News/Views
Finally, Some News
LEDE ON
Along with news comes rumors, as the camera industry tends to be pretty leaky. I don’t tend to discuss rumors much, as I prefer to deal with information about existing products, not imaginary ones (even if the imaginary is likely to become reality).
While it seems like Japan has been sleeping, it’s mostly been a nap caused by supply chain issues coupled with the fact that great camera products already exist, so making even better ones is getting tougher to do. At the moment it appears that the Tokyo's hirune is going to end with the summer, and we’ll have a fairly interesting late summer, early fall. Heck, even the Sony RX line seems to have Rip-Van-Winkled back into awakeness, with the RX100VII manufacturing seeming to renew once a USB-C connector was found they took out in-camera charging, the RX1R III getting more pixels and USB-C, and now the RX10 waking up after a very long nap (see next). So, Sony has the RX for waking up (see what I did there?), does everyone else?
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News and Commentary
The Nine-Year RX10V Update
Nine years is a long time for a camera to go without an update, but not unprecedented (think Nikon D500). The interesting part of the news is that this is clearly a real update and not a facelift, as Sony has completely redesigned the body, controls, and basic UX of the older RX model to conform to their current Alpha mirrorless standard. Ironically, that makes the RX10V look less modern in style than the RX10IV it replaces.
You could almost think of the new RX10V as an A7 with a fixed lens (still 24-600mm equivalent).
Ah, you noticed the “equivalent,” which explains the “almost.”
Yes, the RX10V is still using the 20mp 1” image sensor from before, though it seems to have some new video capabilities). That smaller sensor size is what actually allows the “reasonably sized” superzoom f/2.8-4 lens that sits up front. However, alongside the image sensor now sits dual BIONZ ZR processor and a new AI chip. I always liked the RX10V except for one thing: it was a bit ponderous in focus and other performance. It appears Sony thought the same thing, as the new smarts inside the camera look to address focus in a big way, while adding additional features the original didn’t have. 30 fps raw (but no pre-capture) is one new bit some will like (assuming all 30 frames are in focus ;~).
Other new features are a full subject detection system, the ability to do 4K/60 and 120P (the latter with a crop), a USB-C port instead of micro-USB, and use of the 2x larger capacity FZ100 battery from the Alpha series.
Could the RX10V take over as the all-around camera some really hope for? No lenses to switch between, no particular type of scene that can’t be captured, whether wide landscape or small bird. Sounds good. However, along with the physical changes comes a significant pricing change. The MSRP for the RX10V update is US$2299. While nine years actually makes that look like an inflation adjustment, the new price also puts the RX10V into a price range for bigger sensor cameras that can use your existing lenses.
Now that we have the RX10V superzoom update, can we get a Nikon Coolpix P950 refresh, please? Sony has that new L910 Lytia image sensor that seems like it or something close to it would slot in pretty easily (50mp, 1/1.28, quad Bayer, LOFIC triple conversion gain HDR, etc.). Bring an EXPEED7 to the party, and it seems like that would create a pretty remarkable superzoom camera.
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First Impression
The Fujifilm GFX100RF
I held off on adding this medium format compact camera to the gear closet, but enough of you have asked questions about it and I am in the midst of trying to make my compact camera coverage on the upcoming byThom redesign more robust (I’ll also be adding Olympus Tough6, Ricoh GRIV, and bringing back some key older model reviews).
So I put in the order for a panda version—the all-black version simply looks too much like a large blob of black, bigger than even my Nikon ZR to put that into perspective—and it’s arrived at the office and into my go bag.
I’d already handled and briefly used this medium format compact camera at WPPI, so I had some idea of what to expect, and thus my initial impressions aren’t just a once-over-out-of-the-box reaction. The big impression? It’s big and heavy for a compact camera. It’s not exactly pocketable, particularly with the lens hood on, so it’s a neck-hanger or a small-bagger.
For it’s price, it suprisingly seems a little less high quality than the Fujifilm X100VI. The dials seem a little more flimsy and have a plastic feel to them, the hot shoe cover already keeps trying to work its way loose, and the rigid viewfinder eye piece is out of place at this level of camera. Fujifilm’s choice of grip cover feels slippery to me, even when dry. The EVF is grainier in low light than my Nikon Z50II, which was unexpected. Curiously, Fujifilm didn’t scale their already small buttons for this far bigger camera. That said, the build standard on the GRX100RF is otherwise on the high side, and the camera looks very nice in the panda stripping style.
First images were as expected: the 102mp medium format image sensor produces raw files that are a joy to convert, and if you’re a JPEG fan you’ve got all of Fujifilm’s film simulations in forms that’ll play well for almost any intended JPEG use, though why you need 102mp JPEGs I’m not entirely sure. With so many pixels at hand, the promotion of an aspect ratio dial (it goes to 17:6, which is panorama-like) was a smart choice by Fujifilm, and I have enjoyed playing with what I can do with that already.
One thing I don’t like is that in raw, the camera always shows and records 4:3. If you set RAW+JPEG, the aspect ratio dial comes into play and the viewfinder shows you what the JPEG will capture, but you lose what’s happening outside that area (i.e. what your raw will record). Someone punted on doing the right thing (crop marks when RAW+JPEG is set, actual crop when JPEG is set, 4:3 when RAW is set). A reader had the solution, which is not completely intuitive: SETUP > SCREEN SET UP > SURROUND VIEW > LINE.
My primary initial reaction is this: the 40mp Fujifilm X100VI is in many ways the same notion, a high-quality, high-pixel-count compact camera with a good lens up front. The difference? Size and price (and 62mp). So my first thought is that you really need to have a reason for >40mp in a “compact” camera to justify the GFX100RF, otherwise you can save one heck of a lot of Benjamins by just picking up the X100VI, and your jacket pocket will thank you.
But I need to take the GFX100RF out for a full ride and see if there’s something I’m missing. I do like the files it creates, after all. My full review will appear when the new site design shows up late this summer or early fall.
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First Impression
TTArtisans 50mm f/1.8 Neo
At US$90 I wondered what shortcuts were made. Well, now I know. What looks like a focus ring is just knurled plastic that doesn’t rotate. In Nikon parlance, instead of being an AF/M lens, it’s an AF lens with no control ring. At least that makes putting the lens on and taking it off the camera simple, as nothing turns under your fingers as you rotate the lens. While the optics seem fine for a budget lens, the materials used do seem a little more plastic than usual.
Oh, and another interesting bit: the USB port for updating the lens is on the rear lens cap, not the lens. So the method of firmware update is: (a) make sure the rear lens cap is on the lens and properly positioned (the contacts only engage correctly if the USB port aligns with the white mark on the lens; (b) connect to your computer via a USB cable; (c) perform the update. Oh, and at the moment TTArtisan only seems to release their firmware updates for Windows computers.
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News
102mp Video Gets a Wide Lens
Fujifilm announced the 19-35mm t/3.5 PZ OIS WR lens, the second cinema lens for the GFX series cameras. When the headline says “wide”, it means wide: this new lens is equivalent to a full frame 15-28mm, so not exactly for everyone.
As usual for true cinema lenses, the branding on this new offering is Fujinon, and it clearly seems designed to show up on a lot of GFX Eterna 55 cameras. While the PZ indicates power zoom, all the rings have the usual video gearing on them, and feature long throws for precise positioning. Of course, at US$5500 (and another US$16500 for an Externa to mount it on), getting all the specialness Fujifilm claims for this lens isn’t for everyone.
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Reminder
Thom Live Online Has Returned
At the end of this month, my teaching partner Mark Comon and I will have two free online presentations (presentations will be recorded for those of you who can’t make it to the actual session, but you have to sign up to get the recording). The first, on July 28th, is all about the Nikon ZR as a still photography camera. Discover what Nikon never promoted (that the ZR is a very good still camera, but needs attention to how you set it up for that). The second, on July 29th, deals with our just-completed photo workshop in Botswana. It was a very different year in Botswana, with the primary park completely closed to tourism due to the high water levels caused by this season’s record rains. I’ll be talking about how water defines and refreshes the Okavango, and Mark will be talking about how adventure travel is sometimes actually adventure. But don’t worry. Animals were not harmed in the massive flood, they just moved out of the way, which introduced plenty of new opportunities for those that accompanied us on this trip. Meanwhile, I'll tell you the full story about how water shapes the experience in the Okavango. Most people think you just go for the lions and other predators. But do you know the reason why those predators are actually there in the first place? Turns out that elephant poop, papyrus, where hippos walk, and a host of other odd things all play key roles in defining why the Okavango is one of the best wildlife viewing areas in the world. I promise there will be no pop quiz at the end, but you’ll still probably want to retain the information I present.
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News and Comment
FCC Continues DJI Downdraft
The FCC this week went after the DJI workarounds, companies that popped up in the US with DJI clones or near clones based upon DJI technologies. Eight companies, including Xtra and SZ Knowact (Skyrover) that are the most visible “offenders,” were fined US$25,000 each for failure to respond to radio market registration requests. Additional action is an implicit threat in the fines, as they have only until July 20th to respond, at which point it is assumed that the FCC would take further action.
At the core of the FCC’s complaint are DJI's radio transmitters, which are currently blocked from being imported (due to guessed at security risks), while the company that provided the test certification for them is in the process of being disqualified as an accredited certification lab because it is partly owned by the Chinese government.
The US government hasn’t actually proven a security risk in the FCCs recent actions, it’s just assuming their might be one due to the China connection. There’s been a recent overarching US policy of denying technologies where China may be getting technology leads (batteries, solar panels, drones, electric vehicles, and so on). This is brain dead thinking, and almost guarantees that the US will fall behind in critical technologies as it tries to wall off advances by others. It also guarantees that you’ll pay more for those things than people do in other countries.
If there’s a real security risk in any of these technologies, identify it and close it. Sticking the US’s head in the sand thinking that paper bans removes risk is not the correct call. It doesn’t remove risk (other than from being visible, because your head is in the sand, after all). It doesn’t help make anything more secure. It sets up political corruption grabs that will cost you money in the long run. It’s just wrong policy, and will produce real consequences in the future.
Meanwhile, this is also a continuation of the present administration’s “look like we’re doing something” strategies. Looking like you’re doing something is not the same as doing something. I’ll remind people that Congress passed a law directing the government to direct an audit of DJI’s drones, which it never did. Instead, it simply let a deadline pass and then imposed a paper ban based upon their own inaction. Yep, it looks like they’re doing something. Nope, they’re not really doing anything (existing drones in the US aren’t banned, so if there was a real security risk, it’s still there).
I’ll put it bluntly: some of the best innovation in camera design is now coming out of China. Because that relies upon communication (radio waves) to mobile devices, it’s now possible US citizens will not see the next great future camera. This is the way empires die: they try to wall themselves off from competition.
Adobe Lightroom, Third and Final Round
My Lightroom comments continue to get a lot of attention, so we’ll continue the conversation one last time.
First up, I want to point out that my dilemma isn’t that Lightroom doesn’t have a lot of features or performance. It’s soley my observation that I’m not sure that Adobe is doing enough to both satisfy existing users and attract new ones for me to continue to recommend it as the go-to choice.
This centers on something I write about a lot: what user problem is being solved? For Lightroom, that originally was the late Jeff Schewe’s observation that now that serious photographers where taking many more photos, we needed a place to put them, organize them, and process them (when necessary). Lightroom’s genious was that it treated your ingested images as components in a database, but designed the database to operate in ways that would directly solve photographers’ key needs. The database itself was well hidden from the Lightroom user, but the benefits of the data-driven approach were externalized in a UI that was (mostly) what a photographer might want to use.
The problem with the database approach is two-fold now. For someone new to collecting, maintaining, and processing photographs, Lightroom Classic's a bit much. For someone who’s been using it for a long period of time the size and complexity of the underlying data is starting to feel slow or cumbersome, and deep dives into your material get more difficult if you didn’t get it 100% organized the first time around. That last bit is where some AI-based browser/catalogs are starting to look faster, more modern, and direct.
I’ll give a personal example of how things can start to not work right with Lightroom. When I needed some photos of Chas Glazer for my recent article on his death, I knew immediately where to look for them and just pointed Photo Mechanic at the appropriate folders. A quick scroll and I found what I wanted. Had I been using Lightroom, finding those images of Chas would have more dependent upon me having entered the right keywords and doing the right organization within Lightroom for the database-driven filters to find them quickly. My observation is that not many Lightroom Classic users have been doing enough keywording and organization to quickly pull up exactly what they need, and some of that has to do with the way the program has grown coupled with the way the UI is scattered.
Lightroom Classic as it stands today is a very good program, but it’s starting to rely too much on the user solving their own problems, and not enough on the program solving the user problems. Frankly, I believe it’s due for a fairly strong overhaul if it’s going to remain the go-to choice for serious photographers. Which is why I asked the question of my readership.
It seems that quite a few of you agree with me that we’ve sort of come to a crossroad with Lightroom Classic, and some of you are clearly taking a different route now. At the same time, a large group of you are fine, but would just like a few refinements here and there.
For now, I’m leaving my recommendation intact. But, as always, I’ll continue to examine what’s available and try to make rational and justified recommendations as we move forward.
Meanwhile, here’s some additional followup to your comments:
“I now use DxO PhotoLab.”
Of all the folk that left Lightroom Classic (or are in the middle of leaving it), this was the number one destination. I tend to concur. While PhotoLab has some limits and needs a bit more polish, it’s a really solid product now, and produces consistent, excellent results.
“I’m using DxO PhotoLab for processing, but still use the Lightroom catalog.”
This brings up an interesting point. As imaging software has gotten better, I’ve found that my processing of an image taken five or more years ago is improved if I just start over. So having Lightroom Classic remember all my choices really isn’t all that useful as time elapses and we process differently. The interesting thing is that if you stop paying for Lightroom Classic, the catalog still works. So if you’re really just leaning on Lightroom for cataloging, paying the monthly tithe isn’t buying you much.
I think I’m going to have to do a video on this for the upcoming byThom MAX to show you what I mean, and how much you can rely upon an expired subscription version of Lightroom Classic. But that’s for future Thom to deal with, right now current Thom is writing this.
“Another lock-in might be profiles.”
For a few users that have been using things like the Lumariver Profile Designer, yes, I can see that. I’d generally say, though, that if you’re running other profiling with Lightroom Classic, that’s a bit of a failure on Adobe’s part. As I wrote recently about color, Adobe’s own color models aren’t optimal for a Nikon user (and maybe not for other brands, too, though I’ve stopped trying to evaluate that). I’ve been harping on that for over a decade. Many of you don’t remember that Nikon had a plug-in for Photoshop which did the demosaic for NEF files early in the digital era, and we got used to Photoshop results matching camera results. Then the “breakup” occurred with D2x, and Adobe went their own way.
“Sidecars are a problem.”
Yes and no. There’s no clear win on this issue. If you want reversable changes to a file, then data has to be saved in addition to the results. If you save data in the file, this starts to make the file potentially incompatible with other products, as they may not see/use that data. If you save the data outside the file in a sidecar, then you have the problem that the original file and sidecar need to be kept together. The good news here is that .XMP data is now a recognized standard, so perhaps we’ll see better solutions moving forward as more programs learn to use it within a file, and more operating systems learn that they have to manage a pair of files together.
“If you keep running Lightroom Classic on the same computer for a decade, it will get slower. OS upgrades demand more resources, you have more files than you did with the slower drives you probably have, and so on.”
Absolutely. The notion that you just buy a computer and use it forever is a false hope. At least if you’re doing more than just Web browsing, email, and other casual uses (which can be done perfectly well on a phone or tablet these days, so I’m not sure why you’re holding onto a computer forever).
For Mac users, the M1 chips and reliance on SSD changed things. There’s a real line in the sand that happened around 2019, and if you’re on the wrong side of that line, that the “things are getting slower” problem isn’t solely due to Lightroom Classic, it’s a foundational issue you’re facing. Double that if you’re still relying upon hard drives and anything slower than Thunderbolt for external drives. On the Windows side, it isn’t so clear, but I’ve felt that the Wintel platform has been long-in-the-tooth and not keeping up for some time now.
Security concerns alone—if your computer connects to the Internet then you have security concerns—are starting to force hardware upgrades, as well, as neither Apple nor Microsoft can really afford to keep everything they’ve ever made secure forever. The question I get asked a lot is “how long will my new computer be good for?” The answer is forked: (a) if you’re a casual user not pushing performance boundaries of any kind and bought enough computer to start with, then probably right until your manufacturer no longer supports it with security updates (for Apple that tends to be about seven to ten years); and (b) if you need top-level performance, then you should be upgrading every other generation, which tends to be about every two or three years. So that’s the range: two to ten years, and no more.
The good news is that typically when you update your computer, you’ll get a bit of performance back, even if your Lightroom catalog has grown mammoth. On the Mac side, that’s mostly been due to faster memory and SSD with each generation.
“Picture Window Pro is still available.”
Hmm, yes Picture Window Pro is still available. Jonathan Sachs, the author, was one of the co-founders of Lotus and helped create Lotus 1-2-3, a seminal Windows spreadsheet. While it appears that Jonathan is still maintaining the program, the UI is still very 1990’s (if I recall correctly, Jonathan started his digital photography exploration about the same time as I did in the late 80’s). Nothing overly wrong with that, though this Windows-only program will immediately conjure up visions of Windows 95 when you use it.
“You avoided any discussion of Lightroom (cloud) versus Lightroom Classic.”
I was hoping you wouldn’t notice ;~).
Adobe, like all the big tech players, wants to “own you.” Getting you de-centralized—your images stored on the company’s servers, not your computer—is a common technique to do that. I’m not a fan. Some things, yes, belong on centralized servers, but generally not personal data. The supposed benefit for photographers is that all your photos can be shared by all your devices. Almost all the big players here (Apple, Google, Microsoft) neglect to tell you that you can do the same thing locally with a NAS (network attached storage). A NAS does take a bit of geekdom to set up properly for that, so the cloud companies would also say they’re selling your convenience when you lock into their centralized solution.
I don’t really see Adobe being one of the big players in cloud storage. I don’t think they have the size or the user base to be a winner in that category, though they can certainly build a niche offering that might be profitable for them. Lightroom (not Lightroom Classic) was an attempt to bring the local image handling capabilities to the cloud realm, and across all your devices (phone, tablet, computer). It sort of works, though with a few dissonances to the Classic product that might trip you up.
I think that Adobe was looking more to the so-called creators as opposed to photographers when Lightroom and the cloud aspects were being fleshed out. But now that Apple is building out their own Creative Suite, I’ve found it simpler and easier to work with that for the role I think Adobe was trying to fill.
But in general, I kept my discussion centered on Lightroom Classic, because that is what most of my readers have been using and are (sometimes) complaining about.
“Adobe telegraphed the future years ago when they named it Lightroom Classic instead of Desktop. It’s a legacy product from their point of view.”
True that. However it’s a cash cow that’s not being properly milked. Nor is Adobe seemingly trying to grow the herd. A strange metaphor, to be sure, but this is almost exactly my point: Adobe could do better. If they don’t, I can’t see anything other than a slow demise to Lightroom Classic’s user base as more modern and better solutions appear.
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And with that, I’m going to put a stake in the ground and say that we’ve surveyed the property thoroughly, and this is where we land. Not that I won’t again cover Adobe or its products in the future. It’s that I’ve resolved for the moment to continue recommending Lightroom Classic. If I change my mind on that, I’ll pull up the stake and we’ll do another survey…
FWIW, this was one of the pending things I needed to work through as I rewrite my Web site, so thanks for the help. As I’ve noted before, I’m going through everything on byThom (other than the news) and rewriting it. I want the new site when it appears to be current, even better considered and written than before, and accurate to my thoughts today, not yesterday.