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What is more interesting than the Fuji is what comes after. Hybrid built-in viewfinder is great. And stabilization. Hope Nikon could do it and then Canon will follow?
But first, let's see how good the Fuji is...
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Re: Fujifilm reveals more details of X100 large-sensor compact
- Thread starter MDwebpro
- Start date
What is more interesting than the Fuji is what comes after. Hybrid built-in viewfinder is great. And stabilization. Hope Nikon could do it and then Canon will follow?
But first, let's see how good the Fuji is...
(a) Are you saying an electronic viewfinder cannot be as good as an optical for focussing because the refresh rate and resolution will always be too slow?
(b) Or are you saying that one can only properly focus without an optical aid like rangefinder-style double image, a split-prism or a microprism?
(c) Or are you saying that focus-by-wire can never be as precise as direct manual focussing control?
Klimt z
Forum Enthusiast
However the combination of a compact body with a normal lens hanging on it, doesn't make it much more attractive overall. The lens size can't be reduced because of the large sensor.
Even the 4/3 don't turn out to be much smaller with a tele lens, and they cost too much.
I hope Fuji pursues this idea. They are our best hope because the core problem is that the Canikonsonys and panny would rather build their lens business by selling you an slr. There isn't much motivation there to make a perfect $400 camera. Fuji does not have a lens business that I know of.
This could get interesting. There is a lot of discussion on the Sony forum regarding the one lens for an slr that would cover all situations and not require a bag full of lenses. I thought the changeable lens was supposed to be the big advantage of dslrs! Meanwhile I own several of both but I I would never bother with an dslr if it could be avoided.
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Klimt
Even the 4/3 don't turn out to be much smaller with a tele lens, and they cost too much.
I hope Fuji pursues this idea. They are our best hope because the core problem is that the Canikonsonys and panny would rather build their lens business by selling you an slr. There isn't much motivation there to make a perfect $400 camera. Fuji does not have a lens business that I know of.
This could get interesting. There is a lot of discussion on the Sony forum regarding the one lens for an slr that would cover all situations and not require a bag full of lenses. I thought the changeable lens was supposed to be the big advantage of dslrs! Meanwhile I own several of both but I I would never bother with an dslr if it could be avoided.
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Klimt
onlooker
Senior Member
Sony doesn't have real mechanical dials for shutter speed or aperture. Or anything. What Sony has is a sophisticated camera phone with a large sensor. I'll pass.
bikinchris
Forum Pro
I do want one of these, but I think it is obvious that this camera has limited sales potential. The "retro" look in products does have sales value, but the market gets saturated pretty quick. The first one or two cameras of this type will probably sell pretty well, but then the sales figures will probably drop off pretty drastically after that. The first one ot two models out will have cross over sales from different brands, but after that, I don't think people woudl buy one unless their favorite brand is offfering one.
Unless this camera offers something the best of the current models doesn't do well, it will only sell so many before saturation. Some image feature, or maybe compatability with older lenses might help.
What do you think?
--
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
Chris, Broussard, LA
Unless this camera offers something the best of the current models doesn't do well, it will only sell so many before saturation. Some image feature, or maybe compatability with older lenses might help.
What do you think?
--
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
Chris, Broussard, LA
PeterLeyssens
Senior Member
Felix,
I then realised the M9 is not a very advanced camera featurewise (no stabilisation, no autofocus, ...).
I then realised the E-P1 is actually quite a good body for what I do and it gets me the possibility to get FF like DOF with the Voigtländer 25/f0.95. No autofocus, indeed, but stabilised. It's a bit like the subtitle to that Kubrick movie... or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crop Factor.
Peter.
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gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/peterleyssens
NAP (Nearly a PAD (Photo a Day)) at http://nap.techwriter.be
(...)
I have had the same frustration when thinking about digital camera bodies. If Leica can make a digital body with a full frame sensor in a form factor that is almost exactly the same as the film bodies before, why can't SLR makers do it ? After all, if you think of all the place you gain by removing the mechanics, it should be possible, right ?
I then realised the M9 is not a very advanced camera featurewise (no stabilisation, no autofocus, ...).
I then realised the E-P1 is actually quite a good body for what I do and it gets me the possibility to get FF like DOF with the Voigtländer 25/f0.95. No autofocus, indeed, but stabilised. It's a bit like the subtitle to that Kubrick movie... or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crop Factor.
Peter.
--
gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/peterleyssens
NAP (Nearly a PAD (Photo a Day)) at http://nap.techwriter.be
PeterLeyssens
Senior Member
Klimt,
About the Sony NEX: I didn't think they had this hybrid viewfinder technology ?
Micro FourThirds 100-300 f4.0-5.6: about 75mm wide, 126mm long. weighs 520gr
Olympus OM 600mm/f6.5: 110mm wide, 380mm long, weighs 2800 gr.
And the MFT lens is a zoom and it's faster at the 600mm equivalent and it costs under €600 !
Your statement about changeable lenses being the advantage gets straight to the point. You buy the flexibility to use different lenses for different environments or purposes.
Peter.
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gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/peterleyssens
NAP (Nearly a PAD (Photo a Day)) at http://nap.techwriter.be
About the Sony NEX: I didn't think they had this hybrid viewfinder technology ?
I agree, a major problem with the NEX.
Oh, really ? Look at this:
Micro FourThirds 100-300 f4.0-5.6: about 75mm wide, 126mm long. weighs 520gr
Olympus OM 600mm/f6.5: 110mm wide, 380mm long, weighs 2800 gr.
And the MFT lens is a zoom and it's faster at the 600mm equivalent and it costs under €600 !
I can only say that this must be because some people in that discussion aren't used to serious photography. If you get a superzoom lens, then it's practical for many situations but not for narrow DOF portraits. For architecture, the superzoom won't work because it won't be well corrected in the wide angle range, so you should get a wide angle zoom. And it denfinitely won't be very helpful in low light situations. And if you get a lens that does either of these three situations well, it won't have a zoom range as long as the superzoom. There isn't a "one lens fits all".
Your statement about changeable lenses being the advantage gets straight to the point. You buy the flexibility to use different lenses for different environments or purposes.
Peter.
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gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/peterleyssens
NAP (Nearly a PAD (Photo a Day)) at http://nap.techwriter.be
delphinidae
New member
I've wanted one of the major manufacturer's to make a decent-but-affordable compact digital camera with a large sensor and a decent fixed/prime lens for a long time (the digital equivalent of a Yashica T4 or a Ricoh GR1). The Sigma DPx wasn't it.
I hadn't heard of the X100 until now, but it looks like it will be horrendously expensive/over-priced and the marketing and retro-design is just pretentious (in order to justify the higher price, presumably).
I just want something as capable as my 400D + pancake lens (not that Canon makes one, sadly) without the bulk at a reasonable price. It can't be that difficult.
I hadn't heard of the X100 until now, but it looks like it will be horrendously expensive/over-priced and the marketing and retro-design is just pretentious (in order to justify the higher price, presumably).
I just want something as capable as my 400D + pancake lens (not that Canon makes one, sadly) without the bulk at a reasonable price. It can't be that difficult.
D
Darrell Spreen
Guest
I don't think I could ever name all the 35mm film cameras with specs and features like the X100 which were on the market. Every camera-maker had 2 or 3 at least, and that was before the compact zoom cameras came on the scene.
I'm one of those people who think a good viewfinder is second only to a good lens on a camera. The majority of the current models offer only LCD viewing, poor as it may be in many situations. The add-on optical or electronic viewfinders are okay as an afterthought, but not a really good camera design. (My suggestion is to include a really good EVF in a compact camera and make the LCD an add-on accessory -- you can make several different sizes in fact for those who have a special need for them).
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Darrell
Photomonkey
Senior Member
Without the phone.
CFynn
Veteran Member
A digital Nikon SP would be nice - but an F-mount on a rangefinder camera is plain idiotic (you could always use an adaptor).
- C
CFynn
Veteran Member
CFynn
Veteran Member
Fuji have a long history of making quality fixed lens film cameras (medium format and 35mm) with excellent lenses ~ this is more or less a digital camera along the same lines.
If the lens is as good as Fuji are capable of making - and the sensor is top class - this camera will do well.
- C
CFynn
Veteran Member
Actually I think they now manufacture some of the "Carl Ziess" branded lenses for Hasselblad and I know they make some high end lenses used in televisision production - but interchangeable lenses for DSLRs , no.
I have waited 10 years (give or take) for this type of camera. Back in the predigital era I, like most others, had a good and simple pocket camera to carry when the bag of lenses and bodies was just too much. Mine was an Olympus Epic, which had an extremely sharp, high contrast, quality fixed lens. It was a gem. I still carry a bag of bodies and lenses, but nothing in the digital age has replaced that little low cost, limited use camera. What will be the deal breaker for me will be the cost, which will make the X100 unlike the Epic. If this camera comes in at $500 (not likely) most pros and serious amateurs will have one in their bag. However, the price will make it a low production model. Hopefully I won't have to wait 10 more years.
RRJackson
Senior Member
Take your pick. ;-)
(a) until the refresh rates are higher and the resolutions are higher.
(b) Because even then an electronic viewfinder is like focusing with a matte screen. I don't know if you spent much time with manual-focus 35mm SLRs back in the day, but without a split-image/microprism setup it was frequently tough to nail focus on the fly. I was never much for rangefinders, but I had a Mamiya 7II for a while. It was never as easy for me as an SLR, but I can see how people got used to them.
(c) This kinda depends on the hardware. I've never really liked focus-by-wire. I had 4/3 stuff for a few years and never really cared for that aspect of it very much. On the other hand, I've used broadcast cameras with handle-mounted remotes on the studio tripods that were very precise. Those remotes were thousands of dollars, though. I've never used a consumer camera that had anything comparable.
RRJackson
Senior Member
That reminds me of a Dennis Miller routine from years ago about an American department store having a 2-for-1 sale on suits. He said something like, "Is a short-sleeved leisure suit ever a bargain no matter how much they mark it down? If they really wanted to f*%$ you they'd toss in a third one."
I strongly believe (a) is already there or very, very close. All video cameras can only be focussed that way and sharp moving pictures are being shot and have been shot in great numbers (it might be though that larger sensors as found in EVILs and DSLRs still have a refresh rate that is slower than that of video cameras). In any case, dismissing all LV-like cameras without discriminating among them regarding this aspect does not seem like a credible position.
Regarding resolution, most if not all cameras allow you enlarge the area you are focussing on rendering the resolution issue pretty much moot (though working with enlarged images itself poses some practical issues).
(My SLR days go back to about 1986, so yes, I had several years of MF-SLRs.) While these aides can be useful, they forced you to always focus in the center (yes, you can recompose but then you probably loose the accuracy you might have gained over the matte screen). They also can be distracting when composing an image and a lot of cameras in the pre-AF era shipped with matte screens (like most medium-format cameras). Thus your opinion here that the lack of such aides makes "one being incapable of manual focus" is certainly only a personal opinion and not something that is universally accepted.
With my GF-1 and the 20 mm lens, this is probably the biggest issue that makes manual focus a pain (other than using the screen and not an EVF makes keeping the camera-object distance and in particular the framing constant somewhat difficult but that problem does not exist with the Fuji X100 which has an EVF) but again, without having used the X100, it is somewhat rash to conclude that "one cannot focus manually with it" .
RRJackson
Senior Member
First off, I'm not going to try to dislodge you from a position you're fond of defending. But I will offer up that when shooting HD video almost everyone doing it for a living uses some kind of focusing aid. I come from the days of B&W CRT viewfinders in field cameras, so I'm most comfortable with peaking, but there are a lot of ways to skin that cat. Consumer video cameras generally rely on autofocus and have very poorly implemented manual focus in most cases.
Yeah, if you can run and gun while the image keeps zooming in and out. And of course by the time it zooms back out you've generally lost focus again. Which is why live view is currently excellent for macro and tabletop stuff, but very poor for most everything else.
Only by people who like to see images in-focus. I can count the number of pros I've known who worked with a matte focusing screen on...well...actually, I've never known anyone who worked with a matte screen for anything other than astrophtography and certain kinds of microscopy.
Call it an "educated guess." ;-)
I'd like a camera that goes beyond the retro "look," and actually operates in a more retro fashion, particularly in terms of the lens. I'd love to see a manual focus, normal focal length lens with detailed distance and depth of field scales and no focus by wire nonsense. They can get rid of the lcd and all those back of camera controls, too; then a standard, fully enclosed "everyready" case could be used. I want an aperture ring on the lens, a top-mounted shutter speed selector with lift-to-set sensitivity ring, an accessory shoe (doesn't need to be a hot shoe; a simple pc synch connector is fine), and a threaded shutter release so I can use a standard cable release or accessory self-timer. I would take an EVF that accurately shows 100% of the final image over an optical viewfinder with imprecise framing, and raw-only capture would be fine. For a focusing aid, I like the simple green dot that appeared in manual focus mode when my SD14 was focused on whatever I aimed it at. I don't think I'd bother with auto-exposure (and the complications of choosing modes and needing means for AE lock and EV compensation), but a built-in spotmeter with match-needle or match-diode manual operation could be handy.
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