The Online Photographer

iPhone Takeaway

I’m reminded of a story my father told me years ago. He was visiting an engineering firm and the owner was showing him around. They came to a large room with men sitting at drafting tables (this was in the 1940s) but not seeming to be doing much. The owner commented “I hope to God they’re thinking because they’re costing me money!”

—Rip Smith

Okay, had a little fun yesterday (some people love that, some people don't like it), and threw a little water on the merry iPhone 11 marketing bonfires, like it matters to anyone but people who read me. But the bottom line from my point of view: if you're waiting to upgrade your iPhone for the sake of the camera, wait another year or two...

...They're still thinking.

Mike

P.S. I'll be keeping my iPhone 7+ until then. I'll post my latest iPhone shot I like in the next day or two.

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Moar Lens

I wanted to post a brief announcement about the three-lens camera in the new iPhone 11 Pro, but as I wrote I found myself being a wise-ass...which as we know, usually means I'm being an ass and not wise. According to an interview with CBS in 2015, Apple executives claimed there are 800 engineers working exclusively on the camera in the iPhone. My wise-ass question is, has someone been keeping track of what they've all been doing? Did they have to wait until Apple Park was completed in order to get started? Was there a giant company-wide intramural round-robin of Words with Friends going on? Or have they been working on the Penske file all week?

Because at a superficial glance it seems like the biggest change is that they added an ultra-wide lens...which would fall under the category of market poaching, since clip-on wide-angle attachments are one of the semi-popular aftermarket accessories for iPhones. But poaching an idea from the aftermarket to capitalize on what customers are already buying is kind of an ordinary move, not to mention rather anti-Jobsian in spirit, isn't it? Do you really need 800 people for that?

Okay, there are other things. There's a night mode (already common on Android competitors). Portrait Mode fake bokeh is now available on the middle focal length as well as the longest (a video reviewer said that formerly having Portrait Mode only on the "telephoto" lens was a quote-unquote "limitation." There are so many problems with that statement that it sends my wise-ass mode into overload, starting with the fact that a 52mm-equivalent lens is not a telephoto in fact or in deed). And the 800 engineers are reportedly working on exposure stacking, for which a sententious name has already been chosen and which will get done as soon as they finish the Penske file. (See? I can't stop.) And the selfie camera module on the front has been improved to the standard of the camera modules on the back, because as everybody knows "pros" need to make higher-quality selfies.

Anyway, I guess the primary thing to mention is that I've always said you should never really comment on a camera until you actually hold it in your hand and use it, because there are things you can't know from descriptions and feature lists. And I have not done that. But I have to say I'm a little mystified, and more than a little disappointed. Maybe the stories I've been hearing for years about computational phone-ography, something that seemed to be so imminent when the iPhone 7 with its two lenses came out, are not going to come to pass.

Still, I'd still like to know what all those engineers do all day. I don't want to rat on anybody or get them in trouble with their boss, but I'm getting a little suspicious.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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hugh crawford: "I was hoping that the Time-of-Flight camera would make it into the iPhone 11 but fortunately for me it did not so I don’t have to buy a new phone right away."

Mike replies: I had to look that up.

hugh crawford adds: "Oh, I thought everyone (don’t ask me anything about sports or celebrities) was following 3D and computational photography. Here is a link that explains what I’m talking about as it relates to the iPhone."

Mike: It always makes me smile when the following happens. These two comments came in within minutes of each other:

beuler: "The best 'hands off' camera preview. Ever. The biggest camera improvement on the iPhone 11, as far as I can tell, is in the viewfinder. By that I mean the large palm sized screen that is used for framing. It's very bright and accurate, according to other previews. Now, back to that Penske file."

Jeff: "Step one. Immature rant about Apple or Leica. Step two. Watch the page views and comments flood in. Very disappointing post."

I think the relevant quote is, "You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the times, but you cannot please all the people all the time."

I looked it up on Quote Investigator, and this deserves to be called a folk saying. The original version uses fool, not please, and the earliest verified citation is by a politician named William J. Groo, who said something like it in September of 1885, 20 years after Lincoln's death. Groo's maxim might have been based on a French saying by one Jacques Abbadie that made its way into Diderot's famous Encyclopédie. After Groo said it, it was ascribed to Abraham Lincoln, and sometimes to P.T. Barnum, but there is no record that Lincoln ever said it.

In my defense, I can only say, somewhat ruefully, that if I actually knew what made the page views and comments flood in, you can be sure I would be doing more of it, and would not be shamed into doing less. It's not actually easy.

Viktor: "Mike, you just made my day! And with references to Costanza as well, hilarious."

Mike replies: Has anyone looked for the 800 engineers under their desks?

I should stop.

spot: "Do. Not. Stop.  ;-)  "

Mark Jennings: "Maybe good stuff gets slow walked until the 5G phone."

Jim Arthur: "Um...I'm pretty sure the image you posted is the new KitchenAid Triple Burner Induction Cooktop with downdraft venting and the new celebrity chef catchlight."

JG: "I laughed at this...."

Michael Perini: "I thought Apple’s announcement was significant. Of all the possible features that Apple could have spent resources on to insure sales, they chose to improve photography. If that is not a message heard by camera companies I cannot imagine what could be clearer. It says 'There's a big market there, and we're going after it.'"

Sunday Support Group: Use It Up!

[This post is a ramble. Which is okay with me—I like rambles, sometimes. Ken T. doesn't like rambles, though, and other readers might not. So, up front: All it's going to say is something I've said before, that you shouldn't baby your camera gear, you should "use it up." That's the tl;dnr (too long, did not read) summary. There, now you don't have to read this and you can go cut your grass or watch football.  :-)  —Staff Writer Mike]

Saw a video about a car the other day. A guy—not just any guy but a talented and knowledgeable guy—spent eight years, and Lord only knows how many dollars and pounds and hours, hand-building an exquisite modified replica of a very rare Jaguar. The detailing is superlative and the car is gorgeous. If you like that kind of thing.

There was one thing that bugged me a little, though. In making the video they put three miles on the car, which quadrupled the mileage on the odometer. The car had one mile on the odometer when they started. One.

After the video, the car was off to the Concours d'Elegance at Pebble Beach, the top auto show in the USA. Trailered, obviously.

If I owned that Jaguar Low Drag Coupe, much less built it, I probably wouldn't drive it either. How could you? What a horrible fate. You'd spoil your work of art.

Some people have a thing about perfection. Other people have OCD (mild or worse) and really have a thing about perfection. (One of my many favorite book titles: Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect.) Many people are just "particular"—I like the hillbilly word persnickety. They like things a certain way. I have no problem with that at all. I have a buddy who was buying a new shaft for his pool cue and he wanted one that has a decorative ring that matches the decorative ring on the other part of his cue. Totally understandable. I have another buddy who buys a lot of guitars, and some of them he never touches because he doesn't like the idea of getting fingerprints on them. So? He owns more than enough of them. He has guitars he plays. If he has one he doesn't want to touch, that's up to him. It's his guitar. Again, zero problem with that.

But for me, just speaking personally, guitars would be for playing, and cars would be for driving, as cameras are for taking pictures with.

(I know, I take too long to get to the point sometimes. I get interested in the intros, know what I mean?)

Many months back I watched a series of videos by Tom of Tom's Turbo Garage, a guy who is both an expert professional mechanic and also a passionate amateur geek mechanic. Tom tore down a Mazda Miata and built it back up again according to plans and ideas he'd been developing in his head for years. There are some updates at the end that show him happily tooling around the back roads in his V8 Miata build. He tells us he's put many miles on the car since he finished it.

I keep my cars a long time, but the thing is, I like the status quo, where cars are considered slow-motion disposable. Buy one new or lightly used, drive it for a bunch of years until it's getting shabby and the repair bills start to hurt, then rinse and repeat. Well, let me modify that. I dislike it when cars are either too shabbily built to last a decent amount of time, or when they're so stupid-overcomplicated that they break easily and then are hellishly expensive to fix. Those are examples of the wrong kind of "disposable."

What I mean is, cars are meant to be used up. 

"Using stuff up" is a concept that's a little difficult for people with OCD. I'll speak for myself, at least. That guy Tom is probably a little OCD, but he channels it positively. I'm probably a little OCD too—you have to be, to edit a blog for 47 years.

It's easy to get a little persnickety about camera gear. Many people love to shop, and "build the perfect outfit," and choose the perfect lens set, and find the perfect bag, and get all that just right. And I have no problem with that.

But then you can get into this uncomfortable zone...the Keep It Perfect Zone. Probably everybody understands that thing about the "first ding"—when you get a new car, you keep it washed and waxed and you do things like get down on the ground to clean off every spot of tar from the rocker panels. Then comes that day. You know the day I mean. You get that first parking-lot ding or chip in the windshield or scratch in the paint, which you can't fix yourself yet just isn't worth taking it to a body shop for, and from then on it's downhill.

The same thing happens to me with cameras. When they're new, I don't want them to get...well, fingerprints. Okay, not fingerprints—I'm not that bad. But I have this urge to baby them and keep them new-looking. I actually make it a point to get to that first ding, or its equivalent. I consider it kind of, I don't know, healthy.

I only have a little wear on my 5-year-old
X-T1. It's not for lack of trying.

Oddly, digital cameras come across as much more fragile than old-timey metal-manual-mechanical film cameras, and I guess things do fall off some of them or stop working, but, if the ones I've owned are any indication, they're actually not that easy to put much wear on. My old X-T1 has been battered and banged and wetted and dried and dirtied and cleaned and tossed and toted, but it hardly looks it. It's not even close to being used up.

Of course, I do have a couple of cameras that are for show, for decor, like my friend's untouched guitar or that Low-Drag Jaguar car. "Use it up" is a helpful attitude, I guess. An approach, a mindset. Get to grips with the stuff—wring it out—especially, don't baby it. For cameras that are "users," it just seems like a more useful attitude to have.

Mike

P.S. Usually, when I ramble, I'm talking half at myself. Stop babying that X-H1! might be another way of summarizing this post.

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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Bob Gary: "Funny! Good one. As usual, right on the money. Use it up, wear it out, make it last. Buy good, well-made stuff to begin with, and take care of it, my parents said. And when you’re done, move them along, with thanks for their help. When I get the tools out to work on a home project, I’ve told people sometimes that I had some of my relatives helping me on it, because of their tools I used that were handed down to me. I have my grandfather’s Kodak to shoot with sometimes, and I can almost hear him giving me advice...."

Alex Buisse: "I am with you on this. I take great pride on having well-worn camera gear. Babying my equipment is often not an option at all while shooting in the mountains or in a refugee camp. I have gotten lenses and bodies (including a Nikon D4) to stop working quite right, though never to totally fail, except for the one I literally dropped off the side of the mountain."

David Evans: "Re 'Of course, I do have a couple of cameras that are for show.' Of course? You must be rather rich by my standards. I have a longish list of cameras (probably starting with a Lumix S1R) that I would buy, and use, rather than have a camera just for show."

Mike replies: You can see my main "show camera" in this post. The camera was a gift from a friend.

Richard Parkin: "That’s one of the advantages of buying used, it’s already got its first ding and you don’t need to worry about it."

Peter Williams: "My favourite photography quote is, 'A camera is a tool, not a jewel.' I read it somewhere in the 1970s and cannot remember who said/wrote it, but it's perfect."

John: "With cars, I’ve learned to relax. Stuff will happen, so I take it for granted that it will and deal with it when necessary. With film cameras, I didn’t care much, but since I tend to sell my digital cameras after a while, I don’t really pamper them, but I put gaffer tape in places where they may otherwise easily get damaged. Same for expensive lenses.

"My pain point is fountain pens. I’m not a collector, so I use them, but I have way too many to actually use each a reasonable amount of time. So, I’m caught between admitting I’m like that guy with his Jaguar or get rid of the stuff that sees no use. And I don’t want to be like that guy...."

Huw Morgan: "Tomorrow morning, I'm going to get in my 1987 Jaguar with over 200 thousand kilometers on the clock and drive it from its summer home near Haliburton Ontario back to the city where it will be garaged over the winter. She's a beautiful car with a V12 engine that still purrs. Driving it is pure pleasure. Years ago, I parked it in a classic car show and a guy wandered up to admire my car. He had the same year and model, but with nearly zero kilometers on the odometer. He admitted to envy because I got to drive my car whenever and wherever I wanted to. He could only look at his car. My Jag is nearly worthless in the market, but it is priceless to me."

John: "There was a line from I think the head camera technician who worked at Life Magazine. 'The Nikon F is a hammer that takes pictures.' I remember taking one of my malfunctioning F's into the local Nikon repair shop and Rolf, the senior technician, came back to the waiting room to see me within minutes, the camera apart in his hands, 'There’s mud everywhere inside this camera.' Well there would be. It had been hot and dusty for a few weeks and then it rained, hard."

Darin Boville: "One important difference in 'use it up!' between old-timey mechanical cameras and today's is that the old-timey cameras are used up slowly, and eventually stop working and can't be economically repaired. Modern cameras can look beautiful but then suddenly be worthless if the electronics go. Used up all at once with no warning. (But, to be honest my Nikon D800E never failed me nor has my current camera, the Fuji X-T3.)"

Gary Nylander: "When I worked as a newspaper photographer you would not believe how fast I could wear a camera out, especially working on a daily. My first Nikon was a beautiful black painted F model. Aer a couple of years of daily newspaper work it was pretty well dinged up and brassed around the edges. A few years later I thought nothing of trading it in on a Nikon F2."

Ludwig Heinrich: "My Citroën C5 has over 350,000 kilometers on the clock (220,000 miles?) and the lettering has won off most of the buttons on my Sony A6000—I'm with you on this one.  :-)  "

Big Fuji X-H1 Deal Reaches the UK

...Within the limits of currency exchange: Here it is from Amazon UK (£999).

Don't forget the X-T2 is still an excellent choice in this range for stills; most of the updates for the X-T3 were for video. The X-T2 is currently £599. (It's curious that although the absolute latest and greatest often costs more now, good cameras are getting cheaper—if you have some personal discipline and can make a judicious choice.)

Mike
(Thanks to Salvador Moreno)

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Fujifilm X-H1 Current Impressions

["How's your new camera?" —Michael Perini, yesterday]

-

Someone said here the other day that each generation of new cameras is less interesting than the last. There's something to that.

But as Exhibit One for the rebuttal, let me propose the Fujifilm X-H1. Yes, it's true, the wild-and-woolly "frontier market" of pell-mell growth is over. The camera industry is in steep decline (adjustment?) lately. Smartphones have cut the guts out of the popular mass market for digital point-and-shoots, which barely exist now. And we're paying more for cameras than ever before, or at least we are while they're glistening with newness. (But not for the X-H1, which, at $999 for the body, the battery grip, and three batteries is currently the best bargain out there. They're not giving them away literally, but figuratively they sure are. I'll link to the kit, which I usually don't do, because it looks like B&H is going to fulfill those orders first. Order, then cross your fingers and hope you actually get one.) (Oh, and FujiRumors is now saying there will be no X-H2 in 2019...or maybe even 2020.)

I love cameras, but not all cameras
This thing is a joy to use. I've been neglecting my work because I keep going out and shooting so much. I find myself shooting even when I don't have anything to take pictures of. Any excuse to go out. I love this thing. I love the shutter feel; I love the shutter sound (I use mine set on "SOUND 1"); I love the viewfinder; the control configuration is close to ideal; the IBIS is amazing; the handgrip feels great. I'm very comfortable shooting with it*.

I even like the strap that comes with it, fer Pete's sake. (And you think I'm hard to please with cameras...I'm really hard to please about straps.)

As much as I loved my Konica-Minolta 7D in 2006, as much as I was delighted by the Sony F-707 during its brief window, as much as I was over the moon about the Big Dragoon (Nikon D800) when I first got my hands on it—I still think the X-H1 might be my favorite of all the digital cameras I've ever owned or tried**. It makes the top five of all cameras, all-time. Maybe top three.

Or maybe I should wait to say that. Could be I'm just over the moon like I was with the Dragoon. Anyway right now, I love this.

That's me. Am I just projecting when I speculate that more and more of us have the cameras we're happy with now? Seems like I hear a lot of people saying that. Not all the same cameras, of course. But I think there are lots of people out there who like their current cameras as much as I like mine—am I wrong about that?

Could be the X-H1 is going to end up a footnote, effectively a test-bed for IBIS in future Fujis. If there was IBIS in an X-T4, would I choose that? At this point I don't think so. I believe the superlative precision and lack of vibration of the X-H1 is integral to my impression of it and my feelings about it when I'm using it.

Yeah but
So anyway, back to the point: maybe cameras are less exciting now; maybe we're not all jumping all over the latest and greatest any more; maybe the market as a whole has a lot of model refreshes and "Mark [x]" iterations. Maybe that reader is right. Maybe each new generation of cameras is less exciting than the last.

But when I get to have a camera I like as much as I like the X-H1, all of that is forgiven.

Mike

*It's possible there is some brand familiarity going on, given that my main camera has been the X-T1 since 2014.

**Although I still suspect my absolute favorite would be the GX8 Mark II. But shhh, I'm not going to gripe more about that now.

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Leon Droby: "You are correct, the X-H1 is a great camera. After using an X-Pro1 for years, I started flirting with 'greatness.' I left Fuji and spent some time with a D810, OM-1D Mark II, another D810 and an A7RIII. After all that, I missed using my Fuji but knew I wanted IBIS. Local shop got a clean X-H1 in and the rest is history. It fits me perfectly and does everything I need a camera to do. It's the first camera in years that I have no desire to upgrade."

Mike replies: I feel even more strongly than that. I'm very antsy to get a second one while I can, not to use concurrently but so I'll have another when the first one wears out. I know I should not do that, but I'm feeling that itch....  :-)

kirktuck@kirktuck.com: "Easily the best camera I have ever used. And it was additionally very easy to justify getting three of them because—what if no one ever makes such a well produced camera ever again??? Mike, you better buy a couple more—just to be sure."

John Krumm (partial comment): That made me smile, because I've been feeling the same way. I take it everywhere with me the way I took my first DSLR, the Olympus 420. I ordered a fancy strap, then realized the original was better. Anyway, I was starting to think that mirrorless cameras couldn't really produce that feeling of satisfaction that good DSLRs do, but this one does."

SteveW: "As a Nikon guy, you capture how I feel about the D7500, which is on sale for $896.95. (An amazing price in my opinion). Thom Hogan describes this kind of thinking as 'last camera syndrome.' The comparison between the X-H1 and the D7500 is not apples to apples though. Besides the obvious mirror, the D7500 is the result of a pretty mature DSLR line that began with the D7000. Nikon has pretty much nailed it, and for me anyway the features hit a sweet spot. The size and weight of the two cameras is similar though. I've never been much of a zoom lens guy, but I bought the D7500 with the 16–80mm...and it's been a fun set up. That's the key really these days. We can all tell you're having fun with the X-H1, it checks all your boxes! I also have considered buying a second D7500, but am having a hard time pulling the trigger on that. I probably won't, since Nikon DSLRs are much more ubiquitous. The X-H1 seems more like a unicorn, ha ha. In Nikon World that would be the Dƒ."

Fuji Fire Sale

Here I was, contemplating the notion of writing a post about the Fuji X-H1 possibly being my favorite camera of any kind, ever, and now this. From a fire sale price of $1,299 that I kept harping on and on about as a great whopping bargain—which it was—the Fuji X-H1 and the battery back / vertical grip is suddenly an unbelievable $999.95. (Here it is on Amazon, and at Adorama.)

For a camera/grip combination that debuted at $2,199 a year and a half ago!

Granted, this could well mean that an X-H2 is sitting on the runway waiting to launch. Always a risk.

Regardless of what it means, purely on a "lotta camera for little dollars" basis this is tough to top.

Mike
(Thanks to Dennis Mook)

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Use What You Like

By the way, just because we tend to have Fuji discussions here once in a while, please don't think I'm advocating for any particular kind of camera for anyone else. I have a friend who shoots an EOS R, a friend who shoots 4x5 film, several friends who shoot Canon DSLRs, and a friend who treated himself a few years back to a Sony A7RIII. I know a guy who has lately been doing everything with a Leica Q2, a guy who adapts tripod cameras with movements to digital bodies, and a woman who bought one of the Fuji medium-format cameras. I also know lots of people who shoot all kinds of things. Some people buy a new camera every year and some are shooting with digital cameras from 2009. Some people love film and hang around on film forums as well. Some pros rent what they need when they need it. It's all good. It's true that I tend to talk more about the kinds of cameras that appeal to me, but the last thing I want to do is run a site where anyone feels that have to shoot some particular brand or type of gear to be welcome.

Just thought I'd mention that one more time. Lest any newcomer (or recent-comer) think otherwise. We are camera brand and type agnostic at TOP!

Mike

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I'm a Fuji Man Again

It's not really important what camera system I use. Everyone here is capable of making his or her own choices, and it shouldn't matter to anyone what anyone else happens to choose. I don't care what you use, as long as you like it. I'm not even a working photographer any more (I worked as a full-time professional for seven years, but that was a long time ago).

But I thought you might be interested to know that I've gone back to Fuji.

The decision was made for me, after a manner of speaking. TOP reader Jay Burleson, who was making a cross-country trip and stopped in Penn Yan to say hello a few weeks ago, shot Leica M for 34 years before switching to digital—Fuji—a while back. More recently, however, he made the decision to go back to Leica for digital, and is now happily using an SL kit and a Q2. Rather than sell his newly jettisoned Fuji X-H1 and lenses, though, he very kindly passed them on to me.

The Fuji X-H1 I tested late last year

This is interesting in one way, which is that I will soon find myself with two Fuji bodies and a generous selection of additional lenses to add to the three I already own.

Owning a full kit is something that has seldom happened with me before. In the 1980s, I briefly possessed a relatively full Mamiya RZ67 system. One problem with being impecunious, however, is that when you own an asset that's out of proportion to your general level of prosperity, you can be forced to sell it when you need cash. So unfortunately I wasn't able to hold on to that Mamiya RZ stuff very long. Then, in the '90s, I had an Olympus OM-4T, and I experienced in succession a number of the OM Zuiko lenses, although I don't think I ever owned very many of them at once—I tended to buy 'em, try 'em, and then move on. But I used a lot of them during the churn. I adored that system. A bow of the head to the memory of Maitani-san.

But that's it. I've been writing about and reviewing cameras and lenses since 1988, so what was much more typical for me is that I'd buy a camera and a lens or two, use it for a while, write about it, then sell it on and get something else. I've been accused of all sorts of things over the years, as you might imagine, but in reality I never had much brand loyalty or brand prejudice. I like cameras, not brand X cameras. With film I shot Contax and Nikon and Canon and Leica and Rollei and Bronica and Pentax and a Minolta CLE (loved that camera), and several view cameras. And my Exakta 66, my first and most serious foray into medium-format film. (I still have one.) In digital I've owned Olympus and Sony and Konica-Minolta and Pentax and Panasonic and Nikon and Fuji. One hole in my digital education—oddly, I think—is that I've never owned a Canon DSLR.

I'm sure I'm omitting a few.

This kind of nomadic brand-agnosticism* is good for getting perspective on the options, which is a good thing when you're writing about gear. But one thing it's always militated against is building up a complete system in any one lensmount. I've never owned anything close to a complete kit in digital.

Well, now I'll have that, thanks to Jay**—I'll have lenses from 12mm (18mm-e) to 400mm (600mm-e). From never being able to afford a Fuji portrait lens, now I'll have two, the 56mm and the 90mm. And I've been saying for several years that I wanted a telephoto zoom for the particular visual conditions up here in the Finger Lakes, and thanks to Jay I'll have the 100–400mm, which, in all honesty, I never, ever would have bought for myself. I plan to keep that and my older X-T1 in the car. (The lens is stabilized.)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the experience. I'm sure I'll learn something from it.

I usually do.

Mike
(Thanks to JB)

*You can probably think of more pejorative terms for it, but quiet in the back!

**I loved this story when I heard it, and don't worry, Jay gave me his blessing to pass it along to you: Jay wasn't an investor in the stock market. But he did buy some stock once—just once, one single, solitary time. He invested for his retirement by buying a lot of Amazon stock. In 2001. For $11 a share. 

Now why can't I be half that smart?  :-)

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Dave Jenkins: "Mike, I'm really happy for you that you got the camera you wanted all along, and amazed at Jay's generosity."

Is This the First 'VII'? (Sony RX100 Mark VII)

The Sony RX100 Mark VII. The little editorial comment in the
upper right is B&H's. My comment on that: they wish.

This view of the new Sony RX100 Mark VII reminds me of those onion-ring volcanos the chefs like to make at Japanese hibachi restaurants. Zooms like this always strike me as funny. And a little unstable.

With most digicams having gone the way of the Dodo, this camera has been enduringly popular. I really liked the Mark I version of it, which was the last one I tried. That was no less than six iterations ago. Does everything have to make me feel old these days?

Is this the first "Mark VII" version of any camera? By the way, I'd be in favor of calling the next one the RX108. Here's my reasoning: the RX100 came out in June, 2012, so the rate of updates is one per year. At this rate, Sony will have to call 2052's camera the "RX100 Mark XL," and I'm sorry, but this camera just isn't extra-large. This isn't an immediate problem, but I'm looking ahead on Sony's behalf.

For non-photo-writer civilians, it might be really tempting to ditch everything and use this as one's only camera. And you can put it in your pocket.

Shopping ninjas, take the challenge!
As a shopping problem, there would be two major dilemmas. First, would you rather have this or the Micro 4/3 Panasonic LX100 Mark II? (There, I don't feel old—the LX100 is only on version II.) There are distinguishing differences, but I think I'd really have to do a hands-on shootout to decide which one is the better option.

Second, there are those down-market comps...the (shudder) smartphone cameras. These days, it's getting to be that the first question you have to ask about any new camera is, "is it really that much better than a smartphone?" Insolent, disruptive little buggers! You want to swat them like flies. Honestly, I'm starting to like full-frame mirrorless (FFM) more and more, because it makes the most sense as a complement to a phone. I know I'd rather have a phone camera and a Sony A7R IV (FFM über alles) than a phone camera and this.

A few of the advantages of this series in general and this little guy in particular:

• Pocketable, like I said—it could be carried in the front pocket of a pair of men's pants.
• One-inch (1") sensors (it's just a name—nothing to do with an "inch" as a measurement) are getting better and better. You'd need to do some direct comparisons to know for sure, but they're probably as good now as Micro 4/3 sensors were in 2012.
• Generous zoom range for a camera with a sensor this size (although it doesn't match "bridge" AKA superzoom cameras with smaller sensors): 24–200mm-e ("-e," in TOP-speak, means "angle-of-view equivalent." The Mark VI—not yet marked down in price at B&H—had this lens too).
• Zeiss-labeled lens
• Pop-up 2.36m-dot OLED electronic viewfinder for eye-level viewing or three-inch (this one is a measurement) 921.6k-dot LCD touchscreen
• 100% EVF with diopter adjustment
• Fast operation. Very fast.
• Flippy touchscreen, with selfie position for narcissists
• Photo capture function in video mode
• Wi-Fi connectivity for instantly transferring pictures to mobile devices
• Silent electronic shutter option
• Selectable aspect ratios
• RAW files available
• 10.65 oz./302g

Downsides:

• It's bigger than a pack of cigarettes
• No GPS
• Way too expensive at $1,200—like on the order of double what it should be at this point
• Way, way, way too complex for any sensible conception of its target market
• Won't respond to vocal commands in realtime like Alexa, clip your toenails for you, or go get you a beer from the fridge (DPReview chorus shout-sings: "dealbreaker!!!")

THHHWACK!!
Should anyone update from a Mark VI? No way; they're not identical, but way too close to justify parting with another $1,200. I'd personally prefer a Mark VA, which was the last version that had the much shorter (24–70mm-e) but faster (ƒ/1.8–2.8 vs. ƒ/2.8–4.5) lens. (And for the same bucks and ~lens specs as the VA, don't forget that Panasonic with its usefully larger sensor.)

But we have to admit that this new Sony will pretty much do it all, for any sane definition of "all." It's not as good as an interchangeable-lens (ILC) full-frame camera, no. But on that score, it reminds me of an old cartoon I saw in a car magazine in study hall in the '70s. I had good grades in high school so I got to spend study halls on my own in the library, where, typically, I put my time to good use (?) reading every word of all the car magazines. Anyway, in the multi-panel cartoon, a giant, preening Blower Bentley is lording it over a tiny car that looks like a cross between a Fiat 500, a VW Bug, and an early, tiny Civic. The bug-car is depicted as smiling and eager. Determinedly, the Bentley sets about outrunning the chipper little fellow, and careens around furiously this way and that. But the little car clings to the big car's back bumper no matter where it goes or what it does. Finally, the cartoon Bentley pulls up exhausted, panting, while the little guy is still smiling cheerily...and still right there behind him. At which point the Bentley's trunk opens, a giant fly swatter emerges, and thhhwack! slaps the little car flat.

Heh. Order in the world, restored.

'Kay now...I really am going to take tomorrow off to work on my book and catch up on my other responsibilities. Rather than, you know, engage in the current equivalent of reading car magazines in study hall....

Hope you have a very nice midsummer weekend. I might have some new camera news soon myself.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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

John Camp: "I have an RX100 from a couple of iterations ago. One of my all-time favorite cameras, I have to say, both for quality of the images and for physical size. I've actually put two Panny GX8's and three lenses in a friggin' Dopp kit, which you'd think would allay concerns about camera size, but sometimes, you just don't want to carry anything and GX8's still have to be carried. The RX100 is functionally nothing (and also easy to forget you have, so you gawk at great photos, instead of taking them. At least, I do.) $1,200 is too much, but I'm interested."

Moose (partial comment): "A quick check shows that less than 60% of the photos in my galleries over the last year from Bhutan, southern Utah, and Ireland could have been made with this camera."

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): " Honestly, I might never have made perhaps 20%–25% of my favorite images over the past seven or so years if not for having an RX100 at the ready."

[You can read the full texts of "partial comments" in the Comments Section. Here I just thought it was interesting that Moose and Ken were saying such opposite things. —Ed.]

Kristine Hinrichs: "I purchased the RX100 VI right after it came out last fall. Every time I 'popped up' the EVF I had to readjust the diopter, so I sent it back. I waited a month and bought another; same issue. I could have solved the problem with a little electrical tape, but figured that for $1,200 I shouldn’t have to do that. I bought the Panasonic LX100 II and I’m very happy with it, even though I don’t come close to using all the cool features."

Bruce Hedge: "Well, you've set the cat among the pigeons again...any discussion on sensor size will get blood boiling all round. Here's my tuppence worth. At the beginning of the 'drone' revolution in 2013, I bought a DJI Phantom 1. No camera was included—you could sling your own GoPro underneath, but the still photos weren't high quality. I saw the possibility of using the unit for my real estate business, taking aerial views of larger properties. After much research, I decided to plunge forth and bought a Nikon J1 with 10mm lens (28mm equivalent). Three hundred grams, a 1" sensor, and, most importantly, a time lapse function, which allowed me to set it going so it would take a photo every five seconds. I rigged up a Heath Robinson light platform underneath, with the camera angled down at about 15 degrees. After a bit of practice, I was able to send it up, point it in more-or-less the right direction by eye (no telemetry back to phone then!), and bring it back four minutes later with one or two decent pix out of the forty or so taken.The extra weight of the camera drastically reduced the already short flight time of those early DJIs.

"Clients loved the photos. I even used it at a wedding, where it created quite a sensation back then—I took possibly the first-ever high-quality drone pic of a wedding in Australia. November 2013. The 1"sensor was more than adequate for high-end brochures, and we even made a billboard with one image which was more than OK when viewed from normal viewing distance.

"Suffice to say, I loved that Nikon. Still do. Solid, rugged, reliable quality. I never upgraded, but bought two more cheap J1's when Nikon dumped the range. I took the camera with the 10mm lens on a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp in 2016. Porters carried my Olympus E-M1 with three small primes, but I carried that light little Nikon, with three extra batteries on me the whole way, and got some absolutely wonderful photos, because it was immediately available in my top pocket. I have a one-metre wide panorama taken at Gorak Shep which is a stitch of five vertical shots taken with my beloved 1"sensor, which is rather impressive!

"So, my take is this.... if the 1" sensors were that good back then, I can't imagine why we need any more quality today for general everyday photography.My oldest one has now done over 80K clicks and is still chugging along. My E-M1 does give slightly superior results, but I don't need a Ferrari when a Lexus will get me there just as well at a third the price. (My real car is a fifteen year old Mitsubishi Magna which also continues to do the job.)

"Oh, and incidentally, you're back to your best—the break did you good, and the posts during your recuperation were wonderful!"

Mike Plews: "My beloved Canon S95 perfected but at three times the price. Love it but can't put a house payment in my pocket right now."

Shaun: "You can find a very nice used RX100 III for less than $300, and for me it's the best version of this camera. The newer sensor loses something. I tried the IV and V and went back to the III for image quality. And I prefer the faster lens to the longer reach of the VI and VII. In a pinch, I could use it for all my work, it's that good."

Honey, We Need to Talk (Sony A7R IV)

The new 61-MP Sony A7R IV

...Now then: the new Sony costs $3,500.

I know price sensitivity is individual and varies wildly. To those living penuriously on a Social Security check, such a purchase would be like me wanting to buy a private jet. Yet I personally know readers to whom $3,500 is well within the bounds of consequence-free discretionary spending—for some, at the lower end of that category. Not something that would be done absolutely thoughtlessly, maybe, but not a big deal if it was something they really wanted.

If you're the hypothetical "normal" person, however, the chief downside is that $3,500 is approximately one-tenth of the average price of a new "light vehicle" in the United States. (Formerly we would have said "...of a new car," but Americans don't buy cars any more—they buy pickup trucks and SUVs for personal transportation, a fashion I hope dies soon and dies hard. But ignore that and let's proceed.) The bigger problem is that, like your light vehicle, it's a fast-depreciating asset rather than an investment. That is, it's ultimately a method of divesting yourself of your own money. Not exactly flushing it down the toidy, because there's usefulness to be gotten out of it before it dwindles to a fraction of its shiny new self; still, the chipper couple at Two Cents would never approve, and, unless your financial house is in very good order indeed, it would make Dave Ramsey splutter and spew.

On the other hand—taking the other side of the argument—consider a few factoids provided by various readers yesterday:

• Speed noted that a Canon 5D Mark IV is selling for $92 per megapixel at B&H. The Sony is only $57 per megapixel.
• David Dyer-Bennet pointed out that the Olympus M1X (with its much smaller Micro 4/3 sensor) is $3,000, the Nikon D5 is $6,000, and the Fuji GFX 100 is $10,000.
• Larry Gebhard tells us that $3,500 for the A7R IV is only about $200 more than the price of the A7R III when it came out. (That newly deposed former King, having not yet been exiled, is currently selling for $2,500.)
• Steve Higgins and Trevor Johnson report that the A7R IV is approximately the same price in the UK as the new Leica M-E (240). (Not here, though; here the M-E is $500 more expensive.)

I'll just add that the Nikon Z7 costs $3,000 and the Panasonic S1R costs more than the new Sony, although a trade-in offer currently pertains.

Maniacs and idiots
I'm sorely tempted to slag off the new Sony with acerbic fusillades (fun to write) for its high pricetag. Really, a tenth of the cost of a nice new car? But I have to face the conclusion that much of my own griping about prices is sour grapes. I couldn't even afford the X-H1 I wanted when it cost $1,600 or whatever it was. Who knew it was going to plummet in price mere days after I was committed to the G9? (Okay, I'm still smarting over that.) It's like the old George Carlin joke—everyone who drives faster than you is a "maniac," and everyone who drives slower than you is an "idiot." We all like the speed we're comfortable driving, and we all think that what we can afford is the price range that's reasonable.

If I'm being honest, though, if I could easily afford it I'd buy a A7R IV as soon as I could click the buy tab. Twenty-six MP in crop mode, for that tele zoom I keep saying I want? Fifteen stops of dynamic range? Eye AF for portraits? No doubt beautiful color and awesome in low light? And, it's the perfect complement to an iPhone camera—to do everything the iPhone can't.

Sold.

I just can't afford it, is all. But I can't see why the discussion should revolve around my price sensitivity. It's completely irrelevant what I can and cannot afford. Except to me.

The objective conclusion is this: Given all its features, and its lens range, and given all the comps, the Sony A7R IV is reasonably priced and likely to be a good buy for those who buy it. Wouldn't you agree?

Mike

P.S. Still, I can't quite believe I just said that! What's this world coming to? My "cheap gene" is screaming at me in my head.  :-)  I also continue to think the Fuji X-H1 with the "free" vertical grip battery pack for $1,300 is the best buy among new cameras right now, at least if you have any use for the vertical grip.

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Ken Bennett: "$3,500 is peanuts for a working photog. Compared to other pro-level full-frame cameras it’s not that expensive, even. Also, I’ve seen the Eye-AF demo and it can track a running back’s eye inside his helmet as he runs erratically down the field. So it’s not just for portraits.

"That said, I just ordered a pair of the Fuji X-H1 kits. They’ll replace my X-T2 bodies for most assignments. I got to use one for a week at a conference last month, and turns out to be the ideal Fuji camera for me. IBIS rocks with small primes, the grip and overall feel just blow away the X-T series, and I got two of them and saved a grand over one Sony. Given my investment in Fuji glass, this is a no-brainer. I think I understand why Fuji had a hard time selling the X-H1—they couldn’t succinctly answer the question of 'who is this for?' But the end result of a half price sale works out for me."

Moose (partial comment): "Re 'the new Sony A7R IV is reasonably priced and likely to be a good buy for those who buy it. Wouldn't you agree?' Uh, OK, if you put it that way. On the other hand, my original A7 does everything I want from a FF mirrorless, so the A7R IV is meaningless to me. Hence, of course, I won't buy it, and your circle of logic is complete."

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "I'm all-in on this, Mike. Yes, I clicked the "Pre-Buy" button this morning. Sony has been my primary system camera since my first A7R (in 2014?). It immediately established its chops with me on a tough-ish time-critical project for which my Canon system was slightly awkward. Each model since has introduced logical, incremental improvements that justified an update for me. In February I finally wrapped a twelve-year project, culling over 6,000 images down to 100 for the book. I used nearly 20 camera models over the course of that effort. The images that stood out best in most dimensions were those I captured with a Sony A7Rx camera body, hands down, followed closely by those from the Fujifilm GFX 50S."

Mike replies: Whoa, what project, and what book? Tell me more, tell me more. You know I've been waiting for "Ken Tanaka's Chicago" for years. And, you did use my link when you clicked that pre-buy button, right? Don't break my heart....

Sony Announces Formidable New Flagship

Flexing its muscles as the class leader in the newly crowded full-frame mirrorless (FFM) category, Sony has announced a fourth generation—designated IV—of its high-resolution A7 model, the A7R.

The biggest news about the A7R IV is the 61-megapixel backside-illumination (BSI) CMOS sensor, which betters (by the numbers, anyway) several so called "medium format" cameras (which are really large format in digital terms. I know, all very confusing). When it ships in September it will be the highest-resolution 24x36mm camera extant.

...Which makes me recall that my 24-MP Sony A900 was the highest-resolution 24x36mm camera extant when it came out in 2008, whereas 24-MP cameras are now about as common as icewater in restaurants. The A7R IV offers more resolution than that in APS-C crop mode. And in case 61 MP isn't enough, the A7R IV also has Pixel-Shift Multi-Shooting mode for full color information at every pixel site, which reportedly results in the equivalent of 240-megapixel images. It's almost like cameras have enough resolution now, or nearly so.

The camera will have 567 phase-detection AF points with 74% frame coverage, offer 10 FPS for up to 68 images, and, significantly, ups the resolution of the UXGA OLED electronic viewfinder to a whopping 5.76m dots, which should set a new standard in viewfinder clarity and, dare I say it, beauty. The world through this viewfinder might well look prettier than, well, the world. The camera has two UHS-II SD card slots and of course offers in-body image stabilization (IBIS) and Sony's lovely Eye AF, which recognizes eyes and locks focus on them, sometimes in a manner that seems close to magic. It's also weather sealed.

Dynamic range is said to be 15 stops.

It's also being said that the design and ergonomics of the body have been further improved over previous A7 models in response to criticisms. And then we're also gonna hafta talk about that $3,500 price tag. But I'll leave those two topics till later.

The camera is not yet available for pre-order.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Roger Overall: "Two hundred and forty megapixel images? I remember writing an article on spec when everyone was marveling over six-megapixel cameras in which I said we'd one day see the likes of cameras that would give us 250-megapixel images. I think the piece was laughed out of the editorial office. I'd like to say, 'Hah! Told you so!', but I can't remember which magazine it was for."

Mike replies: Hate to say it, but whatever magazine it was, it might be out of business today.

A Very Interesting...

...Size comparison.

Mike
(Thanks to John Igel and others)

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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

Michael: "Heck, why would anyone buy a either the OM-D E-M1X or D5? It would take you five OM-D E-M1X's (about $15K) or five D5's (about $32K) to get the amount of pixels you get for only $10K. Quite a good deal if you ask me 😎 ."

Mike replies: Q: How do you know you're rationalizing? A: When you've convinced yourself that a $10,000 digital camera is a good bargain! Heh. P.S. Please buy it through my links when you buy it!

s.wolters: "Here's a different point of view."

hugh crawford: "A speed graphic is only a bit larger, and probably a bit lighter. Tiny sharp lens too."

Mike replies: But it only shoots at 2 FPM.  :-)

Ilkka: "Maybe they are all the perfect size. There is one famous German maker of kitchen knives that made a full set of knives from a big chefs knife to the smallest paring knife, or whatever. And all of them had same size handles. That was quite unique. The usual practice had always been that a big knife has a big handle and a small knife had a small handle. The manufacturer explained that your hands are the same size whether you use a big knife or a small knife, so why should the handles be different?"

Fuji GFX 100

There's a new and major milestone in the arms race!

As you probably already know unless TOP is the only photo site you hang out at, the Fujifilm GFX 100 has dropped. Long expected, the world's first complete camera body with 100-plus megapixels is here, and will be shipping in about a month.

There's lots of good news about the camera, too. It's only about the size of a professional DSLR, and not excessively heavy at a little over three pounds—a little heftier than the Leica S, but, at $10,000, only half as expensive. The color depth of the stills output is 16 bits. The camera  records 4K video.

The backside-illuminated 102-MP CMOS Bayer sensor is thought to be physically similar to the one in the X-T3, only much larger at 33x44mm. Early reports are that the wide field phase-detect autofocus is considerably quicker than the AF of Fuji's former supercameras, the GFX 50S and GFX 50R. The GFX 100 has autofocus points over the entire sensor.

Fuji has incorporated five-axis IBIS using what was learned from the X-H1. The GFX 100 is the first medium format digital camera to have this feature. Of course, the camera features Fuji's clever two-way tilting viewing screen that debuted on the X-T2, which can be angled up in the vertical as well as the horizontal orientation.

Base ISO is 100, rising to 12,800 before boost kicks in. One quirky feature is that although there are no physical ISO and shutter-speed dials, those dials can be replicated digitally on the top panel, similar to the way some new cars have digital "dials" for the speedometer and tach. (See this article for an illustration of this.)

There are two UHS-II card slots. The 5.76-million-dot OLED electronic viewfinder is modular and removable, while the vertical grip is built in. There's an optional (pricey!) tilt adapter for the viewfinder module. You can use one or two batteries in the camera.

There are eight GF lenses and a 1.4X teleconverter.

The GFX 100 is probably most likely to be adopted by professional studio advertising photographers, and especially fashion shooters, for whom that IBIS might be seductive. Can't get that on your Hasselblad or Phase One medium-format back.

Editorial comment
In a world where more and more photographers are finding that an increasing number of cameras—dipping ever lower into the mid-range of the market hierarchy—are adequate and sufficient for the work they like to do, there's still always a place for professional cameras that aspire to be the world's best. When the flurry of GFX 100 reviews and trials that will surely follow over the Summer months begin to sort out what the GFX 100's strengths and weaknesses are, it will be fascinating to see what consensus emerges. There's always interest in the best of the best, even if only for its own sake.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Kev: "I don't look at any other photo sites (well, occasionally fredmiranda); as we say in Scotland, I mostly come here for the 'banter.' But, my my, I do really fancy a go on one of these.

"As a business, back in the day we of course used to shoot mostly on Hasselblad 500 series and 120 roll film. The demands of digital meant we exclusively now use DSLRs (I prefer Olympus Micro 4/3), but I miss the sense of 'breadth' that medium format lenses/focal length brings to a large print, a quality that you just don't get even with full frame sensors (to be clear, my comment is not about the sensor/film, but about the focal length-DoF-size of sensor/film relationship).

"It was always waaaaay to spendy for us to get into digital MF (we looked hard at adding the digital back to our Hasselblads, but it was too compromised and expensive!). This Fuji kit may make me take a look at digital MF again (perhaps not for megapixels, but because it's going keep driving down the secondhand price of other kit?)"

c.d.embrey (partial comment): "It may be embraced by jack-of-all-trades pros and AdAm [advanced amateur —Ed.] photographers. But I see few/none high-dollar specialists (fashion, commercial, etc.) abandoning their Hasselblad/Leica/Phase One cameras. IBIS doesn't seem to be a requested feature, except by AdAms. Leica has the technology, but they didn't implement IBIS in their recently announced Leica S3 medium format DSLR. The S3 is 64MP, 15 stops dynamic range, and shoots full-sensor DCI 4K video."

Kodachromeguy: "Kewl!! Wait for the predictable howls of protest and long, drawn out polemics from the 'experts' on DPReview who will assure us that no one needs any format larger than 'full frame.'"

Mike replies: Fuji has officially named its 33x44mm size "Super Full Frame." So that battle has been joined.

Is Canon On To Something Here? The Elusive Fun Factor

Canon EOS RP and RF 35mm ƒ/1.8 IS lens.
Photo courtesy Canon Ireland.

In the previous post I asked my old friend Josh Hawkins (former camera store manager, longtime photojournalist) how he likes his new Canon EOS RP (at $1,299, the lowest-priced full-frame camera ever at initial pricing) and this morning he answered:

"I’m really enjoying it. I’m used to using Canon in live view a lot. Focus at ƒ/1.4 is much better in live view, so it’s a really small step for me to use it all the time. I’m a much more flippant photographer with the RP. I think that’s good for me right now. I’m just having a lot of fun with it. I used it for several weekends with the RF 35mm ƒ/1.8 IS ($449), and I was really delighted with that lens. Far more than I should be. It’s got an excellent flavor/mojo/vibe, call it what you will. A lens that cheap shouldn’t feel that good. It is completely oversized for a 35mm ~ƒ/2 though. I’m now trying my 50mm Leica Summicron DR, and other things in my closest, and having a good time with that. I miss focus with the DR constantly but it’s a lens with great mojo that I’ve never gotten comfortable with before. Again, just having fun taking fun pictures for me. It’s a good space to be in."

I spent a few hours last night poking around the Web reading the conclusions of reviews of the RP, and here's my meta-analysis summary report:

It might not technically be the greatest camera with the latest features, but it's a lot of fun to shoot with and the reviewer enjoyed it

That's all the reviews I read in a nutshell.

So my question is, how did strange concepts like being a lot of fun to shoot with and enjoyment somehow get separated from our notions of what a great camera is?

Think about that for a minute.

Shouldn't those things come first? Or at least be equal?

Consider what Tim Bradshaw wrote the other day when I wrote about modern cameras being too complex:

"Thank you for reminding me why I never want to buy another digital camera. Today I took out my Pentax 67 II for the first time in, I think, two years. I think I had to check to see which way the exposure compensation dial worked, but that was it: the rest of it was muscle memory, down to the use-the-self-timer trick to avoid having to carry a shutter release cable. And its not a camera I ever used that much. I have two digital cameras, and every time I swap to the other one I have about a day's worth of nausea trying to work out which of the several hundred parameters I left in some odd state (even though I never do that). At least the menu system on the Ricoh makes sense. I am done with this absurd, useless complexity."

I keep my ear to the ground in this hobby, listening for hoofbeats. And although few people come right out and say it, I think there's a lot of frustration out there with the diminishing fun-factor amongst the evolutionary dead-ends of ultra-competitive geeky specsmanship. Mastering stills/video hybrids has gotten to be like a university course in a subject you don't like, and over every outing looms the possibility of a pop quiz.

I'm sure Canon's engineers aren't paying much attention to the RP any more. It was built to the brief and they've moved on. They're no doubt beavering away building the S1R killer, the upcoming Canon FF mirrorless flagship über monstercam, which will be an insanely complicated camera-like product that, like a Mercedes, will have 87 onboard computers and, like Photoshop or Microsoft Word, will be impossible to fully understand or master. And all the review sites will say it's a "great" camera but it's got 987 features and it needs three more, and this feature is measurably but not noticeably poorer than the Z7 and that feature is measurably but not noticeably poorer than the A9 so it's not perfect, for some angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead forum-disputation value of "perfect."

If Josh is right and the RP is a lot of fun, I wonder how such a thing happened. Canon certainly isn't in the business of providing its customers with fun. Is it possible that they've built a great camera accidentally? As in, they tried to build a small-and-simple "Digital Rebel" version of the new R mount for the much pooh-pooh'd entry level, beginner, price leader, backup-body tier of the perceived market, and they came up with something that's actually fun and satisfying to shoot with? How else did such a thing happen, except inadvertently?

Meanwhile, they've actually built a good camera for once—one about which a longtime camera buff and everyday shooter like Josh can say "I’m just having a lot of fun with it." Could be they're on to something. I just wonder if anyone realizes it.

I want to live in a world where fun to shoot with and I enjoy this is valued more highly than diminishing-returns OCD levels of time-stamped techy perfection that will fade in a few years, if not months, like the bloom on a cut rose.

Do yer research
I want to know what I'm on about, so I'm gettin' my peeps to send along an RP and one of those 35's Josh likes. I'm not a big Canon guy, and FF doesn't hold any allure, but I have a feeling I ought to check this out for myself.

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

Bob Keefer: "Fun is essential in any pursuit. I took my most recent job when, as I told the boss, it looked like a fun place to work. The fact she agreed that fun was important sealed the deal. Back to photography: Fun is what has kept me shooting with Pentax DSLRs lo these many years. Their cameras feel good in the hand and are fun to shoot with. I mean, who really needs perfect autofocus?"

robert e: "Yes! Now that you say it, fun really was the thing for me with cameras like the Olympus XA, and the quality missing from so many cameras that passed through my hands. Sadly a headline we never see on those camera-measuring sites: 'The most fun camera you can buy today,' or 'The most fun cameras ever'...."

Josh Hawkins: "It's good to know I can still sell you cameras...kind of. There was actually a point on one of my camping trips where I was shooting with the RF 35mm where I started wondering what your opinion of it would be. I've got experience with lenses but not like yours. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on both items."

Ned Bunnell: "Josh has the right attitude. We’ve definitely lost sight that first and foremost photography should be fun.

"I was very fortunate to attend three workshops with Charles Harbutt in the early '70s. In my opinion he’s underappreciated as one of our great photographers and teachers in the past 50 years. He made a point in each workshop that if you don’t feel a little rush every time you see one of your prints come to life then you probably should find another hobby. He also soundly admonished anyone who asked if the camera made a difference.

"I’m sure if Charles were alive today he’d have a lot to say about how technology has not made us better photographers.

"I could never match Charles’s insights or way with words. However I think the problem with technology today is it has made us far too serious about what’s in our bag. For the vast majority of us, photography should be personal, fun and simple...which can be easy to forget if you’re obsessing over the latest and greatest.

"Sorry for the diatribe, but here’s another example of why the fun or simple joy in photographing is apparently not an accepted attitude if you are 'serious.' I went to a Peter Turnley workshop in Cuba in 2014. I only brought my little Ricoh GR, while the other attendees came loaded for bear with multiple bodies and lenses. Peter instructed everyone they only needed one camera and that if they were going to use a zoom lens, tape it down so you were only shooting at 28mm or 35mm. When he got to me he smiled a little and said I was OK.

"I know most attendees looked at me wondering why this old guy had only brought what looked like a nondescript point-and-shoot camera. I had a blast walking the streets of Havana, the GR hanging unnoticed at my side. I think by the end of the week a few of the attendees realized my little camera wasn’t really a toy. The problem was and still is that many folks don’t take the GR seriously. (Note: this is not a plug for the GR. It could be any camera that allows you to effortlessly get the technology out your way so you can just take pictures.)

"Fortunately, I carry as little gear as possible with me these days and focus instead on maximizing the joy that I still get when I see a photograph and depress the shutter. And if that means you don’t consider me a serious photographer, I couldn’t care less. Thank you, Charles."

[Ned is the former President of Pentax USA and has always been a dyed-in-the-wool photography enthusiast. —Ed.]

Mark Sirota: "I can very much relate to this. We spent spring break this year in your neck of the woods—Watkins Glen, Corning, Ithaca—and all I brought with me was a Nikon FM2N with a 50mm ƒ/1.4. And it was fun in a way I was really not expecting...I loved having only two controls, focusing manually through a bright, effective ground glass, and being selective with my shots. Got nothing exciting out of those two rolls, but I've got dozens more in the freezer that I had been contemplating throwing out, and now I think I'll shoot them. Haven't had that much fun in a long time.

"This isn't the only film camera I shoot with—I do shoot 120 in a pinhole camera more frequently than 35mm. But that doesn't have the same fun factor. My big question is, had the camera been mechanically identical but digital, would it have been that much fun? Hard to say."

Curt Gerston: "Fun has become my top criteria for a number of years now. I figured out ultimate speed or image quality wasn't what I wanted (I chased that for a while, though). So, yeah, pump up the fun factor on our cameras please!"

John Krumm: "For me, fun photography has come down to a wide to normal small prime, and a body set to manual. I use manual so much now it's second nature, and the small primes keep my cameras light enough (though I would welcome a lighter K1). When this Canon system came out I found it appealing immediately, and it was because of that affordable prime lens."

Gerard Kingma: "Re 'Canon certainly isn't in the business of providing its customers with fun'—and yet, I had the exact same experience that Ned Bunnell describes, but with a Canon M2. The whole photographic world p*sses on the Canon M system, and perhaps deservedly so, but I had the honor of attending a week-long workshop with Jay Maisel, together with 15 other enthusiasts loaded with tons of in-your-face DSLRs. When Jay saw me with the Canon M2 and its tiny but excellent 22mm ƒ/2 prime, I saw a glint in his eye but he said nothing. We went to a farmer's fair in rural Maine, I talked to people and matter-of-factly shot the most wonderful portraits one after the other of people who otherwise froze up or skittered away at the sight of the big guns. I've had tons of fun with the M2. Probably because no one takes me seriously with it."

Mike replies: A camera no one takes seriously is a big asset. It's one reason why it's so relaxing to take pictures with a phone.

I first learned this when I was doing portraits in the mezzanine of the art room when I taught high school. My usual lens was a little Carl Zeiss 85mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar with a small and unimposing front element—a lens I was "slumming" with until I could save up my money for the magnificent Carl Zeiss 85mm ƒ/1.4 Planar I really wanted (below). But a friend loaned me one of the faster Zeisses with its much larger front element, and I noticed that my portrait subjects were noticeably less comfortable in front of it. There was something about that huge front element staring at them like the eye of a giant squid, seeing into the secrets of their hearts, that just made them tense.

It was intimidating to be "looked at" by this giant front element. But they
sure have held their value—this one's for sale on eBay right now.

I went back to the little ƒ/2.8 Sonnar (discussed near the end of this long post) and never bought a Planar.

Tom Burke: "Absolutely. My Canon 5D Mark IV is a much better camera than my Canon 750D [Rebel T6i in the States —Ed.], both in terms of the specifications and the files it produces, but I seem to enjoy using the 750D more—have more fun with it—than the 5D. Possibly just because it's lighter? Easier to handle? Less complex? More in tune with the sort of Canon (D)SLR I've been buying and using for 30 years? I don't know, but I do know I'm a happier bunny with the smaller, simpler, less-good camera."

The Very Best Camera Deal In the Entire Universe Right at This Moment

Beat this

Submitted for your approval: my candidate for the best all-around bang-for-buck bargain in the entire camera universe right now, the Fujifilm X-H1 with battery grip for $1,299.

Big investment
The X-H1 appears to be an example of the "928 paradigm." The Porsche 928 was introduced in 1978 to replace the aging and technologically questionable 911, which had been very popular as a status symbol during the 1960s and early '70s. But sales had declined as the '70s wore on. Flush with cash, Porsche invested heavily in what it imagined would be the 911 successor—a luxury grand touring car with a front-mounted V8 instead of a rear-mounted air-cooled flat 6. I remember reading various superlatives in the car magazines about the large amounts of money that were invested in the development of the new car.

But all that R&D money didn't result in much of a return. Sales weren't miserable, but the Porsche faithful remained loyal to the 911. The 928 lasted till 1995 but only 61,000 cars were sold over its lifespan. And the 911 outlived it.

That big investment / small return thing seems to be what's playing out with the X-H1 too. Unabashedly aimed at pros, it's got shortcomings in a few areas compared to more established professional workhorses, and rumor has it that it's not selling well. But Fuji sunk a lavish amount of R&D into its development, and the X-H1 is built (in Japan) to exceedingly high standards and extremely tight tolerances—not just for any Fuji, but for any camera out there.

Pros might not be flocking to it, and Fuji's advanced-amateur fan base seem to feel it doesn't have quite the right gestalt, but the fact remains: it's a superb machine for stills and an extremely well made camera. At $1,900 it might actually have been underpriced, or at least it might have had less margin than its development costs would naturally have called for. Its smaller APS-C sensor in the face of FF popularity might have constrained Fuji from pricing it at $2,300 or even $2,700.

Gimme a do-over pleez!
When I tried one, it cost $1,650, and I assumed all of the "post introduction" discounts had already taken place. It was still too dear for cheapskate me, so, to replace my aging X-T1, I bought the G9 on sale for $1,213 instead. (That was a brief sale at the time, when the regular price was $1,299. The G9 is now $1,200 every day, with a nice bunch of extras thrown in.)

Then, right after it was too late for me to return the G9, the price of the X-H1 plummeted again. And I immediately got a tenacious case of buyer's remorse that's been hard to shake. On top of that, to add insult to my injury, B&H threw the VPB-XH1 Vertical Power Booster Grip into the mix for a big dose of additional sweetening. The VPB-XH1 sells separately for $329.

Finally—the last straw!—with the new Payboo card, you can even get reimbursed for the tax, which would have saved me another $103.92.

Augh. It's killing me, I tell ya. Killing me.

If anybody feels there is a better deal out there in the camera universe right now, do tell. I can't find one that beats this.

Mike
(Thanks to S.S.)

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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

Kirk Tuck: "Hi Mike, As you know I switched from Panasonic G9s to the Fuji X series. When confronted with the price drop I bought three. I'm not hard on cameras but when I find one I really like I want backups and redundant backups.

"I had the reverse emotion though, I really miss a lot of what is great about the G9 (and the Olympus 12–100mm miracle lens). Some days I wish I had both...."

hugh crawford: "I don’t know but this seems like a pretty good deal to me. The accessory I most want is something that would keep saying 'slow down and don’t screw things up again!', so maybe my point of view is a bit outside the normal distribution, but that’s a lot of camera for $898."

Mike replies: Oh...well...yes...that's definitely a contender for the title. Very definitely. Might even take the crown from the Fuji....

Jim R: "After fondling this camera at B&H I bought it when they ran the same handgrip discount deal. I really like its ergonomics. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Fuji—I started with the original X100, and then tried the X-E2 and several lenses. Love the lenses, hated the viewfinder size / eye relief and autofocus. The XH-1 finder and eye relief are outstanding, and autofocus is so much better than the other Fujis. I think it’s a better camera than the X-T1/2/3 given its in-body IBIS. Looking forward to trying my hand at some Milky Way landscape photos this summer as the articulating LCD and added batteries in the grip will definitely be a step up from my Canon 6D."

David Goldenberg: "Brett Weston owned a 928, said to be called the Silver Flounder, and his favorite among a huge number of cars that he owned. Maybe if I could see what he saw in the 928, I could have a tiny bit of what he could see in making photographs!"

Christopher Mark Perez: "True 928 story—I knew a fighter pilot who owned a 928 front-engined Porsche. One day he was going a bit too fast (somewhere near flat-out) and he led the police on a chase down the freeway and over sideroads that miraculously led to the airbase. The Porsche blasted by the guards (who obviously knew the pilot) and slid into a hangar. The pilot jumped out of his car and got the hangar doors slid shut just as the police arrived at the front gate. As you might imagine, the guards asked the police, 'Porsche? What Porsche??'"

SteveW: "I like this Nikon deal for $1,400. (Although I paid $1,750 for this in January. Sigh.) The D7500 body only for $800 is a killer deal."

Mike replies: This is just me, but here are the problems with the Sony mentioned by Hugh and SteveW's pick, the Nikon D7500.

Lenses.

I like a ~40mm prime and an ~85mm prime. I'm willing to fudge the focal lengths a bit, but a moderate wide and a moderate tele are basic for me (have been since my second year of photo school in 1983–4). Sony has a very nice 35mm ƒ/2.8, but I don't happen to like its look. And then there's that wonderful Zeiss 40mm, which would be perfect for me—I mean it's like it was made for me—but it costs $1,300, and after you plunk for it you still need to scrounge up an extra $77 for the hood! The matching 85mm, which is also perfect, is only another $1,200.

Gulp. That's $2,577 just for the two basic medium-speed primes, which makes it blatantly obvious I'm swimming in waters too deep for me. They could give me the A7II for free and it would still be too expensive for me. Don't think I don't envy people who can shoot these lenses, though.

Nikon, which has been recalcitrant about making APS-C primes for years—it's obviously corporate policy to ignore the people who want them—doesn't even make an APS-C prime in the vicinity of 24mm (about a 35mm angle-of-view equivalent), nor does it make a purpose-built medium tele. Yes, you can use the 24mm ƒ/1.8G lens, but it's not an elegant solution for the smaller sensor size. It's light enough, but it's huge (72mm filter size—even my medium-format film camera lenses only took 67mm filters!), and don't think you're not paying to have it cover the larger FF sensor. In any case, with the D7500 I'd have to make do with a 50mm, or a full-frame lens, or a micro lens, or a manual-focus lens, or a third-party lens. Granted, there's a truly legendary zoom for Nikon APS-C, one of Nikon's best and almost a reason in and of itself to shoot Nikon. It's very heavy, and very expensive, but it's fantastic. But zooms, although I'll use 'em, aren't where I live.

So, as Oren would say, "bah."

But all that's just me. Your mileage no doubt does vary. But as I always say, first you pick the lenses you want to use, then find a body to go with them.

James: "What does Stephen Scharf think about this X-H1 value?"

Stephen Scharf replies: If the X-H1 and battery grip were at this price when I bought mine in March 2018 for ~$2,300, I would have bought two of them. I may still pick up another one up as a backup, if or when the other body needs to be sent in to be serviced or repaired, or to have another one to shoot with when the first is worn-out from use.

One of the five best cameras I've ever used in 40 years of photography, along with my Olympus OM-1, any Canon 1D-series body, and the Fuji GFX50S and X100F.

That this camera didn't sell as well as expected I attribute not to any shortcomings of the camera (of which there are only a few), but to an ineffective and limited marketing effort as to exactly whom this camera was engineered for and why.

Which is a shame, as it has all the attributes, robustness, and engineering specification cited by Mike above, but most of all, because it has a wondrous and beautiful image quality that I personally prefer and find superior to the X-T1/T2/T3. While photographs don't have the 'technical specs' of files from a medium-format camera, e.g. the GFX, they look much like medium format files.

I am really, really hoping Fujiflm continues the X-H line, with the X-H2 and successors, etc., because it's just a superb professional tool that produces singularly beautiful photographs. My guess is Kirk Tuck would agree.

HSlav: "No offense, but buying based on deals for a camera, in particular, is not wise, in my humble opinion. If you're going to own the camera for, say three years minimum, assuming you get a long with it, then an extra $300 is about $8 and change per month. I'd much rather have the exact camera I want (within my general budget). The same is true, but even more so, for lenses, given that I own them for five to 10 years on average."

James: "Mike, as you have Fujifilm and Porsche related in the same post, we can add snooker—Steve Davis used to drive a 928.

Mike replies: Alas, I can never write about snooker again, because people are now telling me the outcomes of matches before I get a chance to watch them on YouTube. From now on, the fewer people know I like snooker, the better.

Custom Modes to the Rescue!

I spent a few hours yesterday setting up the G9. I've never used Custom Modes on any camera before, but I think Custom Modes are going to be the key to comfortably using the G9 for me. What they mean is that I can have three starting points customized to the way I shoot that are always instantly recoverable, even if I've used one as a jumping-off point for further settings changes.

That's the thing I hate the most about overly complicated cameras...I'll change settings on the fly as I'm working, then not be able to get back to a basic setup. I often don't remember what I've changed, or know what's different, or else I don't know how to make the setting change I have in mind. The result is constant, low-level frustration, and a difficult-to-banish, mildly helpless feeling of being out of control of the device.

C1, C2, C3
On the G9 I've set up C1 for casual, contemplative, slow-paced walk-around single-shot shooting, C2 for action, and C3 for low light. Those three situations cover 98% of my needs that I can think of.

I thought I'd be able to set these up fairly quickly—I know how I like to shoot—but as the afternoon wore on I kept discovering further refinements to each group of settings. The way I've got it set now, each Custom Mode is pretty exotic. For my C1 walkabout mode, I'm using pinpoint AF (which momentarily enlarges a center section for a visual focus check—very nice when you've got the time), an uncluttered viewfinder with a virtual leveling line, a low (but not base) ISO, and aperture priority. C3, for low light, is a very different experience. I've set it to P, with wide area multi-point AF, ISO 3200, and 5-frame autobracketing enabled by default, so each press of the shutter initiates a bracketing sequence (which is blazingly fast). The viewfinder looks like that of a different camera for each mode setting, and the shutter behaves and sounds differently for each. There'll be no mistaking what mode I'm in.

If I make a bunch of setting changes in, say, C1 that I then want to clear out, I don't have to remember everything I did and undo it one thing at a time. All I have to do is to rotate the mode dial away from C1 and then back to it. Bingo, back to my familiar defaults.

One heck of a camera
I came away from today's sessions with a renewed sense of appreciation for the G9's amazing technological prowess. It's one slick, fast, capable camera. I'm amazed at what it can do and how fast it does it. I still don't know what some of the menu settings mean (quick, what's wrench icon sub C > Focus/Release Shutter > AF-Point Scope Setting > PIP Display > Full? What, you don't know? And you call yourself a photographer?), and there are still a few buttons on the body that are mysteries to me. But I'm getting there. Maybe I'm a slow study. But I can't even count all the options in the menus.

(And by the way, I'm amazed when people here say the solution to overcomplexity in cameras is to set the thing on auto/program everything and use it like a point-and-shoot. No, no, no. That doesn't do it for me at all. I want to be in control of the device and understand what it's doing. The solution is never to throw up my hands and give up. Curiously, I don't demand that a camera be able to be set up exactly the way I prefer. But I do demand that I understand exactly how it's doing what it's doing, so I can apply it to situations intelligently. My ancient Exakta 66 only shows part of what will be on the negative in the viewfinder. But if I know exactly how it crops what will be on the negative, then I can compensate appropriately when I'm shooting. I don't need the viewfinder to be perfect. But I need to know how it's imperfect.)

April is the coolest month
Carl tells me he's been out shooting many times with his G9 because Spring is his favorite time to shoot. He's put over 4,000 exposures on it in April and says he's gotten "extremely comfortable" with it. That's what I need to do with this camera...just get out there and use it. When pictures come first, then everything else falls into proper perspective.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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

Roger: "Add me to the list of those who cannot remember which button is programmed to do what. How wonderful it would be if there was a 'Here is a list of your customizations' menu screen. Heck, I’d even program a button to bring up that screen...."

Arg: "I did a weird thing with my E-M5 II as an experiment, and now I'm glad I did. I put my camera in P mode, then set it up exactly as I would most likely want when using P mode, right down to the little details. Then I saved that as a MySet on the P Mode dial position. Then I repeated the procedure for each of A, S, and M. My camera feels so intuitive now."

Which Would Win?

When my son was little—like, younger than five—I used to get a certain question a lot: "who would win?" He might have two armies of little plastic soldiers all set up, or be staging fights with two of his "guys" (action figures). Or sometimes the question would be more theoretical. Who would win: Wolverine, or a lion? Santa Claus, or a zombie?

Now, it appears to me that the Nikon Z7 seems to be emerging as the front-runner in the "most lustworthy" contest among all the new FFMs. So my question today is, for you, if you were in the market, which would win: the Nikon Z7 at the current $600 savings of $2,796.95, or the Fuji GFX 50R at the current $500-off price of $3,999?

Rounding off the prices, that's only $1,200 more for the Fuji.

Granted, $1,200 is still be a lot of money—roughly a nice camera's worth, in the budgetary precincts I occupy—but maybe not if you'd really rather have the 51-MP medium-format Fuji. And not if your $2,800 investment was going to seem like second best, or a consolation prize. Parting with that much dosh for something that isn't quite what you really want could amount to throwing money away.

Do you like my awesome color sense?

See, I really like Fuji's sensible solution of putting more distance between its APS-C cameras and its big dogs. But I'm left wondering if Fuji has just made itself odd man out and for some reason people are going to ignore it in all the clamor over all the new full frame mirrorless models.

If it were you, would you find the extra $1,200 and get the Fuji?

How about if they were the same price—which one would you choose then?

I can't answer the question myself. It would depend, first of all, if the camera were going to be my only camera, or if it were going to be augmenting and complementing a smaller one.

This feels familiar, because I could almost never answer my son's "who would win" questions, either. "Who would win—Superman, or God?" Well, see, it depends. God doesn't often show himself, and he doesn't seem to like to fight, at least not out in the open. On the other hand, Superman is supposed to be a good guy, and what good guy would fight God? The more you think about it, the more complicated the question gets....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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

Rodolfo Canet: "I had to make that choice myself, and the Z7 was the winner. I could say that the Nikon's flexibility trumped my wild lust for the Fuji but, in fact, the cost of the lenses made the choice for me. A nice set of Nikkor primes costs a lot less."

Cab (partial comment): "I also recently stared down this 'battle,' and the winner was the Z7. I am thrilled with the quality of the Z lenses so far and very intrigued where future development of this lens mount will take us. My iPhone is more than sufficient for casual snaps, so for my 'big' camera I was targeting only landscape use, including hiking with it. Other uses of the camera (family photos, kid sports, etc) were of secondary consideration, but the Z7 works great for those as well, and I probably will also add a Z6 for my wife that will fill those uses and can share lenses."

Rob Ferguson: "I made that choice recently. I already owned a Fuji X100T, but wanted a camera for architectural, documentary, and landscape photography that would provide maximum resolution and file quality. I had abandoned 'big cameras' some years ago, and didn't have any particular allegiances.

"I found it an interesting time to be thinking about these sorts of choices, in part because all the historic manufacturers are, in large part, leaving behind their traditional mounts and legacy glass. I bought the GFX 50R. The high quality glass and sensor, the price/performance of the resulting files, rangefinder-style ergonomics, Fuji's recent partnership with Capture One, and the various conveniences provided by the similarities to the rest of the Fujifilm camera line tipped the balance for me.

"My second choice was a Sony A7RIII; the Z7 was third. I also was influenced by feeling that Fujifilm is more likely to successfully execute on their long term plans than Nikon or Canon, but reasonable people can disagree on that one."

Steve Jacob: "Since this is hypothetical and both cameras are wildly surplus to my requirements I would get the Fuji. It's special. The Nikon is just another camera."

David: "I tried holding the Z7, GFX 50R, and GFX 50S recently. Much as I wanted to like the GFX 50R, I found the Z7 had much better ergonomics (for me, at least). The GFX 50S also felt better than the R, but was not as comfortable as the Z7."

Sharon: "I'm working on a large print that a client ordered today. It was shot with the GFX 50S. The quality of the print is amazing. Fuji lenses are amazing. So, for me the fuji is the one. This is a vertical print. I much prefer the aspect ratio of the fuji, especially for verticals. I wouldn't say this camera is right for everyone, I'm sure it's not. But it's right for me."

MHMG: "The Nikon D850 is going to take my next $3k. If Nikon had produced a serious F-mount adaptor for its mirrorless Z's (i.e. one that would provide proper auto aperture for my Nikkor AIS lenses and also proper autofocus for my Nikkor D lenses), then I'd pay more attention to Nikon's mirrorless efforts. However, Nikon punted with its FTZ adaptor, so the venerable D850 still wins for me. Nikon still keeps me as a customer for one more round. Will Nikon keep me loyal past the D850? I wonder. There may well be another Fuji in my Future."

Mike replies: "Venerable?" Released September 2017!

Mike Plews: "Django Reinhardt or Doc Watson?

"If faced with a choice between the Fuji and Nikon I would land on the side of the Nikon. The difference in pixel count is not significant and FF sensors are so quiet that the larger Fuji sensor presents a distinction without a real difference in my opinion. And then there are those fast Nikon primes at near attainable prices.

"We have a little camera war going on at work right now. One of our guys bought a Z7 and another is D850 user. I played with the Z7 some and my preference is still for a DSLR but that's just me. In fact I am perfectly happy with a D7100. Twenty-four megapixels is enough for me and I know the camera, which counts for a lot.

"Now, before you all vote for Django Reinhardt, go to YouTube and listen to Doc play 'Black Mountain Rag.' It's a closer matchup than you think."

Vladimir: "To paraphrase Gary Lineker: Nikon Z7 vs Fuji GFX 50R is a simple game...and at the and, Sony always win."

Tim Wilson: "I would (did) pass over both of those and would (did) get a Lumix S1R, at a price somewhere in between."

Mike replies: Well don't be shy, man, tell us how you like it!

Bruce Walker: "I would select the GFX 50R, not so much for the pixels as the medium format. I already chose medium format four years ago (Pentax 645Z) and I am completely won over to that view."

Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and Your New Microcomputercam

I started looking into the new FFM (full-frame mirrorless) class cameras, thinking maybe I needed to come up to speed with what's on offer now.

But...good lord. Have cameras finally become entirely their own hobby? As I watch some of the video reviews of the various new FFM cameras, I'm struck by the extreme geekery of the young men rattling off the deep capabilities of features I don't understand*. The Panasonic S1 (one of 'em at least) has a focus mode where it will show you a dot that reports the degree of correction for camera shake, essentially showing you how much your hands are shaking, and the continuous tracking autofocus now recognizes eyes, faces, and bodies (as well as several kinds of animals) and will switch on the fly to different targets as you and your subject move and the "angles" change (Kanye West raps in a guest turn in a Travis Scott song, "Kickin' the cameraman offa my stages / 'Cuz I don't like how he snappin' my angles"). Carl has been getting to grips with the G9, and I won't speak for him, but I've been hearing for weeks now about the various things he's discovering about setup and function. I've been putting it off, myself, just using the camera in "surface skater" mode, not bothering to learn the controls, merely taking pictures with it and letting it take care of its own business. But I'm using it in pinpoint AF mode, which shows me a momentary enlargement of the center area to confirm focus visually before returning to a whole-frame view. It's a neat tech trick for sure, but for a purist it's a little disorienting. [UPDATE: Carl told me the next day that this was a function he hadn't discovered yet. Made me smile.]

Goldilocks tried the first chair and it was too big, too pro,
too video-y, and had too dang many functions

It used to be a truism that a new camera cost you a year. That is, when you switched to a new camera, it took a year of use before you had fully mastered its quirks and features and gotten "the feel of the wheel," i.e., arrived at that point where operation had become automatic, fluid, and intuitive, such that the camera and its controls "disappeared" and let you concentrate fully on shooting. But that was back in the days of enormously less complicated cameras, before they were minicomputers, before they were video cameras, before the deep tech had become the field of competition between manufacturers. Now, I really wonder if the lifespan of a professional digital camera is really enough time for an amateur to master it at all—that is, before you've fully learned one camera, it has become obsolescent and it's time to buy a new one. So it's no longer just a year of fluent shooting you lose—now you're in a constant state of not-quite-mastery that never relents, never resolves. For the amateur, most top cameras create a Neverland of non-mastery similar to the kitchen-sink, impossible-to-master software types like Photoshop and Microsoft Word. At this point, for me to attempt a comparo between the FFM cameras would take as much time as a similar comparo of the same number of leading photo-editing programs—that is, it couldn't be done, because there's not enough time to learn them all before they're replaced and the information becomes obsolete.

Do you take this into consideration before buying a new camera? Years ago, I read a critical essay about The Wire that noted that before binge-watching a new TV drama, you needed to weigh whether the day-after-day emotional hit of being subjected to so much virtual violence and depravity will be outweighed by the reward. Now, when I look at a new camera, I don't necessarily think, gee, it would be nice to own that and shoot with it. My right-off-the-bat reaction is more like, do I really want to take the time and go through all the labor to learn all the ins and outs of yet another of these damned things?

There's nothing wrong with doing so if it's how you like to spend your time. Buy a new camera, spend three years learning how to use it...then, before you've quite gotten all the way there, buy a new camera and start the process all over again. Voilà, there's your hobby. No need to start down the road of considering what you're taking pictures of, how the pictures work, how to reify them for others...

...Or maybe lazy old Mike just needs to stop bitchin', buckle down, and RTFM**.  :-)

Mike

*I was that way once. These young men don't realize their hard-won expertise has a sell-by date. They will one day. Get ready to be impressed: I mastered the technique of using a hard and a soft print developer in sequence with graded papers to achieve intermediate contrast grades. The latest generation is clamoring for that information now and my expertise is much in demand.

**Read the f---ing manual.

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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

Phil Service: "Speaking of manuals, the Panasonic S1R user manual stretches to 519 pages. (No, I did not buy the camera, just downloaded the manual.). In a sense, this is better than Sony's recent efforts with bare-bones manuals that fail to explain many of the camera settings, and therefore require buying a third party book: even Sony's online 'Help' Guides fail to give compete, comprehensible explanations of some features. That said, the Panasonic manual is not exactly easy going or crystal clear. The camera is mind-bogglingly complex."

George Feucht: "This reminds me that I need to get the firmware updated on my Leica M6: It needs it done every 36 exposures. What a pain in the butt."

Mike Peters: "New cameras are a pain to get to know. One argument for staying in the same ecosystem of a single manufacturer is that they all share a similar UI, so the transitions are less jarring. When I get a new camera I initially set it up to work like the previous model. In time as I get to know the button layout, if it's different, I'll begin to look into what else the new camera has to offer and slowly tune it to my needs. So, if you're using a Lumix G9 and eventually RTFM and begin to take advantage of what it does that you like, if you switch to the Lumix S1 your learning curve will be much shorter than if you switch to some other brand."

David Brown: "Is it practical to have a photography web site (like this one) that's about photography rather than all about cameras? Of all the ones I've seen, TOP is the best, and it seems about 50-50."

Mike replies: This site is partially supported by direct donations through Patreon (donate here), which helps a lot. And by the way, of the last 89 posts, only 14 were about cameras. There were almost as many off-topic posts as camera posts. It has been so lopsided that I was actually getting a few complaints.

Christopher May (partial comment): "My local camera chain, Mike's Camera, puts on a test drive day twice a year. They'll assemble a number of representatives from the brands that they feature and ask them to bring a selection of currently available gear that their customer base can try out. I've been going to these events for years now and have always enjoyed trying out some of the latest and greatest gear from both my chosen brand (Nikon) as well as others. I used to particularly relish trying camera bodies out and seeing how they felt and how they reacted to my style of shooting.

"Slowly but surely, that pleasure has been waning as the cameras have gotten crazily complex with menu systems that are dozens of pages long (and often questionably laid out). Without fail, the previous user will have set something up that I don't particularly like and it takes me five to 10 minutes to figure out how to change it. The borrow period for the event is an hour. So taking five to 10 minutes to figure out one item takes a heavy percentage of my trial time away from actually taking pictures.

"The most recent event was this past weekend and I tried some recent hot cameras like the Sony A7rIII, the Panasonic S1R, the Nikon Z's, the EOS R and RP, etc. I think I reached a tipping point where the complexity has reached a point that I'm no longer enjoying the experience. One hour is simply not enough time to get to know these über-complex cameras."

Anthony Shaughnessy (partial comment): "The complexity is a real problem for beginners, who buy a big, fancy camera because they think it is necessary for getting good pictures and then find themselves baffled and put off by the apparent complexity. In photo workshops I do, I show them where to find the basic controls and tell them not to bother touching anything else because they don't need it."

Jeff (partial comment): "This is one reason why I admire Leica, despite the relatively crazy prices. More money buys simple controls and menus, first class viewfinders, and fantastic lenses; the things I prioritize. Some ‘features’ like IBIS might be sacrificed (instead occasionally placing OIS in big zooms), but the tradeoff is smaller size and old-school simplicity."

Mike replies: It's true—Leica is the only marque with sufficient confidence to venture relatively simple products.

Hugh: "Doesn’t anybody else own a smartphone? That’s where you download the camera manual. Means it’s always with you. Or else you buy the Canon 5D Mark IV, because everything except the WiFi works exactly the same as the 5D Mark III, and you don’t need to look at the manual. Conservative design works well for actual photographers, even if reviewers don’t get excited about it."

Canon EOS R: Already?

What means this? The EOS R was only announced eight months ago, and already there's a $300 discount on it, with freebies thrown in?! That seems too quick to me.

Anybody know what's going on there?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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:

Mark Pfeifer: "Simple—battle for market share. Nikon's got discounts on the Z 6 and Z 7 as well. (This may be the last time I include the space in the name). The camera market is shrinking and all of the companies want to get people using their mount and buying their lenses."

Carlos Esguerra: "Here is the reason: 'BCN reports the Sony A7III sells more than the competition combined (Canon R, Canon RP and Nikon Z6).'"

SteveW: "Nikon Z6 too."

David Evans: "I'm not in the market, having just traded in my GX8 for a G9, but for me the lack of IBIS would be a deal killer. I wonder if that's why."

Ken: "Camera makers have been knocking each other over trying to corner the high-price, high-profit-margin full-frame market in a seeming response to declining sales. Well, it appears to me that most consumers are not ready to follow them there, and/or that particular niche market is much smaller than advertised. Plus, it looks to me like camera manufacturers are getting stuck in the 'JC Penney trap'—meaning that many (most?) customers have been trained to just wait for the next sale, which is surely right around the corner, and the camera companies have no choice but to have more frequent sales to make their quarterly numbers."

Robert: "Canon as been stupidly/recklessly/stubbornly/cavalierly/obnoxiously (take your pick) resistant to providing IBIS. This has been a spectacular own goal* of potentially revenue/market share -busting significance. Whoever in the company pushed for this strategy needs to go, and they have to very quickly mobilise their resources to rectify the situation as soon as possible, before everybody moves over to Sony. Dumb, dumb move!"

[*In soccer, an "own goal" is when a team member scores a goal for the opposing team. —Ed.]

Thom Hogan: "The R always seemed like an awkward and hastily prepared entrant to me. It tried to straddle A7/A7R and Z6/Z7 positions with an old sensor mounted on a body with some experimental and untested UX [user experience —Ed.], at a tweener price. Not surprising that it's on discount, but so is some of its competition."

Barry Reid: "No affordable lenses."

On the Quickness of the G9

Our friend Carl Weese was discussing the Panasonic G9 (now $1,199) with an online group of photographer friends when the topic of the quickness of the G9 came up. The G9 is almost eerily responsive, in a variety of ways. But one of its most distinctive features is the hair-trigger shutter release—it's incredibly light and easy to trip, which has been difficult to get used to for me. But Carl, who is a trained marksman, had a tip:

"I just figured out another thing this afternoon on a two-hour photo walkabout. I’ve been getting occasional double releases from the G9’s hair-trigger shutter release. What I just figured out was that I was making a perceptual mistake about the problem and making it worse instead of better. I more or less 'assumed' unconsciously that the camera was making the mistake and firing twice, when there was no reason to think so. What I’d been doing was trying to press/release the shutter quickly and gently, as though it were in burst mode and I only wanted one shot (think firing accurately with a fully automatic weapon). Wrong! The camera is in single shot mode, but trying to jigger the release that way was resulting in double touches. All I had to do was deliberately press and briefly hold and it does not spontaneously make a second shot. Having that figured out may make me pretty much completely comfortable with the hair-trigger release."

Eureka! Several months in, that was my problem with the G9 too—I've been trying to to touch the shutter lightly, as if pressing too hard would set it fluttering in rapid-fire Continuous mode. But he's exactly right—one easy but firm full press and the camera takes only one shot. (The light shutter is supposedly to help defeat "shutter jab" syndrome, to aid the IBIS—or at least that's what Fuji says about the similarly light and hair-trigger release on the X-H1.)

It's rather amazing that this isn't obvious, and it may have been to some users. But it isn't to everybody—Carl and I have a long human lifespan's worth of experience with cameras between us, and it wasn't obvious to either of us. So there must be others out there.

If you have a G9, you don't have to admit it if you'd been making this "perceptual mistake" too.  :-)  But if you were, I'm sure you'll be as happy as I was with Carl's tip.

Mike
(Thanks to Carl)

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

(Not) everything must fade away

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

Kurt Kramer: "Thanks for this useful post. I thought something was wrong with my camera and it was annoying."

Maggie Osterberg: "I'll be! My Pen-F has the same 'problem.'"

Frank: "I have a G9, from the first moment it seemed a little difficult, but after 10 minutes, I became comfortable with the shutter. It feels very good. I never had your problem with it. I've made photos for 48 years now. I think it's no problem for most, and you both are the exceptions."

Dale: "It's not obvious. The initial review in PDN also flagged this as a problem. Now we have a solution. Good work Carl!"