I want this

That 40mm lens! It's barely there.

IR-receiver - remote control of the camera for self-portraits/group shots, etc. Self-timer is only any good if you've already focused the lens, whereas the remote triggers AF.

(I'd post a picture of Ava remote-shooting herself with the 300D as an illustration but this is not the parenting board and I need to rein that in a bit...)

Actually, much better than blowing 90 quid on a IR-capable battery grip...this for 17 quid.

Update - like anyone cares: I decided to go for a slightly more expensive Hama version of the above wireless remote (50p more P&P but slashed from £40 cos they obviously weren't selling any with Johnny No Brand just a click away for £17).

The no-name product had good reviews but just seemed a bit...dodgy (one positive review said that they hadn't actually figured out how to autofocus with it yet and another that the battery was actually too big for its compartment). Doesn't inspire confidence. But then again the Hama listing had completely the wrong product photo so who knows what I'm actually getting...

Went to the Olympus E-P1 launch last night - it's really great (I only got to play with one for about a minute), the contrast-AF is faster than I've ever encountered on a compact (but I haven't tried the Panansonic G1) and the thing handles lovely.

Here's top old geezer David Bailey at the launch (rather brilliantly, I failed to take a decent picture of him actually holding one - he was presented with model 001 by a 007 lookalike!):
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3386/3661344698_420faebb2e.jpg

And here's an E-P1 with off-shoe flash and nice leather case round the neck of an Olympus pro:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3330/3661349840_e2ff0283f2.jpg

Looks lovely! Amazon has yet to e-mail me a an estimated shipping date. I've heard it's available at select shops in the UK already. Lucky!

Yes, whether Jessops just had the stock the Olympus team had brought with them that evening, I don't know, but they shifted quite a few (they may have been pre-orders being collected, I guess).

Oh drool, that camera looks sooooo lovely. :-)

Took delivery on my E-P1 today - found a good deal for the body only. Unfortunately, I don't have any lenses yet! The thing is staring at me, begging to be used.

Should clarify: I've ordered a bunch of old c-mount cine lenses which should arrive here within a week, along with an adapter. The adapter shipped from Taiwan last week and ought to arrive here in a week or so. Til then, stuck looking lovingly at the camera

First impressions: Although I handled one at B&H a week ago, it still seems bigger than it does online. Doesn't seem *that* much smaller than my E-520 - although maybe the fact that it's built in shiny silver influences my judgment. It's actually a little smaller than my old Oly OM-G. Fit and finish are superb.

Perhaps what's throwing me off is that it looks like a compact - my brayne is going "Hmm, this looks pretty big for a compact" when it should be going "Hey, this is tiny for an SLR!"

I want this.

Not to push you over the edge, stet, but have a look at what a kindly old Japanese gent is doing with his:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yoshinori_kikuchi/sets/72157619142449147/

The one thing that this system lacks, and I daresay it's a problem which has plagued digital interchangeable lens systems ever since they were first realized, is a wide array of quality ultrawides (which get turned to pedestrian wides). I have half a mind to get a Voigtlander 12mm f5.6 for mine. Unfortunately, with wide angles on digital, you tend to get a lot of smeary corners, due to the fact that the microlens sites on the edge of the sensor have 'depth', and thus light rays which are not perpendicular to them don't enter them evenly, and then you end up with CA and smears and all that. Modern lenses have to be designed to be as 'telecentric' as possible.

Anyhow, this:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2532/3706510388_9c0210e814.jpg

The ultra-wide issue is worse with 4/3rds, I guess, due to the 2x crop factor. That Japanese guy is doing amazing things but a quick skim suggested that there are more gorgeous shots of hardware (taken with his Nikon) in his photostream than actual photos taken with the kit depicted.

Also, I think this is supposed to represent an end to the glass chase for Stet, not a new start! Still, PHWOAR eh, Stet?

PHWOAR is right! I'm not over bothered by the wides, I can't shoot wide for tofu, and 4/3 does give you extra reach on longs, at the expense of a bit of d-o-f.

TOP has delayed their e-p1 review, grr.

TOP?

The Online Photographer.

That review is up. It's pretty good: only complaints are the AF performance and the low-res screen. Am not bothered about the screen -- it's miles better than the one I have now anyway. The AF could be a pain, but am more likely to have manual lenses on it anyway, right? Hmm.

Just saw the review as well - figure I'll add my comments to the mix, despite having only had a fully functioning lens attached to it since this morning, so take them with grain of salt. I think the screen is pretty good - viewing angles are excellent and it's nice and bright. I have youthful eyes so have no problem with using the screen - you can definitely use it to ballpark focus without zooming in. Haven't used a 460k dot screen so don't know if a higher res screen would be better for nailing focus in this regard.

Magnifying while using manual focus lens is a pain - you have to press a button to zoom in, and then press it again to zoom out. You specify the area of the screen to zoom in on using a green square on the screen. You move the green square using the four-way d-pad. Unfortunately, the functions that the 4-way d-pad used to control - ISO, AF, WB, and drive mode - are no longer accessible. That means you have to switch to another mode in order to change any of those functions. Out of these four, ISO's probably the only one that warrants frequent changing - so maybe assigning ISO control to the Fn button can sidestep this issue. The camera's interface is extremely customizable, so I'm sure I'll eventually find a configuration that works for me.

It's definitely not as convenient as using a rangefinder or a split screen focusing screen if you're trying to nail focus using a manual lens. People who routinely scale/zone focus shouldn't have too much of a problem. NB Some adapters will allow you focus slightly past infinity, so the focus scale will be off a by a little bit.

All of the above is moot though if you're just gonna HF the lens at f/8 with high ISO. Which is what I'll probably end up doing most of the time!

AF seemed kinda quick when I played with the Pen but then I s'pose I was expecting traditional compact contrast-AF performance and it's loads better than that. But if it's in place of yr SLR phase-AF, well...I couldn't be doing with it really. Not for the sort of pictures I take (though I do take a good proportion with a manual focus lens). Panasonic G1 seemed to get rave notices for its AF, so perhaps the system can be improved.

The danger with these 920k LCD screens on the newer Sony/Nikon/Canon DSLRs, it seems to me, is that you run the battery down by just endlessly gazing at videos and images you've shot. Having played with a 500D, it's very moreish.

Perhaps I should just buy an M6. Buy the time I'm frustrated with film again and sell it either the E-P1's focus will seem brilliant, or the E-P2 will be out. :)

I want one of these: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/gh1.shtml

My cine lenses came in. 5 of em, all 25mm (50mm equivalent FOV), f1.9. You can get f1.4's and f0.95's but they're a bit more expensive. Have already dinged the bottom of the camera. Somehow I am less distraught over this than when it happened to my MBP.

Some Japanese company has come out with a black leatherette covering for it. Doesn't look quite right to me. Also the thought of scraping off icky bits of adhesive in a couple of years is not so appealing.

http://aki-asahi.com/store/html/E-P1/leatherette/Type1/E-P1_Leatherette.jpg

Alright dudes, time to buy a bag. Which color would you choose:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4103Vk-t45L._SS500_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41sTG1Yzp7L._SS400_.jpg

The top one, I think.

Yeah that's what I was leaning towards initially but the second color is growing on me. Gametime decision, I think.

Here's a pic of the set up so far. I have a Voigtlander 12mm coming next week which will be my main lens I think. Thinking about picking up a cheap Russkie 50mm. (I sold all my Oly gear to finance this, in case you guys think I'm a rich bastard). Each of these cine lenses cost about $25.

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/Photo2.jpg

Dante Stella weighs in.

He makes some good points but a lot of struck me as 'I am a pro photographer, how do you expect me to use this' elitism. Kinda like dudes who still stick by the mantra that "if it has a built-in flash, it ain't a professional camera.' What really me go WTF was the whole "if you can afford this you might as well buy a Epson R-D1 or M8 - they're only 50% and 150% more expensive than the EP-1."

Sadly, his point that legacy lenses may not ever be ideal on a digital sensor may be correct, from what I understand about sensors and how they work. Ah well!

DPReview gives the E-P1 a highly recommended with a few reservations. I got my 12mm in the mail today, for an equivalent of 24mm on the camera. Going to NYC this weekend, will give it a thorough working out.

As so many of the other threads have disappeared into the mists of time and this is a good record of our various product lustings, I thought newsy stuff could go here.

So...two new Nikon bodies - D3000 and D300S.

The former is a 10.1MP entry-level model, basically the D60 with a bigger (but no higher-res) LCD and improved AF. The latter is the D300 with added 720p video recording and a faster continuous frame-rate (better than the prosumer Canons, dammit).

Which means: now is the time to go out and buy a D60.

pretty yawnsome micro-updates from nikon there, along with the 70-200 and 18-200 lens updates. although i'm kind of relieved they're not working too hard to take my cash away at the moment.

rumoured new 24mm 1.4 and 35mm 1.4 would be much more interesting to me. and i definitely want an ep-1 sized camera at some point, although i'm not sure they've got it quite right. looking forward to seeing dyao's first shots.

Yeah, as much as anything it seems to be an effort from Nikon to tidy up their product numbering. Dxxxx = consumer, Dxxx = prosumer, Dx = pro. Oh, hang on, what about the D90?

Meanwhile, £16,000 gets you a Leica S2 medium-format DSLR. I wonder why they've gone with focal-plane AND lens-based shutter options? To allow the use of third-party MF lenses?

Yes, I was wondering about that. It must be an all-bases-covered type of thing.

Hah joe I dunno if my shots would be all that interesting!

NYC camera store hours are pretty awesome - not to be sacreligious/demeaning, but jeez, aren't any big ones not opened by orthodox Jews? I'm looking to arrive in the afternoon and both B&H and Adorama will be closed by 2, and closed on Saturday too.

ok guys i am in no way good at photography nor do i really know anything about it, but having used an M8 for the last month (borrowed from my dad, who can afford these things) i can say that i never want to use anything else ever again

(braggin 2009)

Pictures please!

gonna try and upload some, but i think my ugandan connection blows. i'll be back in the states in a couple days, so they'll be up then

i was actually gonna ask you guys about things like color correction, etc, etc, because i know nothing. or you could just do it for me :D

We could all have a bash. I for one would be delighted to have some Leica M8 images in my Lightroom...

great. will upload soon. --ish

so i have hte originals in iphoto, and there are a couple up on my africa thread

many of my favorites need to be cropped/color-corrected---should i just used iphoto for this, or should i try and get learn how to use something like aperture/lightroom (which i can get student prices on)

(full disclosure: i'm not even sure what color-correction MEANS, just that Michael Jones' pics always look so lush while a lot of mine are a little blown-out looking. due, likely, to wide-open apertures (i like narrow depth of field for portraits) and equatorial sun

They look pretty good to me. What lens is on there, btw? Lens info isn't showing up in the EXIF data. (Just curious).

If I get 5min this afternoon I'll do what I reflexively do to most things I import into Lightroom (this is only the 640x427 images from the ILE thread, mind) and stick 'em up here. See what you think.

I'm no expert, I just generally fill in the blacks on the histogram, brighten a little, add clarity* and vibrance*, knock out colour noise in the shadows, maybe a gentle film-like S-shape on the tone curve if appropriate. But I do often shoot quite saturated JPEGs to begin with, so this is all kinda moot. (* LR terms that don't necessarily translate to other retouching software).

Lens: Leitz 28mm (wanted to bring a 50mm, but the mere fact that my dad was letting me borrow his bazillion dollar camera in a thirdworld country seemed like enough to me).

should i post up bigger/original size versions? i just sent them from iPhoto to Flickr in the interests of getting them on the web for other's perusal. i'm hoping to make prints of the ones i like, and to include them in a piece i'm writing, so that'll probably require the real-deal 4000xwhatever versions

and thank you!

Here you go - S-curve, bit of (attempted) recovery on some blown-out highlights (clothing, mostly), vibrance/clarity/(very slight) saturation boost, bit of bottom end on the histogram, brightened things (identical treatments to both):

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3515/3819993663_5c3ee10f44_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2437/3819993617_505dd4efa2_o.jpg

(Are you a Flickr contact of mine?)

oh yeah, they're definitely warmer looking, i like

and no, i don't think so---i've just seen the pics you've posted here on ilx

Would love to have a bash at the originals - Leica does .dng rather its own proprietary raw format, is that right? Or did you shoot .jpg? YSI, perhaps?

This is me (and my wife) on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pernfors88/

You could probably get similar results to the above with iPhoto though. I've never used it but I didn't do anything particularly fancy.

I made sure to shoot with the high-rez JPG, not DNG

i'm going to upload the full-rez versions when i get home from the cafe, can also zip and YSI, if you like, too

I'll just grab the originals from Flickr, no worries. May not have a chance to do anything this weekend but it'll make a nice change from photos of the kids and grimy old London.

that would be dope, imo

like, see, this one definitely needs cropping. get out of the frame, nathan!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2539/3820979518_ca016e6360_o.jpg

Ah, cropping. OK - that's a bit more subjective. Happy to have a bash anyhow. What's yr Flickr details?

ok so apparently iphoto won't send the fullsize versions to flickr, what the heck

it's a metaphor for my liiiife

I want to order a D600, but that would be dumb.

X100S specs rumored - 16MP, super-fast AF, digital split-image focusing (ie digital rangefinder)

I'm wary, I wound up selling the XPro-1 because the files were less detailed than my X100, no one has been able to convert the RAW files from Fuji's X-Trans sensor (that would be in the 100S) very well.

I'm a bit dubious on the digital split-image focusing. It works in rangefinder optics because there are two hyperfocal/fixed focused optics and a mechanically linked mirror/prism calibrated to superimpose already focused images in the viewfinder when the primary lens is set to that focal distance. But on the digital sensor, only the plane in focus is in focus, so there's no focused image to superimpose on the optical viewfinder of the XPro and X100.

Anyway, "focus peaking", as on the Sony NEX lineup, the Panasonic GH3, Pentax K DSLRS, and Magic Lantern firmware for some Canon DSLRs (as well as a undocumented hack on OM-Ds) works great, IMO better than old-school split-image focusing, and it would work nicely on both the pure digital viewfinder of the X-E1 and the hybrid digital/optical viewfinders of the XPro and X100. That would be a neat upgrade for Fuji, as would a better filter to address X-Trans sensor chroma smearing.

Looks like the X100S has peaking. Not brutally important for the fixed-lens body but since they're probably using this as a test-bed for the XPro-2/XE-2, I guess they're serious about catering to people with M-mount lenses who can't afford a digital M.

Used M8s go for ~$2300, M9s for ~$4500, both less than the fast M lenses (even used). Sell a lens, buy a body, if you must have the Leica cache.

Devil's advocate: There are some great Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses for well under a grand - the Zeiss 50/2 is every bit the equal of a Summicron, etc., and if I'm someone who primarily shoots a film M - and may only own one or two lenses - but wants a digital body, better to drop $1k on a Fuji XE-1 or Sony NEX-16.
(I don't know why anyone would drop $2k+ on a M8/M8.2 - serious concerns about future serviceability, technology equivalent to a circa-2004 DSLR, etc..)

I don't have the lens adapter urges - I'd rather Sony/Fuji/Olympus/etc. focus on making great native lenses for their AF bodies. But I get why others might.

yo check it out nyc people:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/pho/3535631744.html

craigslist seller called me just now about a lens i emailed him about.

he's been talking about lenses for 15 minutes straight. like, i don't think i'm going to be able to get this lens until i hear the story of ever lens he's ever owned since 1980. its 8:46 PM on a saturday.

this guy and i met over breakfast the next day and he brought soooo much gear and wanted to show it all off and tell me all about it and at first it was a little annoying but I eventually relaxed and just let him rip and it ended up being a pretty great experience. i bought a nikkor 28mm-105mm off him that I'm really loving.

then last week he sends me a three paragraph, perfectly punctuated email saying he's got a Nikon F100 he wants to unload. He bought it from a guy only because he wanted the lens it came with, and guy wouldn't sell them separately. Since he's not interested in film at all and I'm now his "film guy" he says he'll give it to me for $100.

so yesterday we met up again for breakfast (he apologizes twice for being tired because he was "up till 2am looking at gear on eBay" lololol) and he tells me he actually has TWO F100's but one is having some auto-focus issues so he'll give them both to me for $135. so I took his offer.

I've only shot 2 rolls on it but I love the feel of it, such a great camera. I feel like once I get good w/ a flash on it I prob won't fuck with anything else for a while.

and, if I can get the autofocus figured out/repaired on the other, i can probably sell it for way more than $35. Or I can just hang on to it for parts 5-10 years down the road.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lomography/the-lomography-smartphone-film-scanner

gimmicky but I kinda want one

I considered it as my girlfriend gave me a Lomokino for christmas, but will see how I get on just doing normal scans.

I liked that the people at lomo were probably like "okay, how can we make lomography more like instagram... gary, lock the doors. nobody leaves this room until we have a schematic."

http://cameraquest.com/voigt_5015_nokton_classic.htm

Pricing "not announced" uh huh

lomo are introducing some aerochrome-esque film btw. i sorta think of their film as just weird rebadged bait or people who don't know you can just buy film in regular camera stores but i will play around w/some purple-making film.

anyone ever made redscale film by flipping it backwards?

i think i'm gonna pick up the new richo gr d with the aps-c sensor

:)

*ricoh

:)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peak-design/the-everyday-messenger-a-bag-for-cameras-and-essen

I was looking for a bag and then I found a bag, and heaven knows I'm miserable now.

oh that does look nice

This looks pretty interesting: https://light.co

Yeah, I was looking at that the other day. Don't doubt the tech, or that something like this is probably the future, but do you think the gallery pics are up to much? They look like superior iPhone snaps. And the chess piece macro shot has got some major artefacts on it, probably a result of all that image combination.

Yeah it seems like whenever some company tries something new (Foveon, Lytro for example) in digital photography, the results don't live up to the hype. Nothing really beats one big-ass sensor (yet).

Quite a markdown!

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1134592-REG/hasselblad_1100182_lunar_camera_brown.html

I've got that Peak Design bag now and blimey it's nice.

https://www.keh.com/226529/fuji-medium-format-gw670iii-90-f3-5-67

only then I'd have to buy a scanner and expensive film and processing and yada yada yada

I don't even want to know how much film has gone up since the last time I bought any (2011ish)