Fujifilm X-Pro1

Earlier in the week I commented on mirrors in the current crop of professional cameras and how I see them as a connection with the past rather than the future.

Well, CES 2012 is here and the mirror-less market just seems to keep getting more interesting. Much has already been written about the previously announced Sony NEX-7 (see here if you want an overview), but the big news (for me) at CES was the Fujifilm X-Pro1.

Apart from the X-Pro1 looking great, it also has some interesting features:

• Large (APS-C) 16MP CMOS sensor
• No low pass filter, but a sensor structure that tries to achieve the same aim. Nett effect that it will hopefully improve image quality
• A viewfinder that you can switch between electronic and optical modes without taking it from your eye
• Support to be provided for (Leica) M-Mount lenses

DP Review have a preview on their site, but I’ll be looking forward to knowing what the actual image quality and shutter lag is like. If they get these right at a reasonable price I think Nikon and Canon may have to up their game a little!

Buachaille Etive Mor At Night

For those of you that haven’t been, Rannoch Moor is a fantastic photography location; if the weather is on your side of course, this is western Scotland after all! In the east there are picturesque small lochs, in the centre an open expanse of “wilderness” and in the west the mountains that surround Glen Coe. At this edge of moor, towering over entrance to Glen Coe, is Buachaille Etive Mor.

Kim and I spent a few days based in Glen Coe in Feb of 2010. The images below are a small selection of night exposures taken in the shadow of the Bauchaille.

The first image was taken from a small lay-by at the side of the Glen Etive road, looking west towards the iconic face of Buachaille Etive Mor. It had snowed quite recently and the road was only really passible with a 4×4, which lucky we were driving. The image is a 10 second exposure at f10, taken after sunset at about 18:30, on a 5D Mk I. It was pretty cold that night with quite a bit of cloud and wind. Much of the evening was spent clearing ice off our lens and warming batteries up to get a few more minutes of life out of them!

Buachaille Etive Mor 1

The next image was taken a few days later, a little further down the Glen Etive road. There is a small bridge with a parking spot next to it. From there follow the river west for the best vantage points. It was taken on Kim’s infrared converted 20D and then converted to black & white. It’s a 342 second exposure at f10. As you can see from the foreground, we weren’t the first people there after the snow fall.

Buachaille Etive Mor 2

The third and final image in this set was taken at roughly the same spot as the second, but this time facing away from the Buachaille towards Sron na Creise. I used Kim’s 20D again for this 600 second f10 shot. It’s been quite harshly post processed to give it what I hope is an aged look. I’ve tried to add to this with a bit of toning.

Sron na Creise

Funny Video For New Beauty Product – Fotoshop by Adobé

This video made me smile. If it was true, Adobé would make a fortune!

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Adobe Lightroom 4 (Beta)

Adobe have just released version 4 of Lightroom for beta testing. Quoting directly from the Adobe download site, the key new features are:

• Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
• Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
• Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
• White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
• Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
• Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
• Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr®.
• Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
• Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

Looking down this list the major improvement for me is likely to be the ability to soft proof. I’ve been waiting years for this!

The other items I’m not so sure about. One of the key concerns I have about software products is “bloat”. ie the tendency for software companies to add more and more features, often extending the scope of the original product’s vision. On the plus side this means you get more features for your money, but it also has its downsides. As software products get more features they often:

• are more complex for the product supplier to support
• have more defects
• more complex to use (eg lots of ways of doing the same thing)
• require more computer resource

With a background in IT, I have personal experience of suffering from the above. In my view keeping products small, simple and focused is a much better way of allowing them to excel in their field. On that basis I would remove the video capabilities and stick to stills. But hey, if companies followed my lead then it would be very difficult to entice people to upgrade or buy new. After all, adding video capability gives Adobe a whole new market for Lightroom.

By the way, I suspect my views about bloatware will not stop me upgrading!

Are DSLRs a Dying Breed?

Trey Ratcliff recently posted his view that the future of high end digital photography doesn’t lie with DSLR cameras, but rather with the new breed of mirror-less cameras that many of the major manufacturers are starting to produce. If you haven’t do so already, his post is well worth reading.

I agree with the general thrust of his argument. Namely that the mechanical nature and form of modern DSLRs owes more to their film heritage than the manufacturers’ desire to make the most of the digital medium.

To be quite frank I don’t need a mirror in a camera. If you follow my blog you’ll know the problem I’ve had with a DSLR mirror and my views about what I wanted from the next Canon Pro camera. What I need is a digital camera that gives me the image quality and control I need for my work. At the moment that really means a DSLR, and a Canon one at that. Not because I think Canon are necessarily better than Nikon or the other major players, but rather because I’m heavily invested in lenses and other Canon related paraphernalia. To switch formats for me is more expensive than just buying a new camera.

Where do I believe the future is though? I believe its in mirrorless cameras. Excellent sensors,  optics and electronic viewfinders/screens combined with masses of CPU power will create a camera revolution over the next 5, 10 and 20 years. It’s happened in consumer electronics and computers, and as cameras are a combination of both now I see it as inevitable.

So, the question is, will my 5D Mk II, be the last digital SLR that I buy? The simple answer is I don’t know. I’d like it to be the last, but that is only going to happen if a viable alternative is released. Canon make enormous amounts of money from their high-end DSLRs and more possibly importantly, their lenses. I can’t see them wanting to let go of this just yet. But, they and Nikon are not calling the shots anymore. If they don’t embrace this electronic future and do it quickly they’ll be left behind by the the likes of Sony, Panasonic, Fuji etc. They know this better then me, so I fully expect to have an alternative ready in a couple of years – just when I’ll be looking to switch!