Last week, looking through my camera archives for old pictures of the house, I was struck by how many good pictures I got out of a point-and-shoot Canon G3 for so many years. If I go back through and look at the sequential file numbers I’m sure I’d learn that I erased a fair bit of them on camera, but the technical and aesthetic quality of what I was getting is really kind of astonishing. I kind of feel like either the modern cameras I’ve been using are almost a step behind, or my skills have atrophied in proportion to the larger number of shots I’ve taken over the years.
I have a perfectly functional Nikon D7000 is sitting on my shelf. I’ve made a decent investment in Nikon glass and accessories in the last six years, and it’s all treated me very well. But every time I use the Canon gear at work I love their color space and picture quality more and more. You may have read about this here in previous posts.
Instead of having gear that’s sitting on my shelf depreciating, I’ve decided to sell my D7000 to fund the purchase of a higher-level Fuji. The rationale is thus: I’ve got a complete Canon kit at work I can use if I need full-frame gear, but the reality is that I don’t lug a full size DSLR to and from work every day. I’ve enjoyed having the X-E1 as my travel camera because it’s small and powerful, but I’d like to upgrade to something with a pro-level focus and shutter speed, and built in WiFi.
Traveling to London next week, I’m renting a Canon 6D body for work and a Fuji X-T1 for myself. This will also be a test run to see if they’re worth buying. Each of them are the latest generation in their respective ecosystems: They both feature Wifi, more focus points, faster shutter speed, better image processing, and in the case of the 6D, built-in GPS. The X-T1 also has a tilt screen, which makes shooting at odd angles much easier.
I got the X-T1 on Thursday and I’ve been playing around with it a little, and I’m already impressed. I’ll write more on this after I’ve used them both in the field.
There’s a Kickstarter going which promises to make direct positive photo paper available for 120 cameras.
Direct positive photo paper falls somewhere between instant film and regular film: the paper does need to be developed, but compared to film the process is lightning fast. You can have a roll developed in about 7 minutes.
I’m totally keeping an eye on this, because shooting this with my Rolleicord would be so much fun.
Via: Petapixel
If you love old film cameras and constantly want to know more about them (like me), then Old Cameras is a YouTube Channel where you can lose hours of time.
Source: Petapixel
Uberbike has left the building. Last weekend I spent a good bit of time cleaning up the garage, which was cluttered with stuff we’d thrown in last fall. Uberbike was sitting in the back, on two flat tires, holding up the soft top for the Scout, and looking sad. We haven’t ridden it in three years, and now that Jen has a bike and Finn is supposed to learn how to ride her new bike, a tandem is pretty useless. I decided it needed a new home. On a whim, I posted it to Craigslist at best offer, and figured I’d get a random inquiry or two. What I got was multiple emails within 6 hours from several very interested parties. One guy kept at me all week until we could schedule his brother to come and pick it up, and he gave me $100 for it this evening. Goodbye Uberbike; may you ride long into the future.
On Monday I stopped into our local music store to pick up a new set of nicotine-free strings, and poked around the bass section to see what they had. Looking through the inventory there, it affirms the fact that I got a screaming good deal on this bass, even if it’s smelly, beat up, and not original; every MIM bass I’ve seen for sale on CL before and since is more than twice what I paid. I walked back to the string section and asked the dude behind the counter if he could identify what I had (he couldn’t) so I got a set of Ernie Ball medium-weight roundwounds for it. While I was there, I browsed a box of half-off bass strings and found a set of Rotosound 606s for the Steinberger. I’ve always played GHS Bass Boomers on that bass, and haven’t tried a new brand in 20 years, so I thought it was too good a deal to pass up.
The Ernie Balls are good, but they don’t have the warm, meaty tone of the unknown strings it came with, and they don’t feel as smooth to my hands. I kept the originals and I’m going to try again to find what brand they are when I have a little more time, because I like them that much.
I also got a package in the mail from Shenzhen, China, with two foldable focus adjustment tools for my lenses. There is a setting in most modern prosumer DSLRs which can fine-tune the focus point for each particular lens you mount; the camera knows which one you’re using and stores the settings for that particular lens. Last weekend I spent Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and a table full of lenses, adjusting each one with the D7000 and storing the data. It looked to me like the primes were the most out of register, especially the 50mm f/1.8, but I think I’ve got to do some more fine-tuning in direct sunlight and at a different focal distance to be sure.
So, a used Fuji 27mm f/2.8 popped up on Craigslist before Christmas, and due to the holiday I had to pass. It came up again after the new year, and I only just linked up with the seller before the snowstorm. The lens checked out and I bought it, hoping it would be lighter, sharper, faster, and more useful than the kit 16-50mm that the camera came with. So far, I’m happy with the results.
The biggest peeve I have with the X-E1 is its glacial autofocus speed. I’m learning how to allow for that when I compose shots, but I know the higher-end Fuji bodies are faster. Some part of this is the lens, but some part of it is the body. The 27mm isn’t as fast as a DSLR, but it’s faster than the kit lens, and it’s plenty sharp.
Meanwhile, I did some research and sorted out the conversion rate between Series and MM lens mountings in order to use a second-hand fisheye I got through a friend last summer. It turns out Series 7 equals 54mm in real-world use. I found a $4 adapter on Amazon and had it shipped to the house; it screwed right on and I was ready to go.
This shot is with the Fuji through the 16-50 zoom and cropped to size; it has little to no effect with the 28mm and looks very interesting with a 50mm on the Nikon. So for $4, I’ve got a fun toy to play with.
Huh, I learn something new every day. Until this morning, I had no idea I could manually adjust the focus for each of my lenses in-camera.
This is unscientific, because the Idiot forgot to set the same ISO on each camera. So we’ll call this “Round 1”. What you’re seeing is two cameras with three lenses shooting on the same focus point. These images are unedited other than bumping up the D90’s exposure to match the D7000, but I’ll fix that in the next round. The first two lenses are manual and the third is a modern AI at the same focal length.
Christmas has come and gone, and we are enjoying a quiet day of doing nothing in our pajamas. the house is quiet after an eight-day visit with my sister in law and her son Scott, who is a cute and very active two-year-old. It was challenging to fit the two of them into our daily schedule, host my folks last weekend (hooray!), host three cats, and prepare for Christmas, but now that everyone is gone I think we’re all quite depressed. The house is silent and we haven’t bothered to pick anything up.
Christmas itself was great. We hosted the Lockards here (there was a slight chance Rob might have joined us Christmas eve but his flight out of Philadelphia took off on time) and Jen outdid herself with milk-braised pork, brussel sprouts, potatoes, and arugula salad. Finley came downstairs to a new bicycle from Santa, as well as a bunch of excellent new books, educational toys, and, most surprising of all, a 3′ Crystle Carrington doll from Dynasty–yes, Dynasty (don’t ask.)
Santa was good enough to bring me an iPad Air two Christmases ago, when I settled into my commute to DC and needed something portable to read and write email. It was great, and I enjoyed using it on a (mostly) daily basis. It has a combination of excellent battery life, portability, and convenience that made my first year on the train an easy one.
When I started teaching, things got more difficult. This past semester, I found myself carrying a ton of extra stuff for each class. I bring a pad of paper to class, along with an attendance sheet that doubles as a notepad. Then I was humping design books, Pantone swatchbooks, paper samples, and other bulky items to show the students each day. Adding all this to a 13″ MacBook Pro, a camera, a Moleskine, and about 5 pounds of other stuff meant that the iPad got left on my desk more often than not. Santa brought me a medium sized Timbuk2 messenger bag, but as I’ve found, the bigger the bag, the more crap you want to cram in it, and the heavier it gets. My intention is to pare the things I carry down to the bare minimum.
- MacBook Pro 13″
- Moleskine
- Leatherman Skeletool
- Cree Ultrafire LED flashlight
- Fuji X-E1/18-50mm or Nikon D7000/35mm
- Ray-Ban 4115 sunglasses
- Pilot Precise V7 pens
- Chapstick
- MARC monthly ticket
On Black Friday I saw that Amazon had discounted the Kindle Fire to a price I couldn’t pass up, so I bought two of them. One for Jen, to complement her phone as an entertainment device, and one to replace my iPad.
I’m impressed with it so far. It’s less than a half the size and weight of my iPad, and it has the main features I was using my iPad for–watching Netflix movies and reading eBooks on the train. It takes time to get used to a non-Apple interface, but overall they’ve done a decent job of laying things out and letting me get to my stuff. I could do without the ads on my home screen, but I didn’t pay extra for that. The browser is responsive and small, but it’s good to have something to check smaller screens with. As with our earlier Kindle (thanks, Linda!) I can dump books on it with Calibre, the ugliest OS X application I’ve used in 20 years.
Meanwhile, my Mom has been using a white MacBook for email and websurfing since we got it for her in 2008. It’s getting very long in the tooth, and even though it’s still working, things have been getting funky with it; the browser chrome is blinking out, and the fan cycles up to “tornado” regularly. It’s running 10.7.4 which is the latest version the processor will support, so she’s way behind the times in terms of security. It only made sense to give her my iPad. During their visit, I wiped it and we got her set up with email, her browser settings, an Apple Store account, and found apps to replace the ones she’d been using on her laptop. She’s thrilled and I’m happy it’s going to a great home.
I’ve been using the Fuji X-E1 for about six months now, and I’m finding its limitations a bit frustrating. My primary complaint is that the shutter lag is maddening. Waiting for it to find focus is irritating, having been spoiled by years of lightning-fast DSLRs. It’s pretty useless in low light even with ISO cranked to the ceiling because the camera can’t find anything to settle on. I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to purchase a used 27mm fixed lens for it to slim it down or to sell it and look for a better camera.
While my sister-in-law and her son were here, I made a conscious effort to use the Fuji as much as I could, which meant daylight and quieter situations to avoid movement and low light. It works great in those environments. However, I needed something that could keep up with an active 2-year-old and his mercurial facial expressions–which led me back to the D7000.
I’ve been noticing that the shots I’ve been taking lately aren’t as crisp as I want them to be. It could be the new 35mm lens I bought isn’t sharp, or that the camera is out of alignment, or that I’m just not using it correctly. Something I’ve got planned for this coming week is to set up a tripod and shoot comparisons of the AI 35mm and 50mm lenses I have as well as both non-AI lenses with both the D7000 and Jen’s D90 to see if I can nail down what’s going on.
Slick: Someone is developing an integrated cartridge for old Super-8 cameras with a 5MP sensor and SD card carrier. That would be fun as hell to play with.