Some Thoughts on the Announcements from Nikon and Fujifilm at CES

If you don't know already, the annual Consumer Electronics Show is happening in Vegas right now and several prominent camera makers have chosen to use the event to launch their latest wares. I won't go into everything that was launched. For that you can pay a visit to DpReview which have been doing a good job on reporting the happenings. Instead, I want to share my thoughts on a few things that piqued my interest. Fuji X100s and Fuji X20

x100s-small.jpg

I'm a big fan of the X100. While I was disappointed with the X Pro 1 and eventually sold mine, I missed the Fuji look and eventually got an X100, which I absolutely love. One of the things that I really like about the X100 is the fact that you can process its raw files in just about any software, and they always come out pretty damn good. Well, kiss that option goodbye with the newly announced replacement, the Fujifilm X100s because they've put in the same X-Trans sensor from the X-Pro1 in the x100s. I'm sure that most fuji fans think this is a heretical comment to make, and that this is a great leap forward, but I much prefer the X100 files over the post processing hoop jumping that you have to do if you want to get the best from X-Pro1. On the plus side though, perhaps with more cameras using the propitiatory sensor design a few more companies might add support to their raw converters (I'm looking at you Apple) and maybe Adobe might finally accept that they need to improve Lightroom's handling of the X-Trans files. There's lots of other nice features in the update though, including improvements to autofocus, and a very interesting digital split image focus aid. I'm very keen to see that in real life.

The other big news from Fuji is the X20, the successor to the X10, will also get a new tiny cousin of the larger X-Trans sensor found in the bigger cameras. The results should prove interesting. Again, same caveat as the x100s. This means that you can expect far fewer third parties to support the x20s Raw files. Then again, you never know. Fuji are certainly doubling down on their unique sensor technology, so maybe that will spur better support.

Oh, one cool thing about the X20 is that they've now added some information as an overlay in the optical view finder. That was something I found sorely missing when I tried out the X10. It looks like a nice camera but to be honest, I can't see anything competing with the Sony RX100 until someone else decides to up the sensor size.

Nikon 1 Series

Nikon_1_J3_small.jpg

Nikon announced two new cameras in their mirrorless range. The "J" series now reaches its third incarnation with the J3, and they also introduced a new "S" series, which is a lower end model. The Nikon 1 series has taken a lot of flak from camera enthusiasts, and yet, for the people who use it and take advantage of its unique features, it's giving them great results. The biggest surprise for me regarding the Nikon 1 series was recently reading that it was the biggest selling camera in Japan in the lead up to christmas. I guess Nikon knew what they were doing after all. I have to say, anything I've seen shot with it looks great. The only problem is getting narrow depth of field shots, but then that isn't everything. In fact some photographers would benefit from learning to stop down and give us a sharp image the odd time.

On the subject of the Nikon 1 series, I really home that the next version of the "v" line goes back to the original design. The V1 was lovely, but what the hell were Nikon thinking when they released the V2. It's bloody hideous. If there was an award for the ugliest camera of the year, it would clearly win. It's just that the V1 (and the J series) are beautifully designed, especially the white ones.

New Year Photography Goals

So, 2013 is here then. Well, that was quick. It's hard to believe that the new year is here once again. I was planning to do a whole "year in review" type post before the end of 2012 but I was to busy to get around to it, so instead I'm going to look forward to the new year instead of just looking back.

Not that 2012 was bad or anything. My photography took a huge leap foreword in 2012. I had my first exhibition, sold some prints and got this blog off the starting line. I had some great trips and took some great photographs. My work was picked up on by some influential people and I even got great kudos for my first Blurb book from the folks at blurb. I had some success with adopting mirrorless cameras into my workflow in 2012, and some failures. I even got to go to fulfil one of my childhood dreams and visit the wonderful country of Norway and the beautiful city of Oslo.

Oslo HArbour

One of my Favourite Photos of 2012

Looking back I can't believe how much actually did happen in 2012. But enough looking back, what's the plan for 2013?

For a start I want to blog more. I have been doing well with this photo blog for some time now, but I still don't get to do it enough. But I also want to change the focus a bit. I'm not sure quite what to do yet. I love writing about gear and the technical side of Photography but I also love posting pictures and there's something to be said for a pure photoblog. So I may switch this to being a pure photo blog and write about the gear side of things elsewhere. I do sort of already do that with my tumblr blog, but I'm not sure because tumblr has some limitations. I'm really not sure what way to go about it, but I know I need to address it. Much of my traffic comes for lens reviews and the like so it's something I'll have to put some thought into. What do you think?

I want to focus my photography a bit more in 2013 too. I've been enjoying taking lifestyle shots more lately and I want to explore that more. I also want to keep up the travel and city photography as I really like that. I also plan to improve my composition with a more artistic and strong graphic aesthetic. I've been doing this more and more lately and I like how my shots are turning out. Another thing this makes me do, and it's something that I think everyone should do, is to slow down and think about shots more. It's one thing I'm pretty bad at, andI have to get that urge to move on under control.

Tree Symmetry

Lines and Symmetry

I'm also going to be writing a book in 2013. It's a big secret at the moment so I can't give any details, but it's a real bona fide book, proper publisher and everything. I'm pretty excited about it. I also have plans for self publishing my own quarterly journal / magazine. Ambitious? Absolutely. It will be digital only (probably iPad only too) mind you, but I've been doing some tests and I think you'll be excited about it when it launches. It takes a unique approach to photography magazine / journals and it's something that I'm surprised hasn't been done before now. Intrigued? I hope so!

Gear wise, my main plan for 2013 is to sell off some of my old gear. I've a rather large collection of cameras growing and many I don't use that much any more. The aim is to finally make the decision to stick with Canon or Nikon which I've been sitting on the fence on for quite some time. I also have some holes in my basic kit setup that needs to be filled, the most important of which is a descent tripod. I actually have a pretty good tripod head, but the legs are rubbish and the locks are starting to fail on them, which is never a good thing for a tripod.

Anyway, that's just my thoughts for the year ahead. What about you? What are your goals for 2013, photographically speaking?

The Silly Season

What a couple of weeks. I've been so busy it hasn't even occurred to me that Christmas is coming. I was taken aback the other day when I heard "fairy tale of New York" for the first time this year and it was already three weeks into December. Of course, I'm not complaining about having work, especially considering the economic climate, but I've been neglecting the blog a bit. And as most of the work has been motion graphics my Photography has been taking a back seat. There's been some interesting things happening too that I haven't had a chance to discuss.

For a start, Adobe released the Retina Display enabled version of Photoshop. They promised it before the end of the year and they made it with a few weeks to spare. It's pretty nice. Works like you'd expect it too. I haven't really put it through its paces but it was badly needed, as working with photoshop on the retina macbook pro was a real pain in the ass. Now at least we have a native version.

Adobe released the final version of Lightroom 4.3 too, which also adds retina support. There was a beta released a few weeks ago which only had retina support in the develop module, but the release version adds support to the library module too. It also seems to fix the bugginess and slowness of the updating on a retina display in the beta. It still lacks support in the rest of the application, but its a start.

There was another interesting tid-bit of news I came across last week. There is a rumour that Capture One will shortly add support for Fuji's x-trans sensor, making it the second major third party software to support the sensor after Lightroom. Given the somewhat controversial nature of Lightroom's support for the x-trans sensor (it's terrible, sorry to all those folks say there's nothing wrong with it) it will be good to see if Capture One can crack it. The x-trans has lots of potential still to be unlocked by a good raw converter, so hopefully Capture One will do the trick. I would certainly re-consider the X-Pro1 or the X-E1 if it turns out to be good. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I did manage to get out and get some street shots over the weekend. I like this time of the year as the light is interesting and you can get some shots that have a unique look to them. I didn't really go out of my way to look for photographic opportunities. It was more of a photo wander than a walk!

Motorcycle Guy

DSC_1751

More to come!

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Photography related Bits and Pieces for Nov 4th

Here's a few photography related things of interest that I've come across over the last week that you may want to check out.

Photography Week Magazine

Photography week is a new iPad only, all digital weekly photography magazine from Future Publishing in the UK. You can find it on the App store and I have to say it's pretty damn good. First of all it's weekly, but more importantly, they've also embraced the digital only format and made it quite interactive. There are lots of videos embedded and the layout is quite nice. More importantly, it's very readable and the photography looks great especially on a retina iPad. I read a good few magazines on the iPad and I have to say, this is one of the best implementations I've seen in a while. (Total Film is another one that uses the format quite well, and coincidentally, also Future Publishing. )

Jeffrey’s “Metadata-Viewer Preset Editor” Lightroom Plugin

This is a godsend to address one of the annoying shortcomings of Lightroom. If you're editing metadata in Lightroom you can only choose from the pre-set templates of what metadata is on view at any one time. Which means if you are editing a batch of photos and you need to edit specific fields that are only viewable in the ling list of full IPTC data for example you have to keep scrolling. In Aperture you can create your own presets for this view so you can just see the metadata fields you want. Well, this plug in brings the same functionality to Lightroom. If you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry, this probably is of no use to you, but if you were looking for a way to do this, well this plug-in is your answer.

Shooting Fall Landscapes with Moose Peterson

This is a great new video course over on Kelby training that I've been watching over the (soggy) weekend. It's legendary Wildlife and Landscape photographer Moose Peterson discussing shooting Fall colour. It's quite comprehensive and Moose is a great teacher. As a big fan of Autumn colour myself, I loved watching this course. Check it out if you're a Kelby Training online Subscriber.

The Photography Geek

Last but not least, check out my Tumblr blog, the photography geek. I've given it a fresh lick of paint and I've decided to shake it up a little. I had been using it as a place to post links etc but now I'm going to gear it as more of a companion to this blog. So think of it as a directors commentary or behind the scenes companion. I'll post pictures there fairly regularly without the commentary and story (which you may prefer) as well as links of interest. Anyway, please stop by and if you're a Tumblr subscriber follow my blog.

Lightroom 4.2 Final Launched

You may have seen this already but Adobe released the final version of Lightroom 4.2 today along with the corresponding Camera Raw update. If you use the "check for updates" feature in Lightroom you should see the update. There's a number of bugs fixed  adds support for the latest cameras including what Adobe is describing as preliminary support for the Nikon D600. Not sure what they mean by that but anyway. Here's the full list of new cameras supported:

Canon EOS 650D / Rebel T4i
Canon EOS M
Fujifilm XF1
Fujifilm X-E1
Fuji FinePix F800EXR
Leaf Credo 40
Leaf Credo 60
Leica S
Leica D-LUX 6
Leica V-LUX 4
Nikon Coolpix P7700
Nikon 1 J2
Nikon D600*
Panasonic DMC-G5
Panasonic DMC-LX7
Panasonic DMC-FZ200
Pentax K-30
Samsung EX2F
Sony Alpha NEX-5R
Sony Alpha NEX-6
Sony Alpha SLT-A99V
Sony DSC-RX100

For more info on the release including the list of bugs quashed check out this post on the Lightroom Journal

What A Week

Wow. That's all I can say. Of all my years following the camera technology industry (as well as taking photos of course) I don't think I ever remember such a slew of interesting announcements in such a short space of time. And, in typical fashion I was utterly swamped with work the last week so I'm completely behind in what's been announced so I'm finally getting to share my thoughts now. So, in no particular order here are some random observations about some of the things that have come out over the last week leading up to Photokina 2012. I'm not going to talk about everything (because there's just so much stuff) but just what I found interesting and worth discussing. (I've had a pretty long week too, so please forgive any bad grammar or typos, or half finished thoughts!)

Sony

Sony are on fire at the moment. Hot on the heels of the widely popular RX100 they announced the breakthrough RX1. I'm not really sure what to make of this camera yet. From an engineering standpoint it's very impressive. Do people want a full frame camera with a fixed 35mm lens though? I guess time will tell. It does remind me of the good old days of Sony though. You know, back when the company used to make products that were engineering marvels and you wondered how on earth they did it. I've always been a fan of Sony and most of my audio and video purchases have always been Sony, but lately I, like many others, have felt that the company has lost their way. Instead of precision craftsmanship they were releasing plastic crap. Not everything of course, but a lot. The RX100 is old school Sony. It's precision and it's beautiful and yet pushing the envelope of miniaturisation all in one go. It's not really a camera that interests me personally but I can appreciate the work that went into making it.

Other sony announcements of note were the A99. Sony's full frame SLT. Another full frame in a sea of full frame releases this year (more on that in a minute). Of note is the interesting development that Sony has finally ditched its (well, minolta's) proprietary flash hot shoe and opted for a standard one instead. There's also some interesting video additions on this camera too, and Sony seem to be taking video more seriously.

I'm more interested in the NEX related announcements. In particular, they've finally announced a fast 35mm lens, which the system badly lacked. Hopefully it will be a bit better than their other NEX lenses, which, with the exception of the impossible to get Zeiss 24mm (of which I have no experience) have been less than stellar. Still, it's good to see Sony maturing the system with the addition of some other lenses too including another much needed addition, an ultra wide.

Nikon

Nikon's big announcement was the much rumoured D600. The third of the high profile full frame releases (after the RX100 and the A99) it's the one I'm most interested in personally. Offering a mid ground in terms of megapixels between the old D700 and the D800 this was the camera many people wanted. What's interesting though is they put it in a smaller and lighter body, so it's basically a full frame D7000. It's a very appealing camera at an appealing price point, or at least it would be if we weren't being fleeced on the price here in Ireland. The D600 retails (suggested retail) for $1999 in the US and yet is somehow being listed for €2299. Given the difference in currencies that makes it a whopping $1000 more expensive in europe. I know there's differences in taxes etc but there is no justification for such a price difference. You could actually get a return flight to New York for the difference in price.

Panasonic and Olympus

Panasonic just today announced the GH3, the long awaited successor to the GH2. I have had the GH2 for some time and I use the hacked version for shooting video. It's an amazing little camera. The video quality, especially with the hack is second to none. It's pin sharp and limited only by the bit depth of the sensor. The work done by the guy who hacked it is remarkable and has earned him and the hacked GH2 numerous accolades. Amazingly panasonic have taken notice and have upgraded the GH series to include many of the features from the hack including a very impressive new 80mbs i-frame compression codec. If you've never shot video this isn't of much interest to you, but if you do this is a really big deal. As well as that, the new camera is dust and splash proof, and the new design is gorgeous. Kudos to Panasonic for taking bold steps.

If you haven't seen it already check out the amazing video shot by Philip Bloom using a pre production GH3.

Panasonic GH3 launch film: Genesis from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Olympus announced a new version of their PEN camera, which is not of that much interest to me, but they did release one clever new feature which was a lens cap with a fixed focus lens built in, so you don't have to miss a shot while you search for a lens. It's kind of a gimmick, but it's certainly thinking outside the box. They also announced a very nice looking macro lens for the micro four thirds system.

Over all, the micro four thirds system is becoming quite mature with a wide range of professional and consumer quality lenses available. I've dipped my toe in the NEX world and the Fuji ecosystem, but I keep coming back to the feeling that micro 43 is where the momentum is in the mirror less world. It's looking like a really strong platform, especially if you are doing both photo and video.

Canon

Canon announced the Eos-6D today. I have to say, I'm finding it hard to get excited about. It seems to me to be pretty much the 5d Mark II with a few tweaks, selling at the price that the 5D Mark II has been selling at since the 5D Mark III was announced. It seems to have the same antiquated autofocus system from the 5DII which was the same as the 5D1. I am perhaps being a little unfair. It does have basic wifi functionality and built in GPS. I'm sure it's a fine camera in its own right but nothing that exciting, and just a minor iteration of the 5DII which is currently selling for the same price.

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There is more still to come from Photokina, and I'll post some more thoughts later in the week.

My Image Library Gets A Makeover And A New Home!

The image library section on my website has been given a bit of a makeover. Actually, it's a substantial makeover. In case you haven't visited it before, the Library is a place where you can see an archive of my previous projects as well as current ones. It also has images from my portfolio and various other genres. All the images are available for sale either as downloads for use as stock or as prints which are processed professionally by a pro photo lab in the UK and ship directly. Over the past while I've been busy adding new content and some new options.

The first thing you'll notice is it has a completely re-designed look. Where as before it was just a single big slideshow, it now shows the various galleries and projects. I've also given it its own domain too. So while you can still get to the image library by clicking on the links on the website, you can also go to it by going to library.thomasfitzgeraldphotography.com directly.

The other big change is I've added a personal use download option. If you want to buy an image to use for your own personal use, such as a wallpaper or a school project or something similar there's now an option to licence images at a reduced price. If you want to use the image commercially, there are royal tee free and rights managed options available too, although some images are only available for editorial use (such as news, magazine articles etc) due to the content.

Anyway, have a look around and see what you think. The back end is provided by Photoshelter and it's now much easier to update (as they've done some work too) so I'll be adding much more content in the coming weeks.

Welcome to the new blog!

After much back and forth and trying to play with various settings on my recently re-designed web site I was still not happy with the way it was working. I liked how the main site worked and I found that the look complimented my photography, but I still wasn't happy with the blog side of the equation. Then it hit me. I was trying to do too much with the one set up. I was using the one wordpress install for both my site and my photoblog, but in reality I wanted these to be two different entities. So, now they are. By seperating the two I can give this blog its own identity, while maintaining my Photography site as a place to showcase my work and get information on sales, and prints etc. This will of course be part of it, but no longer tied down by it so I have lots of things to say and show in the future. Of course, if you're reading this you probably don't care about such things as wordpress installs and so forth. But what it boils down to is that I should be back to blogging about Photography here on this blog. I had lost touch with it, because I wasn't happy with my old blog. Then I changed it and I really wasn't happy. What has this to do with photography? Absolutely nothing, but I had felt that the way I had things set up wasn't the best way to showcase my images and so it stifled my passion somewhat. Now, I'm happy I feel like writing again. And, now that I've separated it from the rest of my site I can tweak the blog without having to do a whole website all over again.

But enough about that, and on with the photography. I have lots to update you on so stay tuned and I've taken some great pictures lately so I can't wait to share them with you. As for my regular readers thanks once again for your loyalty and your continued readership!