Cameras and Photography Explained

We need to talk about a chart that Fujifilm executives pulled up during the recent introduction of the GFX100RF, a camera that does not have sensor-based or lens-based image stabilization:

We have a lot to unpack here. The claim Fujifilm makes is that under the "normal" handheld use of the GFX100RF, image stabilization isn't necessary (blue area, lower right corner). This is based upon the assumption that people can steadily handhold 1/focal length, which in the case of the GFX100RF would be 1/28 second. Another way of deciphering the chart for the camera they just introduced is that Fujifilm recommends a tripod for anything slower than 1/28 second, handholding for 1/28 or faster shutter speeds. 

This is a little disingenuous, as any photo instructor can tell you that there's a large subset of the population that can't (or won't) hold a camera steady at 1/focal length. Fujifilm seems to refer to this group as "Snap" under the section where image based image stabilization (IBIS) works. The GFX100RF doesn't have IBIS, so you "snappers" should probably avoid the camera ;~). Okay, you "snappers" are going to need higher shutter speeds to compensate for your movement. But that's where the f/4 aperture of the lens starts to come into play. The base ISO of the camera is 80, so the Sunny 16 exposure is f/4 at 1/1280. No problems there. Heavy overcast probably puts you at f/4 and 1/80, so you're still probably okay. But if you move into edge of day, night, or less well lit indoors scenes, you're at or beyond that 1/28 limit. But if you're a "snapper" and need two more stops to be "steady," Sunny 16 is 1/320, overcast is 1/20, and indoors and edge of day, well, good luck.  

The good news is that the GFX100RF uses a leaf shutter, which doesn't tend to impart additional slap, so it really comes down to how steadily you hold the camera as to whether or not you'll get the full acutance goodness from those 100 megapixels. As I tried to point out, some may find the IBIS-equipped 40mp X100VI a better choice when all is said and done.

But Fujifilm's chart probably raised a few other points you want to know about. First, they show something around 16mm only allowing 1/2 second exposures with IBIS, and that shutter speed gets progressively higher as you increase the focal length. Fujifilm has a "normal" focal length lens showing as only good to about 1/6 second with IBIS engaged, and the range at which they say "IBIS Works" is only 3.5 stops. 

Olympus has made claims of 1 second handheld, and we now have many makers claiming 8 stops of correction for their stabilization systems. Is Fujifilm lagging behind, or are you getting gamed?

You're getting gamed. 

While there's no doubt that IBIS systems are beneficial, the marketing messages and claims about them are at best case exaggerated, at worst case deceptive. 

Let's begin with one thing suggested in that Fujifilm chart: the range at which IBIS is useful shifts as focal length increases. This is absolutely true. You can't violate geometry. (Well, you could, but only by making up pixels where they aren't. See: AI.) Moreover, sensor movement has a limited range, so even if you wanted to try to 100% correct things at 200mm, you might not be able to if the "shake" is too great.

Which brings us to CIPA. CIPA is a marketing organization that all the Japanese camera makers belong to, and which, among other things, assigns standards by which the member companies need to comply. This includes how you measure the size of a product, how you weigh it, and much more. One of CIPA's standards has you strapping your camera/lens to a special platform that is intended to create a repeatable, simulated camera movement. You might have noticed that over time the numbers being reported for that test have gone up. You probably thought that was entirely due to IBIS systems getting better. Well, some of that has happened, but in practice, I'm not seeing the same level of improvement in real world testing. We didn't go from 2.5 stops to 8 stops in a short period. We went from the test rig was pretty crude to the test rig getting better at the simulation and the camera companies getting better at designing to the test rig. 

Next up on our list is that Fujifilm claims that IBIS doesn't work above 250mm. This is also related to the geometry, but there's much more going on here that needs explanation. First, marketing will claim that their stabilization system is 5 Axis. (That would be pitch, yaw, roll, horizontal, and vertical.) Well, sort of. IBIS can't change the pitch or yaw of the image sensor (and I believe most can't change their rotation, either, which is roll). In-lens stabilization can't change rotation, and tends not to do horizontal or vertical because then the image circle at the focus plane would be offset. 

At some point as you go higher into the telephoto range, pitch and yaw done around the optical center is the best way to correct the geometries of camera/lens movement, and IBIS becomes far less useful. Is the termination and/or crossover of usefulness at 250mm? I do not believe it is. My testing tells me that the crossover tends to occur somewhere in the 100-200mm range and that the usefulness of IBIS just tends to degrade beyond that, but not exactly terminate.

Note that Fujifilm seems to imply that Lens OIS (their form of lens-based stabilization) works all the way down 1 second with 250mm and longer lenses! Sorry guys, but that's simply not even close to true. Just as with the IBIS range Fujifilm shows in the chart, there needs to be a lens-based range, too. (And I'd argue that instead of "tripod" at the left of the lens-based IS range, it should be "gimbal".)

Our final little nugget to unpack is right up at the top of the chart: "New Exposure Program." I suspect Fujifilm is referring to Program exposure mode, that little automatic exposure-setting aid that doesn't always tell you exactly what it's doing. Nikon used to put charts for their programs in their manuals. Shame on them for omitting them these days (and having entire pages that are mostly blank but at the top say something like "The X mode sets X"; yes, you documented something, but not in any useful way). Since I don't have a GFX100RF nor the manual for it, I can't tell you how Fujifilm changed the Program exposure mode. It seems to me that with apertures only a five stop range between f/4 and f/22, to be "fully" useful said program would also need to consider Auto ISO. 

Kudos to Fujifilm for trying to explain why they didn't feel they needed to complicate the GFX100RF with sensor-based image stabilization. Some demerits for not getting things clearly explained. 

Now, if you think the above doesn't apply to you because you don't have and won't buy a GFX100RF, you weren't reading carefully enough. Image stabilization is one of those much ballyhooed "savior" features that doesn't get explained carefully enough by the camera companies. They all avoid the useful explanation for the simplified marketing message. The days of camera companies providing useful technical white papers about their features and performance seem to be long gone (rest in peace Chuck Westfall). Executives seem unable to explain things. Engineers would rather avoid talking to you. This is no way to run a consumer-facing business. 

I’ve mentioned supply chain issues in the past. Now they may be intersecting with a new problem. Let’s dive in.

One source who should know tells me that the primary supply chain issue right now is image sensors. Getting new ones not only into production but at the quantity the market might demand is apparently really tough right now. The Sony A1 II supply, for instance, is probably choking on image sensor scarcity at the moment (other low supply parts might be impacting shipments, as well). 

What apparently is happening is that when you find that you need more image sensors than you projected (and originally ordered), getting additional production on fab just isn’t going to be a simple phone call asking for more. 

You might have noticed that the final CIPA shipment numbers for 2024 exceeded the original projections back at the start of the year. Those projections are made from the conglomerated individual manufacturers production forecasts. And those original 2024 projections could be characterized as “another year like 2023.”

If you look at the monthly shipment numbers, though, you’ll see that 2024 started “hotter” than 2023 in January, then 2024 mostly mimicked 2023 until September, at which point 2024 suddenly showed growth that didn’t happen the previous year. I’ll bet some of that was image sensor orders finally catching up. The overall ILC bodies trended about 10% higher for the year. Thus, if you said to the fab you needed 100 image sensors at the start of last year, you found you needed 110. Overall, the Japanese makers needed about 600,000 more image sensors in 2024 than they did in 2023. That by itself takes up a lot of fab time and wafers.

Now let’s say you want to introduce a new camera with a new image sensor. Squeezing 10% more existing sensors out of the production lines is one thing, but now you want another 2%, but from sensors that have never been done before (or are special in that they are stacked and require more and better production time)? 

Let’s take Nikon for example. They have basically six image sensors (20mp DX, three variations of 24mp FX, two 45mp FX). Of those, four are basically older image sensors (20mp DX, two 24mp FX, one 45mp FX) and two are “special” and newer (24mp FX partial stacked and 45mp FX stacked). Everyone keeps asking when Nikon will drop a new >45mp FX sensor, a >20mp DX sensor, or another “special” sensor (e.g. stacked). Historically, their last two “new” sensors were in 2020 (Z9) and 2024 (Z6III). So age-wise we get:

• 10 years old — 24mp FX (Z5, Z6, Z6II, Zf, the latter one with minor changes)
• 8 years old — 20mp DX (all DX Z’s)
• 7 years old — 45mp FX (Z7, Z7II)
• 4 years old — 45mp stacked FX (Z8, Z9)
• 1 year old — 24mp partial stacked FX (Z6III)

If you look at the other makers, you see similar patterns. Sony’s “newest” image sensors are 2021 (2) and 2023. Getting new sensor tech on fab is slowing down and large sensor fab utilization apparently remains at 100% (or more), so new image sensors are coming more slowly now.  

So image sensors are a big part of the supply chain issues that the camera companies are struggling with.

What’s the new problem that intersects? Little or no demand for the same image sensors. Oops ;~). 

Recently I've seen three different photography sites complaining that they didn’t get any affiliate commissions for newly announced cameras, because no one clicked on the link and ordered one. 

We’ve had six cameras introduced so far this year, only two of which have new image sensors. Three of the older sensor cameras that were just introduced have little demand, and were part of those affiliate link failures I just mentioned. Another is a new body for an old inside (it’s an OM-3 on the outside, OM-1 II on the inside). So how does the market continue to grow? By selling more bodies with the same image sensor? I don’t think so.

It’s not that you can’t create a “better” camera with an “older” image sensor. The Sony A1 II and Nikon Z50II are good examples of re-invigorating a model without needing a new sensor. The Fujifilm X-M5 is a “different” camera than Fujifilm has done in the past with the same image sensor. But in general, it feels to me that a number of companies are not quite getting things right. The biggest part of their long-term success will be upgrading, not new customers buying older sensor products. 

It doesn’t help that CMOS image sensors have pretty much climbed the hill. We’ve been stuck on the top of a plateau for a while now with dynamic range (DR). As I like to put it: “in most circumstances, current cameras record the randomness of photons accurately.” Moreover, the real challenge in DR that hasn’t been breeched is saturation, not noise floor, which is where everyone's misplaced attention has been. 

The primary thing that new image sensors seem to be concentrating on is speed. Speed helps both with quantity of pixels the sensor can have, as well as things like removing the physical shutter and lowering costs (e.g. Z8, Z9). But advancements in speed are essentially driven by a form of Moore’s Law, so it’s tough to really break a new sensor out in a way that others can’t also do. Another aspect of this is that dedicated camera image sensors have traditionally been done on old, larger process fabs where you can't get "easy" speed benefits by using smaller process size. Unfortunately, fabs that can do small process are the ones that are most utilized at the moment, to the point where at the current "best" processes you have maybe four customers locking up all of production. (None of those are camera makers.)

Meanwhile, we just keep getting “more” piled into the bodies themselves via menus. I got a headache staring at the details for the just-announced Panasonic S1RII's video capabilities: over 60 different settings, which produces six different crops, has compression interdependencies, and varies in bit rate. Plus there’s some other footnotes you need to apply to fully understand a setting! 

I really have to ask how many people need 60 different FullHD, 4K, 6K, and 8K settings. How many can even keep track of what all of them do and how they differ? Are all these settings actually used by someone? Is that what we really want camera makers to concentrate on: adding more and more choices? 

Yes, I’m sure there’s some customer somewhere that will appreciate all that choice. It isn’t me, and I’m pretty sophisticated as a user. My number one request of Nikon—I predominately use Z8’s and Z9’s for my work—is to provide a truly useful save/restore settings function, not to give me another video option. A settings system where I can name my camera settings files (birding, wildlife, football, ice hockey, portrait, etc.) and restore them with a single command (or better yet, button press, e.g. Cycle saved settings). 

Which brings us to the thing that’s really holding the camera industry back: they think they’re designing hardware, not software. If you think about what a modern mirrorless camera is, it is data coming from an image sensor processed by a SoC (System on Chip), coupled with some form of interface where the customer tells the SoC what to do with that data. “Processing” and “Interface” are software tasks, not hardware ones (though they may involve some hardware). 

So while the Tokyo camera makers all wait for new image sensors and more production of them, they’re really staring at the wrong problem. They’re failing at software, not hardware. 

You can think about that this way: if I told you that you had to use the existing Sony Exmor 24mp sensor (or any other currently existing image sensor) and design the perfect camera using it, what would happen? It doesn’t matter what you think “perfect” is; such a camera would produce excellent images that print really well to 19” on the long axis (because that’s where 24mp sensor state-of-the-art is). In other words, it’s not the image sensor that’s holding anything back. 

A lot of people have poo-pooed Sigma’s recently announced bf camera. I don’t. Sigma is tackling exactly what I just asked in the last paragraph. Good on them. I see some design decisions in the bf that I agree with and many I don’t, but at least it’s not just another DSLR-like 24mp camera with as many features as we can cram into it. It’s a camera company challenging what “perfect” might actually be. 

Likewise, I’ve found I tend to like Leica’s current modern UI (DLux-8, Q3, etc.). I’m not menu diving with these cameras, I’m pretty directly making the settings changes I need to make, and only those. 

Need another example to understand my point? Look no further than the Nikon Z9. When I first was given a pre-release unit to take to Africa and test, what I found was that the Z9 was a really good camera, better than anything Nikon had done in mirrorless to date and mostly equalling or bettering what Canon and Sony were doing at the time. Then we got firmware 2.x. Then 3.x. Then 4.x. Then 5.x. Each time the already excellent camera became better. Why? Because the software was refined and added to. Amazingly, the Z9 still hasn't caught up to what Nikon knows how to do (content authentication, HEIF, Pixel shift shooting, etc.). Whether that means we get firmware 6.x or a Z9II with mostly software changes—I'd bet on an EVF upgrade, but not much else on the hardware side—doesn't particularly matter. 

While many of you sit and wait for the latest and greatest hardware to finally arrive at your dealer, I'm personally waiting for the Japanese camera companies to get better at software. Way better. Because that's really what's needed to break out of the current volume doldrums and attract both new and upgrading customers. 

Today's headline is a baseball metaphor because I know the Japanese understand baseball. I'm going to use the company I know best for my examples, but don't read too much into that: I can write essentially the same article about Canon, Fujifilm, OMDS, Panasonic, and Sony. This is a cultural problem, not a corporate one. It's time to shift the culture.

Swing and a Miss

Let's start with the most recent Swing-and-a-Miss. That would be the Nikon Coolpix P1100. You know those times when the staff finishes a product as shouts "nailed it!" Well, Nikon's staff finished the project and said whispered "mailed it!” (As in “mailed it in.”)

What was the R&D budget for the P1100, 100 yen? Notes from management to staff said (1) replace serial port with USB-C; (2) do something that says "birds" in the menus. Mailed it!

Let me be frank (okay, let me be thom ;~): the lens in the P1000 (and now in the P1100) was for the most part wasted in that camera. I personally prefer the P950 in terms of function and handling. 3000mm equivalent is really tough to handle hand-held, and the snap-back-for-tracking feature is too slow to be functional, particularly when combined with the sluggish autofocus performance. Still, for static subjects you can manage to locate at 3000mm, the lens pretty much does a solid Nikkor telephoto job. In a word, excellent. This just once again proves that Nikon knows optics as well as anyone. Too bad they sometimes fail to prove they know cameras all that well.

I really don't have a lot of issue with the image sensor, either, even though it's a small one (1/2.3"). I've spent enough time with the camera to know that I can massage a lot out of the raw files if I get everything else right. Heck, even the simplified functions and menus are livable. 

Where the P1000 (and now P1100) fall down is in making 3000mm useful. Focus performance and finding/following the subject, to be specific. And nothing was done to improve that in the new model. Worse still, there's not a single thing that the marketing department can do to regenerate any interest in this camera, as there's not even a bit of new product grizzle for them to chew on. That said, Nikon Marketing took a big swing at it with the press release (title: "Reach for the Stars") but in the end this launch was a total miss. Zero new interest at dealers on a product most people had forgotten about for good reasons.

So let's dream about the perfect swing for a moment. Simply put EXPEED7 and phase detect on sensor into the package that already exists. As Nikon just showed with the Z50II and Zf, even with older, slower image sensors this makes a substantial and important difference (plus there was a far better "birds" to add to the camera ;~). Personally, I would have done that with the P950 instead, but Nikon is trying to claim the supersuperzoom crown, so sure, P1000 it is.

Staring at Pitches

Nikon truly left the compact market—and by that I mean the highly capable compact—just prior to launching the Z System. The Nikon J5 was arguably one of the better compacts Nikon had produced. Nikon management apparently looked at the waning Nikon 1 sales as a product failure, not the management failure it actually was. 

Beyond just staring at the obvious problem and not doing anything different for seven years, management also mostly misread the market, believing that the need for a shirt pocket compact no longer existed. Another stare at a perfectly good pitch and doing nothing. 

The J5 was a perfectly fine 20mp compact when it appeared in 2015. Its image quality level would still be relevant today, what with the EXPEED improvements it would have received. But Nikon had already stopped making new lenses for the Nikon 1 line, and that was apparent to anyone paying attention. Moreover, Nikon never really got the Nikon 1 lens set right in the first place: they took a couple of practice swings and then stood in the box doing not much of anything as the pitches passed them by.

The Z30 now pretty much takes the place of the J5, though at a bit of a size penalty. So it's clear that Nikon management understands that there might be something to swing at, but they still keep hesitating with their actual swing and claim they're swinging at a different pitch (apparently they see only a "creator" on the mound). I suspect a Z30II is coming, what that PC button being important to that pitcher. But we still have issues of not seeing the full pitch dynamics and then not swinging fully. Plus we're back in the no action realm in the lens bullpen, so even if Nikon gets the camera (swing) right, they still might not manage to win the game.

Lack of Team Play

I've written now for more than three decades that Nikon's number one problem is that they don't interact with their customers. They seem to think of themselves as just a bunch of engineers doing business-to-business things with other engineers. Hmm. The last reported financial numbers say something entirely different: 46% of their sales and 540% of their profit comes from just camera and lens consumers. 

We camera buyers should feel like we're part of the team. Do you feel like part of the team? Getting Nikon Japan to recognize anything with their cameras that needs changing because of the way we use it is like looking for a dentist using only road signs in upper Mongolia. I'll give you a recent example: with the Z50II I finally helped get Nikon to make Focus point display > AF-C in-focus display default to On. This was after spending time trying to convince them that AF-C in-focus display should actually be built in (it's not the default on the Z9, Z8, Z6III, or Zf, where we finally got a function to even turn it on). 

It shouldn't be that hard. Serious, core, influential Nikon users know exactly what does/doesn't work or needs fixing. That's because we're part of the team: we're actually on the field playing the game. Management seems to be up in the Owner's Box sipping sake and swapping investment suggestions.

Here's my wish: let me put together a group of nine players (pro users), bring them to Japan, and have them spend a day telling everyone at Nikon exactly where the problems really are. What we'd buy and what we'll ignore. How we actually play the game and why we're still missing some critical gear. 

My local Philadelphia Eagles just won the Super Bowl. You don't get that far without a "team." Apparently the night prior to the game, they had a special team meeting. It wasn't the usual meeting with the coaches telling the players what they can/can't/should/shouldn't do. Instead, each of the veteran players got up and shared their views. By the time all the speechifying and rallying was done—apparently left tackle Jordan Mailata picked up the podium, shook it, and just yelled "One More!"—the reports are that the coaches and players actually left that meeting feeling more together as a team than ever, and you saw that in the first half of the game if you watched it.

When was the last time you saw a photographer and a camera company 100% on the same page like that?