I think I'll wait til Photokina before buying the S2...

[DuraVision]

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma + Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

 

[JohanP]

Hi

yes, and after Photokina it may come new surprises.. and after them possible new ones..

I have to say that the S2 will be hard to beat. I got my S2 last week and I have to say that it is very impressive.

Regards
Johan

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more
surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

 

[stuart98029]

Is not the real problem "always on the horizon ?"

I am new to digital photography..

My first "real" D Camera was an Olympus E-20p and found it a very good camera (in the short time i owned it)..

I have now just upgraded to an S2 Pro and hope/plan to get a great deal of use from it...

I purchased it with the view "i hope to increase my knowledge of taking digital pictures.. whilst learning how to use it properly"

But surely there will always be "next months news or next years model" ?

All very inticing im sure... and we all want value for money... but im glad i jumped off the fence and purchased the S2... by the time i can afford the next camera... hopefully they will "really have moved on to rival film" and hopefully with the help of people here i will be in a position to feel i am capable of using it.

For now however i have stopped looking at whats on the horizon and plan to capture it instead.

Kind regards all.

I have to say that the S2 will be hard to beat. I got my S2 last
week and I have to say that it is very impressive.

Regards
Johan

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more
surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

 

[Boris]

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more
surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

Wait for next years Photokina.....just think of all the pictures you won't be taking.
Are you still running a 8088 and waiting for the Pentium 10 ?
Sell all your stuff and buy a D100 or S2....Keep the economy going!
Boris

 

[JohanP]

Hi

I believe that you have purchased a more lastning solution with the S2 compared to the OlyE20. I had the E10 for a short while but missed the flexibility with a true SLR. So, my S2 was delivered last week and I must say that I am impressed, far more impressed than my initial feeling about the Oly E10 (wich was a let down i several ways).

Regards
Johan

I am new to digital photography..
My first "real" D Camera was an Olympus E-20p and found it a very
good camera (in the short time i owned it)..

I have now just upgraded to an S2 Pro and hope/plan to get a great
deal of use from it...
I purchased it with the view "i hope to increase my knowledge of
taking digital pictures.. whilst learning how to use it properly"

But surely there will always be "next months news or next years
model" ?

All very inticing im sure... and we all want value for money... but
im glad i jumped off the fence and purchased the S2... by the time
i can afford the next camera... hopefully they will "really have
moved on to rival film" and hopefully with the help of people here
i will be in a position to feel i am capable of using it.

For now however i have stopped looking at whats on the horizon and
plan to capture it instead.

Kind regards all.

I have to say that the S2 will be hard to beat. I got my S2 last
week and I have to say that it is very impressive.

Regards
Johan

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more
surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

 

[sebMarc]

Digital photography is just beginning. The S2 Pro is the 286 of the PC evolution. CCDs will explode in resolutions, lenses will become smaller (maybe the OlyDak will set the trend) and faster and soon digital will be far above what the medium format is today.

It will be a huge wake-up call for those only seeing film and ignoring the digital revolution happenning today and it will be hard on the wallet for those following every step of the digital trend, as prices will be cut in half every year to come for many years, following that happened with the PC industry.

Make your choice at the right time for you will be the key. All i can tell, having bought my S2 pro, is i will be happy for the next 4 or 5 years, regardless of what Photokina brings. My next digital will probably a 10 or 15 megapixels and much smaller/quicker/efficient/cheaper but i won't miss all the wonderful pictures i am shooting right now. They are priceless.

Seb.

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more
surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

 

[jacques]

I think you will have to forget the Foveon sensor based cameras for a while. I think they can produce one out of a thousend working CCD's, the others will not have the required thikness in all layers. Th eidea is fine, no realy great, but in practise they don't have the skills yet.

The period of silence is become too long allready,

jacques.

Not that easy to reproduce the colors in a butterfly wing.

 

[Ken Mai]

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more

surprises, I hope. So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.

Yes and no. Photokina will give you an idea about where the big (and small) companies are going in the future, but just because it's displayed at Photokina, doesn't mean that you'll be able to buy it the day after. Also, user experience is a big factor. Being an early adopter is fun and brave, but you don't have a big group of users with whom to share tips and tricks. Right now, I expect that for most problems people have with the S2 or D100, there's someone else who's had and solved the problem.

So Photokina will be useful to point out which paths are dead-ends, but if you need a camera today , then your choices are already released (Nikon D100, D1x/h, Fuji S2, Canon D60, 1D) and all the next generation hardware at Photokina won't change that. If you can wait 6 months to a year, then Photokina is a nice sneak peek at the future.

Plus, I have no money! Haha.

That's a different matter entirely...

 

[Greg Marshall]

Digital photography is just beginning. The S2 Pro is the 286 of the
PC evolution. CCDs will explode in resolutions, lenses will become
smaller (maybe the OlyDak will set the trend) and faster and soon
digital will be far above what the medium format is today.

It will be a huge wake-up call for those only seeing film and
ignoring the digital revolution happenning today and it will be
hard on the wallet for those following every step of the digital
trend, as prices will be cut in half every year to come for many
years, following that happened with the PC industry.

Make your choice at the right time for you will be the key. All i
can tell, having bought my S2 pro, is i will be happy for the next
4 or 5 years, regardless of what Photokina brings. My next digital
will probably a 10 or 15 megapixels and much
smaller/quicker/efficient/cheaper but i won't miss all the
wonderful pictures i am shooting right now. They are priceless.

Seb.

I'm not in complete agreement with Seb - there are very significant differences between the PC industry and digital photography. But I think the way to plot your course through this period of rapid development is to plan in advance when you will upgrade (either in time or feature availability) and stick to it. For example, my previous digital camera was a 3.3MP consumer type and I decided I would not upgrade until 6MP was available. So now I'm buying an S2 and working on what my next trigger point will be. It takes more than a single feature, of course, but choosing one helps to keep things sane. And I don't waste time constantly researching cameras in the waiting period.

Greg

 

[Peter Leyenaar]

I have a strong suspicion this year's Photokina is going to have
more than a few surprises. Looks like the Olympus+Kodak
collaboration will show fruit during this year's event. The Sigma +
Foveon camera will probably be available then too. Plus a few more
surprises, I hope.

So while I'd like to get a Fuji S2 now, it might be better to wait
a few weeks.
Plus, I have no money! Haha.

Here is a link to the Photokina website http://www.photokina.de/servlet/PB/menu/1000226_l2/index.html

I will be in Europe the last 3 weeks of September and spend a few days at Photokina, I expect some interesting products to be shown there, I think that Rolleiflex is presenting their new Rollei D530 Flex which is reported to have astounding image quality, possibly rivaling that of the S2.

I wiil briefly report the highlights of Photokina but probably on the Other digicams forum.
Best Regards
Peter
--
Peter Leyenaar
Decisive Moment Photography

 

[Rinus Borgsteede]

If you do not have a camera yet, waiting for the Photokina may be the thing to do. The only problem with the Photokina is that the products seen there usually take another 6 months (or more) to appear in the stores. It ieems that with some of them they never make ik at all. Those are pretty empty promises to wait for. I have a lot of work to do NOW so I am packing the S2 to every job. I treat mine as a 12 MP camera, not a 6 and I and my clients are very happy with those 71 MB files. They all have a hard time accepting and understanding that I went from 3.3MP with a 9MB file size to this. My credibility went up and off the scale. I am happy to look at what is next but for now, I feel like am king in my field allready and the next should maintain that status.
Rinus of Calgary

 

[grc]

I think with digital cameras we are starting to look at diminishing returns.

As the resolution increased there was less of a noticeable difference, ie, 1 2mp noticeable, 2 - 3mp less noticeable, 3-4mp less noticeable still and so on.

Cameras like the S2 will print pretty large at high quality.

Therefore I don't think that there are going to be large observable improvements in image quality in the short term (or possibly longer)

GRC

S2, Nikkors 18-35, 28-105 and 75-300 ( and a huge overdraft!!)

If you do not have a camera yet, waiting for the Photokina may be
the thing to do. The only problem with the Photokina is that the
products seen there usually take another 6 months (or more) to
appear in the stores. It ieems that with some of them they never
make ik at all. Those are pretty empty promises to wait for. I have
a lot of work to do NOW so I am packing the S2 to every job. I
treat mine as a 12 MP camera, not a 6 and I and my clients are very
happy with those 71 MB files. They all have a hard time accepting
and understanding that I went from 3.3MP with a 9MB file size to
this. My credibility went up and off the scale. I am happy to look
at what is next but for now, I feel like am king in my field
allready and the next should maintain that status.
Rinus of Calgary

 

[Ken Mai]

I think with digital cameras we are starting to look at diminishing
returns. As the resolution increased there was less of a noticeable
difference, ie, 1-2mp noticeable, 2 - 3mp less noticeable, 3-4mp
less noticeable still and so on. Cameras like the S2 will print pretty
large at high quality. Therefore I don't think that there are going to
be large observable improvements in image quality in the short term (or
possibly longer)

Yes and no. It is true that if you're only going to print at 4x6, then 2-3Mpixels is enough for you to get a nice 300dpi print. For an 8x10, you'll want 6-8Mpixels. So the current round of dSLRs are good enough to easily generate 8x10s and with a little work can do larger prints. This is plenty for what most people want to do.

However, this is all assuming that you'll never want to crop the image and enlarge the cropped portion. With greater camera resolution you can squash those pesky color interpolation moire problems without going to a Foveon X3 sensor. Greater resolution also buys you fewer aliasing artifacts.

Yes, we will probably see a topping out of camera resolution when most people don't see any appreciable gain from it, but I doubt that it'll happen before we get above 10Mpixels.

 

[Rinus Borgsteede]

I think you are not very informed about resolution and print size. If I could only do an 8x10 with my S2, I would not have ungraded from my Nikon 990 that did 11x14 without any pain or work. The LightJet prints at 150 dpi for true photographic quality. With the 12 MP (71 MB) image I get from the S2, that is a 19 x 28" print. On the Epson printers, the optimum dpi is near 210 ppi for the file to print without loss at 1440 ppi. That would be 13.5 x 20". If I did a little work, I can double it, very easy! I think improvements are indeed going to be small and we are getting to refining what we got, not increasing it resolution. A wider dynamic range is a lot more important than the increase in resolution for any 6MP camera. Just like film, wider contrast range and less grain was the only real push that dominated that developement.
Rinus of calgary

 

[Ken Mai]

I think you are not very informed about resolution and print size.

True, I'm not very informed about this, but that doesn't necessarily make me wrong...

If I could only do an 8x10 with my S2, I would not have ungraded
from my Nikon 990 that did 11x14 without any pain or work.

What each person finds acceptable as a print is different. I never said that you could not make a decent looking 11x14 print from a 3Mpixel camera (your 990 right?). If you're happy with 150 ppi prints, then more power to you.

The LightJet prints at 150 dpi for true photographic quality.

Hmmm, according to the LightJet 430 datasheet from the manufacturer, it can print continuous tone at 200 or 300 dpi. And the recommended input file will have between 200-300 dpi also. Given my uninformed nature about resolution and print size, maybe I've gotten something wrong here...

With the 12 MP (71 MB) image I get from the S2, that is a 19 x 28"
print.

The 12Mpixels you get out from the S2 are interpolated from the 6Mpixels from the actual sensor, despite what the Fuji propoganda says.

Look, in the end, we're only quibbling about small integer factors in resolution. I used 300 dpi/ppi as the basic print quality metric, you want to use 150 dpi/ppi. No big deal, because one process technology generation will double the resolution (1.4x the linear resolution). So the time difference is only 3-4 years. Your basic point is sound. We are approaching resolutions where further increases will yield only minor benefits. Is the break point at 6Mpixel or 10Mpixels or higher? Depends on the person and what they are using the print for.