Feb 2011: elf's Canon 50D Journal

You can now visit many famous art museums around the world and look at the paintings in extreme detail. (Flash required unfortunately.)

It is important for photographers to study art because the masters have a lot to teach us about composition and lighting.

From Friday Foto

A student project displayed in the window of the School of Interior Design at Ryerson. Some Photoshopping involved.

From Pfoto 2011

This was one of the promotional photographs I took for this research lab. There was about 10 minutes of set-up for this photograph as the desks and chairs had to be re-arranged and brought closer so everyone could fit in a 2-image pano. There is also a light behind and to the left of my position (note the presenter's shadow).

Final specs announced for the retro Fuji X100 priced at $1200 (Vistek).

I like the hybrid viewfinder. I haven't seen any sample photos yet but the price would indicate (based on my Price/ISO Rule) usable photos up to ISO 1000.

Update Thu 10 Feb 2011 05:47:53 PM: I don't know if it has exposure lock, allowing you to meter a different part of the scene than then the center of the lens.

An interview with my favourite cinematographer, Roger Deakins, who started out as a photographer and currently shoots Leica (he has a both a film and a digital model).

I was surprised to read about his belief in luck.

From Friday Foto

One of my Mom's roses photographed indoors. I used my green sweater to camouflage the parquet floor in the background. This is not the true colour of the rose; it is actually a dark blood-red. This colour, however, is more exciting.

I stumbled upon cinematographer Gregg Toland's entry in the Wikipedia from a link in the article for The Maltese Falcon. It has details on his cinematic contributions to Citizen Kane— instead of using shallow depth of field to separate background from foreground, he used lighting, shadows and deep focus (shooting at f/8 and f/16).

CNET Asia has a review and sample images (I'm not impressed) of the X100.

Enticing The Light has some commentary about the camera— it seems Fuji is testing the waters with a non-interchangeable lens on the X100 and might come out with a model with interchangeable lenses if the X100 is successful. I agree with the commentator that this is a bad idea; it should have been an interchangeable system from the start, giving a larger user-base.

Official Fuji X100 samples. Those first three photos of flowers look like they're lit with softboxes.

It's BIGGER than I imagined.

Update Sun 13 Feb 2011 08:37:42 PM EST I've decided not to buy it. I want something smaller.

Mon 14 Feb 2011 01:54:26 PM EST: After watching the Fuji Guys video, I'm having second thoughts. It doesn't look that big.

Thu 17 Feb 2011 02:00:33 PM EST A Spanish site (translated) got their hands on a preproduction model and has sample pics (including high-ISO and RAW). Unfortunately, the two high-ISO photos I checked (deli counter and strawberries) were taken with flash (WTF?!). Mon 21 Feb 2011 09:07:42 PM EST photos taken down at Fuji's request.

Fri 18 Feb 2011 12:34:49 PM EST Some commentary and rationale about the X100 by Thomas Pindelski.

From Friday Foto

These flowers were photographed after a slight drizzle on an overcast day. Only later did I notice that my white-balance was incorrectly set ("Sunny day" instead of "Cloudy"). I liked the result so I didn't fix it.

Fri 18 Feb 2011 06:43:04 PM EST The stamens of the flower and the three water droplets were isolated and sharpened in Photoshop Elements. I also spot-healed a few blemishes on the petals.

I found Thomas Pindelski's photo blog while scouring the net for more X100 information. I like his style.

A couple more site with "web" samples of X100 photos...

Here (Korean) are some high-ISO and long exposure photos taken with the X100.

This photographer got a pre-production x100 and posted some photos and videos.

The amount of interest in this camera is just crazy. When every other entry in this Canon blog is about a Fuji camera means that Canon better come out with a competitor very soon or they will lose a lot of customers (including me— I held-off buying an S90 and an S95 because it's the same camera as my 2002 S30 with some enhanced features).

So far I like what I see from the Fuji X100 and the more I see, the more inclined I am in buying it and jumping off the Canon ship.

DP review has posted pre-production sample photos taken with the Fuji X100.

The ISO3200 photograph of the County Hall with the colourful pillars has sensor banding in the sky and is a bit soft, but it should look pretty good with some noise-reduction and sharpening.

From Friday Foto

Heavily cropped photo taken with the 24mm f/1.4L. I was surprised at the sharpness of bee's wings because I was (obviously) a few feet away when I took the photograph with a wide-angle lens.

Last Thursday, on Steve Jobs' birthday, Apple refreshed the line of Macbook Pro laptops with core i3 and core i7 (quad core) CPUs, AMD (ATI) video cards and Intel LightPeak (renamed Thunderbolt) 10Gbps connectors.

I am in the market for a new computer (laptop) to replace my Powerbook G4 from 2005 which still works fine. It would be nice to have a faster computer as loading the 3-5MB photos from the 50D is a bit slow. If I was shooting RAW, loading those photos would be painful, though bearable.

I am not that eager to purchase a new MBP at this moment because when the iPhone 5 is released in June (and possibly the iPad 3 in the fall), it will have NFC capbilities which will likely integrate with the desktop computers. NFC support might appear first in the iMac refresh this Fall. This model MBP first appeared in 2008 and will likely be remodeled/refreshed (based on rumours) in 2012 and it will likely also have NFC support.

I imagine NFC would allow for a wireless sync between the iDevice and the desktop in addition to "stateful" functionality where the iDevice would carry the state of your apps and you could continue working on the desktop when you placed your iDevice near the computer.

I might buy a Macbook Air instead as it is comparitively inexpensive and would carry me over until the next generation MBPs arrived.