Digital Bolex D16 Footage Has Been Seen

I have to admit that the news about this camera has seemed to pass me by, even though it's been talked about for almost 2 years. It's still not quite available, but Bolex has made some footage from the new camera available to view on their website. The low light capabilities are impressive.

This camera is supposed to sell for less than a new Canon 5D Mark III and it seems to fit a similar niche that the Blackmagic cinema cameras do. And it can mount a wider range of lenses and shoots RAW footage, so that is all good. But what is that crank on the side of the camera for? And I even like 1950s Space Age aesthetic to the design. Retro and Modern at the same time. Go to Bolex here to watch the sample videos and learn more about it.

CamRanger now includes Android devices!

CamRanger has been successful with their device which allows you to remotely control your DSLR through your iPhone or iPad. Now they've extended that to include Android phones and tablets, and will soon add Windows 7/8 PCs to their compatibility list. There are about 30 Canon and Nikon cameras that will work with this system. The CamRanger is a device that plugs into your camera and then allows for WiFi connection to your phone or whatever, up to a 150 feet distance. You also need to download the app to your phone or device to make it work. The CamRanger device sells for $299.00. Sounds like a cool idea.

That Old Blackmagic Does It Again!

Blackmagic Designs from Australia  have announced a new Micro 4/3s based point-and-shoot camera designed for movie making, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. The specs are impressive: Super 16 sensor size, dynamic range of 13 stops, SD card recording, choice of ProRez 422 or lossless CinemaDNG recording formats, uses the Micro 4/3s lens mount, and records in 1080HD resolution at either 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97 or 30 fps. This pocket-sized movie camera is designed to go where a full-sized camera cannot fit and promises to deliver nearly the same image quality. And the price will be around $995 for the body! Not bad at all.

They've also announced an updated version of their regular cinema camera, to be called the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K, that will have full 4K resolution, has a Canon EF compatible lens mount, and will sell for $3,995 (body alone). Considering the cost of a RED camera, that's pretty good.

David Burnett's Olympic Photographs

 Photograph by David Burnett.

Photojournalist David Burnett has put online a selection of his large format black-and-white photographs taken at last year's London Olympics. He used a vintage 1940s Speed Graphic 4x5 camera for these images, along with a fair amount of swings and tilts to control plane and depth of focus. In many of the shots, Burnett was not trying to maximize the focus, but minimize it. Sometimes the results look like some of the toy settings on camera phones, with only a small portion of the image in focus.

Photograph by David Burnett.

Burnett was part of a team covering the Games for the International Olympic Museum and he exposed around 350 images during the competitions. He also used a Canon 5D Mark III and a Leica M9 for the Olympics. Burnett has been using a Speed Graphic in his photojournalistic work since 2004, primarily to achieve a unique look that sets his images apart from other photographers and in which he surely succeeds. Thanks to PetaPixel for the head's up on this. You can see David Burnett's Olympic portfolio here and you can check out his other work there as well.

David Burnett and his Speed Graphic by Mike King.

Canon News

Item 1: The big news is that Canon has finally jumped into the mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera market with the EOS M. The EOS M features an 18 MP APS-C sensor with full HD video capabilities and will ship in a kit in October with the EOS M 22mm f/2 STM lens for around $799.95. If you remember from an earlier post, Canon's new STM lenses offer full-time, noiseless autofocus even during video recording. The EOS M will be offered in four colors: black, white, silver, and red. It's not clear exactly how big or small the camera is, but if the lens mount is any clue, it should be around the size of comparable cameras like the Panasonic GX-1, or maybe just a touch smaller. The new lens mount is significantly smaller than the standard Canon EF and EF-S lens mounts and Canon will start out with 2 lenses for the EOS M: the 22mm f/2 (which is equivelent to a 35mm lens) and an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM. Canon will also have a lens mount adapter so you can use their regular line of EF and EF-S lenses.

I think the price is right and if the size is right, this could be an excellent camera for a lot of photographers. It could definitely function as a back-up to a bigger system, or as a pocket-sized alternative to a bigger system. Canon is kind of late to the party with this camera, so it's hard to predict how people will respond to it. I know that I am looking forward to seeing it in person and seeing how it shoots. Color me interested.

Update: After looking at a few promo videos of the new EOS M, it looks like it is being aimed at the casual or amateur photographer. It has a touch screen that is used for most operations on the camera. There are very few physical buttons and controls on the camera. While this will appeal to a lot of potential buyers, and there is nothing wrong with this, it will be a definite turn-off for most serious photographers. Having to go through touch-screen menus to choose an aperture will limit the use and appeal of this one for pros. Plus, at least for now, there is no option for an in-camera viewfinder. I wish Canon had debuted a model with more pro-features than this one. Kind of a bone-headed move, if you ask me. Color me not so interested, now.

     

Shot with the EOS M with the 22mm f/2 STM lens.

Item 2: Ilford and Canon are teaming up to offer folks a chance to have one of their images printed on Ilford Galerie Prestige papers (Smooth Gloss 310 gsm and Smooth Pearl 310 gsm) using 3 different Canon printers: the Pixma PRO-1, the Pixma Pro9500 Mark II, and the Pixma Pro9000 Mark II. If you are interested in seeing how Canon printers perform, this is a great opportunity. For myself, I am currently using the Canon Pixma Pro9500 Mark II and am quite happy with it. I know Epson has the majority of the inkjet market locked up, but you won't lose anything by printing with a Canon printer, that's for sure. To read the details and take advantage of the offer (it's good till September 30th), go to www.TryMyPhoto.com.

Item 3: This is more in the realm of rumor, but Canon is supposed to announce in the near future a new full-frame, entry-level camera. From what I've heard, it will be more like a full-frame Rebel than a 5D Mark III. It will be smaller, lighter, and use more plastic in the construction. The interesting part of the camera is that it is supposed to sell for around $2000. And suddenly the higher than expected price of the 5D Mark III starts to make sense. When the Mark III came out at $3500, people were surprised and dismayed. It seemed like too much of a jump in price from the Mark II for too little gain. But with the new camera coming out, having a full-frame camera that is nearly $1500 less than the Mark III almost guarantees that people will snatch these up in a heart beat. Having a smaller and lighter camera with the new 40mm pancake lens might be the perfect combo for street shooting and photojournalism. At this point, I'm not really sure how I feel about this. Of course, as I said, this is more of a rumor for now. We'll see what happens later.

New Tasty Canon Lens!

Canon has done something unexpected and announced a new lens. It's not that they don't bring out new lenses, they do that all the time, but this lens is something they've never done before; a pancake lens. The EF 40mm f/2.8 STM lens is very small--less than an inch long--and is designed for maximum portability. Perfect for street shooting, photojournalism, and casual snapshots. The "STM" designation refers to new Stepper Motors used for autofocus which allow for continuous and silent autofocus, even during video capture.

The EF 40mm f/2.8 STM has six elements in a modified classic planar formula of six elements/four groups and will focus down to 0.3 meters or around one foot, which is pretty close. It also includes one aspherical element. It will work on both full-frame cameras and APS-C models. Pancake lenses are called that because of their flat profile. I'm hoping that the introduction of this lens signals Canon intentions for stepping up their game. Right now, they are the biggest camera manufacturer in the world, but they are lagging behind companies like Sony and Panasonic in terms of innovative products. Maybe this is when they change their approach.

Also, Canon announced a new Rebel, the 4Ti, with features an 18 MP sensor, continuous AF during video shooting mode, and touch screen control.

New Camera Blues

Canon has posted a new firmware 1.1.2 update for the 5D Mark III which addresses several problems and issues. You can download it here. Canon has also stopped shipments of the new camera until they can fix an exposure problem. It seems that if you are shooting in extremely low light conditions and use the top LCD illumination feature, which most people tend to do in that situation, this will throw off your exposure, probably in the direction of under-exposure. Canon has also issued a product advisory to 5D Mark III owners about this glitch and starting in mid-May will inspect owner's cameras free of charge to see if this is happening to their cameras. Whether this means they will also repair or adjust the cameras for free is unclear at this time. Most new cameras have a few glitches to work out after introductions, but I have the feeling that this won't help sell the 5D Mark III.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Blackmagic Design has announced their first camera, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. This will be a very interesting camera for people who are into movie-making. Blackmagic Design has up to now been more involved in the post-production side of things, making hardware and software for editing and such.

The Cinema Camera will be a 2.5K camera in terms of resolution, regular HD has basically 1K resolution, with a dynamic range of 13 stops, which approaches the dynamic range of film stock. The major goal for the camera is to produce the best possible footage in terms of image quality, which is a high goal indeed. It also uses the Canon EF lens mount, which is bound to of interest to filmmakers using Canon DSLR's like the 5d Mark II, and now the 5D Mark III, and the upcoming EOS-1D C, which is specifically geared towards filmmaking. And on the back of the camera is a 5-inch touchscreen for viewing, which dedicated controls for recording and playback. It will record onto interchangeable SSD hardrives or you can use a Thunderbolt cable and record straight to your computer. To sweeten the pot, so to speak, its price will come in around $3000, which puts it $500 less than a new 5D Mark III body, and it should be available in July.

As you can tell from its design, this camera is not trying to be anything other than a movie camera. It's not trying to be both a still camera and a movie camera. It's for making movies. I have the feeling that these will be very popular when they are available. You can find out more about the Blackmagic Cinema Camera here.

Odds and Ends

It's been a while since I made a post here, but a lot has been happening. Some good, some so-so, some interesting. I'll try to hit the highlights and see what is what.

"Golden Boy" by Albert Watson

First off, I just turned in my article/profile of Albert Watson to PhotoMedia Magazine and that should be published in around a month or so. Albert Watson is a high-level photographer based in New York City. As far as I can tell, his main career peers were Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, and his talents are even broader than those two masters. Watson is known most widely for his celebrity portraits, his portrait of Steve Jobs was the one that everyone ran when Jobs died a while back, but Watson is equally adept at fashion, still life, architecture, and landscape photography. Watson is a rare photographer in the commercial realm; he insists on keeping his hand in every aspect of the imagemaking that goes on under his studio name. That means that he personally makes all the physical prints and final digital images for every job his studio takes on. There's not many other photographers that ever did that. Watson was a blast to talk to and he was full of surprises. I'll let you know when the article is published and/or when it goes online.

Canon 5D Mark III

Canon finally released the specs on the upcoming 5d Mark III and most people are underwhelmed. Most of the changes are refinements of the 5D Mark II and are not revolutionary. The sensor is roughly the same size, 22 MP, but it does have a new processor (the Digic 5+), better weather and dust sealing, 6 frames per second, and the ISO will go up to 102,400. And the price will be $3500 for the body alone. That's about a thousand more than the 5D Mark II originally sold for. It's hard to get too excited about all this. But perhaps the image quality will be light years ahead of the previous model, since it has a new processor, though I doubt anyone will see much of an improvement in the lower ISO ranges from 100 to 800 over the Mark II. Who knows? Maybe. Also, the price of the 5D Mark II is now on close-out from Canon and is now priced at around $2100. That's a good deal.

Adobe Lightroom 4

Adobe has released Lightroom 4 and they've lowered the price for the full program to $149.95 in the US. Lightroom is a great program and many photographers are using it instead of Photoshop, though they are very different tools. I use both, myself. Lightroom to bring in, catalog, and rough edit the RAW images and Photoshop to finish the images and prep them for printing. Image management is probably one of the biggest challenges for digital photography and Lightroom was created to deal with that task. Hasselblad just announced that all their professional cameras will now ship with Lightroom as the preferred RAW image processor. If you've been thinking about trying out Lightroom, now is the time.

Sigma SD1

Sigma has announced a rebate program of sorts for the people who bought their DSLR, the SD1, when it first came out. When it came out, Sigma priced it at close to $7000. Keep in mind that the SD1 is a APS-C camera with approximately a 15 MP sensor, though Sigma rates it at 46 MP, since it uses three layers of pixels to capture images, or something like that. The latest version of the camera, the SD1 Merrill, is now priced at around $2000. People who bought the camera at the original price can apply to Sigma for the difference between the old and new prices in credit towards Sigma products, not for the cash difference, unfortunately. To check the specifics of the offer go to Sigma's website or contact the Sigma USA Director of Marketing, Christine Moossmann (Cmoossmann@sigmaphoto.com) directly. And good luck with that.

Update: It's been said that the Nokia phone, the 808 PureView, which was mentioned in the previous post won't actually be coming to the US! That's too bad, but the 41 MP chip will make it here in some form or another, I'm sure. Or, as sure as I can be. When I hear something, I'll let you know.