Vintage DSLR Pics: Puppers and Doggos with the Canon EOS 40D

In the beer garden behind Half Liter on Sunday afternoon were plenty of good doggos.

Fortunately I had the Canon EOS 40D and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS along with me that day! Thanks to the 1.6X crop factor of the 40D's APS-C sensor, the lens acts like a 38-168mm lens, which gave plenty of reach for pupper portraiture.

Mirrorless Pics: Around SoBro with the Pentax Q

The tiny little Pentax Q came out in 2011, touted as the smallest interchangeable lens system camera, and it is twee indeed. It vibes like an update of Pentax's old 110 SLR system.

Pentax Q with a Nikon D700 for scale.

The Q system numbers its lenses, and the first two released were the 01 Standard Prime, which is an 8.5mm f/1.9, and the 02 Standard Zoom, which is a 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5. Both lenses have built-in leaf shutters.

Constructed with a very solid-feeling aluminum body, the Q has a 1/2.3" sensor, of a size more commonly associated with pocket point & shoots and cell phone cams. Thanks to the tiny sensor's crop factor, that gives the 01 Prime the equivalent field of view to a 47mm lens on a full-frame camera, and the 02 Zoom a 28-83mm equivalent field of view.

Here's the SoBrosaurus at the widest angle with the 02 Zoom...

...and here it is zoomed in to the maximum 15mm:

These were both shot in RAW and just run through the Photoshop converter by poking the Lens Correction, Adobe Vivid, and Auto buttons.

Here are a couple more pictures from my walk yesterday, both using the 02 Standard Zoom lens:

SoBro apartment door

BMW X3 M4.0i

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Which to buy: Nikon Df or Nikon D4s?

Jim Grey at Down the Road posted another batch of photos from his Nikon Df today.

I've had a low-key hankering for one since the first time I saw it. It used to be because I pined for classic dial & knob controls, but that was before I really learned to use the wheels on a modern DSLR. (There's a reason that pro cameras have used the dual wheel setup since the days of the Nikon F5 and Canon EOS-1 film cameras, and it's not because professional sports photographers can't figure out knobs and dials.)

My hankering for the Df, therefore, is purely nostalgic these days, but there's another reason for it.

I use Canons for work, so my old Nikons are purely for fun. Because of that, I'm not going to dump a ton of money into Nikon lenses. And because of that, there's only one lens I own that really works well on my Nikon D800: the 24-120mm f/4G VR. The D800 is a fantastic camera, but the 36MP sensor really reveals the weaknesses of cheaper lenses, especially non-stabilized ones.

The 16MP sensor in the Df would offer more resolution than my D3 or D700 while still working well with older/cheaper glass.

There was a time, not too many years ago, when prices on used Nikon Df bodies had slumped down around nine hundred bucks or so. I should have bought one then.

These days, prices on the collectible Df have crept up to the $1200-1300 mark. Meanwhile, prices on the Nikon D4 and D4s pro bodies have slipped below a grand. Heck, you can get a D4 for under $800 if you shop around.

The D4 has the same 16MP sensor as the Df.

The Df has those vintage looks and old-fashioned knobs. The D4 has everything else: Rugged pro body construction, twice the frame rate in burst mode, a monster battery, the vertical grip and shutter release, et cetera.

When I first started pricing them, it was the D4 that was way more expensive and the Df made sense. With the price tags swapped out, however, the D4 is looking like the no-brainer for me.

Plus I have a real weakness for pro bodies.

Which would you pick?

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Mirrorless Pics: Lotus Evora GT with the Nikon 1 J4

Two shots of a Lotus Evora GT with the Nikon 1 J4 & 1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8 lens.

Give it up, Panasonic.

For years people bought cameras manufactured by Ernst Leitz GmbH, but everyone called Leitz camera "Leicas". In fact, that's the official name of the successor corporation.

Similarly, when one purchased a camera manufactured by the Asahi Optical Company in Japan, one referred to it by its trade name, "Pentax". The "Pentax" name was actually purchased from Zeiss, and is a portmanteau of "Pentaprism", for the viewfinder mechanism, and "Contax", itself a trade name for a line of Zeiss-manufactured cameras.

So when the Matsushita Electric Industrial Corporation got into the camera biz, they wanted a catchy little name for them, too. I mean, they should be pretty good at it, since all their consumer goods were sold under the "Panasonic" name, and Panasonic home hi-fi equipment went under the "Technics" brand, in a sort of Russian nesting doll of obfuscation.

So Panasonic hung the "Lumix" name on their cameras. Every Panasonic camera has "LUMIX" in big letters right on the front of it.

But I've never heard anyone call them that. Ask a Micro Four Thirds loyalist shooting his shiny new Lumix G9 II and ask him what kind of camera he's using and it's dollars to donuts he'll answer "Panasonic", despite the label blazoned in half-inch tall letters across the front of the viewfinder hump.

Just own the Panasonic brand, guys. After all, it's been the official company name since 2008.

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Mirrorless Pics: Indiana World War Memorial with the Nikon 1 J4

One of the best things about the Nikon 1 J4 is it lets me use the word "antepenultimate" in a sentence, because after its launch in January of 2014, Nikon only released the Nikon 1 AW1 and the 1 J5 before discontinuing the entire Nikon 1 line of cameras. Their first attempt at a mirrorless system had been a marketplace failure.

"Antepenultimate" happens to be my third favorite word. Anyway...

On a visit to the Indianapolis World War Memorial the other day, I mounted the little 1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8 lens on the 1 J4 and tucked it into the space in my Lowepro Event Messenger 100 bag that normally holds the long 30-110mm zoom lens.

On the 1" Nikon CX-format sensor, the 10mm lens offers the same field of view as a 28mm lens on a full-frame camera. Wide angle, to be sure, but not crazy wide. I can always use the practice with a wide angle lens, because I don't really "see" images at fields of view much wider than the one offered by a 40 or 50mm lens.

I keep the Nikon 1 cameras set up to save each image as both a high-res monochrome JPEG and also as a RAW file. The photo of the World War Memorial above is an unedited JPEG straight out of the camera.

The photo below is lightly cropped. It shows off the level of detail that can be delivered by the 18MP 1" sensor, especially at its base ISO of 160.

After exploring the inside and outside of the Memorial, we ventured a block south to University Park.

It was a gorgeous day for early November in Indy. Nearly sixty degrees by lunchtime with a bit of a breeze and hardly a cloud in the sky.

I still don't really have that eye for wide angle lenses I'd like, but I'm getting a better feel for them.

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Digicam Pics: Around SoBro with the Nikon Coolpix S6500

Released in January of 2013, the Nikon Coolpix S6500 is right at the cutoff date for what is considered a "fossil" on this blog.

There are only six years separating it from the Panasonic DMC-TZ3 from the earlier post, yet the technological gulf between them feels far more vast than that.

The 2007-vintage Panasonic has a 28-200mm equivalent lens in front of a 7MP CCD sensor, while the 2013 Nikon packs a 25-300mm equivalent lens and a 16MP Backside Illuminated CMOS sensor into a package that is slimmer, lighter, and altogether more pocketable. It also has built-in WiFi & GPS, a host of optional automated portrait features to remove dark circles under eyes, add color to cheeks, and even whiten teeth.

Further, where the Panasonic had a $330 MSRP, suggested retail on the Nikon was only $220, and I picked up this one as an open box sample at Best Buy in 2014 for only eighty bucks.

This is because by 2013, the pocket camera market had entered freefall following the introduction of smartphones with truly usable cameras. With a Samsung Galaxy SII or an iPhone 4 in their pocket, most folks had their snapshot needs covered. Digital camera sales had peaked in 2010, with CIPA reporting over 120 million cameras sold, while just three years later had plummeted almost by half, to 62.8 million.

Here's the SoBrosaurus at the widest angle:

And here we are zoomed in on just his noggin:

Even at an equivalent focal length of  257mm, the Nikon vibration reduction in the lens works pretty darn good. That's 1/40th of a second at f/6.1, ISO 400.

It's pretty crisp and detailed in Photoshop. Of course, there's no shooting in RAW and no manual modes of any kind. You can futz with the white balance, the ISO, and the metering, but that's about it. There's no driving stick shift with this camera; you have a dizzying array of presets and special effects, but everything's processed to JPEGs right there in the machine.

"Look, Ma! I can shoot in old-timey sepia!"

This is a handy little camera if all you need is a fast 'n' friendly pocketable superzoom. That 300mm lens lets you do things you can't do with a cell phone, and the camera's smaller than a deck of cards, so it's not any real hassle to carry in pocket or purse.

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Vintage DSLR Pics: Flowers in the Rain

It was raining off and on last Sunday, and there's no DSLR that I trust in the wet as much as I do an Olympus Four Thirds pro body. The E-3 and E-5 are absolutely tops in the weather-resistance category.

This photo of a morning glory speckled with raindrops was taken with an Olympus E-3 and the Zuiko Digital 14-35mm f/2 zoom lens.

The next night we got our first real hard freeze of the season and all the morning glories along this neighbor's fence are wilted and gone until next year.

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Digicam Varieties: The taxonomy of point & shoot cameras.

Peak digicam years started in the early Aughties, say 2002 or 2003, when prices on usable ones got low enough that most consumers could justify one. They ended probably around 2011 or 2012, when cell phone cameras like the ones in the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy SII started getting good enough for most people's simple snapshooting needs.

Before that you had your basic compact point & shoots. Everybody had one of these for taking pictures to put on MySpace or eBay or send in emails. They usually came in a few different price tiers, and sometimes manufacturers would offer a more fashion-forward line, too.

Then there were the travel zooms, similar to your basic compact in size and form factor, but generally offering longer zoom lenses.

Enthusiast or Luxury compacts had optical viewfinders, manual modes, and allowed for shooting RAW. They usually had physically larger sensors, too.

Adventure cameras were like your basic compact in terms of functionality, but came in ruggedized, waterproof outer shells.

Bridge cameras tended to be almost the size and shape of small DSLRs, with the same array of manual modes available, and usually had extremely long zoom lenses, to make up for not having interchangeable glass.

Nowadays these are mostly all gone except a smattering of Adventure and Bridge cameras, with a few Enthusast compacts that mostly cater to the hipster street photography market.

Cell phones have eaten the rest.

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Digicam Pics: Around SoBro with the Panasonic DMC-TZ3

Playing around with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 from 2007.

From about the early Aughties until the early Twenty-Teens, digicams actually came in a variety of types as manufacturers tried to slice the market ever finer. The TZ3 came out in 2007, a year when Panasonic alone launched over a dozen different models that could loosely be termed "pocket digicams", not counting larger bridge cameras or DSLRs.

The TZ3 was one of two "travel zooms", hence the nomenclature. Panasonic's travel zooms were pocket-size cameras with long zoom lenses ("10X" in consumer-speak, "28-280mm equivalent" if you're a shutterbug) that should allow you to do it all when you were on a trip. You could take landscapes, closeups of architectural details, or bring that scenic castle across the river closer without having to "zoom with your feet".

The TZ3 differed from its stablemate, the TZ2, in having a 7MP sensor to the 6MP one on the lesser model, as well as a 3" LCD screen versus the TZ2's 2.5" screen. They both sported the same 4.6-46mm f/3.3-4.9 MEGA O.I.S. lens, with the TZ3 having a higher MSRP at $330.

Here's a wide-ish shot of the SoBrosaurus, a frequent test subject of mine...

It was heavily overcast, and even with O.I.S. or "Optical Image Stabilization", which is Panasonic's trade name for their lens-based image stabilization, the little camera had difficulty returning a sharp image at the long end of its zoom range in that light, fighting both camera shake and Panasonic's own heavy-handed noise reduction. In retrospect, I should have set maximum ISO at 400 and taken my chances.

Colors on the little 1/2.35" CCD sensor are somewhat muted under the dim lighting...

...but pop nicely when the sun comes out.

I guess it's back on?

I'd lamented before that my plan to do some extensive work with Nikon's 1 system of CX-format mirrorless cameras had hit a snag and I was calling it off.

Finding a working 32mm f/1.2 at Roberts (UsedPhotoPro), however, has me fired up to try again. I even have a brace of adorable miniature Speedlights!

Olympus E-300 EVOLT review, part 2…

(Continued from Part I...)

The DSLR market… heck, the whole digital camera market …was way different in 2004 than it is now. It’s even different than it was in the mid ‘teens before cheap digicams were crushed by the increasing abilities of camera phones.

Due to the price of sensors, early DSLRs were marketed directly to professional photographers, the sort of people who could write off camera purchases on their taxes as a legitimate business expense. Sure, some well-heeled amateurs bought the early Nikon D1’s and Canon D30’s in 1999-2000, but interchangeable lens digital cameras remained a phenomenon reserved for people who could blow quite a wad on one. 

By early 2004, the first “inexpensive” DSLRs had hit the market from Canon and Nikon. The Digital Rebel from Canon (sold elsewhere as the 300D) stickered for right at a grand with a kit zoom lens, and Nikon’s D70 went for the same sticker price for just the body; adding a lens to the Nikon took the tariff to twelve ninety-nine.

Looking back at the DSLR market from its sunset years, it’s common to refer to the lowest price models in any manufacturer’s catalog as “entry” or “beginner” cameras, but you couldn’t really classify these cameras that way, since they had to serve two market niches. One niche may have been actual beginners, but the other was photography enthusiasts who just hadn’t been convinced to spring for a “serious” digital camera yet.

Bear in mind that the thousand dollar Rebel or D70 in 2004 was selling for the equivalent of sixteen hundred bucks in 2023 dollars.  These days that’s a sum of money that will get you solidly into the ranks of “prosumer” cameras.

When Olympus jumped into this market in 2004 with their second DSLR, the EVOLT E-300, they had to make a camera that wouldn't intimidate novices, but would offer enough control to avoid alienating advanced amateurs.

So the dial on the top offers the usual PASM modes for the latter, as well as the little icons of a face, a mountain, a running dude, and the cryptic hieroglyph that signifies a backlit subject to appease the former. In addition, there's a "SCENE" setting on the dial that drops you into a menu of more than a dozen other presets, to include everything from "fireworks" and "night portrait" to "museum" and "document".

Bobbi's rental Tiguan in the foreground, my '94 GT in the background
Olympus E-300 & Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 

In 2023, the E-300 has several downsides.

While it's capable of taking perfectly adequate photos in capable hands as long as one stays within its limitations, those limitations are pretty severe.

The camera's ISO range is limited to 100, 200, and 400 settings, and the vintage Four Thirds CCD-type sensor is hella noisy by the time you're at 400. Compounding this problem is the fact that, if you pick up a used example and nobody's bothered to update its BIOS, it will only work with the old Four Thirds kit lenses that existed when it was new. I have several good pieces of fast Four Thirds glass, but the first time I tried mounting the 12-60mm f/2.8-4 on the camera, I thought I'd bricked it. It took turning it off and removing the battery for a hard reset to get the thing up and running again.

Further, the Porro finder is a dim and cramped little tunnel that will leave you pining for the subpar pentamirrors found on a D3000 or Rebel XTi.

All in all, unless you are just chasing a retro experience for giggles, collecting old Olympus DSLRs, or trying something a little challenging, I'd probably pass on an E-300 for actual use.

My pal Bug behind the bar at Fat Dan's in SoBro.
Olympus E-300 & Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6

Fossils at the Fair, Part 1

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II hit the market in November of 2008. It sported a 21MP full-frame sensor and was the first Canon DSLR (and the first full-frame DSLR from anyone) capable of recording 1080p HD video. The 5D Mark II was used to shoot things as diverse as the opening credits of Saturday Night Live, whole episodes of House, and scenes in Hollywood movies like Act of Valor and The Avengers.

At launch, the MSRP for the camera was $2,699 without a lens. Nowadays you can pick up a nice used body for $350 or less, which is about as inexpensive as a good full-frame DSLR gets. A lot of these cameras were picked up by enthusiastic amateurs based on the hype and then sat largely unused until their owners decided to trade them in on some new mirrorless hotness or other. Batteries are still available new and of course you can use the entire library of Canon EF lenses without having to worry about an adaptor.

One of the attractions of using the Canon EF lens mount are its "L"-series lenses, identified by their red rings, high quality construction, premium optics, and (typically) enormous price tags.

The latest version of the L-series midrange zoom, the 24-70mm f/2.8L II, goes for something like eighteen hundred bucks at BezosMart, but you can get the older version from the 1990s, the 28-70mm f/2.8L, for around six bills at KEH Camera Brokers if you're willing to settle for "Bargain" grade. (And you should be, because KEH grades very conservatively. Their 'BGN' would be 'VG+' most places.)

Introduced in 1993, the 28-70mm f/2.8L was noted for its optical qualities and indeed still holds its own at DxOMark. I use mine on my 50MP EOS 5DS without worrying about it not being sharp enough on the super high res sensor.

So there you go. If you're willing to shop used, you can get a very competent professional DSLR body and lens setup for eighty percent off.

(Cross-posted at the other other blog.)

What counts as a fossil?

Ten years is my cutoff line for "fossilization" for electronica.

With the march of time, that means that cameras like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II qualify. It was introduced at the end of 2008, just in time for Christmas shopping, and discontinued in December of 2012.

Still, though, it feels weird to call a 21MP DSLR that's capable of shooting HD video a "fossil".

Time marches on. The Sony Mavica was a wonder in its day, too.

Taken with an EOS 5D Mark II

E-300 update...

Just needing to gather up some more photos with the Olympus E-300 EVOLT to illustrate the second half of the review.

Here's a loaded baked potato shot in indirect sunlight at base ISO of 100 and a pistol shot on a heavily overcast morning at the max ISO of 400. (Well, maximum unexpanded ISO. But it's noisy enough without faking ISO 800 or 1600.)

Both were taken using the Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, more about which in the closing part of the review.

Old Enough to Vote

Had the Nikon D1X out to keep the shutter exercised yesterday. With a 21-y.o. camera, you don't take that for granted. Sooner or later it will snap its last photo...but that day wasn't yesterday!

The staff at Fat Dan's is friendly!

The problem with the D1X for indoor work by available light is my paucity of Nikon DX lenses. The best DX lens I have for the purpose is the 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR, but the D1X is too old to control the electronic diaphragm on that lens. There's the 17-55mm f/2.8G, but it's not stabilized and it's a bazooka of a lens; very unsubtle.

I went with the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G, which is also not stabilized, but at least is compact and light. The 18-70 was originally a kit lens for the then-new D70 in 2004. The lens was discontinued in the early 'teens, but is a hidden gem in the Nikon DX lineup. Inexpensive and tack sharp, even dudes like Thom Hogan speak well of it.

With an old camera like the D1X, your maximum realistically usable ISO is 800, and even that's pushing it, as you can see by the noise in the portrait I shot.

It's hand-held, 1/125th of a second at f/4 at a focal length of 34mm in aperture priority mode with the lens cranked as wide open as it would get.

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Digital Fossils

In a Telegram conversation, I remarked that the 7" Kindle Fire tablets that Amazon is selling for the price of dinner for two at Applebee's would have been props on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Marko replied "If the Fire had existed when TNG was still running, it would have been the most powerful computing device on the planet by a fair margin. Weird to think about."

He's not wrong, either.

I remember back in the days of dialup and BBSes, call it 1990 or so, one of the rotating sig lines in my SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader) file was "And you may tell yourself 'This is not my one gig drive'."

My boyfriend at the time had a 386DX 33 with an HDD that was so huge that it had to be partitioned into virtual drives. Like eighty whole megabites or something like that!

Coincidentally, the SD card slot on my computer right now is occupied by a 64GB card from an old Nikon D7100. Each 24 megapixel RAW image file takes up over 30MB. 

My wristwatch has higher screen resolution than a Sega Genesis.

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Olympus E-300 Review: Part 1

Olympus launched their first DSLR, the E-1, to much fanfare in 2003. Not only was it the first DSLR from Olympus, it was the first interchangeable lens system camera designed from the ground up for a digital sensor, rather than being adapted from a film camera.

Unlike Canon and Nikon, Olympus didn’t have a huge installed user base of autofocus lens owners they had to lure to digital, so they started with a clean sheet of paper for their sensor and lens mount.

As part of the Four Thirds consortium, along with Kodak, Panasonic, and Fuji, they used a smaller sensor, which would be less expensive, an important factor in those days when image sensors were still phenomenally spendy. The E-1 had a ruggedized, weather-sealed magnesium alloy body, an innovative ultrasonic vibrating sensor cleaning mechanism, and resolution equivalent to or better than the contemporary Canon EOS-1D and Nikon D1X despite only costing $1699 (about 2800 bucks in 2023 dollars).

Almost simultaneous with the launch of the Olympus E-1 came the next shot fired in the DSLR wars, from Canon, who announced a stripped down consumer DSLR with a plastic body shell for under a grand. The 6.3MP EOS 300D, sold in the US as the Digital Rebel, hit shelves for $999 with a bundled 18-55mm kit lens. Olympus returned fire in 2004 with their second DSLR, a consumer-grade 8MP camera named the E-300, which sold for $999 with a Zuiko 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens included in the box.

The E-300 had three selectable autofocus points, had an ISO range of 100-400 (expandable to 800 or 1600, but don't bother), shutter speeds up to 1/4000th of a second, and could shoot 2.5 frames/sec...at least for four frames, at which point the buffer was filled.

Despite the lack of a viewfinder hump (due to its odd Porro finder system) and small Four Thirds sensor, the E-300 wasn't meaningfully smaller than its competition from Canon, although it offered more megapixels for less money.

Part two of this review will have some photo results and conclusions!

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Portrait Photos With the Olympus E-510

Olympus's DSLR cameras have been discontinued for more than a decade now, but that doesn't mean they can't still snap a decent picture.

The E-510 was their midrange offering from 2007 that introduced the Panasonic-designed MOS sensor to the Oly DSLR lineup, replacing the Kodak-manufactured CCD sensor used by the earlier cameras. 

Its predecessors had already introduced dust reduction and live view to the DSLR market, and to those features the 10-megapixel E-510 added in-body image stabilization, previously a Pentax exclusive.

I've been out shooting with my E-510 lately, using the excellent Zuiko Digital 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 zoom lens, which has a field of view equivalent to the classic 24-120mm focal length zoom lens on a full-frame sensor.

Here are a couple of casual portraits snapped with this setup at my neighborhood hangout, Fat Dan's Chicago Style Deli...

Time Machines

The D2X is long in the tooth, but I still get a ton of use out of mine.

Just think about it, when the Nikon D2X was new, that Camaro was only twenty-three years old!

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Sensor Sweep

Interestingly, I happened to get photos of the same subject at the same time of day, albeit about a month apart, with two different cameras of broadly similar vintage and capabilities.

It's midafternoon, I'm sitting out front of Fat Dan's on College Avenue, and here comes that gorgeous Elm Green Volkswagen Karmann Ghia!

The first time is August 31st, and I've got the Nikon D700 wearing the compact 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G super zoom.

The D700 came out in 2008 and packed the 12MP full-frame CMOS sensor and EXPEED processor of the previous year's pro D3 camera into a smaller body. Priced at $2999, two grand less than the D3, it lost some features, like the vertical grip and larger battery, the second card slot, and was downgraded from 9fps to 5fps, but it was still ruggedized and weather sealed. 

The 28-200 lens mounted on it favors compactness and focal length range over ultimate optical performance, but it's a Nikon and still does a pretty good job.

This was shot at a focal length of 95mm in Program mode with the camera set at its base ISO of 200, and the camera went with 1/400th of a second at f/10.

About a month later, early October, I'm sitting the same place around the same time when here comes the Karmann Ghia again!

This time I had a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV with the excellent EF 24-105mm f/4L IS general purpose zoom lens mounted.

Released in 2009, the $4999 EOS-1D Mark IV was Canon's top-of-the-line pro camera aimed at sports and wildlife photographers and photojournalists. It had a 16MP APS-H sensor, slightly smaller than the full frame one the company used in its studio & landscape oriented -1Ds series. This is because it prioritized frame rate; the Mark IV could blaze away at 10fps until the buffer filled.

The 24-105/4 "L"-series lens has a field of view equivalent to a 31-137mm lens on the 1D, due to the 1.3x crop factor of the APS-H sensor.

I was shooting in Aperture Priority mode at f/5.6 to ensure reasonably fast shutter speeds at the base ISO of 100 in the late afternoon sunlight.

Both images were shot in RAW and minimally processed through Photoshop's Camera RAW convertor.

It's interesting that a decade and a half on, the prices of the cameras have decreased dramatically, but the relative price gap remains fairly consistent. Nice used D700s are running around $300-400, while a 1D4 is still going to set you back six or seven hundred bucks.

Both lenses are discontinued. The 24-105mm f/4L IS has been replaced with a "Mark II" version. The handy little 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G, a marvel when it was released, lacks an internal focusing motor or any kind of stabilization, and is therefore not amenable to being used on mirrorless cameras or most Nikon DX DSLRs.

It's fun to use these old pro cameras I never could have afforded when they were new. They were built to last and plenty were traded in with a lot of life left in them. There are D700s running out there with a million documented shutter actuations; if you run across a used one with only a few thousand on the clock, it's barely broken in.

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Two is one and one is none...

So what do you do with dual card slots in a camera, you ask?

Well, it depends.

Back in the day, when you had the one SD slot and one Compact Flash slot, it was common to record a JPEG to the SD and the much larger RAW file to the CF, since read and write speeds on Compact Flash were higher.

It's as common these days to have both cards of the same type, but some folks still use them like that. Others will have the second slot set up as an overflow when the first one fills.

I shoot everything in RAW these days, and so I record simultaneously to both cards, using one as a backup in case a corrupted card is unable to be read. That way if I shot a whole day's worth of photos at a class or event or something, all is not lost if a card craps the bed.

The only time I do differently is in the Fuji X-T2. I love Fujifilm's JPEG film emulations, and so I'll record RAW to one SD card for post-processing in Photoshop or Lightroom, and then a film emulation JPEG of Velvia or the like on the other card.

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Grumble...

Here's a gripe...

Olympus's E-3 DSLR came out in late '07 and was roughly comparable to the Nikon D300 and Canon 40D. It had two card slots: A CF card slot like a normal camera and a slot for Olympus's almost-proprietary xD card. It couldn't record to both simultaneously, and you couldn't even set it to switch over automatically when whichever one you were using filled up. Oly was just clinging to xD like grim death and wanted to sell cards, I guess.

Anyway, a couple years later the E-5 came out. An updated E-3 with HD video, 2MP more resolution, and some other tweaks, it was the last gasp of Olympus's Four Thirds DSLR system, and the closest to a true pro body they'd yet made. They even bowed to the inevitable and replaced the xD slot with an SD slot like a normal camera.

Guess what? You still can't write to both slots simultaneously.

WTF, Olympus?

Project Evolution...

Sometimes I get a little carried away with a project idea...

Nikon F5 > D1X > D2X > D3

The need for speed...

One thing I noticed when I was shooting the D1X last month was how quickly the buffer filled up. I popped off several shots at that Caddy as it rolled by and the camera made me stop and let it catch up at something like seven or eight.

This confused me as all the media about the camera, even when it was new, claimed the D1X could shoot three frames per second for 21 consecutive shots before the buffer filled. 

The sports-oriented D1H had less resolution but could blaze away at 5 FPS for forty shots before it bogged down. That's a full eight seconds with the shutter button mashed; enough time to cover an NFL play from the snap.

The disconnect, as I soon figured out, was that I was shooting in RAW, which was not as often done in the earliest days of digital. That buffer that held twenty-some JPEGs only holds six or seven .NEF files (Nikon's proprietary RAW format.) You can count "two Mississippi" and then you're done until the buffer's flushed out, or has room for another image.

From a retrospective on the D1X's predecessor, the original D1:

The super fast speed was partially hindered by the settings. While JPEG processing was really fast and almost instantenious, switching to RAW cause the camera to crawl. Storage time went sky high, 45 secs per photo not uncommon. People complaining today about slow CF/SD cards shoud respect that a microdrive could only deliver 0.5 MB/sec and the D1 electronics limited the fastest CF Cards (12x Lexar) to data rates well below 1 MB/sec.

I was using a 133x Transcend 2GB card, probably capable of receiving data a lot faster than the old D1X could send it, so at least the buffer probably cleared faster.

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Built like a tank...

I had my Nikon D1X out yesterday. I'm not sure of the shutter count on my example, but it's an old one. D1X serial numbers started out in 2001 at 5100001, and mine's number 5100496. The 17-55mm f/2.8 DX glass on the camera wasn't much newer. The serial number would indicate it was an early one, too, probably made in 2003.

Still takes a decent photo...

This would have been top flight pro kit in 2003. Six grand worth of body and next thing to two more of lens. 

I got the lens, cosmetically well-worn but functionally fine, for a bit less than five bills at Roberts. For use on crop-sensor Nikon DSLRs, the 17-55/2.8 has largely been supplanted by the excellent 16-80mm f/2.8-4E. The latter has a greater focal length range, spiffy new nano crystal coating, and vibration reduction to more than make up for the stop of aperture it gives up at longer focal lengths. Thing is, it uses an electronically-controlled diaphragm that the D1X is too old to communicate with.

I don't know if a camera store or pawn shop would even give you any money at all for a D1X these days. Used ones are bringing about a hundred bucks or thereabouts.

Still takes an okay photo. Nikon builds their pro bodies like tanks; you could bludgeon a dude to death with one of these and then take pictures of the crime scene with it.

Practical Pixels

In 2004, digital cameras had become mainstream, but sensors were still expensive. Digital SLRs with 35mm-sized "full-frame" sensors were exotically expensive, being limited to the Canon EOS 1Ds and some Kodak hybrids.

Point 'n' Shoot compacts, now commonplace and offered by every manufacturer, were still generally a couple hundred bucks. Most were in the 5-6 megapixel range and had built in zoom lenses, video recording ability, and other gimmicks to offset their physically tiny sensors.

The interchangeable-lens DSLR had just dropped below the thousand-dollar mark with Canon's 6.3MP Digital Rebel (aka the 300D) and there was something of a format war in the category.

Canon and Nikon were constrained by the need to woo customers who already had substantial investments in their 35mm film camera systems. In order to allow the film camera lenses to be usefully ported over, the sensors couldn't be too small, or else they'd not work well. This also allowed the two makers to essentially convert existing film camera technology to digital; indeed, their early DSLRs were based on 35mm film camera bodies.

The solution was a sensor size that became known as APS-C. Canon & Nikon used slightly different sensor sizes, with Canon's offering an effective 1.6X focal length multiplier to existing lenses, and Nikon's multiplying by 1.5X.

Olympus and Panasonic, on the other hand, went with a clean sheet of paper: an all-new sensor format called Four Thirds. About the same size as an old 110 Instamatic film negative, these small sensors were cheaper than APS-C to make, and had a 2X crop factor relative to a "full frame" camera. In other words, a 50mm lens, which is a standard mid-focal length on traditional film cameras, would act like a 100mm lens on a Four Thirds camera.

In 2004, the super coolest most ultra APS-C camera was probably Nikon's D2X pro camera. Boasting a 12MP sensor and a $5,000 price tag, this would be the camera used by photojournalists everywhere from NFL sidelines to the war zones of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Olympus had just launched their second Four Thirds camera, and their first one targeted at consumers rather than pros and enthusiasts. The E-300 used a Kodak-manufactured CCD sensor, and it had two-thirds the megapixels of the top-of-the-line Nikon, and could be had for a fifth of the money; while five grand got you a Nikon D2X with no lens, just a box and a battery charger, the Olympus EVOLT E-300 could be had for $999 with a 14-45mm zoom lens included in the kit.

With more and more people viewing pictures on screens, what was the practical difference? Here are some pics shot with an E-300 and the 14-45mm kit zoom, compared to ones shot with a D2X and the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR II.

E-300

D2X

E-300

D2X

E-300

D2X

Truthfully the biggest visual difference to me, after accounting for the mangling effects of compression, is actually one of sensor technology, more than size or megapixel count.

The Nikon D2X uses a Sony-sourced CMOS sensor, while the Olympus E-300 uses a Kodak-made CCD sensor. While CCD sensors have been more or less completely replaced by CMOS ones, there are holdouts who insist that the CCD had "more pleasing" images, sometimes providing facts, but often with a level of hand-waving woo reminiscent of vinyl discs and vacuum tube amps.

You can embigennate the pics and judge for yourselves.

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Premature Fossilization

I don't really have a hard & fast rule about what makes a piece of electronica a "fossil". Generally, ten years is enough in the world of computers to make something pretty thoroughly obsolete.

At this point only the very oldest of Canon's EF-M crop sensor mirrorless cameras meets that definition, Canon having been slow off the blocks in the mirrorless fad. The original EOS M, with its 18MP sensor lifted from the Rebel T4i DSLR, didn't launch until the middle of 2012.

The M6 in the photo above launched in 2017 and its 24MP sensor and DIGIC 7 processor makes it one of the most modern cameras I have, but the latest news from Canon would seem to indicate that the days of the EF-M series are truly numbered, which would prematurely fossilize a five year old camera.

While the body of the M6 is marked Made in Japan, Canon is coy about marking cheaper lenses with where they're manufactured. Given that the now-shuttered Zhuhai plant made millions of lenses a year, and the fact that pretty much all EF-M lenses are cheaper lenses, this probably signals the looming end for the EF-M crop sensor cameras.

The final nail in the coffin will be the launch announcement of a crop-sensor body using Canon's newer RF lens mount from their full-frame mirrorless line.

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Big in Japan...

I feel like I'm ahead of a trend for once in my life! Old digital cameras are getting popular, especially in Japan...

Alright, it’s a valid question. Why would I want to spend my precious time using an old digital camera that takes subjectively poor-quality photos? Why use a camera that’s painfully slow, gives an unnatural front pocket bulge, and makes you look even more like the geek-a-zoid you already know you are? Yeah, many reasons to toss the old digicam in the recycle bin. (Please remove the battery, thanks). Yet, before you toss the digicam away forever, ask yourself “Wouldn’t it be cool to take pictures with your grandfather’s camera?” “Oh, how grand it would be to hold an object that so many memories were taken with?” This is, after all, what many of us said about film cameras not long ago.