate. But I'm also not going to worry if I get caught out in the rain.

• Love the way a flip-up viewing screen makes the camera into a mini-Rolleiflex. Yeah, other cameras do this, but it happens to be something I really want my camera to do.

• The camera controls are very customizable. There seem to be just enough buttons, and there are so many ways you can set them up that I almost can't imagine any photographer not being able to configure this camera exactly to his or her tastes and preferences. I never felt in control of the E-M5. I always feel in control of the E-M1. Big difference there.

• Awesome image stabilization. I have the GX7 here as well, and while the GX7 is competitive in many respects, where the IS of the two cameras is concerned it's like a footrace between Usain B. and Drunk Uncle.

• The viewfinder is excellent. No, it's not as good a view as a large glass pentaprism viewfinder. But it's the first EVF I actually like looking at the world through.

• Finally, there's this: lenses, lenses, and more lenses. I'm always saying that Micro 4/3 is the mirrorless system for lens nuts, such as moi. It's just fun, is all—there are so many tasty options, so many fine and fun alternatives, that you can just have a blast with them. The E-M1 takes all that and then adds in all the old 4/3 lenses. Well, that's like giving another turkey drumstick to Henry VIII. Fill that goblet to overflowing.

I could quibble. I don't like the positioning of the on-off switch or the review button. How picky is it reasonable to be? Oh, and by the way: the E-M1 is NOT too expensive. On the contrary, you should feel grateful they put as much expensive goodness into this camera's build as they did. It's great that they put so much money into this. You can tell.

But forget all the above: the main, overriding gestalt of the E-M1 is how complete it is. It does everything right and nothing wrong. The best thing about it is how solid it is, how well it falls to hand, how well everything works, and how well it all works together.

Is it better than any other camera? Of course not; cameras are a matter of taste. Does it warrant upgrading from the E-M5? Probably not; depends how well you get along with the E-M5. Best image quality? No, just really good, and good enough. I think it does have the best IBIS, and might have the best EVF, and it's possible it has the best ergonomics. It's not the best toy, though, so if playing with gee-whizzery is your thing (not that there's anything wrong with that) then this one probably won't distract you for very long.

And recall that I'm not big on video.

So if you just want to take pictures....

I'm sorry, but our hands are tied. Gotta do what we gotta do. This was a great year for cameras, and there are a lot of fine choices out there. However, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 ticks every box and raises Micro 4/3's whole game. Acclaim and applause: it's the Camera of 2013.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Morgan: "It's interesting you mention all of the lens options with Micro 4/3. One of the things that keeps me from considering Micro 4/3 is the wide-angle lens choice below 24mm. The Panasonic 7–14mm has the purple blob issue, the Olympus 9–18mm is completely uninteresting, and there are no rectilinear primes below 24mm. This is one area Fuji seems to have Micro 4/3 beat and may eventually get me away from using a DSLR."

Mike replies: You make a very good point, one I'm always trying to remind people of: evaluate the lenses in any system first, and evaluate only the lenses that exist, not lenses you have to wait for. It's a personal matter, so you're very right to evaluate it for yourself. It's really the first step in considering any camera: can I get the lenses I need for my own uses? Just because I might like Micro 4/3 and 4/3 lens choices doesn't necessarily mean you will.

Amin Sabet: "Really well said, Mike. I feel as you do about all the nominees. I'd add this about the Sony A7 and A7r: As bodies, they are relatively unrefined compared to the E-M1. For example, the shutter release button placement is awkward, and of course there's no image stabilization. What the A7 and A7r give you, however, is the ability to have fun with a virtually limitless number of adapted manual focus lenses. For example, there is now a run on Leica R and Canon FD L glass like never before. That plus the fact that the new Sony FE 35mm ƒ/2.8 and 55mm ƒ/1.8 are both really excellent."

Speed: "An embarrassment of riches."

Oskar Ojala (partial comment): "Simply put, it's a user's camera: just works in the field, takes great pictures, but won't be the best in a spec sheet comparison. I hope that cameras like this would be the norm."

Dave Karp: "My wife and I went to Samy's Saturday. I thought we would probably come home with a Pentax K-3 or a Panasonic GX7. We came home with an Olympus E-M1 and 17mm ƒ/1.8. It just feels right. The electronic viewfinder is delightful. When we got home I pulled out my Dad's beloved Pentax MX and put it on the table next to the E-M1. They are nearly the same size. The E-M1 is lighter. The grip on the Olympus makes it easier to hold. This is the digital camera I have been waiting for."

Jim: "I would probably agree that the E-M1 is the better camera...but I love the jewel-like feel of the Panasonic GX7. It is Leica-like, as you say. I took a quick trip to Rome with the GX7 and the new, tiny 12–32mm from the GM1...perfect combo. Here are some of the results."

Photo by Jim Tardio using the GX7 and Panasonic 12–32mm pancake zoom lens

Mike replies: Jim, that second picture at your link has some serious distortion on the right-hand side, and the colors look off. I admire the flashy way those Italians dress, though.

Open Mike: Monday Morning Quarterback...LAST Monday (OT)

You remember my football picture:

For those of you who weren't in on the joke at the time, the Green Bay Packers' colors are green and gold, the Chicago Bears' colors are blue and orange.

The caption when I first posted this was "Coming Dec. 29th." The date of the second Bears-Packers conference meeting for 2013. For the first time since I moved back to Wisconsin, I was rooting for the Bears against the Packers yesterday.

I think Bears fans might want me to stop doing that.

I couldn't have foreseen how dramatic the teams' second meeting would be. By virtue of a tie with the Vikings many games ago, the Packers could knock the Bears out of the Division title with a win yesterday. By virtue of the fact that the NFC North leaders have the worst records of any Division champs, the losing team would go home.

It was winner take all.

So here's what I wrote to both a couple of Packer-fan friends and a couple of Bear-fan friends last Monday:

Here's what SHOULD happen: AR [Aaron Rodgers, Packers quarterback] should not play, and the Packers should lose to the Bears. AR can have a solid offseason to recover. Then, with a rested and rarin' to go quarterback and running back in the prime of their respective careers, and defensive draft picks in the offseason, Green Bay will tear up the League next year and win another Super Bowl. And this year, Chicago will go on to at least the NFC Championship game.

Here's what WILL happen: The Packers will beat the Bears with or without AR. The reason is that Green Bay always breaks Chicago's hearts, and what better way to break their hearts than to knock them out of first place AND the playoffs at the same time, in a game which will most likely remain meaningless for the Pack either way? It's karma; it's destiny; it has to happen. Packers 21, Bears 20. The Packers will take the lead for the first time in the last 40 seconds, just to grind it in.

And here's what did happen. Aaron Rodgers, knocked out for half the season by the Bears in week 9, did come back. At the end of the game, the Bears were leading by the ominous-looking (to Packers fans) score of 28-27. The Packers, making one last desperate drive for a possible field goal to eke out a win, were being pretty well stopped: they had already survived one fourth down and had fourth and eight near mid-field with 38 second left to play—for you European readers, that means they have one chance to make at least eight yards or they lose the ball—and Aaron Rodgers threw a giant arcing touchdown to Randall Cobb (also newly returned from a broken leg). Packers 33, Bears 28.

I was two seconds off.

Well, and had a few details wrong. But still, that's the spookiest football prediction I've ever made.

Aaron Rodgers unloads the game-winning pass.
Photo by Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

I thought the Bears would have gone further in the playoffs.

If San Francisco thrashes the tar out of the Green Bay defense next weekend it will be hollow consolation to all my Bear-fan friends, who know that the Upper Midwest's very own private Super Bowl took place yesterday...and those @!#%! Packers did it to them again.

But for Bears fans smarting over that weird fumble-recovery touchdown: notice in the replay that #50, Bears linebacker James Anderson, got to the live ball first. If he had scooped it up and run with it, that whacky TD might have gone the other way. It was really his assumption that the play was dead that made that play unfold the way it did.

I actually don't know how to feel about this. I feel elated...and I feel stunned. I've lived in Milwaukee, and I've lived in Chicago. I love the Bears, and I love the Packers. I have Bears-fan friends and Packers-fan friends. I even live between Green Bay and Chicago, more or less. By all rights, Sunday's game should have made my head explode....

But what a game.

Mike

"Open Mike," a day late this week, is the off-topic editorial page of TOP.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Haines: "As you say, what a game! Glad for the Pack and especially for Rodgers, who after having his collarbone broken by the Bears Shea McClellin in game 9 that sidelined him for the remainder of the season, until last night when he rendered his own kind of poetic justice. I too had mixed feelings about the game. My wife is from Chicago (we live in NY) but I've always liked the Packers, at least partly because they are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States. Chicago has the loop, the second tallest building in the world, the Art Institute, and so much more. Green Bay has meatpacking plants and the Packers. What else do they have to cheer for up there in the frozen tundra?"

Mike replies: Well, the Packers are really the team for all of Wisconsin...which has approximately the same number of people as the city of Chicago and environs. And the tundra here where I live is pretty well frozen today, lemme tell ya.

Al Benas: "Wow; talk about weird coincidences. I graduated from Virginia Tech—founded in 1872—which only gained initial national recognition when Michael Vick played there. I always root for pro teams with Tech alumni (Carroll Dale played for the Packers in the first Super Bowl). So now Tech alum James Anderson (Bears) watched as Tech alum Jarrett Boykin (Packers) picked up the fumble and scored. Somebody wasn't listening to Coach Beamer's fumble recovery lecture. Bittersweet day  :-(  ."

Great Cameras of 2013 Part V: Sigma, Samsung, Lomography, Chamonix, and Phase One

The Chamonix 045F1, new for 2013.

Here we wrap up our survey of the cameras of 2013.

Sigma: It's rather odd that perhaps the best sensors for pure image quality, amateur division, are to be found in a quirky and obscure line of cameras from a lens manufacturer. But there it is. Sigma's only new camera introduced this year cements its plan to "fix" the fixed lens problem with the little DP[x] Merrills in the same way that Rollei once did with its TLRs: need a different lens? Buy a whole new camera. The series now has a moderate wide angle (the DP1), a normal (DP2), and with this year's DP3, a short tele. It's a nice simple solution, maybe most especially so if you need only one.

A DP with a different focal length lens naturally does not vault to the head of the crop as the year's standout. Should you want to marvel over image quality in every shot, however, the Sigma Merrill cameras are for you.

Samsung: This year Samsung brought us—well, brought somebody—the Galaxy NX, the world's first camera to feature the Android OS natively. Which might be cool, but I don't know what "Android" is. Although I know what an android is. A body's gotta be born somewhere on this blue teardrop and can only speak but so many languages, and I apparently don't speak Android. You may think this unfair, but then, if you're a diehard Samsung camera partisan you are a) not coming here primarily to feed your brand passion, and b) most likely lonely.

Lomography: I already covered the Lomography Konstruktor in the kickoff post of this series, where I called it "geek times three...it's a film camera, a toy camera, and a plastic model kit. Like a hat trick of regression and geeky goodness." Which means, of course, that we love it. And if I had more time and more space, I would buy one and spread the parts all over the top of a table and leave them there for two years, you bet I would.

Chamonix (the "-ix" is pronounced "ee"): New for 2013 is the beautiful 045F1, which starts with the 045N2 and adds base and asymmetrical tilts at the rear standard. I'd explain that, but if you care at all, you already know. If you're interested in this camera, don't forget that the world's most perfect lens is a great match for it.

Phase One: Finally, if you were wondering at that brief clause "amateur division" at the beginning of this post, here's why. The best sensors from you can buy, professional division, are the Phase One IQ2 series of backs, new for 2013. There are three, topping out at 80 megapixels, which, you might recall, is approximately the number of megapixels Ctein once calculated that current lenses can actually use. There is even (sob!) an IQ260 Achromatic (black and white) 60-MP back that you (quaintly) control with optical filters. I will be getting one of these just after I finally acquire my Feadship yacht and convince Gwyneth Paltrow to start living for giving me backrubs. (The IQ2 backs start at $40k.) Back here in reality, I must reluctantly admit that camera equipment more expensive than sporty German automobiles barely twerks my radar screen...or rather, it glows ever so faintly on the screen and I go outside with the binocs for a wistful visual as it passes in the distance.

Nominees from this group: sadly, none, although we find most of them delightful in their multitudinous ways.

Coming soon (of course): Our winner. New Year's Day. Place your bets.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bob Smith: "I got a Chamonix 045F1 in November. It is a stunning looking and finely crafted camera. One of my avocations is building and finishing 18th C. furniture by hand so I'm sure of my statement when I say the fit and finish on this camera are excellent. It is a bargain at the current list price."

Gerry: "I think the most significant innovation of 2013 was Sony's decision to offer a programming interface (API) for their cameras, thereby allowing third-party software developers to develop their own applications that communicate with the camera. This is far more powerful than Sony merely releasing their own application for controlling their cameras from a phone or tablet. It means that Sony is allowing third-party developers to make the camera do things beyond what Sony itself has imagined. The A7 and A7R are on the list of cameras that initially support this, and I think that makes them good candidates for the TOP Camera of the Year Award.

"However, if the award has to be for features that are within the camera itself, I think the award should go to the Panasonic GX7 for the configurability of its buttons and touchscreen focus point selection.

"I've found that the best antidote to all 'Camera of the Year' awards is to go back and read a review of the camera you already have. I read one for my camera the other day. If I didn't already own one, I'd want to rush out and buy one. It has been said that there's nothing more subversive than an old newspaper and perhaps nothing can better subvert consumerism than a glowing review of a discontinued product."

expiring_frog (partial comment): "By the metric of programmability, the Galaxy NX and cousins are so far ahead of the pack it's not funny. You can (at least theoretically) reprogram pretty much anything about it, and not just to remap a few buttons or control it remotely. The kernel is open source and as far as I know Samsung plans to or has already made the camera API available. The last sentence of Gerry's comment applies far more to the NX than to the Sonys. (No, I don't own Samsung stock and have no interest in buying their cameras :-) . It just seems people don't really get the potential of the NX, or how much customizable, extensible software can transform how you capture photos. For comparison, see what folks have done with their iPhones (even when considered purely as a communication device) since Apple opened up the API. To me it's infinitely more interesting than just putting a larger sensor in a mirrorless camera."

Great Cameras of 2013 Part IV: Leica and Sony

The Sony RX10 with its lens extended. This would earn most interesting new camera of the year, if that were the contest.

I should point out again that we're nominating "Cameras of the Year" (CoY) for 2013, not "the best cameras available" in 2013. To be considered, something needs to be mostly new for 2013 or utilize significant new technology. It needs to embody what was happening this year.

"Significance" in new technology is a tough call to make, though, since significance is usually only apparent in retrospect. (For example, I'm pretty sure I once predicted that all sensors would be Foveon-type sensors by 2013.) This year, Canon's Dual-Pixel Autofocus in the 70D and Pentax's on-demand anti-aliasing filter in the K-3 seem to be significant technologies—but are they significant enough to warrant the cameras they first appeared in to be CoY? Was the first camera that had in-body image stabilization (IBIS) the camera of the year for that year in your judgement? I don't know, I'm asking.

On the other side of the argument, I think the original Canon D30 (remembered as the first affordable digital camera to rival film) was the Camera of the Year in 2000 and the first Digital Rebel (remembered as the Model T of DSLRs) was the Camera of the Year for 2003.

(It might be more meaningful to pick the CoY of ten years ago and do that every year. In the '70s I wrote a piece opining that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ought to give Oscars every year for the movies of ten years prior. The problem with this conception is that although the Academy's objectivity and judgement would be greatly improved thereby*, our interest in the outcome would be just as greatly diminished. So it goes.)

-

Leica: Leica introduced the X Vario this year, a handsome and well-designed APS-C mirrorless camera with a fixed, slowish 28–70mm-e zoom lens and no viewfinder. But at $2,850 it is aimed at the most price-insensitive segment of the market. For everyone else, it doesn't compete with its putative competitors. For C0Y, a bit of a non-starter.

Sony: We're in the middle of a sort of Sony Renaissance. Canikon have the camera market sewn up insofar as anyone does, but Sony is the one company that both wants to elbow its way into that club and also thinks it can. Because innovation rather than a more staid approach is about the only feasible inroad, Sony has been very bold and creative with new ideas.

Accordingly, some of the most interesting cameras and camera ideas of recent years have come from Sony. The "SLT" cameras in 2010, the NEX-7 in 2011, and the A99, RX100, and RX1 last year.

2013 continues the trend. No fewer than three of Sony's top enthusiast options have received useful updatings in 2013, in the form of the APS-C mirrorless NEX-5T; the RX1R, which is Sony's tiny full-frame, fixed-lens camera without an anti-aliasing filter; and the RX100 II, an upgrade of what we consider to be the leading small pocket digicam for...well, everyone.

On the innovation front, there are the super-low-cost A3000, which has lots of limitations but an extraordinarily low price (not linked because we don't recommend it), and the odd-duck QX cameras, which are essentially lens-sensor modules meant to marry with smartphones. (I wouldn't know from those. My smartphone is only useful as a texting walkie-talkie with my offspring, as the world's most expensive Angry Birds console, for giving me driving directions out loud (very useful, I must admit), and for telling me jokes. Apropos Ctein's column yesterday, courtesy of Siri: "The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar. It was tense.")

The A7 and A7r—ostensibly the interchangeable-lens versions of the RX1, but in reality all-new mirrorless full-frame cameras, one with and one without anti-aliasing filters—are shoo-in nominations for CoY if anything out there can be.

But perhaps the most interesting camera of this year from Sony is the RX10. Almost entirely invivible in the alphabet soup of camera designations, and mystifying to John Q. Public in terms of its species, it is a very small but very complete premium camera with a fixed Zeiss zoom lens. The lens has an equivalent focal-length range of 24–200mm (limited by bridge camera standards, vast by enthusiast camera standards) and a constant ƒ/2.8 aperture. Finally the camera has a 1-inch (<9x14mm) sensor. Conceptually all this makes it a rather intense hybrid—a fixed lens but a very good and capable one; a much-larger-than-tiny but smaller than Micro 4/3 sensor; and a very capable but very small body with a traditional SLR-type form.

Weird. And yet you might well be looking at the future. Many have said that full frame (24x36mm) is taking over (2012 was the Year of FF, no question), but I think the opposite: Micro 4/3 is almost too big for most people and most uses. FF will die out, I think, except as the "medium format" for professionals, and the public will end up with smaller-than-APS-C sensors in the cameras it uses almost exclusively for video and stills in electronic display formats. I just really hope that the eventual standard will be something as large as 1-inch.

Be that as it may...Sony's nominations for CoY are the RX10, the A7, and the A7r.

Mike

*Rocky had just won best picture, which at the time I thought was...let me be diplomatic...not the right choice.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Steve Greenwood: "Currently in San Francisco with a Sony A7 and the 35mm ƒ/2.8 from Lens Rentals—goes back in a couple of days. Won't really know about overall quality until after some serious time with the iMac and the 13x19" Epson at home, so I'll confine myself to first impressions in the hand and carried on the shoulder. Which are very positive. In size it's about the same as my Panny G3, and carried on a shoulder strap it's about the same—easy to forget it's there. Impressive for full frame. Viewfinder is excellent and completely usable for this eyeglass wearer. Controls are good and fall readily to my fingers. The Zeiss looks to be a little gem; I like the way it is essentially self-hooding. I debated whether to rent this or the RX10 for this trip. I will rent the RX10 before making a purchase. But the bottom line is that for me, all the possibilities are Sonys."

Speed: "The death of dedicated cameras in favor of phones has been forecast for several years. Hasn't happened so far. Instead we're getting more choices, many not from Canon or Nikon. Good for us. I hope that the CoY choice is even more difficult and controversial next year. And the next."

Bill OBrien: "My comment about the Sony A3000: cameras take pictures plus lots of other things. If you are only interested in taking pictures, the 'lots of other things' just get in the way. The A3000 is a very good camera; the lens it comes with is really good. Resolution of the lens and sensor are close to some other very expensive cameras. My point: When you say '(not linked because we don't recommend it)' it leaves the impression you know something 'not good' about the camera but are not going to explain. Have you used one? Do you know any one who has used one?"

Mike replies: No, I've not even seen one, but yes, a "trusted friend of the site," Kirk Tuck, has used one and gave it a negative review. I'm not saying Kirk is infallible in his every opinion (I don't think he'd say so either), but I do think the A3000 has a bit of a "Yugo Problem." The Yugo Problem, first discovered by Henry Ford (although not by that name of course), is that very cheap new products have to compete with the used market. Either a) better products available used for the same price as the new product, or b) products of the same quality available used for even less. I'm not willing to say the A3000 is a bad camera, or that some buyers might not enjoy and appreciate it, but I don't think it's a good idea for us to recommend it.

What is Time? (OT)

The annual "X" column by Ctein

Seasonal greetings to you all. As is my tradition, my X-mas present to you is another "X" column that addresses one of the mysteries and wonders of the physical universe.

This time I'm going to take on the preeminent culture war of modern physics. No, not string theory—although all the spleen that's being spewed about over that topic does have a certain entertainment value. We even have a famous physicist raging that it has ruined an entire generation of scientists. Really, dude? I haven't read such pointlessly fiery rhetoric since the debates of the mid-1800s. I'm staying away from that one.

The question that splits the community and interests me is considerably more subtle and profound. I can state it in five words:

Is time a "process" or "content?"

I'll spend the rest of this column explaining just what the hell that sentence means.

The thing is, while we all experience time, we don't actually understand what we're experiencing. There is no physics, no experiment that really addresses this. We can measure time. Well, actually, spans of time...but we don't know what we're measuring them in.

The common idea is that time is content, a real, physical thing. That's embodied in a lot of the way we talk about time. Einstein brought us the concept of space-time, which no one really disputes (at least, no one who should be taken seriously), conceptualizing it as another dimension, the so-called "fourth dimension." Bodies move not just through the three spatial dimensions but the fourth time dimension as well. A standard way of visualizing this is a "world line." Think of a planet in a circular orbit about a star, viz. figure 1. The star's at the center, and the planet goes round and round. But in this flatland world, if you draw in the "third dimension" of time, as in figure 2, you can describe that same path as a spiral, where the planet moves ever forward in time, around the star.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

The concept of time as a real physicality is embodied in a lot of real physics and, more fancifully, the whole idea of time machines and traveling through time.

So, why don't we just accept this notion of time? It lets us make excellent physical predictions about the world, and, as I often say, data trumps theory. When the data seems to say that's the way it is, why even consider that it might not be?

Because there's one big problem with this notion of time as content. We can't observe the content! So far it has proven utterly impossible to experience any point in time except the present. We cannot move freely in time, like we can in the three spatial dimensions. Every attempt to come up with a real physical model that results in "travel through time" fails. It doesn't matter whether it's forward or backwards. We are stuck in time, moving forward at the rate of one second per second.

Now, the fact that every time machine theory has been disproven (or is, at least, unverified), so far, doesn't make it impossible. Some of them have come close. But that doesn't actually prove anything. The folks who designed perpetual motion machines came close. That doesn't mean that they are actually possible (hint: they're not). Close-but-no-cigar still means no cigar. So far, so far as we can tell, time travel is not possible. But we can't prove that.

(I should mention at this point that the kind of time travel that comes up in relativistic time dilation is a peculiar special case. It really involves the transformation of coordinates, it is not a free motion through time as a physical entity. It doesn't come into play in this debate, and I won't be discussing it further.)

And that's why there's a really, really big problem with the idea of time as content, because we have absolutely no idea, no physical model that can explain why we can't access other parts of the content than "now." The simplest and most satisfying explanation for that is that the reason we can't is because they aren't there. There are no other parts to time than now. Time is a process, the evolution of the universe second by second. It's a little like the universe is a great big grandfather clock, and the pendulum swings and the gears go tick tick tick, marking the passage of time. But that's just what the clock does; the clock is not time.

Much of modern physics incorporates this notion of time, too. A lot of quantum mechanics doesn't include time explicitly—it's something you apply to see how a wave state changes. Time is that second-by-second progression of physicality. there isn't really anything before now or after now. It is entirely now.

So, why is the debate so hot and heavy and laden with florid rhetoric. Because, not to put a fine point on it, this is philosophy, not really physics. Not yet. Both perspectives are equally attractive (or unattractive); the appeal of one or the other defaults back to an unstated sense of what "obviously makes sense" about the nature of reality. Once you buy into the axiom, the rest follows logically. But you have to buy into the axiom, and if two different philosophers buy into two different axioms, well, then there's no meeting of minds.

It is a wonderful puzzle and a profound question: What is the nature of time? Everyone's got an opinion, and none of us really have a clue.

Ctein

Physicist Ctein dabbles in photography and/or photographer Ctein dabbles in physics. We are not quite sure which is the correct philosophical model; but it's always fun to go with the flow column (tick) by column (tock).

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Erik Petersson: "This is an old problem. In the fifth century Augustine of Hippo said: 'For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even the past now is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then, time present—if it be time—only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be—namely, so that we cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be?'"

Invisible Post (OT)

Those of you who don't like my other enthusiasm can pretend this post isn't here. For those who do, this is a great match if you haven't seen it—Johnny Archer vs. England's Karl Boyes in the 2010 Mosconi Cup. Short (race to 6) but exciting, with some great shotmaking and lots o' dramatic tension.

Mike the Beginner

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

This Year, Australian (And, We're Back!)

Well, I hope you had or are having a nice seasonal celebration, if you have one. Our family had a very nice Christmas, celebrated in what has become our usual way—a traditional Polish Wigilia on Christmas Eve, ably hosted by my sister-in-law's brother, Ed Noyszewski, and his wife Mary—Wesołych Świąt!—and then a family-traditional internationally-themed dinner on Christmas day hosted by my brother and sister-in-law.

They are good enough cooks that their adventures in cooking are not only edible year after year, but delicious. This year the theme was Australian, so dinner consisted of, among other things, pumpkin soup (outstanding), a fish and lobster-claw appetizer, and kangaroo (what else?). You Ozzies out there might think kangaroo common, but it's exotic in the suburbs of Chicago. It's the only time I've ever tasted it (and the first time I've had red meat in almost three months). Strong but tasty. Dinner was topped off by a dessert concoction that would be better described as "out of this world" than Australian—it was called—it was called (brain struggles with proper-noun-aphasia...)—a "Pavlova," I think, after the famous dancer. I have no idea how common a dish that is in Australia, but I put forward a motion (that was seconded, and carried) that we make it a traditional dessert of ours. Yum.

We suspended our gift exchange a few years ago—there's only one child in the extended family at the moment, who is showered with plenty of gifts—so I took an amount of money and divided it between three charities. This year it was St. Joseph's Medical Clinic, a free clinic for the uninsured and underinsured in my hometown; the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in support of the Lakota kids, which I started helping to support on the recommendation of photographer Aaron Huey*; and the Philippine Red Cross, for Typhoon Haiyan relief. It's a great privilege to be able to give.

('Tis good to remember that the original Santa Claus, Nikolaos of Myra, a half-historial, half-mythical Greek bishop around whom are gathered many stories of gift-giving, gave to the poor and the needy. Sometimes it's good to give yourself a present too, though.)

After dinner we had a Bible reading by my nephew David, who recently converted to Mormonism, and a reading of fun facts about Australia collected by my neice Mari, who is thinking of becoming a teacher. Very interesting—lots that I did not know about our neighbors Down Under.

Ed and Mary are good friends, and it's always nice to stay over with them—this year we solved the world's problems until 3 a.m., which is always fun (Ed works as a night-shift nurse, so he was just getting into his usual day when I finally faded).

But talk about aphasia...I left my camera at their house, which is why this post doesn't include a photo. That's not middle age, however. I've been leaving cameras hither and yon all my life, starting with my first serious camera which I lost at age 14. I haven't lost more than that first one, but I misplace them often enough that I have anxiety dreams about it. Too bad there's not an app for that.

More later today—

Mike
(Illustration by Elisabeth Ivanovsky)

*Be a bit careful, though, because they sell your name and address. Although the Red Cloud School is bona fide and does good work, some of the "Indian Relief" organizations are faux-charities that donate very little to native Americans and keep most of the donations—93%, in the case of one I researched—for "administration." Just sayin'.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Peter Gilbert: "I'm an Aussie from Melbourne. Aussies, not Ozzies. Crayfish, not lobster. Kangaroo would be 5% or less of the meat department at the supermarket and rarely seen in a butcher shop. Glad to hear you liked the pav, they are pretty good.  :-) "

Pritnam Singh: "The nationality of the creator of the Pavlova dessert has been a simmering controversy between Australia and New Zealand since forever. I'd be loath to allow the credit for it to be handed to the Ozzies so facilely. If anything, it weighs in favour of the Kiwis so far as I know. In any event, it is an enduring controversy with a mostly good-natured tug-of-war between the two countries and a far less robust one than, say, rugby or cricket."

Mike replies: Not Ozzies, Aussies.

Peter: "Don't let anyone from New Zealand try to tell you pavlova was invented there. They do this all the time."

Merry Christmas

The view from TOP World Headquarters at sunset last night. Taken about twelve feet away from where I sit at my computer to write.

So I stepped outside to get the mail. As soon as I saw the empty mailbox, I realized I'd already gotten the mail. It came back to me what was in it. As I was thinking what an idiot I am (I'm not, just a little forgetful)—I looked up and saw the sun setting. Hmm, I thought, that's kinda pretty. So I went inside to get the camera. But the D800 had no card it in. Told myself again I'm an idiot—I try to be in the habit of leaving clean cards in all my cameras at all times. So I went to get the E-M1, which is next to the computer because I've been writing about it. But a new email had come in. It was from Ctein, so I had to take a quick glance at that. I began composing a reply, then came to and thought, sun's going down!

So I grabbed the camera and went to the front porch again. But now there was a pickup truck.

Now there's photography in a nutshell. Isn't there always a pickup truck?

The driver was in it. Could I ask him to move? No, because the sun had almost disappeared and I only had another minute or two. At least his headlights were on, which looked kinda nice.

I glanced down to check the settings on the still-unfamiliar camera. When I looked up again the pickup's headlights were off and the driver was getting out of it. Three exposures and the sun winks out.

The world always changes on you—often enough just after you know the picture is there and just before you get the picture. If I ever write a book of photo technique, which I never will, I think I should call it "Damn, Now There's A Pickup Truck."

Sometimes the arbitrary inclusions are helpful, though, and that's what you hope for.

•     •     •

As we do every year, we're about to wink out like the dipping sun, but just for a couple of days. We'll be back on Friday with a seasonal "X" column from Ctein, also an annual tradition.

Meanwhile, I've decided to go along with the conservatives and say "Merry Christmas" to everybody this year, which I've been cheerfully doing. My notion is that Merry Christmas has become as generic as "kleenex" for "tissue." Everyone knows what it means and I can't imagine anyone being offended. It's not like a secret code greeting between co-religionists with prejudice and intolerance implicit in it, subtly pressuring people of other faiths or no faith to conform. No. It simply means "goodwill to you, friend." Even Christmas-ignoring non-Christians understand that. We must resist the pressure to politicize everything.

Also as we do every year, we especially remember those who are sick or hurting, or unemployed or in distress, or dealing with addiction, or facing challenges new or old. We remember those who are lonely at this time of year, perhaps discouraged as they recall happier holidays with loved ones in some manner now departed. We remember you, and have you in our thoughts. If you feel you're among those to whom this holiday is in part a trial, try to find someone who has it worse than you do, and do what you might to raise their spirits. It will make you feel better too.

Merry Christmas to you, and Merry Christmas to all—in goodwill and friendship.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Anders: "I also found a pickup truck on Christmas Eve:

"Every day is like Christmas for TOP readers."

The Essential Accessory

Written by John Kennerdell

Some years back I mentioned to Oren that I was buying a car.

"Ah," he said, "the ultimate photographic accessory."

It's an appealing image, cruising the highway like Robert Frank or Lee Friedlander, skidding to a halt at every photo op and then jumping out with cameras blazing. It just doesn't work for me. Once behind the wheel, I seem to fixate on driving, not shooting. Seriously, I can’t even do it on a bicycle. Walking pace seems to be the fastest I can move and still see and take decent photos.

So what is my essential accessory? Camera bags, then? Like everyone else I own dozens. Some even get used, mainly to transport gear. But I've never enjoyed working out of a bag and have come to avoid the kind of photography that demands it (which is generally, and unfortunately, the paying kind). One small body with lens in the hand, some extra batteries and memory cards in a pocket—now there's photographic paradise.

How about a good pair of shoes? That was the top tip when somebody recently asked the members of Magnum. Hard to argue with that, though to my mind proper shoes transcend photography. They're just a really good idea for any activity.

No, I think I have my answer, though it might not resonate with you unless you live somewhere like Glasgow or Seattle or Southeast Asia. For me, the key companion to a camera is...an umbrella.

Rue de Paris, temps de pluie, by Gustave Caillebotte, 1877. A hundred years later and I'm confident that the fellow crossing the street in the middle of the frame would have a camera around his neck.

Yes, I belong to that tribe of photographers who like to go looking for good light as near as possible to bad weather. (Make no mistake, there are plenty of us. As Carl Weese put it once here: "We've had terrible weather all week—clear bright sunlight, blue skies, puffy white clouds.") My perfect day is roiling dark clouds and strange shifting light, with little or no actual sun. While such days almost always bring some rain, it's seldom constant or heavy enough to tempt me into rainwear. It's sufficiently hot and humid here in the tropics without encasing yourself in plastic. And raincoats of course don't do much to protect your camera or, no matter how weatherproof it might be, keep water off its lens.

But the humble umbrella gets it just right: a marvel of lightweight construction perfectly designed to keep both your upper body and camera dry, even if doesn't do such a good job for the rest of you. I admit it, I am a man of slightly soggy trousers.

For all the umbrella's usefulness when deployed, it does even more when at rest. A neatly furled umbrella projects style, confidence, and quiet authority. Or perhaps it's just that it makes its owner look a bit quaint and harmless. All I know is that people seem to relax a little when I carry my umbrella. Maybe they think I'm a lost Englishman and feel sorry for me.

An umbrella can provide support, quite literally. These days I shoot mostly from the waist. Plant an umbrella firmly into the ground and that's exactly the level of the top of the handle. It's probably not as steady as a real monopod but sometimes it's just the ticket, never mind the entertainment value this technique might have for your subjects. Some photographers have actually attached camera mounts to their umbrella handles, though that may be taking it too far. Our role model here is the Parisian flaneur, not MacGyver.

Rainy season, Phnom Penh. Come to my part of the world any time from around July to October and you'll soon be enjoying some
quality time with your umbrella.

Then, even for the most peace-loving among us, there is the umbrella as weapon. My fine English "solid stick" model has proven an effective deterrent to aggressive dogs, thieving monkeys, and, once, an angry goose rapidly inbound toward a delicate part of my body. Do not underestimate the territorial instincts of large domestic fowl, nor the self-defense value of a stout umbrella*.

We also shouldn't forget the more conventional uses of the umbrella in photography. I have one covered in bleached linen, bought in Tokyo, which functions nicely as either impromptu reflector or scrim. More than once I've shot a flash through it too, easy enough to do even with one hand. And yes, you can buy silvery rain umbrellas which I suppose could be rigged up as flash reflectors, though again that may be going a little over the top. A certain dignity is expected of a man with an umbrella, and fussing with bungee cords is no way to achieve it.

And finally, when we get old and creaky, a prospect that no longer feels entirely theoretical to me, an umbrella can of course double as a walking stick. Well, at least until it starts to rain.

So there it is, my unlikely but essential photo accessory. What's yours?

John

*The Japanese even have a martial art based around it: kasa-do ("the way of the umbrella"). If that's not enough for you, there are also umbrellas with knives or even swords hidden in the handle, though I certainly do not condone those. Should you insist on a concealed feature, I suggest the splendid Malacca Cane Flask Umbrella by Brigg, preferably filled with a tot of Talisker 18 Year Old.

John Kennerdell is a writer and photographer based in Southeast Asia. He tries to keep it mostly real at indochina-photoelectric.com, and maybe a little less so at 500px.com/indochinaphotoelectric. You can see more of his writings for TOP under his Category in the right-hand sidebar.

©2013 by John Kennerdell, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Benjamin Marks: "Ah. I am the choir to whom you are preaching. But, I am afraid after extolling its virtues, you are going to have to provide some brand plugs! I have gone through a seemingly endless series of umbrellas over the past 15 years. The only one even remotely robust enough was a no-name umbrella purchased in London that actually made it several of those aforementioned years before being lost by some wretch (me). Like a good kitchen knife, I would gladly pay four times the going rate for a bumbershoot that was robustly made. So give it up! What is the Leica of anti-rain gear, and where can I find one?"

bongo: "So how do you hold an umbrella and shoot with a camera at the same time? Any advice on technique would be appreciated."

Dave Levingston replies to bongo: "I first used an umbrella while shooting high school football games in the rain many, many years ago. The umbrella simply sits on the top of your head. The shaft goes down in front of you and can be held with the left arm pressed against your chest and you can still steady the camera with your left hand. Not elegant, but it keeps the downpour off the camera and lens."

Richard Tugwell: "I'm not so keen on the brolly as an accessory, but a quick scan of my Lightroom catalogue reveals 374 images tagged in some way with 'umbrella.' Obviously I appreciate it as a motif (or it rains a lot here)."

It's Good to Look at Pictures

I did get to spend about five hours yesterday working on picture selections for our first book. (Despite being distracted. We're having some family drama.)

I'm always surprised by how easy it is to imagine editing photographs, and how different it is to actually do it. This has been consistently surprising, if such a thing is possible. To edit you have to actually do it, and to do it you need to actually look at photographs, let your visual intelligence take over.

I should back up and explain that I'm editing pictures for a book we plan to publish next Spring. One first book, as an experiment—an experiment to see how things go. Hopefully more after that, but for now, this one. I made a call for work, and got more than 2,000 suggestions from readers.

My intention has been to simply put all of the "possibles" into a "bin," if you will, for winnowing later. It hasn't gone like that. What happens is that when I put a "possible" into the document and look at it and it just doesn't fit, I know pretty quickly that it doesn't belong and then there's no more need to leave it in. So a lot of pictures have gone into the bin and then come right back out again, hours or days later. The ones that stay are the must-haves, the ones I feel rock-solid about. And once you get a certain critical mass of those, then you've got a core that dictates what else goes and what doesn't go. It becomes a simpler matter: does this go with what you already have? Does it belong with the others?

The "rejects," of course, are rejects just for this project. Accordingly, some of the pictures I really like but won't be using are suggesting other projects to me! For example, this wonderful shot by Sergio Bartelsman:

Photograph by Sergio Bartelsman

That's a great shot, and in the right company it could really sing. It doesn't "fit" in this first book, but it got my mind churning about future projects where it might fit. "Anonymity," a book of unrecognizable/recognizable people? This photograph would never do for identification purposes, but I'll bet this fellow's friends would know it's him in an instant. A book about negative space, where something in each photograph is a shape of featureless or near-featureless black? The possibilities pile up. These are just examples, and this is just one picture—a number of other pictures are likewise suggesting their own possibilities. I don't want to give up too many ideas.

Another interesting thing is happening, something I'm very familiar with and always enjoy—some photographs that didn't grab me at first are showing "legs"—staying power—while others I liked at first aren't lasting. The way I've always edited my own work (when I'm working, which isn't often any more) is to take the best shots from a recent batch of shooting and put them all up on the wall. Then I just look at them for a few days. What happens is almost like a form of magic or alchemy. I'll start out with ten or twenty shots I feel are all approximately equivalent in quality. Then, after two or three days, I'll have a handful I like and a handful I don't. Then when five or six days have passed, there will be two or three shots that I just love (well, if I'm lucky there will be), and the rest I just don't need to see any more.

It's like they sort themselves. Some of my initial selects for the book have traveled the same arc.

I did make a rookie mistake that I take full responsibility for. I should never have given the words "quiet color" as a cue. When you make a call for pictures, naturally people want to give you what they think you want. I just got loads of pictures that in some way illustrated the concept of quietude—pictures of emptiness and desolation, unpeopled landscapes and featureless seascapes, minimalism, lots of pastels and washed-out color, lonely scenes, out-of-the-way details. That wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but then, I didn't make that very clear, did I? My bad, mine alone. All I was really after were pictures that use unexaggerated color...easy on the sliders, maybe I should have said.

It's just very difficult to find the right way to give a call for work with an enabling cue rather than a limiting one. Take a look at this page to get an idea of the kind of pictures that people think illustrate the word "quiet." Nothing wrong with any of it, except that a little goes kind of a long way for me.

I can promise that our next book—assuming the first one goes okay and there is a second one—will have a very robust cue, one that will be enabling but not limiting. (In fact, I can give you that cue right now, if you want to be thinking six or nine months into the future. It's this: birds. Do not send me anything now—really, don't—but I thought you might want to set it it percolating.)

Back to Quiet Color. We're aiming for 32 or 36 pictures—the book designer will tell me exactly how many we have room for when he does his first concepts, and he hasn't started on that yet. So far I have made about half of the final selections, and about two-thirds of those come from TOP readers one way or another. But I'm in the process of going through all the submissions again, and I'm about a third of the way through that.

My mood is good, though. What overrides everything else is that it's good to look at pictures—always perks me up.

Good day to you, too.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Updates and Demotions

I was going to take the entire day today to work on the Quiet Color book project, and I haven't even gotten to it yet.  :-(  Something's come up this morning, and it's always something. But a few minor blips:

• Don't forget today's the last day for the Brett Weston books. Here's the post about that, and here's the link to lodima.org.

• Based on readers' inputs, I think we should demote the Nikon 1 AW1 from the CoY nominees. Pretender, begone! I cannot swim a stroke, and would drown in the shower if I didn't pay attention. My personal experience with underwater photography is exactly zero. I admit I picture the AW1 being used by kids at the swimming pool and the beach, but then, I cannot fathom anyone wanting to be under more than six feet of water. (You see what I did there. Fathom. Six feet. And my son thinks my sense of humor is corny.)

Also, we might have to promote the GM1 based on reader input.

• Today is the most lightless day of the year in my hemisphere. Hallelujah! From now on, the days begin their slow lengthening toward those beautiful, light-filled summer days with their long, lovely twilights. Happy, hopeful Solstice to everyone.

As for "Quiet Color," it's still a go and it's still looking very good. I will work on it today....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JohnMFlores: "Thanks for demoting the Nikon AW1 and hopefully devaluing it in the marketplace; I'll be able to get one more cheaply now. It doesn't have the best IQ, but I deem it good enough for what I do. I value small and light and good tracking AF, and my latest story for RoadRUNNER magazine featured many photos taken with the AW1's older brother, the V1. My thoughts on using the V1 as my main camera are here. The AW1 will be a nice compliment and will fit in my bag quite nicely."

Mike replies: You're muddying the waters, John (see what I did there too?).

Seriously, though, beautiful article in RoadRUNNER. Nicely done.

Bryan Hansel: "I own a Nikon AW1 and am working on a review for a kayaking magazine that I write for. While, it isn't exactly what I'd like—what is?—it's a solid camera. The image quality seems good enough and the focus is blazing fast. There's not another camera on the market that's as waterproof and rugged as the AW1 with a similar image quality. When shooting from a sea kayak, it's great to be able to just stash it on the deck under the elastics and not worry about waves washing over it. We were kayaking the other day on Lake Superior in two- to three-foot waves, 10 knot winds, air temps in the high teens, and I came home with a few photos and the only reason I didn't get more is that my neoprene mittens froze so solid that I could do much other than hold the paddle. When we got to shore the camera still worked fine. There's not another camera on the market that can do that."

Great Cameras of 2013 Part III: Olympus and Panasonic

Well, this one is certainly going to be the easiest one of these posts to write: 2013 saw the introduction of two of the best Micro 4/3 cameras to date.

Olympus: Three cameras in particular are of interest from Olympus this year. The E-P5 is the current version of the Pen. It's a beautiful and capable camera that is also elegantly styled. If you're particular about your camera's looks and you don't need a built-in viewfinder, the E-P5 belongs on your short list. The Stylus 1, all-new this year, is the company's deluxe bridge camera—dpreview rightly points out that camera companies are (somewhat anxiously) working to figure out what regular people will buy when they want something more than the camera in their smartphones, and the Stylus 1 is Olympus's very slick attempt at an answer. But despite its handsome angular styling and well-specified  lens, the Stylus 1 would not be a camera to naturally tempt enthusiasts because of its 1/1.7" (i.e., <8x6mm) sensor.

No, the towering product intro from Olympus for this year for enthusiasts is without question the OM-D E-M1, an improved E-M5 made to a higher spec. I've been using an E-M1 and I have a lot of thoughts about it, which I'll defer to another time. But that it should be a strong nomination for CoY 2013 is beyond doubt.

Panasonic: Olympus's main partner in the Micro 4/3 consortium also introduced its best-ever camera this year.

But first we need to mention the wee little GM1 and the SLR-like G6. Both fine cameras. Good, now we've done that.

The Lumix GX7, recently field reviewed by Carl Weese in these pages, takes the GF1's somewhat up-and-down lineage to a whole new level. It is to today's digital cameras just about what Leica's M6 was to cameradom in 1984. Or close. (the Leica M, a replica in digital of the actual M6, is a whole different beast now, with a whole different meaning.) Of course the GX7 will not be anywhere near as iconic because its life will be so much shorter (out, out, brief candle!). But right now....

Another no-brainer nomination for CoY.

So the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the Panasonic GX7 get the invitation to our award show.

We're getting closer to the Big S.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

adamct: "Ooof! For what it's worth, I think the GM1 deserved more serious consideration than you gave it. On paper (or on a website) it is easy to dismiss out of hand as a possibly cute toy that is overshadowed by its larger, sexier, bristling-with-features big brother, the GX7. In the hand, it is a tiny, jaw-dropping jewel of a camera, very responsive, with picture quality the equal of its beefier sibling. It is a camera that makes you want to slip it into your pocket and go for a picture-taking walk. The thing is smaller than an LX7, fer cryin' out loud!!! Anyway, taste is personal, but if you get the chance to actually hold one yourself, you might find yourself surprised...."

JK: "One note about the GM1: just on a size/weight basis, it removes any excuse for Micro 4/3 users not to carry around a backup body at all times. If you'd pulled this thing out a few years ago you'd have had jaws dropping in disbelief. A few years before that and you would have been burned as a witch."

Great Cameras of 2013 Part II: Ricoh-Pentax and Nikon

[Ed. Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, as ever (the principle being that I tell you where I stand and then you can decide for yourself if I'm biased), I have to admit to some feelings about Ricoh-Pentax. I liked both constituent companies, pre-merger, but, as you might recall, Pentax was our lead advertiser for a few years. The basis for it was a handshake deal I had with the "old king," who was a very fine fellow and a very fine fellow was he. But when the old king was beheaded (um, figuratively speaking—sorry, Ned!) and a new head was crowned, they said, "You got a contract? No?" and traipsed off...owing me quite a pile of moolah. The company was unconcerned about this. It's a blip on the balance sheet for Ricoh-Pentax but a big deal for l'il ol' me, and I admit I'm kinda holding a grudge. Not because I intended to—I intended not to, actually—but because that feeling of resentment is still...well, there, smoldering with a tiny wisp of smoke.

You might want to take this minor departure from equanimity into account in your peregrinations around 'n' about TOP. —Mike the Ed.]

As you know we are currently surveying the year that's coming to an end looking for our "Camera of the Year 2013." That award comes with no grand cash prize and does not affect sales figures, confers no prestige and apparently goes unnoticed by whichever company wins it, and our readers are independent-minded and experienced mavens who go their own way regardless of what we say. But we do it anyway, because what the hell.

So to continue our survey of the landscape:

Ricoh-Pentax: The huge news from Ricoh in 2013—okay, the only news from Ricoh in 2013—was the new Ricoh GR. Although based on previous Roman-numeraled iterations of the basic body shape, tracing its roots back to a film version, the GR 2013-version has an APS-C sensor, a huge leap up from the "tiny" <8x6mm sensor in the GR IV.

Like the Leica of old—I mean back when it was just a camera company—Ricoh gets high marks as well as outsized mindshare from photographers. At least, those photographers who try its products. The GR is therefore a nominee for Camera of the Year.

On the Pentax side, there's yet another significant and thoughtful updating. The excellent 24-MP flagship K-3 builds on the K-5IIs / K-5II / K-5 / K-7 line. Which is a good thing, as we liked those cameras and especially their silent-ish shutters and sturdy and handy body styling.

Pentax's new (well...) camera design for this year is the MX-1, which uses some design cues from the old MX of sainted memory and is solidly parked in the "retro" camp that's allegedly been trending over the last three years or so. A digicam (née point-and-shoot) that is definitely not bad but also nothing extraordinary (although note the current very low price), the MX-1 stands no chance of winning overall and therefore gets shunned by the Academy.

Photographers love the little GR out of proportion to its market share.

So, a serious contender in the form of the Ricoh GR for Ricoh-Pentax. But remember that Pentax is the Subaru of camera brands, as one of our readers put it the other day, and we love Subarus.

Nikon: First, the Nikon Df is a shoo-in nominee. Needs no introduction further than this to our audience. The Df is a) proof that Nikon is listening, and b) an option—choice—for those who like old-fashioned-y knobs 'n' dials. Choice be good.

Seems like it's been a good year for Nikons. The D5300 is, as one reader pointed out the other day, better than almost any digital camera you could buy more than a handful of years ago; the D7100 is a mainstream 70D competitor and the beneficiary of long development; and we actually quite approve of the D610, a mistakes-were-made-but-we-admit-nothing course correction of the problem-plagued D600. What's wrong with fixing problems? Nothing as far as we're concerned. The D600 is a camera we really liked a lot, and if you like FF DSLRs with their excellent viewfinders then the D610 has got to be on your short list.

The fine little Coolpix A, a GR-fighter, is, at $300 more than the already expensive GR, priced out of the discussion, and has been since its introduction. You don't hear it talked about much. But we've also liked it since the beginning, so it snags a nod.

And the coolest Nikon of the year is the great-great-grand progeny of the once-famous Nikonos, and why O why they didn't call it a Nikonos is a missed marketing trick and a mystery. But the Nikon 1 AW1—a shock-proof, fully waterproof, and temperature-tolerant take-me-anywhere camera with interchangeable lenses—(although, granted, there are only two of them—where are we, Sony-land?)—definitely garners a nomination from us. Give it to the kids at the swimming pool and say "What, me worry?"

So, Nikon's got three nominees: The Df, the Coolpix A, and the Nikon 1 AW1. Fine and dandy.

We're up to five nominees now, with four companies considered. And the best is yet to come....

-

[Part I is here. To be continued....]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Edward Taylor: "'Give it to the kids' may be the best advice for the Nikon 1 AW1. I admire the concept, and I admire Nikon for actually building such a camera. So, I bought one as soon as it was available. I tried to like it. I am going to the islands with the family in a few weeks and really needed a better underwater camera. But, alas, I sent it back. The problem: image quality, or lack thereof. Maybe I just had a bad copy, but the images, with or without pixel peeping, seemed no more impressive than my various point-and-shoot, tiny-sensor underwater cameras. And, those cameras are smaller and more convenient. I don't know what they did to that 1" sensor, but it doesn't seem to measure up to the 1" sensor in my Sony RX100 II. So, I'd vote for it for idea of the year, but camera of the year?—No way!"

Giovanni: "With all due respect, I saw the Nikon Df up close, and my good ol' FM back home said: Well, I put on weight and waist size just as much as you did over the past 30 years, man. Yep, even Leica added a bit of weight around the waist since the good ol' M6, but it's invisible by comparison. I would have been tempted to give my Nikkor AI lenses some good mating opportunities, but it seems like they'll have to stick to the old lady, a bit frayed at the edges but as svelte as ever...."

Christmas Present for You

Time to take the pulse of the Commentariat.

Thought experiment: Let's say you come downstairs on Christmas morning to find a festively-wrapped box under your Christmas tree. The card says it's for you. (If you are Jewish or a Rationalist or for some other reason are not accustomed to receiving gifts at this time of year, you are very welcome to restructure this aspect of the thought experiment in a way that is most comfortable to you and most amenable to your own family's customs.)

The box contains a full-frame mirrorless camera, which you've been, er, pining for. In the box is EITHER a Leica M with a Leica APO-Summicron-M 50mm ƒ/2 ASPH lens, OR a Sony A7r with a Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm ƒ/1.8 ZA lens.

Of course, being a gift, you cannot return it or resell it (well, let's say you can't). Then again, you didn't have to pay for it. The point is that it costs you nothing and it doesn't matter what it's worth at resale. What matters is which you'd rather take pictures with and which you think would give you better pictures. (IOW, please don't argue with the thought experiment's premises. <—I know, hopeless request.)

Which one would you want to be in your box?

Mike
(Inspired by last night's MegaMillions lottery drawing)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Steve Snyder: "Sony A7R! Can't stand manual focus!"

Mike: "Leica. I want the real viewfinder."

Edward Taylor (partial comment): "It's easy—the Sony. Even in the 20th century, I never liked Leicas, not because they were Leicas but because they have always been rangefinder cameras. I always want to be able to see through the lens—whether by mirror or electronically."

Peter Nilsson: "I know this is not what I'm supposed to do, but once I've thought 'the Leica, obviously, because I can afford an A7r if I actually want one' I can't then go back and try the thought experiment properly. I'd be surprised if I'm the only one to think that way!"

AdamR: "As much as I've always lusted after a Leica, I'd have to go with the Sony. The sad truth is I'd never be able to afford another lens for the Leica whereas the Sony gives me the opportunity to use the Nikon glass I already own via adapters. And I really like those lenses anyway. I feel like that answer is much more rational than you intended. Now, if my secret Santa were going to get me a 35mm next year and a 90mm the year after that I'd take the Leica. I could live with just a 50mm for a year but probably not indefinitely."

Mike adds: To drive home the point of the last two comments, some people would take the Leica because there would be no other way they could afford it except to get it as a gift; and some people would take the Sony because additional new lenses for the Leica would be too expensive. Good examples of how cost considerations enter in even when they don't.

Incidentally, the latter consideration is why I didn't buy a Leica when I was in photography school, at the very dawn of my interest in photography. I could have afforded a body and one lenses, but I couldn't see being able to afford a second lens in the then-foreseeable future.

Gary: "The Leica M. I have enough lenses, I want rangefinder focussing and a real viewfinder, and don't want to screw around (pun intended) with adapters."

Hugh Smith (partial comment): "No brainer for me. A7r with the Zeiss."

MarkB: "I'm sure they're both great, but I'd hope for the Sony. Leica (as a brand, as an object, as a camera) just rubs me the wrong way. I briefly had an M6 before going digital, and it was like your 'Mercedes experience' for me...went back to Canon/Toyota, though now I shoot with Pentax/Subaru."

Stephen McCullough: "The Leica. Why? It's a Leica dammit!!! (I'm very comfortable with RFs, the overall bulk (camera and lens) is more appealing, I have a camera that can do what the Sony can do, but I don't have one that can do what the Leica does, or the way it accomplishes it's work). Plus, it's a Leica dammit!!!"

Michel (partial comment): "Leica M for me please—should I send you my address via email or do you already have it?"

jim: "I've had the pleasure of owning an A7 for two weeks now (but not the Zeiss lens). And I've had an M8 for quite a few years (I know an M is different). So my answer is easy—the A7r! I'm not Leica bashing when I say my NEX-6 handles far better than the M8. I use the NEX-6 and now the A7 mostly with manual lenses—a lot of them M-mount ( and I've always been 'in love' with Leica—my very first serious camera was a rangefinder)."

yz (partial comment): "Surprise me!"

Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "Darn, Mike. Now you've got me all worked up. Better go shake some of the boxes under the tree."

Jeff: "It will be like this: I'll agonise, hesitate and vacillate and then eventually choose Leica just because it's cool and I never had one. Three weeks later I will hate shooting with it and a week after that will be kicking myself in the shins for not choosing A7r. By the end of the fifth week it will all be too much and I will put the Leica up on eBay and sell it at a loss, for which my wife will be mad at me, but I will go on and get the Sony. The Sony will not fit into the bag that I bought for the Leica, and two months later they will release A8r without the stupid VF hump that stopped it fitting into the bag in the first place. I will realise that what I really need is A8r. My wife will resort to domestic violence, and I will grow thin with worry. Three weeks later I will eBay A7r, make a loss and will end up not being able to afford the A8r. I will start saving up, but three weeks into that I will realise that it all went horribly wrong the moment evil entered my house in the guise of the Leica. At this point I will unearth my old RX100, will go out to shoot some pics and blow whatever cash is left on my wife to try and mend the relationships.

"The upshot is simple: I am not touching the stuff with a barge pole."

Drew Medlin: "A7r for image quality."

Mike replies: Funny how few people have mentioned image quality.

Andrew Eckert: "The Leica M, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, though, I would not be able to use either of them for awhile. For my 28th birthday this past Sunday, I bought myself an M6 to make 2014 my 'Leica year.' It's going to take enough willpower as it is to lock away my D700 and X-Pro1; the absolute last thing I need for Christmas is another tempting digital distraction."

Mike replies: Cool! Go, man, go.

Dogman: "Without hesitation, the Leica. I still miss my M6. Both of them."

Gordon Cahill (partial comment): "What I really want for Christmas is a week free when I have nothing to do but travel and take pictures. I'd bd happy to do that with any camera."

Craig A. Lee (partial comment): "What I really need is the time to get out to use [my cameras]. So, Santa, what I want for Christmas is six months paid to go out and shoot whatever I want."

Tam: "I am lucky enough to have both (including lenses) and I have just sold the Sony A7R. Why? While the IQ of the Sony is impressive, it is a camera that does not know what it wants to be. It tries to be a 'decisive moment' camera and a landscape camera not to mention other things and it ends up doing nothing well. And so for me, I would go for another Leica M. I think it is the best Leica since the MP (excluding the Monochrom)."

UPS Is Your Friend

This week's column by Ctein

I don't mean the package delivery service, although I always look forward to the appearance of the big brown boxy truck on my block. UPS stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply, and if you're at all dependent upon your computer(s) it's cheap insurance and peace of mind.

A UPS is a box about the size of a shoebox (more or less) that plugs into the wall socket and has a bunch of power outlet sockets on the back that your electronics plug into. Inside the UPS is a sealed lead acid battery, some AC/DC converters, and monitoring circuitry. If the line frequency or voltage fluctuates (or goes out entirely), the UPS switches to its internal battery within a cycle and continues to feed 120V AC to its outlet sockets.

Depending on how heavily you've loaded down the supply, the internal battery will be good for anywhere from about a half dozen minutes to half an hour or more. That's enough time for you to save any work you're in the middle of and shut down any electronics.

It'll not only save you from lost work product, but it can save you from lost equipment. Four or so years back we had a power brownout here that somehow managed to fry my Apple Cinema Display, despite there being a transformer between the display and the wall socket. Probably should've gotten a UPS back then, but I didn't. The local power's been reliable for the past 15 years, with outages a rare thing.

Two weeks ago was the exception. Four outages in three days, and I thought I was going to go nuts. It was a Murphy's-law situation. I was doing some orbital simulations for a book project (a story I may tell you at some future time but not now). It was straightforward but somewhat tedious, repetitive work. The software that does this well only runs under Windows, so I was running my Windows virtual environment on the iMac.

There's no difference between running virtual Windows and real Windows...except...if you yank the plug on virtual Windows, it leaves the virtual hard drive file in a confused state. Confused, as in unbootable and unusable. The only recovery is to go to the backup and restore the virtual drive file.

That's fine, except 1.) it takes a fair chunk of time to port over that large a file from the backup drive and 2. any work done after the last backup is gone. Doesn't matter whether it was saved or not; it got saved to a virtual drive that no longer exists.

After the first outage, it took me most of the day to figure all this out and get it straightened out and back to where I'd been.

The second time it happened, I only lost about half a day's productivity.

After that, I got completely paranoid and started archiving what I was doing every half-hour. Which was another source of wasted time and still didn't eliminate the time it took to restore from the backup.

Let me repeat: this was somewhat tedious, repetitive work I was doing. Oh yeah, how much more fun it was having to do it repeatedly!

Enough was enough. I logged into TOP's Amazon affiliate link and bought a CyberPower CP1350PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS 1350VA 810W PFC Comaptible Mini-Tower for $159.99. It was possibly more capacity than I needed, but more is better and it wasn't much more expensive than a lower capacity unit.

-

Left: rear panel of the
CyberPower tower

-

It's a nice design: made to be energy-efficient (it "sleeps" itself except when it needs to top off the battery or detects a line fluctuation) and it puts out sine wave power instead of square wave (supercheap UPS's do the latter, and that may not matter with modern transformers/switching supplies, but then again...). The front panel display is great and tells me just what I need to know about the state of my power.

With a couple of power strips plugged into the UPS, I had it supporting both the 27" iMac and the 15" MacBook Pro, the Apple Cinema Display, all eight external hard drives, the phone service/Internet router/modem, my AudioEngine computer speakers that Mike recommended, even the 60W desk lamp that happened to be plugged into one of the power strips. With everything turned on, the UPS reported that I was drawing less than half its capacity and that I had 10 minutes to shut things down in the event of a power failure.

Naturally, the next thing I did was to yank the power cord from the wall socket. The office electronics didn't blink. After I turned off the desk lamp and the two computers, the UPS's display informed me that I had well over an hour of runtime remaining before the battery would be drained.

There are two reasons why that might matter. The first is that my MacBook Pro runs fine off its batteries, so the UPS could give me more than an hour's access to its external drives. Nice, if I don't want my work interrupted quite so abruptly. The second is just a maybe—I won't know what will actually happen until I have a real power failure. Our access to the world is through a fiber-optic phone/data line; we no longer have a copper wire phone line. That means that in the case of loss of house power, the phones go down along with the inter-webs. If all it takes to keep those up and running is to keep the router/modem live, then the UPS will do the job (for a while). Dunno if that's the case, but I'm hopeful.

I'm almost looking forward to the next power outage to test all of this out for real.

Well, no, not really.

Ctein

Columnist Ctein looks out for your supply of power every week on Wednesdays.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dave (a.k.a. Sparky) in NM: "Our power comes from a rural electric co-op, and outages are regular occurrence. For that reason, we've got four UPS devices feeding all our computer equipment. They've been invaluable. Not only have they provided us with consistent power and surge protection, but on three occasions they sacrificed themselves, saving our equipment from lightning strikes. Unfortunately, many of the other electronics in the house and office that were only connected to surge protectors were fried. I've yet yet to find a practical method of protecting network cabling from transferring lightning strikes to connected equipment. None of our strikes were direct hits, but they were close enough to find their way through in-wall CAT-5e cabling and blow out routers and gigabit switches. If you've got any suggestions aside from abandoning the wired portions of my network and switching to completely to wireless, I'd love to hear them...."

M. Stanton: "I wonder how long that UPS would run my Gralab timer and the 211 bulb in my D5XL?"

Ctein replies: Hmmm, well, I can't imagine the whole assemblage is drawing over 200 watts, and this particular model is rated at 800 watts with a 100 watt-hour battery...so even allowing for a 50% safety margin, you'd have a good 15 minutes run time. Which ought to be enough to complete a print exposure or several.

I've been working in the darkroom when the power went off. It's kinda annoying, ain't it? And, somehow, the dark gets even darker.

Will Frostmill replies to Dave (a.k.a. Sparky) in NM: "I can offer some suggestions regarding Cat-5 protection.

"In general, you want the ground each device sees at a given point to be the same. You could use a power strip that has a dumb ethernet passthrough, which grounds the Cat-5 at precisely the same point as the equipment it is connected to. This lets any surge "see" the same ground value at any given group of equipment. Lightning can do math: if the AC power line drifts high by 1500 millivolts, but the Cat-5 only rises 800, then 700 millivolts are going to subtract themselves through your computer in an effort to reach that ethernet port. (Make sure your three-prong grounded wall outlets are actually grounded. There's a cheap tester for that.) You would need to do this at every single point you connect something to a Cat-5 jack, and you would need to do this for all the other cabling as well: telephone lines and cable TV lines as well.

"Prudence dictates the same kind of common ground setup back at the router and modem. I'll make a wild guess that this would make the biggest difference.

"Take a peek at the standard grounding diagrams that now are printed at the front of nearly every home electronics user manual. You should see something similar at your home, with TV antennas, cable TV, and electrical power all having ground lines that are bonded at the same point at the Demarc, the point at which they enter your home.

"If this doesn't look right, please hire an electrician to correct it for you. DO NOT TOUCH IT. The ground stake or post MAY HAVE LIVE POWER FLOWING THROUGH IT. It's supposed to do this as a safety measure when things go wrong. Most of those things trip breakers, so no problem, but in the rare exceptional case YOU COULD DIE if you don't know how to properly check it.

There are some fantastic resources out there on the net if you start googling for terms like 'lighting protection,' 'spark arrestors,' 'RF ground,' or 'HAM radio ground.' Polyphaser has some nice technical bulletins.

"Here is a company that sells Cat-5 lightning protectors at 28–35$ a pop.

"I'm not endorsing either company, by the way."

Panasonic GX7 Notes: Responsiveness

Reviewed by Carl Weese

[This is the fourth and final installment of Carl's notes about the Panasonic GX7. Part I is here, Part II is here, and Part III is here.]

First, a few less favorable points. I think Panasonic should have made the GX7 "splash-proof." The first 4/3 format camera, the Olympus E-1, was weather-sealed way back ten years ago. Even if this moved the price of the GX7 up a notch, I'd like it to be there. I've used my GF1 and G3 cameras in the rain lots of times (I like to take pictures in the rain) and they're still working, but I'd rather not find the water resistance limit the hard way.

Next, with the GX7, Panasonic has, for the first time in one of its Micro 4/3 cameras, included in-body optical image stabilization. This is welcome, but the implementation isn't powerful. My sense is that the "shake reduction" in Pentax cameras seven years ago was a bit more effective. It's still much better than nothing, especially since my four best lenses for the format are not stabilized. Testing with a 20mm ƒ/1.7 I found the stabilization began to improve my results consistently at 1/30 sec., and by 1/8 sec. it was much better than me, though not entirely reliable. I won’t hesitate to use this combination at 1/8 sec., but I'll let off bursts of several exposures expecting that some of them will be good enough for large prints. If the best possible stabilization is a top priority for your work, you may want to look elsewhere.

Rangefinder-like form-factor: The uncommonly
handsome Panasonic Lumix GX7

There is a stealthy "silent mode" that turns off the mechanical shutter, focus assist light, and alert sounds (I turn sounds off anyway as soon a camera's out of the box). The standard shutter sound is more of a whirr than a click and seems quite unobtrusive. The silent mode really is inaudible—it takes some practice to get used to the lack of feedback. The downside is that relying on the electronic shutter alone can result in defects in the capture. The problem is that while you may have an effective speed of 1/320, the sensor scan can take 1/10 second. If the subject moves, or the camera shakes, during that time, you can get some weird renderings. I've experimented with it and managed to come up with some Lartigue-esque out-of-round wheels on moving vehicles. The usefulness of this feature will depend on whether the situations where you want a silent camera are likely to generate these motion-based image defects.

Southbury, CT. The snow flag on the hydrant reads perfectly round, but look at the front wheel of the moving SUV in the background. Movement during the sensor scan in silent mode has distorted its shape.

I can't give a hard and fast definition of what makes a camera feel responsive, but I know it when I see it, and this is the most responsive digital camera I've used. In no particular order, here are some of the reasons.

I've already mentioned the double control wheels, and also want to point out that they respond immediately, without needing to be unlocked. This could at some point result in accidental actuation, but I’ll take that chance in order to have instant response. By default, the camera auto-switches between LCD and EVF. I found that disconcerting at first, but I've decided I like it. I don't like to use continuous autofocus, but a nice touch is that in single AF, as you raise the camera to your eye, when it switches to the EVF the autofocus is automatically triggered, as though you had half-pressed the shutter. I don’t know if this will ever make the difference in getting a successful grab shot, but it makes the camera seem quicker, which is a valuable thing in itself. The contrast-detect AF is, as with earlier models, highly accurate and reliable, and it's now noticeably faster. Combined with that automatic triggering, focus is mostly seamless and simply there before you know it.

Torrington, CT. You don’t need to shoot sports to appreciate a responsive camera that helps you get the framing and timing just where you want them.

Like some other cameras, the GX7 responds to the shutter release faster in burst mode than in single, even if you only want one frame. It's also so much faster than the G3 in medium-burst drive mode that I had to retrain myself to get off the button soon enough to avoid two or three shot bursts when I meant to take one frame. It's nearly impossible to squeeze off just one shot in high burst. The camera also writes its RAW files remarkably faster than the earlier models—to my same old cards, which are quite slow by current standards. This will help anyone who does a lot of high speed sequence work, but I also like it because, in difficult light (and I'm drawn to difficult light), I often take one shot and then review the RGB histogram. A fast write time means that the file is available by the time I've lowered the camera enough to see the LCD clearly and hit the playback button. If I see a safe histogram I can go back to shooting with this whole check sequence taking perhaps one second flat. It makes the camera seem quick and eager to please.

There are more custom mode settings available than before, which is nice. I find custom modes highly useful and will talk about them someday, but in some future article since they certainly aren't unique to this camera.

Ancramdale, NY. Natural light effects can be fleeting. A camera with "good reflexes" helps capture them.

The LCD is improved in general appearance, visibility in bright light is better, and it has more and better touch screen capabilities. The EVF presents, well, a more substantial display that seems more like a ground glass and less like a washed out mini-TV. It's also easier to use in bright light, though not yet to the level of an SLR.

Of course there's a raft of other features, from "intelligent" automation to Scene Modes and "creative" filters and effects, but I don't use any of that, so this wraps up my mini-series user report on the GX7. I'll watch comments for any questions about details of interest that I might have missed.

I mentioned in the first post of this series that I had waited out a number of new Micro 4/3 models from Panasonic and Olympus before pulling the trigger on the GX7 release. The camera is a big step forward from the GF1 and G3, even though I've been getting files from those cameras that make excellent 17x22-inch prints. I expect I’ll be able to use it for quite a while before something demonstrably better comes around. The improved exposure range of the sensor is important to the pictures I like to make, and the greatly improved high ISO performance, while not as important to me, is certainly nice to have. However, it's the "responsiveness"—the overall combination of factors from body design to hardware controls to logical, easily navigated menus—that really stands out for me. It has already affected the way I shoot. Before I'd even worked with it extensively, the GX7 was becoming much closer to "an extension of my hand," than any digital camera I've used before. It's a keeper.

Carl 

©2013 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dave Karp: "Thanks Carl. I am thinking about purchasing this camera. Your articles were very helpful."

Alan Brown: "Thanks, Carl, for the well-written review. I concur with your observations about responsiveness. The GX7 is so responsive that it seems to be anticipating what I'm going to do. The camera is more that the sum of its parts or features. One additional observation is that the histogram, compared to earlier Panasonics, is very accurate. I thought I would miss the 'blinkies' of the Olys, but the accurate performance of the histogram mitigates that. It is simply a delightful camera to use and makes me want to go out and photograph. Thanks again."

Book Review: 'Genesis' by Sebastiao Salgado

Genesis, by Sebastião Salgado (trade edition), Taschen, 2013

• From Amazon U.S.
• Amazon U.K. lists it for three different prices and we can't figure out why, so best go suss it out for yourself....
• From The Book Depository with free international shipping

Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Indian-born photographer John Isaac worked for many years for the United Nations, documenting its work around the world. Regular readers of Outdoor Photographer may be familiar with his work. After years of grueling first-person experience with natural disaster, environmental devastation and human suffering, Isaac suffered a spiritual crisis and retired from his job as chief U.N. photographer. He gradually healed and returned to creative life by immersing himself in nature, photographing India's tigers and remaining pristine rainforests.

The Brazilian economist-turned-photographer Sebastião Salgado has traveled a similar path over the last decade. Many will be familiar with his justly famous books Workers (1993) and Migrations (2000), photo books documenting, respectively, the toils and dignity of manual laborers, and the tribulations of displaced populations around the globe. More recent was Africa (2007), a stunning book that juxtaposes exquisitely composed photographs of the Rwandan holocaust with achingly beautiful landscape images. As Salgado explains in the foreword for Genesis, at the completion of these projects, "I had lost all faith in the future of humanity." He retired to his family's ranch in rural Brazil and commenced an intensive project of environmental restoration, replanting its eroded and degraded land with native flora.

As the land rapidly healed and native wildlife returned, so too did Salgado's enthusiasm. He initially considering documenting environmental degradation and global warming, but instead embarked upon an eight year project to explore and document what he terms the 46% of the globe that remains ecologically intact. He pointedly included the indigenous peoples still living close to the earth, relatively untouched by industrialization. This was a monumental project for the photographer, involving four months-long expeditions a year for eight consecutive years, complicated by a bout of malaria.

Salgado's work is exclusively black and white, and has been characterized by meticulous composition and a dramatic interpretive printing style. He has used Leica and Pentax 645 film cameras in the past, but migrated to digital capture during the course of the Genesis project. As explained by the photographer's wife and partner, the resulting digital files were converted into analog negatives and silver prints to insure a consistent æsthetic throughout the project.

Like Paul Caponigro at one time, Salgado has the good fortune to be married to his book designer. Lélia Wanick Salgado has created a beautiful volume. Genesis is too large to hand-hold comfortably, but does fine in your lap. Margins are generous, and the paper is a very nice heavyweight semi-gloss stock. The typography is a cut above the average; the Adobe Garamond typeface used includes the ligatures that are usually omitted out of sloth, and the type size is large enough to appreciate the subtle details of the font. The photographic reproductions are excellent, with deep blacks and endless detail in the 3/4 tones, features essential to sympathetic rendering of Salgado's dramatic print æsthetic. A good number are printed across the fold, though the book's sheer size makes this less objectionable than usual. There are also a smattering of gate-folds. Most welcome is a separate 34 page insert that provides details about each photograph's subject. Bravo; no more trips to the back of the chapter for footnotes.

The book is broadly divided into sections by subject: "Planet South" (Antarctica and adjacent ocean/islands), "Sanctuary" (isolated habitats such as the Galápagos, New Guinea, and Madagascar), "Africa," "Northern Spaces," and "Amazonia and Pantanal." Each includes exquisitely rendered pristine landscape images, wildlife often rendered as part of the landscape, and indigenous peoples both in formal portraits and integrated with the environment.

It would almost be superfluous to comment on the photographs themselves. If you like a simple, straight, documentary approach they may not be to your taste. But if you like the dramatic, expressive black and white æsthetic à la Ansel Adams, it's difficult to imagine a more beautiful book.

Geoff

©2013 by Geoffrey Wittig, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dennis: "How can you help but love a site where the readers' comments are often as enlightening as the original articles?"

Mike adds: I have deliberately not featured many comments here because the Comments Section is so interesting. Click on "Comments" below to see them all.

You View Camera Photographers...

...Will love this. Made me laugh.

Mike
(Thanks to Leslie Ashe)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark: "I don't know how many times I've taken a 'selfie' by accident using a view camera."

Michael Perini: "Once done, you have to scan the negative so you can print on the only printer appropriate to the task."

Brett Weston: Big Deal

By Brett Weston

Great news—as a holiday present, and to kick off the brand-spanking-new Lodima Press home page, our friends Michael and Paula (you remember their print sale here last January) are offering for TOP readers a BIG discount on Lodima Press's wonderful series of Brett Weston monographs.

Each monograph looks like it might not be a very good value if you were comparison shopping with other books. They're paperbound, and they don't contain very many pictures—fifteen, give or take. But appearances are deceiving. Michael did his usual fanatically perfectionistic job with the printing of the images, making the printed page mimic Brett's original photographs far more closely than most printed images possibly can. The result are brief monographs showing actual-size pictures that are very close in their visual and artistic impression to Brett Weston's original photographic prints.

In other words, all the money was put into the printing.

As such, they're fairly priced. But at $54.95 to $69.95 each, they seemed expensive in absolute terms.

Until now, that is. Until December 21st, for TOP readers, they're only $30 each. And if all ten volumes of the projected nineteen-volume set published to date are purchased with this sale, the price is only $25 each.

Go to the new Lodima Press page, Lodima.org, and click on "Book Sale" at the bottom of the page. Then use coupon code TOP2013 for your purchase. I believe you can only enter the coupon code once (not sure, and I can't check it), so, just to be safe, be sure to finish loading your cart before entering the coupon code.

(Many other Lodima titles are priced at 50% off during this sale as well—a particular longtime favorite of mine is Paula's High Plains Farm, for the next five days only $39, a steal.)

I have all of these and they're absolutely lovely, a great way to enjoy Brett Weston's wonderful work.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Weekes: "Mike, You have done it again. I ordered three of the Westons, a Robert Adams and the Eric Lindbloom. You do lead me unto temptation. But at those prices and with their quality I could not resist. Thank you."

Mike replies: 'S true. But I only lead you into good temptations, not bad ones. :-)

MM: "Buyers of the Brett Weston volumes (and I'm likely to be one) should be aware that Brett often wasn't big on retaining shadow detail the way that other West Coast photographers of the era usually were (including his father Edward). He tended to use the shadowed/silhouetted areas in his photos as negative space to form powerful, solid shapes that make a counterforce to lighter shapes, not as areas to be 'looked into' for subtle detail. The effect works for me and other fans of his, but those unfamiliar with Brett's work may at first think the printer used too much contrast and the shadows blocked up. I think book printers in the past had trouble printing Brett's photos—Dave Gardner (for years the printer of Ansel's books) being a notable exception, because he wasn't afraid to really 'lay on the black'—so it's a great thing that Lodima is going back to print these masterworks. Kind of like a great violinist issuing a fresh new recording of classical masterpieces...."

Fred: "I saw this post and based on Mike's recommendation took the plunge for the Weston set. I'm aware that the publishers are fine art photographers that contact print 8x10 and larger so I figured their affinity for the finer points of printing would also characterize their publishing. I placed the order using regular UPS ground for shipping and was pleasantly surprised when the order was packed and shipped the same day. I was even more surprised when the order showed up on my doorstep today, only a day after I placed the order. They are finely crafted books with wonderfully rich printing and a nice afterword in each edition and an introduction in some. This was a good buy. Highly recommended."

Perfect for the Investment Banker Who Has Everything

From last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

Duly noted.

Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey Goggin)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Paddy C: "Try as I might to ignore these every time I see them, so as not to get riled up, I always fail. I cannot help but feel that these cameras represent the worst aspects of our consumer society (and by extension our nature). That can be said of other products certainly, but these take it to new heights. I should add that I haven't a clue what the 'Swedish Tradition' of these cameras is. Italian design, Japanese engineering maybe. But Swedish? Tradition? Sigh."

B. R. George: "I remain a little confused about why the kit lens for the Lunar isn't the Zeiss-branded 24mm. It wouldn't cut into the margin that much, proportionally speaking, and it seems like it would be much more consistent with the premium image they're trying to cultivate. Of course it doesn't matter from a photographic perspective, since I can't imagine anything to do with photography is a major factor in the purchasing decision for this kind of thing, but it seems like it would be preferable just from the perspective of producing the Vebleniest possible Veblen good."