F/1.0

Well, as September is “officially” over, my black and white project is technically done… although I have to say, it was actually quite enjoyable… kind of “getting back to my roots”.

I definitely found myself rusty at first… I find that shooting b/w definitely requires “seeing” the scene differently… very quickly though I fell back into my old habits from my film days, looking more at light/contrast/texture rather than color…

It’s amazing how some self imposed “restrictions” can really get you out of a rut creatively & doing things differently. Definitely going to be concentrating more on b/w in the near future (and I haven’t even gotten my 120 film processed yet!)

a quick gallery of some pics from the month too…

Now that Photokina is all wrapped up something occurred to me - I can’t say I was really all that excited about it.  Surprising, as Photokina is usually the main “gear lust inspiring” event out there, and you can practically hear the mobs of photographers panting and salivating over each new announcement.  And sure there was some pretty cool stuff this year - (Olympus micro-four-thirds prototype? - Awesome.  5DmkII? - sweet.  The new paradigm of video on SLRs? - very interesting development.)  Overall though, it was just kind of like “oh yeah, new gear…”

I dunno, maybe it’s the economy or maybe I’m just becoming one of those crotchety old photographers who is more concerned with light and composition than with gear :-)  I think as is common with many photographers as our skills and experience improve, our interest in gear for the sake of gear decreases.  I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what I want out of a camera (high quality, light weight, fast wide glass- particularly primes) and I’m happy with what I’ve got.

I’ll probably take a hard look at the olympus “pseudo rangefinder” micro four thirds camera when it comes out (probably not for another year is my guess) but for now I just want to go out and take pictures

After my initial reaction of “meh” to Panasonic’s first micro-four thirds entry, I was eagerly anticipating Olympus’ announcement (after all they, co-developed the standard, so it stood to reason they would introduce their own camera).

…and with the announcement this morning, I could practically hear the “digital rangefinder” crowd give off a collective “Oooooooo…”

Sure it’s only a prototype, but the body looks exactly like what we’ve all been clamoring for… super compact (looks about the size of a DP-1 in hand) “EVIL” body… and good lord is that a pancake prime on it?!?!?  Retro-rangefinder styling is just a bonus

DPreview has the announcement here along with photos of the prototype… check it out!

The first Micro Four-Thirds camera and leses dropped today from panasonic… DPreview has the hands on preview here

I have to say, my initial reaction was “somewhat dissapointed”.   The thing looks just like a regular SLR.  I thought the whole point of getting rid of the mirror box was to, well, get rid of the mirror box!  What’s with the big hump on top and pseudo-optical finder.  The whole point of this was to make a more compact interchangeable camera, so why do it half-assed?  Get rid of the finder completely, and either use EVF exclusively, or make a rangefinder style add on finder that mounts to the hotshoe.  (coupling it to the zoom would be easy).  Speaking of which - no primes?  Yeah, I know it’s just the first announcement, but “compact” camera system just *screams* for primes.  The 14-42 zoom it comes with is just “meh”.   To be fair, there is a 20mm f/1.7 on the roadmap for 2009 (40mm equiv - awesome), but hey - lets see a 12mm and a 40mm too.

After reading more of DPreview’s preview however, I was slightly mollified.  From the comparison images the thing *does* look pretty small (and light - 630 grams *with* battery and lens? holy cow!)  Check HERE for some size comparison and “in hand” images

from the reports, the biggest technical hurdle (making a usable contrast-detection AF) has been handled nicely as well, seems like AF is fine (and it has a built in AF assist light).

So what’s the verdict?

Well, it’s definitely cool, and I think a step in the right direction for opening up a new niche in the industry *but* I think they could have done more.  If you’re selling the concept of “small and light” go all the way - commit to the true rangefinder form factor, lose the big grip on the right side, lose the bulky pop up flash (stick it on the side if you must a-la the lumix LX3).  Oh yeah, and let’s see those primes.

Give us something like THIS

or THIS

Honestly if it was something like one of those renderings, I probably would have sold my G9 and bought one on the spot.  As it is, I’ll wait and see what comes down the pipe

(and Olympus hasn’t announced anything yet, so fingers-crossed)