News/Views
First byThom Minimum, Later byThom Max
As I noted earlier this year, I'm taking a couple of long breaks from posting this year so that I can work on new products you'll want, including site rethinks and redesigns. You just saw one of my planned breaks as I worked on updating the Mastering Nikon JPEGs book and created the new Mastering Nikon Customization book. From the response so far it seems I was correct in anticipating demand for more information in these areas. With Nikon updating firmware and a Z5II book to still complete, there's plenty just in the book side of the business to do.
Since I haven't perfected cloning yet, when I deep end on these projects, I don't typically have the bandwidth to keep all the sites updated with new material. Given that I'm in the middle of site re-designs, I also don't want to add much new material when I'll just have to redesign it. Moreover, the less interrupted I am, the faster these things get done.
I'm about to enter another planned quiet period. Look for new site material in late July, after which I'll take another short break.
My goal is to come out of 2025 with sites, books, and more that are better than ever, and far exceed what you've seen in the past. It'll just take a little alone time for me to get ahead of you again.
How is it Better?
I think we've officially come to the point where every new product announcement needs the first paragraph to clearly enunciate how it is better.
With everyone now iterating full lineups (and Chinese lens makers trying to elbow in), each new announcement from a camera or lens maker tends to be something that existed before (or existed in someone else's lineup and is now being copied). Coupled with a slower development and release pace, "truly new product" tends to happen fairly rarely. In terms of cameras this year, that meant only three of sixteen were something noticeably new (Canon R50V, Fujifilm X half, and Fujifilm GFX100RF, and you might argue that the first is just a different body for an existing camera and the latter is mostly an existing camera with a bigger sensor).
Lenses haven't really fared any better than cameras. Of the 25 announced in the first half of this year, yes, I see some "stretching" being done—Sigma 300-600mm and 400-800mm and all the f/1.2 optics—but nothing has struck me as "wow, that's new."
For everyone in the camera industry, including you, the customer, your primary thinking about any product announcement now really has to consist of the headline question: how is it better?
The just announced OM-5 II is a good example to consider. The shape of the hand grip changed, you finally have the menu system that OMDS has been using since the OM-1 several years ago, a button has changed function, plus two new minor video features and two minor still features. Oh, and there's now a brown panda version. That's not enough "better" to get me to pay US$300 more for it (today's pricing; the OM-5 is currently on sale).
Compare that to the Fujifilm X-E5 or Nikon Z5II. Both those cameras got considerable feature/function upgrades from their previous models. If you were considering the previous model, you should be more impressed with the new one, as you can clearly tick off a substantial set of "better" items. On the other hand, the Nikon Z5II sells for US$700 more, so it had better be better.
But I mentioned "everyone" in the camera industry, so let's take a peak at how that looks for a few others:
- Camera maker — "Better" for them comes in one of two ways (or both): cheaper to make, or will sell more. I don't get much of that from the OM-5 II, but do from the Fujifilm X-E5 (the Nikon Z5II is tending to steal customers from the Z6III).
- Camera dealer — It's only "better" if it sells more. Dealers live off of inventory turns, and they only get that through sales volume. Dealers complain when a new product doesn't tweak the turn bar up, and strongly complain when the turns instead become boxes sitting on shelves.
- Rumors site — The more surprises—particularly ones that can be revealed in the run-up, something that Fujifilm's supported leaks do well—the "better," but they need a series of those, not just one big surprise at the end. The slower development schedules and the meh releases are hurting these sites, as there's not a lot of reason to visit them if they're not constantly giving you "sneak" tokes.
- News/Forum sites — When your news is meh, nobody pays much attention, and when your fora are discussing how meh a new product is, the cathartic post effect wears off very quickly. You can almost figure out the "better" product announcements by how many "should I update" posts there are, which these days are already well down from their peaks.
- Professional photographer — Starting to not care. Realistically the top tier products from every camera maker are more than sufficient enough to carry them through the next few years, and nothing in the lower end products is making amateurs snipe any more seriously at our tails. Lenses, on the other, do get our attention if they fill a hole we either knew we had or didn't know we had. But both those things require more than a press release that says "we added a new lens."
- Amateur photographer — I'd argue that even the entry bodies and lenses from all the camera companies are good enough to take pretty incredible photos. Plus, with apps like Adobe's Project Indigo now showing that smartphones can do even more than most thought, as long as you're not going larger than, oh, 11x14" in output I'd say that you don't need more, and even "better" cameras and lenses aren't going to give you any benefit unless you actually learn to use them for that benefit.
We're sort of in one of those lulls the auto industry kept getting into: "yes, we have new cars this year, but some of those are just new grills and a couple of other visible things that we think make it look snazzy."
Are You Better Than Average?
Just a reminder: Average means you're right in the middle. About half the folk are better than you, and the half are worse than you.
I was struck by a few of the results when I came upon the thanaverage Web site. In particular:
- 71% of participants think they are more perceptive than average.
- 58% of participants think they are more creative than average.
Perception and creativity are two crucial aspects to taking good photos.
You really have to perceive something in order to take a photo at all. Anyone standing in a certain area in Paris can perceive that that there's a very tall metal structure jutting up in the air. Most will take a photo of it (the Eiffel Tower, if you are one of those that 21% that think they're not smarter than average). Creativity after the perception is where great photos lie, though.
Galen Rowell used to often ask me about what I was feeling as we wandered landscapes together. The fact that we were using our feet to explore meant that we were almost certain to see (perceive) things that others wouldn't, as we were well off the beaten path most of the time. Even when we were exploring a beaten path, we weren't actually on the actual path all that much. "Perception" wasn't our problem.
Meanwhile, Galen's "feeling" question spoke to the creative process. If I felt something I was perceiving, the critical question was "how do I get those that view my resulting image to have that same feeling?" Often those feelings were clearly emotional, such as isolation, smallness, surrounded. When was the last time your photography instructor told you to capture a feeling or emotion like that?
I often I see students caught up in the "I perceive a thing" construct. They then proceed to point their camera at said thing and voila, press a button, and they're done. When they post those photos, I can pretty much guarantee that the viewer will quickly flick to the next one (or flick left!). Sitting in airports and planes I get a lot of time to watch people doom scrolling (yes, I snoop; I'm a curious guy). Flick, flick, flick, pause, flick, flick, flick.
Wait, what made them pause? Typically something they've never seen before (or perhaps not in this way), but more often than not I see they've stopped on an image that has a real story in it. It's not a photo of a thing, it's a photo containing a story in which the thing is a key player.
Perhaps it's all the filmmaking training I had early on that makes me go directly to story: films (and TV shows, and streamed shows) are pretty boring without a good story, right? Moreover, the director of photography—why isn't it director of filmmaking?—works hard with the director and actors to emphasize and embellish the story. For instance, they're more likely to light a drama in noir (dramatic lighting) than just turning on a bunch of big lighting panels.
Let me repeat something I've written before, there's a progression in photographic thinking: noun, adjective noun, adjective noun verb/adverb, complete sentence. Noun isn't much of a photo (elephant). Adjective noun is better (large elephant). Adjective noun verb starts to get interesting (large elephant trumpeting). Complete sentence or story is what I really want, though (large elephant trumpeting at predator making them uneasy). Curiously, the two extremes (noun and sentence/story) are the easiest to photograph: noun just means the thing needs to be in frame, while story means you have to show everything in the story. I'd argue that if the story isn't there, the photograph isn't there.
While I'd like you to come up with your own story, if you're just starting out on this journey into better photography, go ahead and cop a placeholder summary from Hollywood: adventure, drama, comedy, buddy, fantasy. When that elephant comes along, are you making an adventure, drama, comedy, buddy, or fantasy photo story?
The implication of the thanaverage results is that you're a perceptive, creative individual (okay, you're really just above average). My question to you is how is that showing up in your photos? Is it even showing up in your photos? What are you perceiving that others aren't, and how are you creatively tackling that to create a photo that's unique? If there's a photographer you admire, how are these two things showing up in their work?
Galen would travel to a new place with a bunch of pre-conceptualized stories based upon extensive research (fantasy photos that needed to be realized), but he also was very open to his perceptions when he was there, which always opened up entirely new stories. His best images were some of the former, some of latter. None were simply a noun.
If you made it this far, I'm going to suggest something outlandish, but instructive. Go to amazon.com. Search for "Dick and Jane level 1." There's a good chance if you're older as I am you encountered these books as a kid. Buy one. Take a close look at the illustrations. For instance, the book I'm looking at right now has a great potential photographic story from the get go in "Away we go." William S. Gray would have been a great photographer, and the vocabulary he was using was as basic as it gets, plus his sentences are tight and succinct. You don't need a huge vocabulary, incredible creativity, or pyscopathic perception to make an image do great work. But you have to tell a story, even a simple one.
You're above average. Now show it through your photography.
Compact Camera Reviews are Back
As part of my work on getting my sites re-arranged and re-designed, I've moved the old gearophile compact camera reviews here to the Gear section on byThom.
Better still, I've posted my initial Fujifilm X100VI and Leica D-Lux8 reviews. They're still devoid some example images in the performance section, but weather and other issues have delayed me getting those done.
ANNOUNCING: Mastering Nikon Customization (Updated)
Yep, another book. As part of my recent work on trying to collect all your Z System firmware requests, I noticed that quite a lot of those were about customization. Moreover, a number of emails I got requesting a "feature" indicated that some of you weren't aware of how customization actually works, and what you can do with it already.
I had already been grappling with how I might integrate customization more into my Complete Guides, but the more I thought about it, the more this seemed to me to be a subject that was less reference (e.g. Complete Guide) and more education (e.g. Mastering).
Since I have a bunch of other commitments coming up this summer and I didn't want to delay this work, I put the petal to the metal and created the second book in my Mastering series: Mastering Nikon Customization.
While this book isn't camera specific, it is type of camera specific. The Mastering Nikon Customization book applies to Z System mirrorless cameras. All of them. True, the Zfc doesn't leave much room for customization, but that's actually a reason you need to better understand what is and isn't possible. More importantly, how you prioritize what functions you bring into the customization process for your camera.
Be forewarned, while this book is the shortest I've created recently (at ~200 pages), it has some important homework assignments in it that you really need to perform if you want to get everything you can from the book. The book is another dense pack of useful information.
I also consider this book "preliminary," in that I can think of a number of things to add to it (and will) to make it as comprehensive as I'd like it to be. Therefore, if you buy the book while it's in this early form, I'm discounting the price to US$29.99. When I finish the additions, I'll update the book and adjust the price to the usual Mastering price of US$39.99. Those that bought the preliminary version will get the revision as a free update. The book has now been updated and the price reset to my standard pricing. Purchasers of the initial version should have received update links (check your Spam/Junk folder, as those notices come from an automated server and a lot of email providers don't like that).
Wait, you don't know what "customization of a camera" is all about or what you can customize? Well, then you need Mastering Nikon Customization. Customization is about making a camera work the way you want it to—at least as best as Nikon allows us to—because that speeds up and gives you more control over the photographic process. If you're always taking your eye away from the viewfinder and doom-scrolling through the menus to find something you need to change, then your camera isn't customized (or you haven't learned to use the customizations you made).
Mastering Nikon Customization tackles U# settings, Banks, i menu options, button and dial customizations. Each of those do a different thing and have a different purpose. I'll help you understand that and learn what to put where. I'll also discuss creating and saving a set of "base" settings you use for your work, and point to two options if you're tired of waiting for Nikon to provide named settings files.
I should also point out that working intensely on this book gave me even more insight to what Nikon should be doing in updating firmware and functions in the various Nikon Z System cameras. I've been advocating behind the scenes for a number of changes, and writing this book helped me focus my thoughts. As part of the firmware update request process I started two months ago, I'm beginning the next step specifically centered around the customization process. You can read my article on that and help participate as soon as I post the next installment.
You'll find Mastering Nikon Customization on the zsystemuser.com site today. If you're willing to spend US$39.99 to get the preliminary version, you can click here to get started.
And a bonus: Today I'm also updating Mastering Nikon JPEGs, including information some of you requested to be added. Check your email (including Junk/Spam folder) for your link to the update if you already own this book.
The book comes both as an ePub and PDF file. The PDF file is structured for printing (but can be read on your device, too).
