The Latest Sensors are Always the Best, Sharpest and Happiest, Right?

I know it's the Holiday Season and as an American blogger I have almost a sacred duty to inflame your lust for a new camera, lens or costly accessory so you will order said unit and I will have a bit more cash in my Christmas stocking from Amazon.com via their affiliate program (which, incidentally, costs you nothing extra...) but---I'm just not in the mood to be mercantile right now because I'm not feeling that it's really that important to buy any of the new gear that's out there  today when there is so much surplus "last season" stuff out there that is almost as good as the new stuff....or maybe better. 

I'm going off on a tangent right now that has very little to do with science and perhaps more to do with the emotion of seeing instead of the quantification side of judging things. As an example it's pretty much a given that on most computer screens (where the vast majority of people ingest and enjoy photographs) a sharp image from a lower megapixel camera will look better than a massive and much higher resolution camera file. Try it yourself with any of the cameras you own and you'll find it's true. Now, if you are using the cameras to produce mondo sized printed posters you'll definitely decide that bigger is better so newer is better. But honestly, how many of us even get around to printing the majority of our images?  If you are truthful you'll admit that mostly you share your images at about 2000 pixels on the long side, right? So while those with a scientific bent can show us that the bigger, newer sensor is quantitatively much better and can equal the on-screen look of the less populated sensor through the process of downsampling or binning it's really just theoretical for our every day use.

Why am I hesitant to rush out and buy a newer, bigger, more specification-glorious camera right now? Well, maybe it's because I'm coming to realize that for my uses those cameras might not be the best choice. The reason I have a photo of the Kodak DCS 760 at the head of the blog today is to serve as a reminder that some of the most wonderful digital portraits I ever took were done with this camera and that I often reverted back to it long after having "upgraded" to cameras like the D2x, etc. because I LIKED THE LOOK OF THE FILES BETTER. I didn't measure anything or go to DXO to get their considered opinion, instead I used a very complex method I learned long ago: I looked at the images. The slow, noisy, CCD sensor in the DCS 760 ( a whopping six megs) made skin tones look wonderful and had a feeling of depth that I don't usually see in the cameras we rush to buy today. 

Several times in the last ten years I upgraded cameras NOT because I needed better image quality but because I needed other unrelated features to make my jobs out in the field more flexible and accurate. I traded up from one camera that had a small, low res, uncalibrated LCD screen on the back to one that had a much bigger screen because it was easier to see (an more accurately) what I might end up with when I brought the images back into the studio to post process them. I upgraded to prevent nasty surprises.

Early on I had a Nikon D100 camera. It was a very nicely done camera. In time Nikon came out with a camera that had more resolution and a better screen but the biggest reason I felt compelled to upgrade was the fact that the weakest point of the D100 had nothing to do with the quality of the files but with the paucity of the buffer. If you shot raw you would get four images and then you would need to pause while the camera processed the files and wrote to the card. It was tedious. I am a garrulous and promiscuous shooter and the small buffer really cramped my style. But in terms of image quality both my D100 and my D2H were better photograph making machines than the D200 ever was, no matter how quickly it was able to whip its mediocre constructs through its internal process. (Can you tell that I loathed that camera? God it was awful. A real example of checking off the marketing boxes with tedious engineering).

Recently I jumped down another silly rabbit hole. I had a client give me a job the parameters of which I thought would be outside the performance envelope of the micro four thirds cameras I was trying to press into service for nearly everything. I did some quick research on the sharpest, highest resolution cameras I could buy that would also be cost effective and have a system that would be (for a portrait photographer) relatively easy financially to slide into. For better or worse the Nikon D7100 was the choice I made. If you need very sharp, very high resolution files I can recommend the camera with very few caveats. It's actually my idea of the best APS-C working camera out there right now.

Well, since the Summer I have used it pretty extensively (but please note that I shoot a lot and also constantly rotate other cameras into the mix as well), so much so that I decided I should have a back up camera of those times when its feature set suggested its use out on a remote location. You gotta have a back up, right? So I went back to my research and after researching every recent Nikon camera body I settled on a used D7000 for my back up. The first one I tried had some massive back focus problems so I returned it, waited a while and then found another one at a decent price. I immediately tested it and then AF fine-tuned all the AF lenses I intended to use on it. Then I took it out for a series of walks to check out the overall performance of the machine. It was nice. It focused as quickly as all of my current cameras. It handled low light levels at least as well as all of my current cameras, including the three year newer D7100. I came to trust that camera as a working tool.

Recently I shot an evening event for the Texas Appleseed Foundation at the Four Seasons Hotel here in Austin. Most of the images would be used on the web and repurposed as five by seven inch prints for attendee/donor gifts. I decided to use the D7000 as my primary "grip and grin" camera for the event mostly because it's largest Jpeg file was just right. A good intersection of high image quality but not so much information as to bloat the files. I used it with flash and the flash was modified by a Rogue bounce apparatus. I stuck an 85mm lens on the D7100 and used it for about 20 % of the shots. When I started to compare the files in post production I found that I preferred the color and tonality of the portraits from the D7000 every single time. 

That led me to start using the D7000 as the primary camera and keeping the D7100 camera as the back up. And that interested me. Was there something about the ever increasing resolution and dynamic range of the ever newer sensors that, while measuring better, is aesthetically at odds at least with my perceptions of what is good? To discover more I called a friend who sometimes sits as a model for me and we made a bunch of tests. Same lens, same light. 

It's hard to quantify the actual differences but I'd say that the D7100 works sheer force. By that I mean it relies for its impressions of sharpness and quality on endless assemblages of endless dots. But it feels a bit muddier than the D7000. The files feel almost to thick for me. The D7000 feels more open and crisp. As I say, it's hard to put into logical words but the D7000 feels more like it's making images to me where the D7100 feels like a lot of the little dots are just wasted filler that ends up giving you more detail as you increase file size but also makes the files seem frizzly and less substantial as you increase on screen magnification. It may just be that my lenses aren't up to the challenge but..... it's all in the way the image looks not in the way it measures.

I also talked to a friend who is in the fashion industry and who shoots with a large assortment of cameras. He shot with Olympus EM-5 cameras among many others and, upon announcement he rushed out and bought an EM-1. He says the EM-1 is a much better handling camera but that he much prefers the colors and especially the handling of flesh tones from the sensor in the EM-5 cameras. I had wondered if my experience with the Nikons was nikon-limited until I heard from him. With this new information (and four EM-5's in the drawer) I decided to borrow an EM-1 and compare for myself. What I found tracked what I saw on the Nikons as well as on the Olympus cameras. The older model had a palette and overall rendering that I preferred. 

But now, in late 2014, the reasons I might have reflexively upgraded in years past are no longer nearly as valid. The finders aren't worlds better. (yes, the EM-1 has a much better EVF) they are better but not in a "make it or break it" way. The buffers are pretty much invisible to me on all four of the camera under discussion. So I have to ask myself, "is the upgrade actually to downgrade?"

In the same way many people thought that the Olympus e1 and a few other 4:3 cameras that used Kodak's CCD imagers rendered a much more pleasant image than the following generation of cameras that used CMOS sensors. Again, the newer cameras measured better  but whether the holistic image was superior is one of those subjective questions that can probably only be answered by the users.  There are non-camera analogies all over the place. The handling of mature generation rear wheel drive cars versus the early generations of front wheel drive cars. The look of finely tweaked tube computer monitors versus the first few generations of flat screens. Old Coke v. New Coke. But what I am seeing in comparing the Nikon cameras really has nothing to do with CCD versus CMOS because both cameras use CMOS imagers and both are imbued with the same color profiles by their makers. What I think we are seeing is an unintended artifact of a more highly populated sensor versus a more loosely populated sensor. And it may be that some people will prefer one over the other while others won't. And there will be a third contingent that sees no differences at all. But we don't care about that group...

So, where did I finally fall in on all of this? I decided that I liked shooting most stuff with the D7000 better than the D7100. I like the look of the files. 16 megapixels is more than enough resolution for everything I shoot and when I want to go over the top I can always trot out the D7100 and put it on a tripod and lock up the mirror. Smaller files means I am more often disposed to shoot raw files or, when already shooting raw files I am more likely to go "platinum level" and shoot them at 14bits instead of 12. I know I won't run out of card space nearly as quickly. 

I liked the D7000 so much I bought one more this week on Amazon. It was new in the box with free delivery for a whopping $525. While that's a bit beyond my "pocket change" category it's a minute price to pay for a back up camera that contains a sensor I like but which will almost certainly be discontinued in all new cameras. And what artists like most is choice. My wife is familiar with the way I think. My belief is that when you find something you really like you may as well buy a second copy because you can be certain that the more you enjoy whatever the product is the more likely it will be quickly and unceremoniously discontinued and replaced with some similar product that, for a myriad of reasons, you will like much less. This is why finding a shirt that looks fantastic and fits perfectly is a logical situation for duplication. If you don't feel that way about your current camera you may not be using the camera that's perfect for you. Or you may be one of those people who believe that all things just get better and better. Tell that to the owners of classic 1966 Lincoln Continental, complete with suicide doors. They'll laugh you out of the garage.

There are always trade-offs. You gain some things in a new camera and you lose stuff. Some of it is handling. Some of it is ephemeral and personal and some of it is subjectively aesthetic = the difference between accuracy and "pleasing" in the rendition of the files. This seems to be the year that I discovered cameras I loved just as they hit the sweetest part of the price curve which means in a few months they'll be gone forever and available only in the used market. Caveat Emptor. And, Be Prepared.

One little non-gear ad: It's for the Kindle version of the novel. 

  

The Stand Out Cameras of The Year from My Point of View. And why I didn't buy most of them.

I've been looking back over 2014 and trying to remember all of the great camera launches and I'm coming up with a tiny handful that I think were exciting, interesting or even sensible. There was a lot of rehashing this year with massive doses of marketing spin on re-does of already workable product.

The big news at the high end was the introduction of the Nikon D810 and for people who feel that they need this kind of camera it must have been tremendous news because the used shelves at camera dealers across the country are creaking under the sheer quantity of lightly used D800s that have been traded in. There are also pages of them in the used listings on Amazon. I guess we never realized just how mediocre the D800 was until it was replaced by the significantly improved D810. I think the new camera has a slightly faster frame rate... New spinning rims don't really qualify as a huge paradigm shift so...

We could turn our focus to the other widely touted Nikon product, the D750. Kudos to Nikon for finally cleaning up the D600-610 train wreck. Apparently the new camera doesn't deposit slime on the sensor and has ........ some.......other new features. Like a new price. Which is more. It's interesting to me that their DX flagship, the aging (and price falling) D7100 has little touches like 1/8000th of a second shutter while the new camera only gets to 1/4000th. I know, I know, it's the holy full frame and no evil cam be spoken about full frame. But really, a slower shutter mechanism? Well, at least the video codec got a little better. And as a holiday gift to Nikonians everywhere Nikon kept the same battery they've been using in most of their better cameras since the introduction of the D7000 in 2010. It's an EN-EL 15 and it's an workhorse battery made even more attractive by the sheer number of third party aftermarket batteries that can be had. Don't get me wrong, I've played with the D750 and we would have killed for this camera back in 2004, 2008 or thereabouts. But it's an evolutionary step, just one generation out of the primordial sensor muck goo, and while a great and useful tool it's no big news for 2014.

But I don't want to just pick on Nikon. They are struggling like every other camera maker to deal with an issue Sony recently identified: That there will be half the market for interchangeable lens cameras in the next few years than there is now. Wow! A fifty percent decline in overall product shipped and purchased. I don't care how big your market share is, when the whole market takes a 50% haircut everyone is going to get hurt. Big time. Thom Hogan is postulating that we'll return to a market that looks like the 1990's pre-digital camera market with wider spacing between fewer new products, less ongoing R&D and longer product life cycles. That and a big drop in the total number of camera makers....

But since I've mentioned Sony let's talk for a second about their contributions to the pot in 2014. The best thing they did this year was the introduction of the A7s. That's the new A series camera with the full frame, 12 megapixel sensor that can shoot in the dark. It's the darling of videographers who like to shoot New York Production style (DP walks into any room, looks at available light, any light fluorescents, etc. and says, "We're lit.").

While the body style is the same as the A7 and A7R the guts are great and the sensor is a move in the right direction for many styles of photography because the camera can basically see in the dark. Nice. But very much a niche product and not one that entry level pros can buy as an "all around solution."

So, one more camera and not a lot of cool lenses. Not too exciting (unless you are a documentary filmmaker) in terms of product announcements. Oh, I almost forgot, they did introduce an upgrade to the A77 but they haven't made enough noise about keeping that "A" mount system alive and that makes it too scary for most people to buy in...even if they want to make a change to their equipment status quo.

You could make a case for the delightful RX100iii as a wonderful new camera but it's really just another upgrade to a camera that should have had an EVF on it since model year one. Say what you will about composing on a rear screen but I think if you've stooped to that level for all of your camera interactions you might as well just get a smartphone and a little porkpie hat to wear while you are shooting with it. The RX100iii was an easy camera to recommend until the Panasonic LX100 came along. The difference has little to do with spec sheet image quality and everything to do with handling. The Sony is just a bit too small and feels weird to hold. Not so the LX100 which is much more a "shooter's camera." But the same basic principles unite them both: Fast zoom, great imaging sensor, nice EVFs. The downside with all these cameras is that so much lens correction is done "under the hood" in software and the pickier among us can see the issues in corners and other odd places. While both these products are really good and well worth it for people who like the point and shoots they don't strike me as a stand out camera.

Much in the way the Canon 7Dii isn't any reason to throw a parade or break out Champagne. I'm sure it's a solid body and, though Nikonians and small sensor fans are quick to point out the antiquated provenance of the sensor I am sure that it's actually a very good sensor and in the hands of a fine photographer the images from this camera will look great. But the camera really just checks the upgrade boxes and in a way that's unsatisfying for Canon diehards who are looking over the fence at that juicy 28 megapixel BSI sensor in the Samsung NX1.

And since I've brought it up I'm going to say that, on paper, the Samsung NX1 looks like my first Stand Out camera of the year. It's fun to write this because I have left the Samsung Imagelogger program, given away most of my Samsung inventory and am in no way connected with the company or their public relations firm. The cord has been cut! No free NX1's are in transit (although I intend to review one in late December).  And this is important because what I'm going to say is going to cause some debate. I think the Samsung NX1 is a very disruptive entry into a market at a time when the biggest players are like ocean liners adrift in a storm with limited power to the screws. This is the next shot across the bow in the same way I called mirror less a shot across the bow two years ago.

The big problem for Samsung is the general malaise of the industry. The prevalent talking points this year tended to be about the industry's eminent demise (misstated) and that's a hard emotional space into which one company can successfully sell to people who already have some kind of loyalty to an existing vendor. If you are convinced that the markets are shrinking why trade up (or laterally)?

I haven't handled one yet but I'm not sure the camera itself is such a breakthrough as much as that the individual components of the camera are scary for their competitors. That starts with the high density BSI chip which effectively challenges the Sony quasi-monopoly and probably has rational Canon DX users drooling.  While 24 to 28 megapixels is probably meaningless when combined with the optical prowess of most lenses it does show a different way forward. It would be interesting (to say the least) if Canon were to start sourcing sensors from Samsung while waiting for the rumored Canon semi-conductor fab to come on-line and a small, cynical part of me assumes that Samsung really doesn't care too much about making a profit in cameras but see cameras like the NX1 as a great "proof of concept" and confirmation of completion for their semi-conductor line. "See the copper technology lower heat and increase efficiency in our new sensor! Imagine the same technology hard at work in---your robotic manufacturing equipment!!!" 

The second part of the mix that's related and cool in a geeky way is their imaging processor which is a leap forward (as far as manufacturing geometries and throughput) in speed and information processing from Nikon's Expeed4 and whatever Canon has cobbled together. According to my savants in the industry the Samsung chip is a generation ahead (at least) of the tech in competitor's cameras. Not that it matters for much other than frame rate and lots of video information crunching.

If this were all Samsung brought to the table and I were Canon/Nikon/Sony I wouldn't necessarily worry but the kids at Samsung also brought good optical stuff along for the ride. The two pro zooms, the 16-50 mm and the 50-150 mm f2.8 are by all accounts very, very good. These are exactly the kinds of lenses missing from Nikon's DX line (fast and useful) and more to the point it is exactly lenses like these that Sony should have had at the launch of the better Nex cameras and the launch of the A7 series. While Samsung will undoubtably flesh out the line these two lenses are exactly what APS-C users have been screaming for from Nikon and Canon. Sony should have known better in their product launches. You can't deliver the bread and no meat if you call yourself a sandwich shop.

Will Samsung's NX1 succeed? Maybe. There's such a reticence for photographers to change horses. Even when a product line is demonstrably better. I am sure of one thing, Samsung will have the dominant market share in Korea!

But if we move on to other cameras that Stand Out we have to include the XT-1 from Fuji. In my estimation it's the high point of Fuji's current camera line and checks the two important boxes I see as vital in the mirror less space: it has a really, really good EVF and it's backed up with a line of great lenses. People love the Fuji sensors and rave about the Jpegs but I've got to say that good sensors have been around making waves since the introduction of the 16 megapixel APS-C Sony sensor delivered in the Nikon D7000, Pentax K cameras and a host of other cropped sensor offerings. No, for me it's all about the EVF, the lenses and the body design = the physical interface. That's what Fuji got right. It gets my Stand Out classification not on technical merit or even image quality (which, as a system, is marvelous), it's disruptive feature is beautiful design. Wonderfully executed design. And I am firmly convinced that as technology becomes more and more transparent homogenous all product makers will eventually turn to good design as vital differentiators between brands. You can see it already in Apple's products. You might hate them because you like to build your own systems your garage but a huge number of people are drawn to their computers in no small part because of the physical designs.

Same with the XT-1. If I were shooting the way we shot in the 1970's I'd snap up a couple and three lenses and never look back. But our reality is more complicated and the requests of the clients a bit deeper.

Which brings me to either the stand out product of the year or the white flag of surrender of part of the industry. Which part? Medium format digital.

Which product? That would be the 645 Pentax camera. In the past few years I've had three different medium format camera companies send me their MF digital cameras and back to evaluate and use. If you have a specific use for them and have clients who can pay to help amortize the investment they can be very, very good. But---outside of studio still life shooters, high end architectural photographers and people who shoot high end fashion these cameras tend to be more of a theoretical rather than a practical need. So as long as prices were stratospheric there were few takers world wide. Imagine that with eight billion or so people in the world the global market for these cameras is probably less than 1,000 per year. Add in various collectors and hedge fund managers and maybe the number goes, in a good year, to something close to 2,000.  There must be a sustainable market though since three companies seem to be hanging in there. Well, make it four if you consider Pentax.

Without a doubt the Pentax 645Z is disrupting the MF marketing with a vengeance. Consider that all the players used to use different imagers and most of the imagers were CCD based with attendant high ISO noise issues and short battery lives. Most systems, fully configured but without lenses started somewhere near $20,000 and went up from there. Early on I test a Leaf AFi7 with 40 megapixel back and an esoteric 180mm Schneider lens and at the time the insured value of the package was a bit over $40,000. If you are billing in the $5-10K day rate range and your rep is negotiating good usage fees from international ad clients then I guess it's just another drop in the bucket of production costs. But for the rest of us that represents real money. I could use that forty thousand bucks to do a really nice postcard marketing campaign and still have enough left over to buy myself a nice car.

So it seems pretty obvious that, pre-Pentax 645Z, only a tiny percentage of users troubled themselves with MF. But then the pervasive disrupter called Sony stepped in (again and again) and dropped a 50+ megapixel, CMOS sensor onto the big camera landscape and it was a like a bomb landed. Why? Because they dropped a fully operation and ready to shoot camera system into the mix for about $8,000. And sadly for all the competitors everyone needed  to move to the same sensor. Why? Because it was all around better and also cheaper than the various options then in use. No one could compete if the bottom of the market camera had the best noise handling characteristics, better battery life and all the other benefits that drove CCD sensors out of our interchangeable lens consumer cameras. Why buy a Phase One system for say $25,000 if you could have the same on sensor performance for $8,000. After all, it is the same processor.

So, in league with Sony we should have seen Pentax's 645Z as the major disruptor of both the medium format market but also the high end 35mm based market as well. But from what I can see the explosion never happened. And most experts thinks it's for two reasons. First, the high end market wants backs that can be changed out. The way the MF market has worked is by allowing generous upgrades of backs as newer, better ones became available. Can't do that with the Pentax. It's a closed system. And then the second barrier is that the reason to use a camera with a bigger sensor is to gain the advantage of a different look caused by a much stepper focus fall off as the result of the big sensor. But the rub is that the MF sensor in all these cameras really isn't that much bigger than the full frame 35mm sensors. Yes, they are about 50% bigger but in the days of film the difference was much more obvious. The difference between 35mm and a square Hasselblad frame was more like 400%.

Photographers sense that they are loosing flexibility and paying a premium for a sensor that, while super high in resolution, is not different enough from the optical performance of something like a Nikon D810 or even a Canon 5D3 or Sony A7r. As the MF cameras got cheaper the rank and file cameras got that much better and narrowed the margin in a number of areas. I think the sole impact of the Pentax will be to drive down prices in the MF market and, with shrinking margins, will drive weaker players (Hasselblad?) all the way out of business.

I mentioned the Fuji XT-1 and the Samsung NX1 as "stand out" products for this year, and I'll give a nod to the Sony A7 for its delectable sensor but I'm going to nominate the Panasonic GH4 as my top choice for cameras that made a difference. I know it was introduced in 2013 but for real people in real markets it was only possible to get our hands on a copy in the first quarter of 2014. This camera totally legitimizes the m4:3 format/family with thoroughly professional handling, battery life and image quality while blowing by all the competitors with a first class implementation of 4K video. But the biggest difference from the other player is that they are actively using firmware to add big, substantial features to the camera right now, almost a year after first availability. Not fixes for stuff they rushed out the door (hello Samsung with a new firmware update the week the camera launched).

The GH4 represents a mature m4:3 product with benefits to a huge segment of users who want to or must be able to produce good, clean video well and still have a camera that comes within a gnat's eyelash of competing the the better APS-C cameras on the market. That no one has come along to challenge them toe to toe (No, the A7s doesn't count if you have to add a couple thousand bucks of aftermarket accessories to make it fully functional) speaks volumes for just how far ahead of the pack the Panasonic product was on debut. While it's hardly the sexiest of the gear circulating around the market this year it's the one that innovated where we could use it best.

So, why didn't I make any big camera purchases this year? Why haven't I rushed out to buy the Sony A7s to shoot in the dark? Why no Fuji XT-1 or Samsung NX1? It's an interesting question. I spent most of the year learning to love the m4:3 cameras all over again and other than the GH4 nothing new came along in that category. I did spend some time and very little money amassing a fun collection of Olympus OMD em-5s in a variety of configurations. But the biggest reason I'm a bit reticent right now to jump on any ballparks is my recent investigation into the aesthetic differences between different generations of sensors. Read my next post to learn more.

Of course this is all based on the way I use stuff and you may have a different take on the industry, line-by-line. That's what the comment section is for.

A reminder: The Lisbon Portfolio, my action/adventure story of intrepid photographer, Henry White, is currently on sale for the meager and insubstantial sum of $3.99. It will be available at that price as a Kindle book on Amazon until the beginning of 2015. Get your copy before they run out. When you get to the book's page you'll see that you can also get a printed copy (not on sale). It's your choice...

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