Mirrorless Pics: Broad Ripple, Indianapolis with the Hasselblad Lunar

I know it's just a Sony NEX-7 re-skinned in a funky titanium and carbon fiber shell, but I like it. I mostly shoot it with the Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* 16-70mm f/4, although I also have one of the E-mount 16mm f/2.8 pancake wide angles with the Hassy branding on it.

The Lunar was the first camera I ever had with in-camera HDR and I played with that a bit. The menus on Sony mirrorless cameras back then were clunky and awkward and the light re-skinning they got for Hasselblad duty just made them prettier but no less counterintuitive. The controls and menus on the Sony NEX cameras always felt like they were done by someone who got transferred to Sony Camera Division from Clock Radios or Stereo Remotes two weeks ago.

DSLR Pics: Triumph TR-3A with the Nikon D800

It's hard to believe that the Nikon D800 is over a decade old now. It's still an enormously capable camera and 36 megapixels is still rather a lot.

The image above, snapped on a Saturday afternoon in October, is a JPEG straight out of the camera. Like with all my cameras that can shoot RAW, I have the camera record one RAW file and one high quality monochrome JPEG. The reason for the JPEG is because that's the photo that gets shown for review on the monitor on the back of the camera when I chimp, and it keeps my head in that "light and shadow and texture" frame of mind.

Sometimes the JPEG itself is actually a keeper, too, like the one above. It should embiggenate quite nicely.  It was shot at ISO 200 and the lens was the 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom.

The actual color photo processed from the RAW is below.

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I wish...

That picture of sleepy Huck was snapped with the Nikon 1 V2 and the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2 portrait lens. That was the closest thing to a professional lens Nikon made for the Nikon 1 system. Well, that and the 70-300mm telephoto zoom.

I wish they'd made some pro-type zooms to go with the V-series bodies. A 10-45mm f/4, which would be a rough 28-120mm equivalent would be a banger.

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Mirrorless Pics: Neighborhood people with the Fuji X-E1

Some shots of the crew at Fat Dan's Chicago-Style Deli at 54th & College, using the Fujifilm X-E1 and the lovely little Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 lens.

Being a roughly 50mm equivalent focal length, it's about as short of a lens as I'll ever use for portraiture, and its fast maximum aperture is good for making the subject stand out against a softly-blurred background. At the same time, f/1.8 and an APS-C size sensor is less likely to wind you up in those "Oops, I only had enough depth of field to get one eye in focus" situations than, say, f/1.4 on a full-frame.

Mirrorless Pics: Neighborhood people with the Nikon 1 V2

Out and about on an unusually chilly Saturday afternoon in mid-April with the Nikon 1 V2 wearing the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2 lens.

Mirrorless Pics: Neighborhood people with the Nikon 1 V2

I had the Nikon 1 V2 and the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2 portrait lens with me yesterday. Even though I set an upper ISO limit of 800, the tiny 2012-vintage 14MP Aptina-made 1" sensor does get noisy.

Despite lacking VR stabilization, the whopping f/1.2 aperture on the 32mm lens allows usable speeds in reasonable indoor lighting.

Mirrorless Pics: Neighborhood people with the Fuji X-E1

These are straight-out-of-camera JPEGs from the Fujifilm X-E1 and the wonderful Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8. This is one of my favorite combos, pairing a compact rangefinder-style body with a nice, fast standard prime.

Mirrorless Pics: Neighborhood people with the Nikon 1 V2

I know I go on at length about it, but the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2 is just such a wonderful portrait lens. It's got a large enough aperture that you don't need to crank the ISO through the roof, which makes the little 1" CX-format sensor get noisy in a hurry. The aperture is also large enough that you get some actual subject separation and the bokeh is pleasant to boot.

Rounding Out a Lens Library

Fuji X-T2 & XF 50mm f/2 R WR

My lineup of Fujifilm X-mount lenses had a hole in it... Well, it had a couple holes, actually, but one really mattered to me.

I had a couple good primes: The wide-ish XF 23mm f/2 R WR "Fujicron" and the normal-length Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8, as well as a good general-purpose zoom in the XF 16-80mm f/4 R WR. What I didn't have was a dedicated portrait lens. Oh, sure, I had a manual focus Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 that I'd bought on a lark back when my income situation allowed buying lenses on a lark, but it didn't really fill the gap.

Fuji makes three lenses that would do the job I was looking for and were roughly in my price range: The 50mm f/2, 90mm f/2, and (if I really stretched and maybe traded in some old kit) the 56mm f/1.2

Fortunately a used 50mm f/2 R WR "Fujicron" popped up at Roberts downtown here in Indy at a price I could afford, and so I snatched it up.

Now I just need a longer telephoto zoom and I'll have a fairly complete shooting setup. I could do an event  with one bag, the X-T2 and the X-E1 as a backup.

Mirrorless Pics: Downtown Indy with the Fujifilm X-E1

In my ongoing quest to try and "see" better in wider angles, I switched cameras halfway through my photo walk with a friend in downtown Indianapolis yesterday.

I bagged the  Fuji X-T2 and pulled the X-E1, wearing an XF 23mm f/2 R WR lens, out of my Peak Design  Everyday Sling.

On the X-E1's 16MP crop sensor, the XF 23/2 "Fujicron" has a field of view equivalent to about a 35mm lens on a full frame camera, so it's wide-ish but not really wide-wide.

One thing I like about the Fuji cameras is their film emulation modes, so you can get that Acros or Provia look without having to do processing. Of the mainstream manufacturers these days, Fuji is definitely the camera nerd's camera supplier.

Acros emulation

Provia emulation

Re-Shoots

I used the Amazon gift card Bobbi gave me for my birthday to order a used Kodak Easyshare V1073.

Now I have a copy of each digicam I used before getting my first DSLR:

• Sony Mavica FD88
• Nikon Coolpix 990
• Kodak Easyshare V1073
• Canon PowerShot SX500

Now to go back and see if I can reshoot some things I shot back in the day, using the same gear, but do it better! The arrows are the same, but the Indian's gotten a bit better over the years, or at least I'd like to think so.

Alas, I won't be able to re-do the Lucky Gunner Blogger Shoot, or Knob Creek, or classes with Louis Awerbuck and Todd Green, or...

Kodak Easyshare at Knob Creek in 2011

Mirrorless Pics: Ruby the dog with the Nikon 1 V2

Visiting family in Missouri for New Year's Eve, I got my cousin's pupper Ruby to sit for a portrait session with the Nikon 1 V2 & the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2 lens.

I dearly love that glass.

Merry Christmas!

Pentax Q10 & 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom

Merry Christmas to all you folks out in Digital Fossils Land! Dust off an old camera and take some fun holiday snaps with it!

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Digicam Pics: Squirrel with the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS

Purists may gripe about the chromatic aberration (and I'll gripe about the inability to shoot in RAW), but a stabilized lens with a 720mm equivalent focal length in a lightweight camera that will sit in the palm of your hand and which retailed for under three hundo is a modern miracle.

When announced in summer of 2012, MSRP of the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS was $329. In March of the following year I bought an open-box unit at Best Buy for $149.

Spotted this squirrel while I was out walking yesterday. These are SOOC un-cropped JPEGs, all optical zoom (I keep the digital zoom turned off, because eff that noise.) Your cell phone won't do this.

The Pentax Q10: A Review

Pentax’s original Q debuted to reviews that were equal parts enthusiastic and bemused. Back in 2011 nobody was really sure how the new field of mirrorless cameras was going to shake out. What, in effect, were these new cameras for?

The original Q offered a lot of “real camera” functionality, but its sensor size made it seem like a fun “play camera”. Its sturdy magnesium shell and eight hundred dollar price tag had it competing with established DSLR systems, but its lens selection was limited to the 01 Standard Prime and the 02 Standard Zoom and a handful of plasticky novelty lenses: the fixed focal length, fixed-aperture trio of the 03 Toy Fisheye, 04 Toy Lens Wide, and 05 Toy Lens Telephoto.

In 2012, Pentax leaned into the fun kawaii aspect of the tiny camera and replaced the Q with the Q10.

Pentax Q10, with Nikon D2X for scale.

While it also sports a 12MP 1/2.3" backside-illuminated CMOS sensor like its predecessor's, Pentax claims some hand-wave-y improvements, as well as faster autofocus. The most important change between the original Q and the Q10 was the price drop. Whereas the earlier camera had been $800 with a fixed-focal length prime lens, the new one was two hundred bucks cheaper and came with the 02 Standard Zoom in the kit.

It accomplished this by replacing the magnesium body of the Q with an entirely polymer outer shell. The new body had a slightly more sculpted top plate and a deeper finger grip that somehow gave it more SLR-like lines.

If you read my earlier review on the Q, all the buttons and controls are in the same place on the newer camera. However you could now get your kawaii little mirrorless Pentax with a hundred different combinations of body and grip colors. It's what attracted me to the camera in the first place; I thought it would be neat if Tamara Keel could get a camera, teal.

The other improvement to the Q lineup in 2012 was the addition of the 06 Telephoto Zoom, a 15-45mm f/2.8 zoom lens that had a field of view on the 1/2.3" sensor equivalent to an 83-249mm lens on a full frame camera...and yet it was about the size of a shot glass.

The Q10 is a fun little camera, and with the addition of the longer zoom, you could now have a reasonable three-lens kit: a standard zoom, a long zoom, and a fast standard prime. Within the limitations of the smaller sensor, the Q series had become a viable, if quirky, alternative to more normal entry-level DSLRs and mirrorless cams.

Q10 with 02 Standard Zoom

Q10 with 02 Standard Zoom, using "blur control" mode to simulate background blur

Q10 with 02 Standard Zoom

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Mirrorless Pics: Monochrome cars with the Pentax Q10

As I mentioned, I keep the little Pentax mirrorless cameras set to record both a RAW (.DNG) file as well as a high-res monochrome JPEG. This Maserati Quattroporte Q4 and Mercedes-Benz W213 E-class both look dramatic in monochrome (the Maserati was black and the Benz was silver) and were snapped using the 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom lens.

Digicam Pics: The Moon with a Canon PowerShot SX500 IS

While cell phones have demolished the general point & shoot camera market, a few niche generes are hanging on. High-end enthusiast cameras are still there, as are the ruggedized waterproof adventure cams.

One other type of point & shoot that still endures is the superzoom bridge camera. These things pack ultra-long focal length zoom lenses that no cell phone cam can compete with, and are popular with everybody from birdwatchers who don't want to mess with a more expensive interchangeable lens camera, to vacationers who don't want to miss a shot on the trip of a lifetime due to lack of zoom abilities.

For a while I used a Canon PowerShot SX500 IS, which I affectionately termed the "ShowerPot". Dating to 2012, the SX500 has a 16MP 1/2.3" CCD sensor and a 30X zoom lens that gives it a focal length range equivalent to a whopping 24-720mm in full frame terms.

I remember the first time I casually pointed it at the moon and popped off a shot...

Uncropped straight out of camera JPEG

Mirrorless Pics: Obsidian knife with the Fujifilm X-E1

Every year since 2018, I've made a point of buying a knife from the flint knapper in the Pioneer Village at the Indiana State Fair. This one, with a blade of rainbow obsidian, was the first.

These photographs were taken with my Fujifilm X-E1, wearing the Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 lens.

The X-E1 was Fuji's second camera in its X-mount lineup. It's essentially an X-Pro without the bulky and expensive electro-optical hybrid viewfinder. Instead, it has a conventional high-res OLED electronic viewfinder, albeit with higher resolution than the electro- part of the X-Pro's hybrid finder. It's also got a bit more plastic in the body shell than the rugged X-Pro. The 16MP APS-C X-Trans CMOS sensor is the same as the one on the more expensive camera.

Mirrorless Pics: Around SoBro with the Pentax Q10

The 01 prime lens is fast enough, with its maximum f/1.9 aperture, to use indoors as long as it's not super dark. (Although the tiny sensor does get noisy fast at higher ISOs.)

The monochrome shots are straight-out-of-camera high res JPEGs, while the color pics are lightly-processed RAWs.

 

Mirrorless Pics: BMW 528e with the Pentax Q10

Out and about with the Pentax Q10 in my pocket yesterday, and the 528e was out in the rain, making an excellent subject.

The Q10 was the second iteration of the Q series of miniature mirrorless cameras from Pentax. It has a 1/2.3" 12MP sensor, like the original, with faster autofocus, and with a plastic body rather than the magnesium shell of the original Q.