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House season finale filmed entirely with Canon 5D Mark II

The season finale of the popular TV show House, which will air in the US on May 17th, was filmed entirely with the Canon 5D Mark II. Greg Yaitanes, the director of the show, has confirmed it through a tweet in which he invited questions, and PetaPixel has published a summary of the result.

Adobe announce Photoshop CS5

As part of Creative Suite 5, Adobe has release the next edition of Photoshop.

PX100 Silver Shade on order!

As promised The Impossible Project made PX100 available in their online shop today. But PX600 was nowhere to be seen. But since I'm the owner of an SX-70 camera this doesn't matter too much to me!

Initially orders are limited to just 5 units and they'll still sting you for £14 for p&p, but at least the price of the film is a little less that in their original press release at €18/£16.

Needless to say I have placed my first order (and yes, I went for the full 5 units!)

The Impossible Project launch 2 new instant films

Yesterday The Impossible Project launched their promised new instant films. Both new films are monochrome integrated instant film packs that will fit SX-70 and 600 series cameras:

PX100 Silver Shade
This 100ASA film is designed to be used in cameras that use SX-70 film.

PX600 Silver Shade
This 600ASA film is designed to be used in cameras that use 600 film.

I assume that the 'Silver Shade' suffix indicates black and white, and both films have been released in so called 'First Flush' editions, which suggests that films will be made available in a variety of editions as The Impossible Project refine their manufacturing techniques, with each edition having slightly different characteristics.

Although the new films are entirely new products using new chemistry that is quite different from earlier Polaroid films (and indeed are the first ever monochrome integrated instant films), they have much in common with the basic ethos of early SX-70 film in particular. The films have chemistry that is very sensitive to temperature, light while developing, exposure and manipulations, which means that no two photographers using these films are going to produce the same style of photograph.

The sales of the new films will begin on Thursday (March 25th) at €21 per 8 exposure pack. Despite the shocking price (it will work out at around £2.35 per shot!) I'm very excited by these new films and I will certainly be placing my order on Friday!

Interview with Yasuyuki Maekawa about the Pentax 645D

Luminous Landscape have publish an interesting little interview with Pentax Product Planning executive Yasuyuki Maekawa. It seems that Pentax are planning on selling the 645D internationally, but it's going to take them a while to develop a support infrastructure for the 645D. Pentax haven't sold any medium format equipment in Europe since 2006 (despite the fact that the Pentax UK website still lists the full range of 645 and 67 equipment like nothing changed in 2006!).

Yasuyuki Maekawa was candid about the need for new wide angle lenses for the 645D. He said that no only did the current 645 lenses not go wide enough for the 44x33mm sensor in the 645D (the current widest lens, the 35mm, is only equivalent to 28mm in on a full frame 35mm camera), but existing 645 wide angle lenses did not give the required image quality on a digital camera. And Pentax have indeed added an unspecified 645 D-FA ultra wide to their lens roadmap. It's interesting that the ultra wide is labelled a D-FA lens, indicating that although the lens is optimised for digital, it will be suitable for use on full-frame film 645 cameras.

If Pentax are going to standardise on 44x33mm for their medium format cameras from no on (which is in effect to 645 medium format what APS-C is to 35mm full frame) I would have though that Pentax need to work on some 645 DA digital only lenses, just as they have done for their 35mm based range of DSLRs.

Pentax formally announce the 645D medium format DSLR



So Pentax have finally announced their much anticipated re-entry into the medium format field with the 645D. But it won't be available until May, and then only in Japan, so it's too early to move it out of the vapour-ware category just yet!

But this is still an exciting announcement for gear-heads ;-) The market for medium format gear has contracted considerably over the last few years with now just Hasselblad and Mamiya/Phase One left as the main players (though a few other company such as Leaf still make backs for the Mamiya/Phase One system). So a second brand new medium format system (after the Leica S2, although that system still seems like vapour ware to me!) in just the last year or so is quite something.

Pentax stop producing all their medium format equipment in 2009, and it stopped being available in Europe in 2006. This effectively means they are starting again from scratch, at least outside of Japan. The new camera has a suggested retail price of 850,000 yen (approx. £6350). So the price look attractive too, though of course you still need fairly deep pockets, but that was ever the case for medium format!

It also means that at the moment there is really only 1... just just 1...! lens you can buy brand new to go with your lovely new 645D, and that is the new (deep breath) Pentax smc D FA 645 55mm F2.8 AL[IF] SDM AW. The 55mm lens has a suggested retail price of 100,000 yen (approx. £740).

The new camera has a 44x33mm sensor, which is considerable smaller that the 56x41mm size of a traditional 645 film negative. This means that the 55mm lens is effectively a slightly wide standard lens with a 35mm equiv. focal length of 43mm.

I have to admit I find that 55mm lens interesting... I wonder why they made it 645 full frame? One of the problems for both Hasselblad and Mamiya is that they both make backs with a wide range of sensor sizes, so it's difficult for customers to get an easy handle on what field of view any particular lens will have. I would hope that Pentax will standardise on 44x33mm, so a 55mm lens will always be a slightly wide standard lens. But then they go and make this a lens that will cover 645 full frame where it will definitely be a wide-angle (albeit of the moderate variety).

And of course Pentax have now given us an SLR camera with effectively just one lens (that can be bought new). It will be interesting to see how they develop the lens line.

One thing they definitely need is wide-angle lenses. Even if you currently own the widest existing lens, the 35mm, that is only a 28mm (35mm equiv.) lens on the 645D (OK there was the 33-55mm zoom, but that isn't much wider). And that is quite a hunk of glass... will they give us digital only lenses that take advantage of the reduced image size to cut weight, like the DA limited lenses for APS-C? In other words are they just going to give us 645 D-FA lenses, or will we get 645 DA lenses too?

Panasonic announce the latest Micro 4/3 cameras; the G2 and G10


Panasonic have replaced their first M4/3 camera, the G1, with not one, but 2 models. The G2 updates the G1 with a 720p video mode and an articulated touch sensitive rear monitor. And the G10 takes the G2 and gives it a smaller, lower resolution eye level viewfinder (1.04x, 202k dot vs. 1.4x 1440k dot) and an unarticulated rear monitor. You can use the touch sensitive screen, among other things, to set the focus point by just tapping the thing you want to be in focus. In terms of styling the new cameras are very similar to the out-going G1.

Alongside the G2 and G10 is a new kit zoom. The G1 kit zoom was a 14-45mm model with a metal mount, while the new model is 14-42mm with a plastic mount. The new lens is lighter (160gr vs. 190gr) but strangely, it is also a good 5mm longer.

DPReview.com have a hands-on preview of the G2.

PMA 2010

PMA2010 (the annual trade exhibition of the Photo Marketing Association) runs Feb 19th-23rd and always means some interesting product announcements. Most of these years announcements seem to be of the roadmap variety, that is to say manufacturers describing product currently in development rather than ready to go on the market. Here is a run down of the interesting stuff aimed at enthusiast photographers:

Sigma

Sigma announced an impressive line of new lenses, including image-stabilised versions of their established 70-200mm f2.8 and 50-500mm F4.5-6.3 full frame zoom lenses and a new 17-50mm f2.8 standard zoom with a slightly wider zoom range than their establish 18-50mm model. Most interesting are the new 85mm f1.4 full frame and 8-16mm F4.5-5.6 APS-C lenses.

The independents have traditionally left such things as ultra-fast fixed focal-length standard and portrait lenses to the big boys over at Canon and Nikon (et al), but Sigma first broke that with a 50mm f1.4 and now we have an 85mm version. The 8-16mm ultra-wide zoom lens is perhaps the most interesting item from Sigma because it brakes genuinely new ground. The new lens is a rectilinear, not a fish-eye and so become the widest such lens for digital SLRs with a 35mm equiv. focal-length of 12-24mm. As such it is essentially the digital version of their well established 12-24mm full frame lens, which was equally ground-breaking in its day.

Sigma have also announced mild updates to its DP1 and DP2 APS-C compacts in the shape of the DP1x and DP2s. Finally Sigma have announced a new DSLR in the shape of the SD15. If you're getting a feeling of deja-vu with that last one you're not wrong... Sigma last announced the this camera back in 2008... maybe they will finally get around to bringing it to market this time...

Sony

Sony made a whole string of 'in development' announcements: An a mirror-less interchangeable lens camera (the prototypes look like non-working wooden models, so who knows how close the are to what Sony will finally introduce), 2 new full frame DSLR lenses (a 24mm f2 Ziess lens and a 500mm f4 'G' lens), and finally Sony showed pictures of an un-named successor to their ageing mid-range A700 DSLR. So nothing concrete from Sony then...

Samsung

Samsung announced their first entry into the enthusiast compact market, currently dominated by the Panasonic LX3, Canon G11 and Canon S90 models. The new camera will be known as the EX1 in Europe and the TL500 elsewhere. The EX1 features an ambitious 24-72mm (35mm equiv.) f1.8-2.4 lens and an articulated LCD monitor.

Tokina

Tokina announced a new 16-28mm f2.8 full-frame lens. I can't help feeling this sounds a bit of a short zoom range... it's going to have to compete with 16-35mm lenses from Canon and Nikon.

Ricoh

Ricoh announced that 2 more lens units are in development for their rather daft GXR camera system. The new units are the 28mm (35mm equiv.) A10 with an APS-C sensor and the 28-300mm (35mm equiv.) P10. The press release bizarrely doesn't specify a sensor size for this one. I still find the idea of being almost a complete camera with every lens I buy just plain daft... mainly because you can't upgrade the sensor unit fixed to the back of your lens as sensor technology improves. This system is also eye-wateringly expensive. A recent reader's poll by Amateur Photographer had 70% of voters thinking this system is doomed to failure... I can't say I disagree!

Pentax K-x to be made available in 8 more colours in Europe

Pentax has announced that European customers will get the chance to buy the Pentax K-x in 8 new colours, in addition to the black, navy, red and white versions already available. Most of them are absolutely hideous... especially the metallic variants. The pink ones are decidedly dodgy too! The only one I like is the olive colour.

For those that don't know, Japanese customers have long been able to select from literally 100s of colour variations. There 20 body colours, and each one is available with one of 5 grip colours. But there are 9 grips colours in total because some of the combinations are not allowed, though I've been unable to determine any rational reason behind which combinations are allowed and which are not... taste certainly seems to have little to do with it! I managed to create all these combination on the Pentax K-x colour simulator:




Mind you, I quite like some of the combinations... how about this olive and white example with a silver FA Limited lens:

It's almost like a Leica Safari edition ;-)

Apple Aperture 3

Apple recently announced the latest version of their Aperture photography software. I last tried Aperture when version 2 was announced and I didn't really get on with it very well. As a long time Photoshop user I wasn't really to surprised when I felt more at home with Adobe's Aperture rival product: Lightroom (currently at version 2 with version 3 in beta).

But on a Mac, Aperture has one big advantage over Lightroom, and that is Aperture files appear in the Apple Media Browser, making it easier to add Aperture photographs to documents in other applications. So I've long nurtured a desire to switch to Aperture.

But these none-destructive photography applications all share a common problem: photography developed in Lightroom can only be viewed in Lightroom. View your files out of Lightroom and you'll see the original photograph without any adjustments. Of course the same applies when Aperture developed photographs are viewed in Lightroom. There is now way to import you Lightroom library into Aperture with all the adjustments preserved (or the other way around). Once you start using Aperture or Lightroom it is very difficult to migrate to the other application. Your only option is to output JPEGS and then import those as well as the original JPEG or RAW files.

One of the big new features in Aperture 3 is the ability to apply adjustments selectively using brushes. Lightroom 2 has long had similar abilities, but also adds the ability to add adjustments selectively using graduated 'filters'.

I will probably give Aperture 3 a test, but it's going to have to be pretty damned amazing for me to want to put in the massive amount of work needed to move my Lightroom library into Aperture.

New cameras and lenses from Olympus, Canon and Nikon

OK, just doing a little catch-up...

Olympus E-PL1
First up is Olympus's latest Micro 4/3 camera, the E-PL1. The new camera is designed as a low cost introduction to the M4/3 system. You get most of the same specification as the E-P2, but with a smaller body featuring simplified controls, so you'll have to do more digging around in menus than you would with the E-P1 and E-P2. But by way of compensation you do get a built-in flash unit. Olympus have also launched a new low-cost version of their 14-42mm kit lens with a plastic mount to go with the E-PL1.


Next up is the second of Olympus's new M4/3 lenses, the very compact 9-18mm ultra-wideangle zoom.


Finally from Olympus we have the 14-150mm all-in-one M4/3 super-zoom.


Next up we have Canon proving that you can launch a camera without a having the announcement leaked widely through-out the internet first. Of course Canon are also proving that the mega-pixel race is very far from over! The 18mp 550D seems to have taken everybody by surprise, possibly because no-one really thought a 3mp bump from the 15mp 500D was remotely necessary. Of course Canon have also taken the opportunity to add that other useless-but-necessary-from-a-marketing-point-of-view feature, HD video.

It's interesting that as other manufactures start to standardise on 12mp (like Olympus and Nikon) or top out at 14mp (like Pentax or Sony) Canon is determined to press on with the mega-pixel ramp-up. It will be interesting to see how much market advantage this actually brings Canon. Or will consumers start to realise that the huge files produced by an 18mp camera are more trouble than they are worth.


Finally Nikon have announced two new professional full-frame (or FX if you're going to insist on using Nikon-speak) lenses. The first is a new 16-35mm ultra-wideangle zoom. It is the first lens of it's type to feature built-in image stablisation. You can also be fairly sure that this lens will be just a tad larger than Olympus's newly announced M4/3 equivalent ;-)


The second of Nikon's two new lenses is an untra-fast f1.4 24mm wide-angle.

smc Pentax D-FA 100mm Macro F2.8 WR first impressions

Friday last week (Jan 15th) my new DSLR, a Pentax K-7, arrived, along with a smc Pentax D-FA 100mm Macro F2.8 WR lens. See my last post for a discussion of the Pentax K-7. Here I talk about my first impressions of this lens after my first walk-about with the K-7/D-FA WR combination on Sunday.

To be honest I didn't buy this lens primarily for its macro focussing. I've been thinking for a while that what I would really like is a short telephoto lens, roughly equivalent to a classic 135mm film lens, in Pentax's DA Limited range... maybe with a focal length in the 90-100mm range.

Then, in December 2009, Pentax announced the 'smc Pentax D-FA 100mm Macro F2.8 WR' lens. Although this lens has a D-FA designation, it features the same all metal construction and design cues as Pentax's celebrated DA Limited range. The lens is light-weight enough (340 grams) to be carried without problems even when macro focussing isn't required, and so it seemed like the ideal complement to me existing DA Limited lenses.

I do have plans to make use of the 1:1 macro focussing of this lens, but for the most part it will just be a relatively light-weight 150mm (35mm equiv.) short telephoto lens. So what are my first impressions...?

Well, the first thing to say is that this is a truly beautiful piece of engineering from Pentax. Some how Pentax have managed to combine extreme light weight (at 340 grams this lens is barely more than half the weight of competing product from Canon and Nikon) with all metal construction and confidence inspiring solidity.

Overall focusing was smooth in both AF and MF modes. But one slight disappointment is the lack of a focus limiter. Macro lenses have an extremely long focus travel as the move from infinity to closest focus. I have found that if you set the lens to infinity and then try to focus on something a few centimetres away, the K-7 will often fail to find correct focus completely. You have to help things along my focusing roughly manually first. The fact that the lens features full-time manual focus over-ride even in AF mode makes this easy however, and of course macro photography is rarely about capturing fast action!

I also found that the lens occasionally tries to move all the way from a distant to a near focus setting before moving back to the correct distant setting even when using the lens for normal photography, and this is where a focus limiter to reduce the amount of potential focus travel would be really welcome. But this problem was only an occasional and minor annoyance.

The previous D-FA 100mm macro lens shares this problem. You have to go back to the much earlier FA 100mm macro (which weighed a hefty 600+ grams!) to find a Pentax macro lens with a focus limiter.

Here are a couple of sample shots (both processed for creative effect in Adobe Lightroom):





Over-all I have to say I'm very pleased with my new lens and I'm looking forward to exploiting its macro focussing capabilities.

Pentax K-7 first impressions.

Friday last week (Jan 15th) my new DSLR, a Pentax K-7, arrived. The K-7 came with the new 100mm WR Marco lens, which I'll discuss in the next post.

I just thought I'd post some first impression after taking the camera out on Sunday for a first outing...

Well, the first thing to say is that the K-7 is a really beautiful camera. It's very compact, yet also fairly heavy for its size, which gives they camera a very high quality, even luxurious, feel in the hand. How a camera fits your hands is a very personal thing, but the K-7 fits my hands to perfection. The grip is much more deeply sculpted than the grip on the K20D and I find this makes it very comfortable. The K20D handles very well, but the K-7 is an improvement on the already high K20D standards in this area.

The K-7 has a very different design motif from the K20D. Instead of the swooping, but perhaps slight chubby, lines of the K20D, the K-7 is all straight lines and angles. And a very handsome beast it is too. From a purely aesthetic point of view, I think that the K-7 is one of the best looking cameras out there. Pentax apparently had their compact DA Limited lenses particularly in mind when designing the K-7, and I can confirm the combination of a metal magnesium alloy body and compact dimensions make the K-7 look and feel particularly stunning when paired with an all aluminium DA Limited lens. The combination of very compact dimensions and beautiful all metal construction of both camera and lenses really set Pentax apart from competitors like the Canon EOS 50D and the Nikon D300.

The only very minor handling problem is that I find the front control dial is just a bit too far away from the shutter button. But this is a very minor issue.

When it comes to control layout the K-7 is quite a departure from the K20D. But it is in general a very successful layout. The addition of a dedicated ISO button is indeed very welcome. But the K-7 also looses a few of the dedicated controls that the K20D featured. One is the shake reduction (SR) switch. This is something I used very rarely as I always just left the SR on all the time. But it was still quite useful to have an instant visual confirmation that SR was indeed turned on.

The other dedicated control the K-7 has lost is for auto exposure bracketing. This is a feature I don't use all that often, but I use it often enough to find having direct access to this feature very handy. Auto bracketing is now operated by pressing the button than operates drive modes. It still pretty easy to locate and turn on auto bracketing, it just now involves a few extra button presses. It has to be said that the increased frame rate of the K-7 makes using auto bracketing smoother once you have set it, which I guess compensates for the higher number of button presses required to activate auto bracketing in the first place...

One other control change I'm not hugely keen on is the locking button on the main mode control dial. this has to be pressed when ever the mode is changed. I never had any problems with accidental mode changes on the K20D, so this is rather superfluous as far as I am concerned.

But despite these minor complaints, that general handling and control layout on the K-7 is a joy.

Because I have had the K-7 for such a short period of time, I won't comment at length on the performance, image quality and the various new features of the K-7, but I do have a few initial impressions:

Firstly overall image quality is effectively the same as the K20D. I haven't done any specific comparisons on things such a dynamic range, resolution etc, but I'm sure that any differences are minor. The only aspect of the K20D I've had any real problems with is exposure metering, which I found frustratingly unreliable. My limited first experience with the K-7 suggests that the situation is definitely improved with the K-7.

One new feature of the K-7 I definitely love is the electronic level. Replaces the exposure compensation readout in the viewfinder and the top LCD panel with an indicator telling you if you are holding the the camera level. I've always had to spend a fair amount of time straightening horizons in post-capture processing because I'm just not very good at holding a camera straight! So this is a definite plus for me. Of course using this feature means you loose the normal exposure compensation read out, but you still get a temporary indication of exposure compensation each time the setting is changed, and this seems to work pretty well for me.

The K-7 isn't perfect... no camera ever can be... but it is the closed yet to perfection (for my personal shooting style) that I have experienced, and I can honestly say that I am very happy with my new camera!

Samsung release full details of the NX interchangeable lens camera system

Samsung have released full details of the first camera and first 3 lenses of their brand new interchangeable lens camera system. The new system is very similar to the Olympus/Panasonic Micro Four Thirds system, except it uses the same size sensor used in consumer DSLRs.

The camera is called the NX10 and the three lenses are the bog standard kit zooms (18-55mm and 50-200mm) plus one slightly more unusual lens in the shape of the ultra compact 30mm F2 fixed focal-length lens. Of course any camera system lives or dies on it's range of lenses and other accessories, so it will be interesting to see how Samsung develops the NX system in the future.

Unlike Samsung's previous interchangeable lens cameras, which were re-badged Pentax models, the new system is a 100% Samsung design.

Rather bizarrely I couldn't find the 4 Jan 2010 press release on either the UK or global Samsung sites... only the March 2009 press release for the NX10 Samsung originally released to coincide with PMA2009, so the above link will take you to the hands-on preview at Digital Photography Review.

It never fails to amaze me how often major companies fail to get their press releases on their own websites!!

Pentax K-x review

Digital Photography Review have published a review of the Pentax K-x DSLR. The review is generally very positive, especially when it comes to low light image quality and it gets the DPR 'Highly Recommended' rating. Not that this means much. All DSLR cameras get at least the 'Recommended' rating, so there are effectively only two ratings on DPR, 'Recommended' and 'Highly Recommended'. Still, it's nice to see what is now my home team get the higher rating!

New reviews on dpreview.com

Just catching up with some new reviews on Digital Photography Review:

- Leica X1
- Canon PowerShot G11
- Nikon D3000

The Leica X1 is probably the most interesting camera of those. The dpreview.com review is very complimentary on the design, but less complimentary on the JPEG processing, and, more importantly given that most users will use raw mode, focussing speed.

smc Pentax D-FA 100mm Macro F2.8 WR

Pentax have announced a new macro lens in the shape of the smc Pentax D-FA Macro F2.8 WR. The lens is interesting for a number of reasons:

1. The official recommended price in the US is $849.95. This is the same as the existing D-FA 100mm Macro. This is despite the fact that the new lens represents a considerable upgrade over the existing lens and suggests the new lens will replace the older lens rather than run along side it.

2. The new lens has an aluminium body and is beautifully styled to match Pentax's existing 'DA limited' range of lenses, despite the fact that it doesn't carry the 'limited' designation. Does this indicate a future trend for all Pentax lenses?

3. This is the first D-FA lens not to have an aperture ring. In fact I think it may be the first lens with any FA designation (apart from the FAJ lenses) to rely solely on electronic control of the aperture. Pentax has always touted the high level of compatibility of the D-FA range with older film SLRs, but the lack of an aperture ring on the new lens will severely restrict this backwards compatibility.

4. The new lens is very light weight for a telephoto macro lens at 340grams. This is very slightly lighter than the existing 100mm D-FA lens, and a whole lot lighter than most macro lenses in the 90-100mm category.

5. Some macro enthusiasts will be disappointed to see no mention of a focus limiter. Because macro lenses have such a long focus range, autofocus performance can be compromised. The answer is to implement a switch to limit the focus to either the macro or normal range. The older F and FA 100mm macro lenses had such a feature, but it was dropped for the D-FA version. I'm sure many were hoping such a feature would be restored on the next macro lens, but it looks like it hasn't. I'm sure many users would rather have had the focus limiter than the weather resistant sealing.

I have to say I'm very excited by this new lens. I have been using DA limited fixed focal length lenses almost exclusively for the past several months, and this lens, with it's beautiful aluminium styling, will sit very well with my current lens set, adding both medium telephoto reach and macro focusing in one compact and light weight lens.

Of course a lot depends on what the street price is once it hits the UK retailers!

Sony Alpha A550 review on Digital Photography Review

Digital Photography Review have posted a review of the Sony Alpha A550 DSLR.