Camera Blog

The winter holidays are upon us, and many photographers are out there right now weighing their options on which new camera to buy.  I have put together the following buyers guide to aid people with their decision:

Beginner/Point & Shoot

Intended uses include parties, bars, afternoons photographing your dog/kids/some ducks/etc. in the park.  You’re an attentive consumer so you know what to look for in a piece of electronics: big numbers.  The more mexapixels the better, the bigger “x” on the zoom the better, and if you can save 3 grams in weight it’s worth the extra $5.79 over that other model.

Camera-blog.net’s recommendation: Buy something that looks cool.  Consult GQ, Wired, or Men’s Journal and find the neatest-looking camera you can, or choose from the advertisement that features the hippest 30-somethings out having a good time.  Everything from a major brand under $200 is about the same anyways.

Advanced/dSLR

Intended uses include: taking 30 pictures of your cat at varying f-stops, long exposures of rush-hour traffic from a highway overpass, and wide-angle shots of cathedral interiors from your European vacation.  Be sure to pick up a “How-to” book on photography then go to every photography forum on the internet and clog it up with inane questions, lens “tests”, slightly creepy pictures you took at a local high-school girl’s volleyball tournament, comments on how good your “copy” of your kit lens is, and how much you love the “cinema look” that you get from its video mode which is in reality just crushed black levels and f/1.8 on your borrowed 85mm.

Camera-blog.net’s recommendation: Whichever dSLR under $1100 that feels the best in your hands.  Video features that you probably won’t take advantage of are an important part of your buying decision, as are flash systems that you probably won’t ever fully figure out, built-in “Picture Styles” that will forever ruin your camera-created .jpgs, and the number of $2,000 lenses that you’ll be buying (eventually!) even though you’re shopping around for the easiest $50 rebate right now.

Expert

Intended uses include: “Fine art photography” that you can show off to your pretentious friends at your monthly photo-club get-together, lens resolution charts, close-ups of a tiger’s iris at the zoo. It’s important that you look like you know what you’re doing so lots of buttons, in-camera menus that go 4 levels deep (tethered laptops are an acceptable substitution), giant petal-shaped lens hoods, and CNC’d “L-brackets” are important.  Bigger is better here!

Camera-blog.net’s recommendation: Something with a German or European name that you can be sure others will mispronounce.  Leica, Seitz, Hasselblad, etc.  Suffixes and prefixes such as -pan, hypo-, helio-, -lux, -gon, and -nar are all important to have on your lenses and accessories.  A writeup on Luminous-Landscape.com is essential to confirm your good taste in gear.  Make sure that you practice your concerned chimping face in front of the mirror before you go out on a shoot, and don’t forget to budget for an $1,800 tripod.

So we’ve all seen the new Nikon D3s, and we all agree that it’s the best PJ camera body out there. Right? Right.

Nikon's newest PJ tool

Insane ISO levels, 9fps, top-of-the-line autofocus, and all of the other features that we’ve come to expect for a high-end professional body. There are already thousands of whiny camera enthusiasts complaining about the lack of 1080p video who don’t understand that they’re largely mistaken that the 720p MJPEG is “not good enough”, but as usual they don’t realize that the videos that this thing will take in warzones, candid interviews, and on-the-spot news locations will end up as a tiny YouTube-sized stream on the web, and not on CNN’s HD broadcast.

Nikon knows that it can’t compete with Canon in video right now, so they’re sticking to what they know best and by the looks of it they’re doing a hell of a job. The biggest question that this raises is: What will Canon now come out with in response? This is Canon’s opportunity to go all-out with the best crossover still/video camera that they can possibly muster. An XLR input, an option for RAW 1080p or 2K video, full manual controls, and a form factor somewhere between a dSLR and a camcorder.

Now is your chance Canon. Nikon made their game plan pretty clear here and we’re all waiting to see if you have the smarts to match it.  Let’s see you split your professional line into 2 segments: the D3s competitor, and the indie-filmmaker’s dream-come-true.

Having just spent a bundle of money on a studio flash and battery pack, I felt the need to go out and take some low-tech shots at one of my favorite events: Last Thursday on Alberta St. here in Portland.  As usual, the camera is my DP2.

Natural light only

Waiting for the grilled cheese at Le Petite Provence

Both of these can be anylized from a lighting point of view.  There was a huge wall of windows at camera-left with the evening sun coming through (though not directly), there was a large mirror directly above and behind the subject that allowed for a bit of a hair light accent, and I think I just happened to get lucky with the catch light in the eyes– I’m pretty sure those are the window reflections though.  No on-camera or off-camera flash was used.

It’s fun to take apart images like these and it’s good to keep notes on them, because it seems like half the time that I’m fussing with lights I’m merely trying to re-create what a nice big window in a big open room already does.  I love throwing technology at problems, but I also love the simplicity of doing without it.

Long story, short:

I was having some fairly severe focus calibration issues with my Canon 40D, which I purchased a couple of years ago from someone on the FredMiranda.com Buy & Sell Forum.  I sent it down to Canon’s Irvine, CA facility with a letter explaining the problem, and I fully expeded to shell out a couple hundred bucks for the service.

To my great surprise, not 3 hours after the UPS tracking widget on my desktop confirmed that Canon had received my camera I had an email from their service department stating that they’d re-calibrate it free of charge and ship it back to me within the week!

Not bad for an out-of-warranty used body!

Let’s be honest: despite Canon’s greatnes when it comes to lenses, we always want to see more.  We want updates to the old ones (100-400mm update, anybody?) and we want to see some new and exciting technology put into their offerings; new versions of existing lenses are great, but it has been a while since the magicians engineers have really ‘Wow’ed’ us.

Hopefully that will change with today’s announcement.  Some new innovation in the world of IS is really exciting, and if I’m reading it correctly it looks like this will be able to adapt to movements in a way that in-body stabilization systems won’t be able to do.

More to come, as soon as it is announced!

2 reasons: 1, to show off my 55th picture with my DP2 (taken by my dad), and 2, to put a face to the author of this blog. 

Not bad for a compact camera, eh?

The astute viewer will notice that my t-shirt seems to have some sort of a weird blue tint going on.  I see it too, and I’m still trying to determine at which point in the developing process it got there.  For now I’m going to blame it on the poor white-balance functionality of Sigma’s PhotoPro software.

This is a review of the much-anticipated Sigma DP2 compact camera that was released in May, 2009.

I hope to make it clear in both broad strokes and in great detail why this camera is: revolutionary, a hopeful sign of things to come, a success, and a big steaming pile of compromises.

Please read on for the full review.

As of May 15th it looks as though the Sigma DP-2 is out of stock at every major internet retailer. Phone calls to B&H, Adorama, Amazon, J&R, and others all resulted in the same answer: the DP-2 is out of stock, and there is no ETA for new inventory. Whether the camera is insanely popular or the retailers didn’t get very much stock in the first place remains to be seen, but with images like these starting to pop up around the ‘net it’s sure making a good first impression.

Here’s a quick rundown of the camera’s page on each site for easy reference:

Amazon.com

B&H Photo

Adorama

J&R

17th Street Photo

I will update this post as soon as any of the above retailers get it in stock.

UPDATE: Our friends in the U.K. can pick up a DP-2 at ABC-Digital-Cameras.co.uk for £599.99.  Still no word on North American availability, however.

UPDATE #2 (May 20th): 17th Street Photo has the DP-2 available right now for $699.  This is still a $50 premium over every other store that is will be carrying it, but right now they’re the only place that has it in stock.

The full press release is here.

So Sony has introduced a handful of new products for the entry-level consumer:the DSLR-A380, DSLR-A330 and the DSLR-A230, a new flash unit, and a few low-end lenses.

From two quick read throughs of the release it looks like all of them are marginal (but ultimately worthy) improvements over current models.  A few extra mega-pixels here, a slightly better tilting rear LCD there, and some systems upgrades all around.  Like most new announcements these days there is nothing to be terribly excited about, although any incremental improvements that come about during a standard product release cycle are welcome.

The real question that will be analyzed, studied, compared, and and argued over (extensively…) is: How do these new cameras and lenses compare to those of Canon, Nikon, Pentax, et cetera?  The answer, as usual, will be “Just fine, and you’ll probably never notice the difference unless you’re studying the meta-data.”

It doesn’t even need a description, does it?

Based on aesthetics alone this camera has already won the hearts of many photographers.  It’s small, it embraces the Micro 4/3rds sensor format and it just looks great in that old-school Leica/rangefinder-esque sort of way.

It’ll be coming in at a touch over $1,000 and there haven’t been any detailed specs released to the public as of yet.  At this point though I don’t even care what it does or how it does it because there’s no denying that it’ll look great doing it.

Why is this camera so exciting, when we already have hundreds of digital compacts to choose from?  There are 2 reasons: First and foremost, the sensor has over 10 times the surface area as that of a traditional point & shoot, which should yield far better low-light performance and noise characteristics.  And second, we have yet to see an affordable (sorry Leica) compact with interchangeable lenses.

Somewhere, a team of product managers and engineers is listening to our wishes…

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