Tag: camera

Lumix LX-3

A Lumix LX-3 Review as an every day camera, by Jorge Ledesma.

When I hold the LX3, I just feel like making pictures and my creativity just naturally flows. I don’t have to think about it too much because I know that for the images I want to create the LX3 will be there ready and up to the task when she’s called upon.

Camera is a creativity tool. I have always heard good things about the Lumix LX series, and this confirms it. Panasonic is playing a significant part in today’s camera market.

Kodak to abandon cameras

After inventing the digital camera in 1975, and resisting it heavily, now Kodak is abandoning the digital camera market all together during their bankruptcy, to reorganize, refocus in order to exit as smaller company. They won’t stop making disposable film cameras though, which is part of the film division.

Source Kodak press release and C|Net.

While this seems to be saddening, it is the reality of the business, and I understand this one.

Kodak was in the low-end of the market, their camera weren’t really great, albeit sufficient in the consumer market. But with the declining market for consumer compact digital camera, totally taken over by cell-phones, it seems to be the logical decision. Even the Japanese makers saw a serious fall this year, but most have a higher-end product line to sustain the business.

My only hope is that they don’t end up getting out of the film business ; the current press release does clearly state they continue. The end of Kodachrome was an unfortunate decision they had to make, and consolidating their film product line seemed to be sane ; they still make good products and it would be very sad if they discontinued them.

We’ll see.

OM-D or E-M5? Weather seal.

Just a clarification: OM-D is the product line, a bit like Pen Digital. E-M5 is the model, like E-P1.

Also, concerning the weather sealing for the body, look at this demo:

The flash you see on the camera is also part of the standard package as it does not have a built-in flash.

Olympus OM-D

This is just out, Olympus officially announced the long rumored OM-D (or E-M5), their new high-end m4/3 camera.

Quick hands-on by DPReview:

Longer presentation by Photography Review, with a size comparison with the E-P3:

The short specs (from DPReview):

  • 16Mpix m4/3 sensor
  • EVF 1.44M dot
  • Swivel LCD touch screen
  • 5 axis IS
  • High ISO 25600 – whether it will be good or not is a different question
  • Supposedly fast everything
  • Weather sealed

As the DPReview preview shows, it looks like the same size as a Panasonic G, slightly bigger than the E-P3.
There is also an optional grip.

The price will be $999.

Olympus also announced a 75mm f1.8, a 60mm f2.8 Macro 1:1 and a flash. They are really getting more serious, and it is a prelude to the death of the Four-Third standard as m4/3 is taking over.

Olympus OM-D website.

Update (Feb 9): OM-D is the product line, like Pen Digital, and E-M5 is the camera name. It seems clear that they might have more OM-D cameras.

Getting to know the face behind the photograph

Phaidon has an article about this Famous photographer portraits series I linked previously.

It all started with.

“I really missed the tactile nature of shooting large format and wanted to try a 20×24 Polaroid camera for fun and get back to something old school.”

Relationship between the photographer and his medium or tool did catalyst the start of the project.

Riffing in the key of Ricoh

Gregory Simpson explains how he found himself to buy a Ricoh GRX.

And, truth be told, when Ricoh released the GXR in late 2009, my impression was one of disinterest. Although I found the idea intriguing (a user replaceable sensor), I didn’t much care for the execution — I simply had no need for any of the camera’s available lens modules.

I you read the other writings from Gregory, you’ll realise he is not a big fan of digital. Yes it is a tool, but the trend of treating digital cameras like consumer electronic let him (and other photographer) disappointed. But…

In actuality, my interest wasn’t fully aroused until a second year passed and Ricoh released yet another new module for the GXR — one with a new sensor designed specifically to take advantage of M-mount lenses.

Read the rest.

A few thoughts on time stamps

George Jardine (a Lightroom export) wrote A Few Thoughts on Time Stamps, how he manages time stamps and deal with timezones.

It is a personal thing, and my personal choice is using UTC in the camera and timezone in the library to have the local time (local to the location of the picture). This raise a problem in Ligthroom, but it works in Aperture. And it matches with geo tagging using GPS traces.