Big Mike's Digital Photography Blog

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I set the contrast on the Canon G9 to -2, but it’s still blowing out highlights. And it was cloudy when I took the photo; I thought cloudy days meant low contrast. Does anyone with a G9 know how to avoid blowing out highlights?

Why "full frame" DSLRs will always be very expensive

I put “full frame” in quotes because I think it’s a dumb term, but nevertheless it’s the standard term for a camera that contains a 35mm-film-sized imaging sensor within a system that’s backwards compatible with old 35mm lenses. The term implies that the size of 35mm film systems was based on some Natural Law and that any size less than that is somehow missing something vitally important. But in fact, it’s just an arbitrary size dating back to 1920s, at which time it was considered a novelty because the quality of film in the 1920s was extremely poor compared to modern times, and 35mm was just too small to get decent picture quality. It wasn’t until the 1960s that film finally became good enough such that 35mm was able to replace medium format as the most common film size.

By the 1990s, medium format was extremely rare, and medium format cameras were much more expensive than 35mm cameras. But the price disparity was caused not so much because bigger cameras were that much more expensive to manufacture, but because medium format became a niche product used only by serious photographers, and serious photographers are willing to pay a lot of money for their equipment. Even today, a Hasselblad medium format kit sells for $5,000. That’s a lot of money for a film camera!

So we see, with professional quality film cameras costing so much money, why do we expect professional quality digital cameras to sell for less than $5,000? Full frame is the medium format of the digital age, and as such it will sell for very high prices compared to smaller format cameras. The full frame Canon 1Ds Mark III sells for $8,000 (when it’s even in stock), and the new full frame Nikon D3 sells for $5,000.

Although it seems obvious to me that full frame will forever remain an expensive niche product, for some strange reason there is a chorus of misinformed internet forum posters who think that cheap full frame cameras are the Holy Grail of digital photography, and that the $1,000 full frame camera is just around the corner. (This is unlikely because the full frame sensor just by itself probably costs $1,000, and because Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to digital camera sensors the way it applies to normal computer chips, the price for large sensors will stay high for many years.)

But doesn’t the Canon 5D sell for the low price of only $2,100? My take on this is that back when Canon originally developed this camera, the marketing department bought into the idea that smaller sensor DSLRs were just a stepping stone to the day when full frame DSLRs would be affordable. They probably changed their minds on that. It’s probably selling for such a low price because of inertia—it no longer costs that much to manufacture, so they are just following standard procedure in lowering the price as the product nears the end of its cycle. But this is a bad marketing strategy for Canon, because the low price of the 5D is cannibalizing sales from its more expensive 1Ds. If Canon does ever introduce a replacement camera for the 5D, my prediction is that it will sell for $4,000, thus frustrating the hopes of those who are expecting cheap full frame DSLRs.

Counter-intuitively, now that Nikon has a full frame camera on the market, there is less incentive for Canon to try to introduce lower-priced full frame cameras. When Canon had the only full frame cameras, they were stealing customers from Nikon. But now that Nikon has a full frame camera also, the last thing that Canon wants is a full frame price war, which lowers profits for both Canon and Nikon. The thing to remember about the DSLR market is that it’s an oligopoly, and oligopolistic companies seldom compete against each other on price. Furthermore, a less expensive full frame DSLR cannibalizes sales from Canon's own much higher priced 1Ds Mark III, so it's possible that Canon may never release a replacement for the 5D.

Snowy City

The ultimate test of the Canon G9 will be when a shoot a brick building on Central Park West, side by side with my other cameras, so the results can be compared. But today the weather was not right for doing that sort of comparison.

First photo with Canon G9

My first photo taken with the Canon G9. I already notice that the camera is overexposing and clipping highlights. I guess I need to experiment with the contrast setting, and maybe turn the exposure down by -0.3 EV.

Every camera seems to clip highlights at the default settings. Someone in marketing must have determined that the consumer likes it that way.

The end of Polaroids

Looks like I’m two weeks late writing about this, but Polaroid is exiting the film business.

I am now feeling like more of an old man than ever. One day I will drop the name “Polaroid” in a conversation with some kid, and the kid will look at me with incomprehension that way I’d look at my grandfather if he mentioned a “Victrola.”

Polaroid is trying to get into personal photo printing, but I think this is a doomed business. The article quotes Ron Glaz, director of digital imaging program at IDC Corp:

Glaz added that sales of home photo printers have slowed in recent years. He said today's consumers prefer to look at photos on their computer screens, and are more likely to say, "E-mail that to me, rather than give me a hard copy."

Glaz is right. When I first discovered digital photography, it seemed like it wasn’t a “real” photo unless there was a hardcopy. But now, I just enjoy looking at the photos on the computer screen, and it has been about three years since I last printed a photo on paper.

Canon G9 compared to DSLR

The Canon G9 has arrived!

In my first post about the G9, I compare it to my Olympus E-500 DSLR:

This comparison shot demonstrates the primary reason why one would prefer the G9 to a DSLR. The G9 is easy to take with you; the DSLR is big and bulky.

From the top, the G9 has a retro rangefinder look to it. There’s even an ISO dial where the film speed dial used to be on old 35mm cameras!

I already have two complaints about the G9. The first is that it’s hard to hold. There’s no natural place to grip it. Even the cheap Sony P200 (unseen here because it was use to take the photo) has more handholding space.

The second complaint is that the package includes a neck strap, but no wrist strap. If I wanted a camera to wear around my neck, why not just go with the DSLR? I think a wrist strap would be more useful. I partially remedied the problem by utilizing the wrist strap from the P200, but this is an unsatisfactory solution because the Sony wrist strap is gray, and G9 is a black camera. The result is aesthetically unpleasing. A big demerit point to Canon for not including a black wrist strap.

SD card yes. Camera no

The 2GB SD card I ordered with my Canon G9 arrived today, but the camera is still in transit. Too bad that didn't work out the other way around, I could have still used the camera with the included 32 MB SD card.

The SD card is some brand I never heard of called "ACP-EP." It was the cheapest high speed SD card sold by PCNation. It claims to be "150X." Wow, that's a lot of X.

UPDATE

This cheap SD card is slightly thicker than my other name brand SD card, and consequently doesn't smoothly eject from the Canon G9 the way it's supposed to. Otherwise, the card seems to work OK, and once I figured out how to give the SD card a little nudge with my thumb nail, it's not really that difficult to get out of the camera.

Still, this proves the axiom "buy cheap get cheap," and in the future I will pay extra money for name brand cards like Lexar or Sandisk and I will stop being a cheapskate.

I was ripped off!

The price of the Canon G9 camera dropped by $10 since I ordered it yesterday. I've been ripped off!

Jamie Livingston's Polaroids

An “artist” and “cinematographer” named Jamie Livingston, who died in 1997 at the age of 41, left behind a collection of Polaroid photos, taken one-a-day, over an eighteen-year period. You can read more about it here. And the collection of Polaroids have been scanned and can be viewed online.

I never heard of the guy before, but apparently some people think he’s important enough to consider his Polaroid collection significant.

At online digital camera forums, people obsess over each camera’s resolution, dynamic range, and high ISO capabilities, but here we see people getting all excited over a bunch of low resolution blurry photos with extremely bad color quality. This demonstrates that it's more important to have a creative buzz about you than it is to have a big expensive camera.

The photo pictured above was taken April 27, 1988, and it looks like some blurry people at Shea Stadium.

Hat tip: The Online Photographer.

Just ordered a Canon G9

I just ordered a new digital camera. A Canon Powershot G9.

Why do I need another camera? Don’t I already own two? (A Sony P200 and an Olympus E-500 DSLR with an assortment of premium lenses).

Well, although I love a good photo, it turns out that I hate carrying a big SLR around, so I wind up using the Sony P200 a lot more often than the Olympus E-500. Yet, the P200 has a lot of flaws. I carefully compared sample pictures found at camera review sites (such as dpreview), and I see that the G9 definitely has superior image quality to the P200. It’s not just about having an extra 5 megapixels, but the P200 photos just have a sort of haziness about them, especially in the corners. Despite the P200 having a “Carl Zeiss” lens, I just don’t think the lens is all that great.

Furthermore, the G9 has an image stabilized lens, which means it can be hand held at lower shutter speeds. Also, the lens zooms out to the equivalent of 210mm. That’s twice the telephoto range of the P200. There is also stuff like aperture priority mode, and raw capture (which may or may not be worth the effort).

The question is, is the G9, which I just spent about $450 for, worth the price over a camera like the Panasonic TZ3 which Amazon.com is practically giving away for free? One can argue that the G9 is overpriced, but I just couldn’t resist it, given the buzz that the G9 has on the internet. The G9 is acclaimed as the ultimate small camera for people who don’t want to carry around a DSLR. One reviewer says that the G9 is better than a $5,500 Leica M8, and that it makes “medium format” quality prints. Wow!

(Phil Dunn doesn’t like it because he says there’s too much shutter lag and the optical viewfinder is “all but useless.” But who cares when the G9 takes fabulous pictures like the ones posted with Bill Lockhart’s review?)

* * *

It should be pointed out that the G9 has a 1/1.7” sensor, which is approximately 90% larger than the 1/2.35” sensor found in the TZ3. That’s a pretty big difference, almost as big as the difference between a “full frame” DSLR such as the Canon 5D and an APS-C DSLR such as the Canon 40D.