One thing Ricoh needs to add for GR

Recently several friends decided to buy a GR after seeing my pictures and playing with it. They like the fact that GR integrates a sharp lens, fast focus, comfortable colour rendering into a iPhone sized, ergonomically designed metal+rubber body.

However, one thing more important is that I have a secret recipe for the customised settings of the camera, especially the adjusted positive film effect. That setting produces the colour my friends like, and also the operation they feel convenient with.

GR is a versatile compact camera. It's actually not designed for point-n-shooter.

All my friends who bought the GR asked me to promise them I would set their GR the same as mine, so that they can use it as point-n-shoot, while still generating the colour they like.

Simply go online to those forums, you will find tons of discussions about customised setting of GR.

Ricoh, when these customisations bring added value to owners, why not add a feature to make it easier to share? For instance, sort of export/import function.

Special edition of GR, total unit for sale = 5000

GR

After a few weeks’ try, I feel very pleased to use GR in weekend trip or business travel where it’s a burden to carry D700 and 16-35VR.

GR can deliver pictures with excellent sharpness, acceptable dynamic range, beautiful bokeh, and film style color (using customized “Positive Film” effect).

More importantly, it’s very handy to use this little yet sturdy camera once you optimize settings for your shooting habit.

On the road

A nice country view in Germany on the road from Eindhoven to Luxembourg.

Phone Camera Rank

The rating below from DxOMark takes both sensor and lens score into account, also averages still photo and video capability.

The phone camera nowadays

This picture was taken by iPhone 5, on Christmas eve in Amsterdam.
Below is a 100% crop of the original 8MP picture.



In the past, I felt joking to take picture with a mobile phone.
Today, it’s changed. Camera like iPhone 5’s can deliver practically good image quality in normal circumstances. Thanks to the mobility, it can help on capturing unexpected scenes. Furthermore, capability of instant sharing adds more fun to use mobile phone for photographing.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Digital filters

Post processing is a very important step to make your pictures different from most of others, as well as to express what you want to say in the picture.

It is mainly used in my exercises to address below problems.

• Sometimes, camera system has a certain limit to catch the scenery the same as what we see, which can be reflected as insufficient dynamic range, unsatisfied color saturation, or improper contrast.
• Or some other time, the recorded image does not completely reflect what we feel upon the scene at that time. Often an image crop is needed in this case.

Normally I spent effort in the post processing of images as much as when shooting them. Nowadays I shoot in raw thus I can benefit from the image quality lossless workflow in Capture NX + Color Efex. Thanks to the computer technology, I don’t even need to use various optical filters (e.g. graduated filter, polarizer), but compute a “filtered” image in the digital darkroom.

When shooting the picture, I can concentrate more on picking up a nice viewing angle, proper aperture (for DoF) and shutter speed (for movement freezing), while leaving the rest to fix/adjust in the post processing.

Furthermore, each raw file is like a exposed film, and waiting for me to develop in the digital darkroom (fast computer + versatile apps + large flat panel monitor with good color performance). Isn’t this excited?

If you can learn to master some useful post processing technique, and start to enjoy applying them when necessary, I’d say you are turning your photography from a recording activity to a bit more creative activity.

My current gear

After Sigma released the superb 17-50 f/2.8 OS, I sold my Nikkor 16-85 f/3.5-5.6 VR to get the Sigma. The reason I did this is because I need such a fast, sharp at maximum aperture lens as a "body cap" for my D300. Especially the experience of last year's wedding ceremony for my cousin, made me realize the limit of 50 f/1.4G and 16-85 f/3.5-5.6 VR. 



Now I cut the tele range of my lens (70-300 VR got sold as well since it alway lied in the storage bin), leaving only these two 5xx euro f/2.8 guys (from 11 to 50 mm), which I use most. Plus the 50 f/1.4G, I can handle most of my shooting tasks (I'm not fond of Zoo, so ...).

Upgrade to D300

I was always prepared towards FX format. But last week I made a decision to get a D300 in because of an unexpected promotion (16% off) on cameras in MediaMarkt in Eindhoven.

That's the real life. You never know what you gonna get.

OK, then talk about the D300.

After several days' playing with it, I found out that this Nikon's DX format flagship almost fixes every point not satisfying me on D80.

• Well constructed, rugged body, even better than D700 (a D700 body was placed next to D300 in the shop)
• Professional controlling system (simpling speaking, more useful buttons on the body)
• Clearly improved dynamic range
• 100% field for the view finder
• AF adjustment
• Up to 1/8000s shutter speed
• Much more accurate metering system
• Responsive 51-sensor AF system with a wide coverage

I think I made a smart decision to get in a D300 now, because my two reputable DX lenses (Tokina 11-16 F2.8 and Nikkor 16-85 VR) can stay important.

D300's price being stabilized

Need a real “travel” lens

Currently I have a wide angle (Tokina 11-16mm F2.8), a tele (Nikkor 70-300mm VR), and a portrait (Nikkor 50mm F1.4G, so 75mm on DX format to be a portrait lens).

I used to have a Sigma 18-50 F2.8 HSM, but was sold out several months ago mainly because I was suffering a fever of upgrading to FX system so I wanted to get rid of all DX lenses.

Now I’ve been calmed down by my “boss” to stick to my current D80 gear, and I start to reconsider my lenses.

After the trip to Prague during the Easter, I figured out that only Tokina 11-16 and the Nikkor 50 F1.4G can not cover the most useful focus lengths during the travel.

It seems the one below is what I am looking for:

AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm F3.5-5.6G ED VR

Compare to my previous Sigma 18-50 F2.8 HSM, this one is wider (16mm vs. 18mm) and longer (85mm vs. 50mm). Well, the constant F2.8 is gone, but even with my previous Sigma 18-50 I didn’t use the max. aperture that much because of the softness (normally I used F4). And I understand that VR II can help to improve the sharpness more than the big aperture.

This investment would be much wiser than moving to a FX body. The latter would demand much more than just a D700 since I would need a standard zoom lens (e.g. 24-70 F2.8) for the FX body as well.

My Gear for Post Processing

After switched from 6MP’s D40 to 10MP’s D80, I found that my previous ThinkPad T42 could not provide me sufficient performance when I processed those NEFs in Capture NX, even the T42 2373-8ZU I owned was equipped with 2GB DDR333 DRAM + Seagate 5400.3 16MB 160GB HDD.

For the sake of being a ThinkPad fans, I built up my small workstation for photo processing with ThinkPad T400 2764-CTO + Advanced Mini Dock + ThinkVision L220x. Following is a short introduction on this combo.

The T400 I ordered is configured with Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU, AMD Mobility Radeon 3470 256MB GPU, 1GB x 2 DDR3-1066 DRAM. Recently I upgraded the original 5K320 80GB HDD to WD Scorpio Black 320GB HDD to boost the Read/Write performance of the file system. Particularly, the 1440x900 ThinkPad LCD can help to do some temporary photo processing during the travel where my L220x is not available.

Generally speaking, this T400 satisfies me well for its great stability and sufficient performance, as well as the cool and quite behavior (thank for the great thermal design). You can get a good deal if you keep an eye on Lenovo’s official website in US (extra discount available from time to time).

The ThinkVision L220x has a 22 inch 1920 x 1200 S-PVA TFT panel. I think the words in blue already tell you the great color performance delivered from this LCD monitor. I don’t need to say too much about this LCD (quite a lot of reviews about it in internet), and it’s well worthy to get if you want to balance between desktop real estate and color performance (plus the 178°/178° view angle).

I output T400 to L220x through the DVI-D interface on the ThinkPad Advanced Mini Dock to get a stable image signal under the resolution of 1920 x 1200.

The last one which I want to mention here to help a lot for my photo processing is a good mouse. Good in shape (ergonomic design), as well as good in performance. If you can get the Logitech MX Revolution with a good price (current price in The Netherlands is not nice compared to 1 year ago), better don’t hesitate!

Finally I would like to share something for software. Capture NX is the greatest tool in my opinion for NEF processing. By using it, you feel like you are really developing the NEF to a JPEG. Apart from NX, IrfanView is a neat, swift, but powerful freeware for photo viewing and management (like multi-renaming and multi-resizing).

Taking pictures for others

Where: Grenoble, France

When: April, 2008

Normally, if you are hanging a SLR, people will come to you for help to take pictures for them. You would have left a professional impression for them because of the SLR.

In this picture, I was taking a group photo for a group of tourists with their camera, while my wife caught this moment.