Mirrorless Pics: Red Squirrel with the Pentax Q-S1

Another local nature shot with the 06 Telephoto Zoom on the Pentax Q-S1. This one's 1/400th of a sec, wide open at f/2.8 at ISO 200. The in-body image stabilization ("SR" for "Shake Reduction" in Pentax-speak) worked dandily, which is unsurprising since Pentax was a pioneer in the field.

Wide open there's a bit of purple chromatic fringing around the edges, but it still delivers pretty sharp results in the center, especially considering the tiny size of the 1/1.7" 12MP sensor.

You can make out individual hairs on the squirrel quite easily. Not bad for a lens the size of a shot glass.

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Mirrorless Pics: Huck the Cat with the Sony a7 & vintage Nikon lens

It's hard to believe that it's been a whole decade since Sony's a7 rocked the camera market by introducing full-frame mirrorless to the world of serious photography.

They were the first mirrorless cameras to really dent the pro market, which had previously shunned them due to viewfinder lag, focus speed issues, and battery life. The a7 and its successor, the a7 II, solved the first two issues, but it wasn't until the a7 III that you could go through the day without a pocketful of spare batteries. (The problem was the original a7 used Sony's NP-FW50, which was originally intended for crop-sensor cameras with lower power requirements.)

I used the a7 & a7 II for a while before going back to Canon DSLRs for work because I was too poor to afford a new a7 III and the pandemic delayed the launch of the a7 IV for over a year, which kept used III's uncommon and spendy.

What I miss most about the a7 and a7 II was something fairly unique to full-frame mirrorless: The ability to use almost any old 35mm film lens at their native focal length with a simple dumb adaptor. Sure, you can put them on an APS-C camera like my Fuji X-T2, but then they get that 1.5X focal length multiplier.

These shots of my roommate's cat, Huck, were taken with the original a7 and a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5, one of the all-time classic portrait lenses.

While Responsible Tam would save her pennies until she can afford a nice used EOS R or even something newer, Impulsive Tam is always in danger of jumping on the first reasonably-priced used EOS RP that I can find just so I can play around with old lenses like this again.

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Nikon 1 V1 and the 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8

On the little 1" sensor (or, as Nikon called it, "CX format") of the V1, the 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 is the equivalent of the Nifty Fifty. 

The f/1.8 aperture is nice and bright, but while the aperture doesn't scale in terms of brightness, it does in regard to depth of field. When it comes to blowing out the background, even wide open the maximum aperture is equivalent to f/4.86 on a full frame camera.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though! Check out this wide open shot of some cameras on a bookshelf. On a full-frame body it would have had a depth of field about as thick as a sheet of paper, whereas here all the titles are legible.

Mirrorless Pics: Red-Tailed Hawk with the Pentax Q-S1

I happened to have the Pentax Q-S1 with the 15-45mm f/2.8 06 Telephoto Zoom on it in my jacket pocket yesterday when a red-tailed hawk alit on a street light right in front of me.

On the little 1/1.7" sensor, that lens is the equivalent of a 70-200mm on a full-frame.

The image above is lightly cropped. Un-cropped shots look like this.

EDIT: My birdwatching friend tells me this is probably a red-shouldered hawk.

Vintage DSLR Pics: Lions with the Olympus E-600

The Olympus Zuiko Digital 150mm f/2.0 is a magnificent lens. For these photos snapped at the Indianapolis Zoo, it was mounted on a 12MP Olympus E-600, one of the last Four Thirds DSLRs from Olympus, released in late 2009.

Physical Deterioration, Digital Decay

Over at Down the Road, Jim Grey is scanning some negatives he took back in 1982, pictures of friends and memories from his high school days.

This hits a note for me, because I have a huge box of negatives in the attic from my peak photography days in 1990-1992. I was working in one hour photo labs and as a photographer's assistant, and so I got discounted film and prints and free processing. Well, technically processing was supposed to be discounted, too, but no manager I ever worked for cared if you ran your film through the processor during a lull in the workday or charged you to do so, since there was no actual cost to the company for it.

The funny thing is that most of my earliest digital photographs, from the early Mavica days in late '01 up through probably 2007 or so, are inaccessible to me right now. Anything I kept saved to a hard drive is quietly succumbing to bit rot on a dusty Celeron tower in a cobwebby corner of the attic. Anything I didn't save to HDD, well... who knows where those floppies are, assuming I even bothered to save them through two moves?

I've been a much better digital custodian since then, and have photos saved to multiple places, but I really should get a proper on-site RAID setup, rather than using just the single external HDD I am now.

I should also look into scanning some of those old negatives. I mean, I've got photos of Lance Armstrong winning the First Union Grand Prix in Atlanta, his first big race win, in there someplace.

I don't know whether I should get a proper scanner, or just a simple light table and use my phone for a scanner, though...

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Nikon D800: High Resolution Fossil

It's hard to believe that we're coming up on a dozen years since the launch of the Nikon D800. It was such a huge deal when it launched!

In the spring of 2012, its only full-frame rivals were the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and the recently-discontinued Sony Alpha 900, with 22MP and 24MP sensors, respectively.

In contrast, the D800's 36MP sensor had resolution close to that of the medium format Pentax 645D, and for a third of the price. (I mean, three grand was still a lot of money, but...)

Nowadays you can pick up used D800s in the $400-$600 range from reputable resellers like KEH and Roberts. Just be aware that if you want best sharpness you need to use good lenses! I usually keep my 24-120mm f/4 VR on my D800 body.

Digicam Pics: 1961 Buick LeSabre with the Samsung TL500

I keep the Samsung TL500 set up to record two files with every shot. The camera records one in RAW format, which for Samsung uses the ".SRW" file extension, and one fine quality JPEG. You can set custom color balances for the JPEG like Soft, Vivid, Forest, et cetera. It took me a little bit of scrolling and testing to figure out that "Classic" was Samsung-speak for "Monochrome".

So that's what I use: One RAW file is recorded and a monochrome JPEG. Being as this is a 2010-vintage pocket camera, it takes it a hot minute to write that 24MB .SRW file. If you just wanted to turn the camera on and pop off a quick shot or two then shut it back off, you'll be waiting a few seconds for the green "Busy" LED to stop blinking before it'll retract the lens and power down.

The Classic setting gives you a pretty stark and contrasty B&W effect.

Vintage DSLR Pics: Kit Cars with the Canon EOS-1D Mark III

Here are a pseudo Bugatti Type 37 and a faux MG TD tooling around the 'hood. Both are Beetle-powered, although the Bugatti is a much more extensive alteration of the original VeeDub.

Both were photographed with a 2007-vintage Canon EOS-1D Mark III & EF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

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Comeback Trail for Cameras?

Indiana State Fair attendee with a Canon EOS 80D & Tamron 18-400mm zoom lens.

Something I noticed at the State Fair this past summer was that there were a lot more people carrying actual cameras... you know, the kind you hang on a strap around your neck ...than there have been for the last several years. I probably haven't seen this many serious cameras being used in the entire time I've been attending the Fair.

A shutterbug friend attending a Highland Games event out east last month also noticed an unusual number of cameras, real cameras of the interchangeable lens variety, relative to what he'd been used to of late.

Heck, on the random street corner I picked to stake out the Monumental Marathon here in Indy the other day, among the people waving cell phones, was a young shooter with a Canon Rebel T7 and kit lens.

That got me to wondering why this is, and here’s my theory:

Up through the end of the film era most people had some sort of camera, but unless they had photography as a hobby, it was generally only used to document special occasions: holidays, parties, holiday parties, vacations, sports games or concerts...that sort of thing.

This was because of two things. The first was that each photograph had real physical monetary and time costs, in film and processing and printing. The second was that in order to share those images with anyone, you had to be in the same place with them and get them to look at your physical photo.

The flash-burned photo of me leaning on the trunk of my '75 Ford Granada sedan* was taken with a Kodak S1100XL just like the one in the photo, back in '91.

That changed with three innovations that became increasingly common toward the end of the Nineties: Digital cameras, the World Wide Web, and broadband connectivity that could transmit images to your screen at something other than a snail's pace. (One of the first web fora on which I was a moderator would close and lock threads once they went over 100 kilobytes in size so that they wouldn't load too slowly for people on dialup connections.)

With the ability to share photos over the internet, the reasons to purchase a digital camera began to multiply. I remember on my first AOL home page what a pain it was to take physical photos and then get my then-roommate to scan them so they could be put online.

The new horizons of eBay and Craigslist gave normal folks who'd never consider photography as a hobby or pastime a reason to buy a digital camera. How are you gonna sell that sofa or old Honda unless you can upload some photos of it?

In fact, the need to sell my old '84 Trans Am was the impetus for the purchase of my own first digicam, a New-Old-Stock Sony Mavica FD-88 in October of 2001. The fact that I could use it to take pictures of S&W revolvers and upload them to internet forums was just a bonus. Ironically, I picked the Mavica not only because it was on sale, but also because it stored photos on floppies. Back then, there was no standard storage medium for cameras: Memory Sticks, SD and CF cards, SmartMedia, xD cards... they were all vying to be The One. I picked the Mavica because computers would always have floppy drives, right? Ell. Oh. Ell.

You never forget your first digicam or your first cellie, I guess...

Over the next few years I upgraded digital cameras twice, first to a Nikon Coolpix 990 in 2003, and then a Kodak EasyShare V1073 in 2008. I was still using the Kodak when I got my first smart phone in 2011, an LG Optimus V, whose 3MP camera was no threat to the supremacy of the EasyShare with its 10MP sensor and sharp Schneider-Kreuznach 3X optical zoom lens.

My next phone with a camera was a Samsung Galaxy SII and, to be perfectly honest, if I hadn't gotten back into photography as a hobby, that's where I would have stopped buying cameras. The Galaxy's camera had an 8MP sensor and turned out perfectly adequate snapshots.

Here's the thing, though: That generation of smart phones... the Galaxy SII and the iPhone 5 ...put perfectly adequate snapshot cameras into the hands of millions of people, some percentage of whom eventually wanted more. Being on Instagram or Flickr can expose a person to some pretty cool imagery of the kind that can't exactly be duplicated with a fixed 24mm lens and a 1/2.3" sensor.

Dozen-year-old cameras are still useful, unlike dozen-year-old smart phones.

Just like back in the film days, some people got their start with a Brownie or an Instamatic and decided that they liked taking pictures and wanted to be able to do more, a certain percentage of folks are using the modern-day equivalent of those ubiquitous snapshot cameras...and deciding that they want more.

Will digicam sales ever return to what they were? No, but only if you count the standalone inexpensive general purpose digicams. People don't need those anymore, because there's already one strapped to their phone.

But cameras for the specialized activity of photography are still with us, and maybe having a bit of a revival. After all, it's never been easier to share your photos than it is right now.

What about you? Have you noticed an uptick in actual cameras where you are?

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*EDIT: My bad, my memory had failed me. The brown ’75 Granada was a coupe, not a sedan. It may have been a depressing six-cylinder crapbbox bought for two hundo as basic transportation at what was maybe the low ebb of my life to date, but I still had standards, dammit.

Fujifilm XQ1 review: Thumbs Down

So there was this time I fell in love with a pocket digicam, only for it to break my heart.

On paper, the Fujifilm XQ1 was my perfect pocket camera: The lens collapsed flat and the whole thing was the size of a deck of cards. It had a ginormous (for a pocket cam) 2/3" sensor. It had a 24-105mm equivalent zoom lens with a bright f/1.8-4.9 maximum aperture. It had those lovely Fuji colors and could shoot RAW with the full array of PASM modes.

It took great pictures!

Alas, the XQ1 has a known bug in that the aperture blades tend to get stuck wide open, and the camera's basically bricked when that happens, because it's long past the time when Fuji could repair it.

Get a Sony RX100 instead, the original one, used. Just as good a lens, same focal length range, bigger sensor.

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Vintage DSLR Pics: Motorcycle Action with the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV

The EOS-1D Mark IV, launched in autumn of 2009, was Canon's last pro DSLR to use the APS-H size sensor. This sensor was slightly smaller than a full-frame 35mm negative, giving a 1.3X crop factor, and was intended to offer higher frame rates for sports shooting.

The early Canon pro bodies came in pairs. The original EOS-1D had a 4MP APS-H sensor and could shoot at 8 frames a second until the buffer filled, while the EOS-1Ds had an 11MP sensor the same size as a 35mm negative, but could only manage about 3fps and filled the buffer much faster with its enormous image files.

So the larger sensor cameras were marketed for studio and landscape work while the higher frame rate APS-H bodies were aimed at photojournalists as well as wildlife and sports photogs. The 1D Mark IV, for instance, started shipping a couple months before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the timing was not a coincidence.

While the 1D Mark IV was the apex predator of the Canon lineup when it was new, sporting a $5000 price tag to match, used ones these days are obviously much cheaper, available for as little as $400 from KEH. The samples to look for, though, are the extremely good condition ones with low shutter counts. 

A friend calls those "Doctor Cameras", referring to the well-heeled enthusiast photographers who buy the top-of-the-line pro gear, designed and engineered to give years of hard use and hundreds of thousands of shutter actuations, and then use it very little before flitting off to the next Ultimate Camera. Those buyers are a boon to us Poors who like to play with high end gear, as they inevitably clean out their camera closets every few years and sell the stuff to resellers like Roberts, MPB, or the aforementioned KEH.

It's kind of ironic to use a high-speed sports camera to take pictures of motorcycles from my usual perch at 54th & College in SoBro. It's not really a spot for action photography, being a flat four-way intersection in the middle of a city...but sometimes I get lucky!

These were all shot with the 1D Mark IV and Canon's EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens.

Digicam Pics: Autumn Colors with the Nikon Coolpix P7000

I've had the little Nikon Coolpix with me as I was walkabout in the neighborhood the last few days. We're past the peak of fall colors, but it's still quite scenic out there.

This house's decor is always on point and changes from month to month: black and white checkered flag motif in May for the 500, rainbows in June for Pride Month, star spangled red white and blue in July, spooky in October, and this harvest motif in November...

Digicam Pics: Around SoBro with the Samsung TL500

The TL500 from Samsung... yes, Samsung was in the digital camera biz for a hot minute ...was their 2010 offering in the "Enthusiast Compact" segment.

Like most enthusiast point & shoot cameras of the period, it offered a physically larger 1/1.7" 10MP CCD sensor, which offers better low-light performance than the more typical 1/2.3" sensor found on P&S.

The star feature on the TL500, though, is the glass. Samsung used German optics company Schneider Kreuznach as their OEM glass provider, and the lens on the TL500 is quite a showboat: It's a 5.2-15.6mm f/1.8-2.4 zoom lens. That's the equivalent of a 24-72mm lens on a full-frame camera with a bright f/2.4 aperture available even at the long end.

Here's the SoBrosaurus at wide-angle...

Here's the full 72mm equivalent zoom on the dino's noggin...

Here's a 100% crop of the second photo. Notice the good detail on the rusty metal surfaces...

I love the color rendition from these old 10MP CCD sensors!

In addition to the usual JPEG filters offered by P&S cameras, enthusiast cameras like the TL500 offer the full array of PASM modes and the option of shooting in RAW. The TL500 even has dual control wheels (a click wheel on the front grip and a rotary dial that doubles as a 4-way D-pad on the back) just like a prosumer DSLR. That's important if you want to shoot in full Manual mode, since one controller handles aperture settings while the other controls shutter speed.

Mirrorless Pics: Pontiac Trans Am with a Canon EOS M

A couple years ago, I tagged along to the Indianapolis hamfest at the Marion County Fairgrounds. In case I saw anything that needed photographing, I brought along a Canon EOS M with the EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit zoom mounted.

Sure enough, there was something to photograph, right there in the parking area!

Despite fitting in the palm of your hand, the big 18MP APS-C sensor of the EF-M delivers DSLR-quality images. I mean, essentially it's a EOS Rebel T4i with the mirror box and optical viewfinder removed.

This is a 1979 Trans Am, with the 10th Anniversary Y89 option package.

As Sammy Hagar sang in "Trans Am (Highway Wonderland)", '79 was the end of the road if you wanted horsepower overload...at least for a while. That was the last year for the big motors in the Pontiac F-body pony cars.

The fact that the hood scoop decal reads "6.6 Litre" rather than "T/A 6.6" means that it has the 185bhp Oldsmobile-sourced L80 403cid engine, instead of the optional 220bhp W72 Pontiac 400 cube V8. For the following model year, the only performance motors in the Firebird were the Chevy 305 or a turbocharged Pontiac 301.

Mirrorless Pics: Portraits with the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2

Easily the best lens in the entire lineup for the CX-format Nikon 1 mirrorless system, the 1 Nikkor 32mm f/1.2 is the equivalent of an 85mm lens on a full frame camera.

Despite the tiny 1" sensor, the f/1.2 maximum aperture can even manage a bit of background separation.

85mm is a classic focal length for portraiture and when you shrink it down to match the Nikon 1 format and put it on a little camera like a 1 V1 or V2, it doesn't feel as intimidating for subjects as would getting up in their grille with a big full-frame 85mm f/1.4.

Digicam Pics: Around SoBro with the Nikon Coolpix P7000

Over at Down the Road you'll find a review of Jim Grey's workhorse digicam, the Canon Powershot S95. I can really relate to his enthusiasm for the camera, because it mirrors mine for the Nikon Coolpix P7000. (In fact, the cameras are in such a similar market niche that they were both in a three-way comparison test at DPReview.)

These days, when I almost always have an actual camera on a strap around my neck, the P7000 (it's my second!) doesn't get as much lovin', but I had it out yesterday.

The 6-42.6mm f/2.8-5.6 lens has a field of view equivalent to a 28-200mm zoom on a full-frame camera and a reasonably bright maximum aperture at the wide end.

At 200mm full zoom, the built in vibration reduction in the lens is plenty to offer a nice, crisp view of the SoBrosaurus's noggin, with good surface detail

Check out this mean-looking Audi SQ5 I saw yesterday!

I think I'll carry the P7000 around for a few days and see what it can see...