Wednesday 24 August 2011

Comment on new Sony NEX-7

Just read the news from dpreview that Sony will be launching NEX-7. The outlook is combination of retro, like Fujifilm X100 and modern style. I think this is a killer camera ... and seriously the on paper specification is really stunning. Some of the strength of the camera that i think will give much pressure to Panasonic and Olympus are:


  1. 24Mega pixels APS-C sensor, I guess dynamic range and noise will be improved tremendously.
  2. Built in 2.4M Electronic View Finder (EVF). Currently, the highest resolution EVF is belong to Panasonic Lumix GH2, which is around 1.5M dots. The quality is a big leap over other competitor.
  3. In-camera photo correction. Previous lenses problem, i.e. chromatic abberation and distortion, can be corrected in the camera.
  4. built in flash which is not seen in the previous NEX system.
  5. all the good things come under one "compact" size camera which is around 300grams.

with the above features, i think the NEX-7 will really bring a lot of impact to the growing Mirrorless Interchangeable Lenses (MIL) system camera and of course it's in my wish list, BUT i think it's not gonna cheap ....

LUMIX G VARIO 14-42mm macro shooting at "Marina at Keppel Bay"

A relax holiday today, my girlfriend and I went to Marina @ keppel Bay for some photo shooting. I equipped the camera with LUMIX G VARIO 14-42mm  as i worried that the manual lenses will miss many photos for my gf ...



I posted here with some macro shooting, the background blur effect is not bad to my standard, I do not have any problem in focusing and exposure. My nice chicken drumstick is shown below, basically i do not have anything to complain.


(23mm, 1/25, ISO-800, F/4.4, center weighted average, 0EV)



I quite like the bokeh effect and the natural middle white color portion in the sky to bring out the flower, after i seen the photo, i think i should have bend down the camera further so that the flower can take the full advantage of the white color background. The magnification of this lenses is 0.16x / 0.32x (35mm camera equivalent), is this the reason that make the photo less sharp for the subject? this is the only question that i have ... , else the photo can be better. (I did a mild color saturation, exposure editting on the photo)


(14mm, 1/100sec, ISO-400, F/3.5, center weighted average, +0.7EV)

Sunday 21 August 2011

First test-Canon FD 50mm F1.4

First test of the Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses and Lumix G1 happened in National University of Singapore (NUS). I do not have any experience in using manual focus lenses, i found it difficult to do focusing as sometimes i found already focus BUT after uploading to computer, it's actually not focused... below are the 3 photo i taken in NUS.


1st photo taken, seems the focusing and exposure is not that accurate, still trying to improve my manual focus skill.

ISO-100, 1/80sec

I like the 3D effect, with different layers in the branches in the photo below.

ISO-250, 1/60sec


This shot is taken to test the bokeh effect of the lenses, this lenses produce a satisfying background blur effect.



ISO-250, 1/80sec

Friday 19 August 2011

Mirrorless Interchangeable Lenses (MIL) Camera Market Data

Not too long ago, I read some marketing data from IDC shows that Mirrorless Interchangeable Lenses (MIL) camera shipments from 2008 to 2010 has been growing and IDC also projects that DSLR market will be eroded by MIL market from 2011 to 2014. According to IDC, MIL shipments in 2009, 2010, and 2011 are expected to be 449K units, 1.53mn units and 5.40mn units respectively. With the strong momentum to switch to MIL, it is also optimistic that MIL is to surpass DSLR in 2013. 


this is an interesting information, as Panasonic Lumix and Olympus Pen system camera are the market leader in Mirrorless Interchangeable Lenses (MIL) market. Let's see whether they will dominate in interesting MIL market.

Thursday 18 August 2011

An Introduction to Micro Four Third (MFT, M43) Camera

To give a quick introduction of the Micro Four Thirds System camera, I extracted one of my academic report for MFT as following:
The Micro Four Thirds System Specification (MFT Specification) is an extension of the Four Thirds System Specification for interchangeable-lens type digital camera systems and has been established as a means to enhance the potential for size and weight reduction of the current Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) System. Currently, Olympus and Panasonic are the 2 companies to produce this Mirrorless Interchangeable Lenses (MIL) camera.

It inherits the benefits of the Four-Thirds type image sensor device, i.e. Olympus E-System DSLR and Panasonic DSLR L-series, such as the optimum balance between size reduction and high picture quality, and is intended to deal with expected future needs such as further size and weight reduction of camera systems, increased emphasis on Live View shooting, and demand for movie shooting capability.

These requirements have been met by shortening the flange back length by 50% (because of removing the mirror box that only existed in conventional DSLR), adding the signal compacts for improving the speed and stability of signal exchange between the lens and body, and reducing the lens mount diameter to facilitate system size reduction.Compared to Sony NEX system, and Samsung NX system which is using APS-C sensor, even though the body can be designed in very small size, BUT the lenses can't escape from HUGE size .... this is mainly due to the problem of large sensor. From this perspective, M43 camera created a perfect sensor size to match the size and quality of the photo required by the user.

Micro Four Third System Camera Structure
(for more detail, please refer to: http://www.four-thirds.org/en/microft/index.html)

MFT logo:

From "http://www.four-thirds.org/en/microft/logo.html"

I hope the quick introduction i extracted here can help people to appreciate more for the on going popular Micro Four Third (MFT, M43) system camera. The system camera that i owned, Lumix G1, is the first MFT camera created by Panasonic. I am going to post more information regarding to this technology and why is it so important in the system camera era, please follow me !

First MFT camera-Panasonic Lumix G1 and Canon FD 50mm F/1.4

I'm a new learner in photography after affected by few friend of playing of DSLR. After "mixing" with friend, i started to study and learning some basic foundation of camera. Micro four third is the type that I understand very deeply (i guess so...), because i just like it small size n the quality that it can produce.

After a long long search and market study, I made the decision to purchase Panasonic Lumix G1. I bought the camera at a rather cheaper price, around SGD450 with a standard kit lenses as this is a 2nd hand camera. Even though this is an old camera, but I'm still very satisfy with the quality that it produce, it's just fantastic! Beside the camera, I purchase one Canon FD 50mm, F1.4 lenses (SGD150) and FD lenses to MFT adapter(SGD30). I will be sharing more with you guys of my experience with my setup, hope u enjoy it!


My Lumix G1 with 14-42mm lenses

 
Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses and Canon FD to m43 adapter

Both photos are taken by my Lumix LX3, some interesting finding: second photo is taken with Lumix LX3 with metering set to "spot metering" then manual focus on the "CANON LENS FD". This background is blended with mixture of white color fluorescent light on the left and warm color light on the right. I like the focus and spot metering on the "dark" CANON word, the background is hence blended by two different color temperature light source perfectly