Big Mike's Digital Photography Blog

Thoughts on the unnamed Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera

There’s a photo at dpreview. Now that’s a really cool looking camera. I want one!

That downside is that there’s no viewfinder.

I wonder what that pancake lens on the camera is supposed to be? Hopefully it’s fast like the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7.

Thoughts on the Panasonic G1

Finally, someone has produced a new digital camera system with interchangeable lenses but without a reflex mirror. It’s about time! I couldn’t be happier. I believe that this type of camera is the future of digital photography.

I won’t miss phase detection autofocus. As I’ve written before, phase detection autofocus is highly overrated. When you read the messages on DSLR forums, the most common complaint that people have about their DSLRs has to do with focusing problems. Phase detection autofocus requires everything to be calibrated perfectly otherwise the camera misfocuses. The manufacturers seem to have finally wised up—for example, the new Canon 5D Mk II camera features AF micro adjustment for up to 20 lenses. But it would still be a pain adjusting each lens, and there’s no guarantee that would fix all focus problems.

There’s one big reason why I will not be buying a Panasonic G1 right away. The lens is really slow. A major reason for schlepping around a bigger camera is to obtain better low light capability. Let’s suppose that the Panasonic G1 will do ISO 1600 as well as a small sensor camera like the Panasonic FX3 will do ISO 400. This means the G1 is a much better low light camera, right? Well, with a slow f/3.5 to f/5.6 lens, it’s not really a better low light camera. The FX3 has an f/2.0 to f/2.8 lens, so it’s about one and a half stops faster. You’re only getting about a 1/2 EV advantage with the G1.

The G1 will be a much more interesting camera when that f/1.7 20mm “pancake” lens is available. If that lens is affordable, and provides good quality, that might tempt me to buy a G1 just for that lens. Finally an affordable, small, camera with superior low light abilities! (But without zoom.)

The upcoming 7mm-14mm lens also looks interesting because normally extreme wide angle lenses are very expensive. Can Panasonic provide high quality wide angle at a low price and in a smaller size than a DSLR?

Thoughts on the Panasonic LX3

I haven’t checked the camera sites for a few months, and it looks like I missed out on a whole bunch of interesting new camera.

The Panasonic LX3 does look pretty interesting, on account of its f/2.0-f/2.8 24mm-60mm lens. This makes it a lot more interesting for me than the Cannon G10 which I blogged about yesterday.

The LX3 would be a really great companion for my Canon G9. Between those two cameras, I’d be able to cover 24mm to 210mm. The LX3 seems ideal for street photography because of its wide angle and stealth characteristics. I tried doing street photography with my Olympus E-500 and the 11-22mm lens (equivalent to 22-44mm), but the loud shutter noise seemed too obvious to me. One person noticed that I was taking his photo.

The Canon G10 is perhaps the better general purpose camera because most people will find the 60mm maximum focal length on the LX3 rather limiting, but the way I see it, the entire LX3 is less expensive and smaller than a wide angle lens for a DSLR.

The downside of the LX3 is that it doesn’t come with a viewfinder. You have to pay $200 extra for an add-on viewfinder, which seems like a lot of money to spend considering what a short lifespan digital cameras seem to have. The LX3 isn’t like an old Leica that you could buy in 1960 and still use in 1990.

The advertising literature says it does ISO 3200, but that sounds like a joke. I saw an ISO 400 photo on the internet, and I judged it to be usable but barely—not quite as good as the Canon G9 at ISO 400. I also found the G9 to be not usable above ISO 400. However, with the LX3 lens having an aperture of less than f/2.8 and optical image stabilization, the LX3 low light usability isn’t really so far behind a DSLR with a slow kit lens.

Thoughts on the Canon G10

There’s a new Canon G10 camera, so sadly my G9 is no longer the latest and greatest. I doubt I will be buying the new G10, not because it’s not a worthy camera, but because I don’t even use the G9 much anymore. As you can tell by the lack of blog posts, I haven’t been interested in photography these days. This is because I’ve been busy programming a new online dating site, and there’s only so much free time for hobbies.

There seem to be two major differences between the G9 and the G10. The most significant is that the lens, instead of being 35mm to 210mm, is now 28mm to 140mm. People who were clamoring for more wide angle will be happy. There were times when using the G9 that I wished I had more wide angle. On the other hand, I have taken some cool photos at greater than 140mm. This photo was taken at 175mm.

I think the real purpose of changing the lens is to give owners of the G9 some reason to spend money on a G10. If it had the same lens, there wouldn’t be much of a reason to upgrade.

The other notable difference is that the number of megapixels has increased from 12.1 MP to 14.7MP. On internet message forums, there are anti-megapixel types who complain about cameras having too many megapixels and that the extra megapixels,ironically, decrease the image quality. However, in my famous camera comparison, I demonstrated that the 12MP Canon G9 definitely picks up a lot more detail than the an 8MP DSLR with a much bigger sensor. So although this camera definitely has some diffraction issues, as I demonstrated here and here, I am sure that the extra 2.6MP will result in some increased image detail if the new lens is a quality lens. The extra MP probably won’t make the G10 images any noisier than the G9 images, because improvements in noise tend to coincide with improvements in pixel density. Indeed, the G9 has the least noisy ISO 400 of any non-DSLR camera I’ve ever owned, even though it also has more megapixels than any camera I’ve ever owned.

Some minor differences include an extra manual dial on the top of the camera for exposure compensation—I’m not sure if this would make the G10 easier to use because now the ISO dial has moved to what looks like a less convenient spot. Another minor difference is that the G10 uses “Canon’s new DIGIC 4 image processor.” I have no idea what that means for actual photo quality.

Hot girl with Canon G7

A few months ago, I saw a hot girl with a Canon G7. She was wearing it around her neck. (I could identify it as a G7 because of the silver ring around the lens which is missing from the G9.)

Why is this notable? Normally, you expect geeky guys to use Canon G7/G9s and not hot girls.

The Olympus E-520 is here!

Olympus announced the new E-520 DSLR. It looks like nothing more than an E-420 with image stabilization and a bigger battery. So the question is, why wasn’t this announced simultaneously with the E-420? Why do we need an E-420 at all when the E-520 is the same camera except for the two differences noted above? See my previous post about Olympus’ clueless marketing.

I don't see why anyone would buy an E-420 when you can get an E-520 with image stabilization (as well as a bigger battery) for a mere $100 more.

The E-420 and Olympus' clueless marketing

Olympus is lagging far behind Canon and Nikon in DSLR sales, and even Sony has pulled ahead. So what is Olympus’ response? The E-420, a camera without built-in image stabilization, and the option to buy it bundled with an f/2.8 “pancake lens.”

This confirms the fact that Olympus marketing is clueless.

The lack of image stabilization for this new camera is a deal killer. Every Pentax and Sony DSLR now includes built-in image stabilization, and Canon now has a new kit lens with image stabilization that’s bundled with its new Rebel XSi/450D. Even cheap point and shoot cameras come with image stabilization. Olympus is seriously behind the technology curve on this new release. Olympus is not going to catch up to Canon and Nikon unless it has the best technology in its cameras.

Furthermore, why does Olympus think that people want such a slow prime lens? Most unsophisticated photographers desire only zoom lenses. But this doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for prime lenses. At Amazon.com, the second-best selling Olympus lens is the f/2.0 50mm. You would think that Olympus would get the message from the sales data that people want fast prime lenses. Instead, Olympus gives us a slow prime lens that’s only slightly faster at its single focal length than the much more versatile f/2.8-3.5 14-54mm zoom lens which most serious Olympus DSLR owners already own.

The biggest complaint in online forums is that the Olympus DSLRs aren’t as good low-light cameras because their sensors are allegedly too noisy. While Olympus is to be commended for putting a better sensor into the new E-420 camera (it’s said to be on par with the sensor in the much more expensive E-3 camera), Olympus has blown the opportunity to produce what might have been the best low-light small-sensor DSLR kit if the E-420 had image stabilization and if the bundled prime lens were f/2.0 instead of f/2.8.

An f/2.0 kit lens would also have had a serious nostalgia factor going for it. Most older photographers remember owning a film SLR which came bundled with a fast normal prime lens. I had a Minolta manual focus SLR, and for only an extra $60 or so you could get an f/1.7 normal prime lens with it.

What’s even worse is that Olympus concentrated on releasing a new E-4xx camera instead of refreshing its much more popular E-510 camera. The E-510 camera is much in need of refreshing given the low grades its sensor has received for its limited dynamic range compared to the competition. It seems to me that someone at Olympus marketing, peeved that people aren’t buying the E-4xx series, decided to release the E-420 several months ahead of the E-520 in order to prevent the E-420 from being overshadowed by the E-520. I’m pretty sure that if the E-420 and E-520 had been released simultaneously, everyone would be ignoring the E-420 because people highly desire the image stabilization built into the E-520.

A big thumbs down to Olympus for having such clueless marketing.

Some wedding photography statistics and estimates

According to this web page, there are 2.4 million weddings per year in the United States, generating “over 60 billion dollars a year in wedding and ceremony related expenses.”

The same source states that wedding photography averages 6.6% of wedding spending, so wedding photography is a $4 billion industry.

How many wedding photographers are there? Well if two-thirds of the weddings have a professional photographer, and each photographer averages 20 weddings per year, then there are 90,000 wedding photographers. That means there are five times as many wedding photographers as there are actuaries in the U.S.

But how many of these wedding photographers are making six figure incomes? Alas, probably not too many. You need to charge a lot more than $2,000 per wedding to be a six figure wedding photographer. The six-figure wedding photographer needs to charge $8,000 per wedding, and if he clears $6,000 net income per wedding, and shoots only 20 weddings per year, then his income is $120,000 per year.

But there are top wedding photographers who shoot one wedding per week, and have a low paid staff to do the dirty work like photoshopping the pictures and putting albums together. These top guys are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Are amateurs with digital cameras threatening the industry? Not for the top guys. The people who are paying for six-figure weddings will always be willing to spend in excess of $10,000 on photography for the wedding (as long as people continue to believe that photography is a "required" part of a wedding).

Joe Buissink: rich wedding photographer

The story of Joe Buissink is inspiring to anyone who might want to be a wedding photographer. He was in his forties, and in the third year of a Ph.D. program in neuro-psychology when one day he decided he wanted to be a wedding photographer. Maybe he realized that wedding photographers make a lot more money than neuro-psychology professors, yet they need a lot less education?

So there he was, a guy who was a hobbyist photographer who shot landscape photos but had minimal if any experience with portraiture or photojournalism. Nevertheless, he shot two weddings by offering to do the work for free, and then he had a portfolio in which to get paying gigs. Now he gets paid five figures per wedding, and even once shot a $100,000 wedding. Yes, Joe Buissink made more money shooting just a single wedding than the average guy makes working for an entire year.

With regards to the best way to start out, Joe Buissink clearly had the right idea to shoot the weddings for free. A lot of wedding photographers try to start out by offering their services for really low prices, and then all they get to shoot are blue collar weddings with fat brides in cheap-looking low class venues. This is not a good way to build a portfolio that will bring in the high-end clients.

Internet bibliography

February 2003 Rangefinder Magazine article
July 2005 Rangefinder Magazine article
Joe Buissink’s website

Wedding photography, part II

Two days ago, I wrote a post about how wedding photography is easy money. The post picked up a surprisingly large number of comments from angry wedding photographers. Many comments accused me of writing the post only to get “hits” for my blog. Believe me, I had no idea that so many people would find the post—I figured that ten or twenty people would read it and one person or so would leave a comment, like most of my other posts.

What I did learn about wedding photographers is that they are a very defensive bunch, and they have a very inflated sense of their self-worth. I suppose that the defensiveness is the result of the cognitive dissonance caused by the difference between their self-view and the reality.

Brady, the wedding photographer from Rochester New York, was kind enough to fill in the numbers in a comment he left to the previous post.

• His normal large wedding package requires 30-40 hours per work.
• The price for a normal package is $6,000 to $8,0000.
• Brady didn’t say what his profit was per wedding, so here is some guesswork. The normal package includes a medium or large album, two parent albums, and a second photographer. I’ll guess that the blank albums cost $800 (fancy-shmancy wedding stuff is ridiculously overpriced) and that the second photographer gets paid $250 (photographers who don’t own their own wedding photography business get paid crap). It also costs him some money to printout all the photos. $250? This probably leaves Brady with a $5,500 marginal profit for a normal wedding.
• Brady shoots only 20 weddings per year, but he makes so much profit per wedding that he still has an estimated gross income (that’s revenue minus cost of goods sold) of $110,000 per year.
• Brady has some other expenses such as equipment, liability insurance (the PPA charges $1000 to $1500 per year for this), and advertising/marketing. Perhaps Brady only makes $100,000 per year after these expenses?

Is Brady making easy money? For Rochester, NY (far away from New York City), $100,000 is a damn good income for a part-time job. He seems to work less than half as many hours per year as a regular full-time white collar worker. If Brady can increase the number of weddings he does to 30 per year, he can get his income up to around $150,000, meaning he’d be earning more money than most medical doctors in the Rochester area.

Now, let me address some of the weird comments the previous post received.

One day of work huh?

My first post never said the wedding photographer only works one day per week, the post said that the wedding photographer “only has one high stress day.” The photographer has to do additional work during the rest of the week, but it’s low-stress work, done without a boss breathing down his back or artificially imposed deadlines. The wedding photographer has complete flexibility to take a day off whenever he wants, as long as it’s not one of the few days during the year in which he has to shoot a wedding. Based on Brady’s explanation of his work habits, he has a lot more days off than the regular white collar worker.

Brady himself asks the following question:

A question for you, Michael, how many people, who just so happen to have a suit in their closet, are trying to take your 9-5 job each day, despite having no or limited qualifications, and of those very few people trying to take your job just by showing up in a suit, how many of those people are actually being hired by your boss to replace you?

Actually, for the typical white collar worker, there are two billion people in China and India willing to do your job for a fraction of your salary. Pick up the Wall Street Journal sometime. People are being outsourced left and right. One of the big advantages of wedding photography is that your job can’t be outsourced.

Sam wrote:

The waitress who toils to earn tips, the miners who work 15 hour shifts in dangerous conditions...all good examples of jobs that are harder than wedding photography, but guess what...they CHOSE those jobs

Sam must have been smoking the Ayn Rand weed. No one would ever “choose” a crappy job like coal mining if he had a better option available.

Brady, again, said:

The barriers to entry in this field are surprisingly low…

Another commenter echoed that notion. Whenever someone can make $100,000 per year in a part-time job, there are obviously barriers to entry that allow him to do this, otherwise everyone would crowd in and the cushy job would disappear.

The guy who charges $500 for a wedding is obviously not making the six figure salary. What prevents him from increasing the price to $7,000 like Brady charges and doing 20 weddings per year? Those are the barriers to entry.

In order to get to Brady’s income level, you need (1) above average intelligence (this disqualifies 50% of the population); (2) a few years of experience photographing weddings so you can get to Brady’s skill level; (3) a marketing network.

Finally, let me address the supposedly expensive “equipment costs” that several comments mentioned. In reality, wedding photography is a very cheap field to enter from a capital perspective. That’s the ironic contradiction of the comments—one commenter says photographers face high equipment costs, and then another commenter bemoans the fact that anyone with a camera can compete against him.

It costs a lot more money to become a doctor or lawyer. Just a single semester of graduate school tuition ($20,000+) is more than enough money to completely equip the photographer with expensive camera equipment for many years. White collar professionals often find themselves paying monthly student loan payments exceeding $1,000 per month, and unlike the equipment and insurance costs of the self-employed wedding photographer, student loan payments (except to a very limited extent) are not tax deductible at all.

The following comment was written elsewhere on the web, but in response to my post:

Anyone with a bit of common sense can tell you that real estate, banking and currency trading is where the BIG money is.

It's true that there's much bigger money in investment banking, trading, and money management, but in order to get a job like that you need an MBA from Harvard, Wharton, or Columbia. If you can get into a top business school, then it would be dumb to pursue a wedding photography career. But on the other hand, for people who can't get admitted to the Wharton MBA program, wedding photography looks like a pretty lucrative field.