Enjoying the Cron

Over the last few weeks, I have added a new set up to my camera gear. I've gone full frame and added a Leica lens - the Summicron-M 1:2/50 - to my arsenal. At a very good price.

Over the last couple of days, I've managed to pack up early from work and take the gear for a spin, enjoying the great weather to boot.

I was still trying to get used to the new set up. Certainly it was a departure to my usual habit of picture taking. Having to master some new technique. Hopefully soon it would be ingrained into my muscle memory. At the moment, I still had to stop to manual focus on my subjects and often the moment would have passed by the time I press the shutter trigger. Now, I have to anticipate the moments before it happens. I wasn't able to ninja around unnoticed with my smaller compact.

More about the gear on a later entry. For the moment, still getting to know the setup ....

The Orange Snapper

I have been eyeing the Windows phone for a while now. It started with the HTC One Windows version, which unfortunately was hard to come by in Malaysia.

Then came Windows 8 and the 1520. Great but the software still felt sluggish although the camera feature looked interesting.

The last Nokia I owned was the 9300i Communicator back in 2006. Before that, it was the excellent N73. Great 3.2 MP camera with a feature called Nokia LifeBlog which when the phone were connected to a PC, would upload the photos and the SMSs onto a program akin to a diary. A great feature. There was no Mac equivalent unfortunately.

Even back then, the camera on Nokia had been half-decent.

Then with the announcement of Lumia 930 and Windows 8.1, my mind was made up. And the camera was just simply amazing, with a good built-in photo editor which made post-editing and posting onto Flickr a doddle. Dare I suggest that the snaps were better than my main phone, the iPhone 6 Plus.

There were three options as far as the photographs were concerned, the small 5MP jpeg, larger 20MP jpeg and 20MP DNG file - a RAW version essentially. Even the 5 MP looked great. I only tried manipulating then lather's files using Aperturebut found the whole process - transferring and processing - rather time-consuming. I prefer just to snap, edit and upload.

How about the other features? The app store wee's still pretty basic but there were the usual Facebook, twitter and Instagram. As long as there was push email and Google Calendar integration, I was fine. Not quite as much of a productivity tool as my iPhone, but it had potential. I wouldn't mind it as a second phone. So, the Android had to stay on the tablet for the time being.

All the photos, apart from the top were taken with the Lumia 930.

Filling up the Cabinet

Last week, I purchased a dry cabinet to store my camera gear. It was only today that I managed to get all my camera gears sorted out to fill the case up. It turned out to be too small. I should have gone for a bigger unit!

I dusted off my old DSLR, all the lens - minus a couple which I couldn't remember where I placed them - and all my compact cameras from the past.

I got them all cleaned and the batteries charged up. All except the LX3 were working OK. Not sure what happened to the Lumix. Hopefully it was all down to battery cell issues rather than anything more major. An old, but still capable camera. But as with all the early Lumix, it had this rather weird tinge on the jpg especially in low light. In needed plenty of work in post, but most of the time I just shoot in black and white.

I fired up the giant 7D, and shot a few frame. That was when I realised how inferior the white balance algorithm on the Canon compared to my staple, the Fuji. The X100 would more likely get the colours right, or just with minor tweaking. The 7D then went back into the cabinet ....

Now, everything were in order, inside the cabinet. While I was cleaning the bodies and lens, I decided to photograph them. The GR certainly did a great job here ....

Smitten

I managed to take the GR for a quick spin after work yesterday. Mind you I was on call. So, it was a quick escape while having dinner essentially.

Even on a 15 minutes spin, I could already see the potential. After my evening round, I went back to the apartment and downloaded the snaps onto my deskstop. I couldn't remember how many times I shook my head looking at the quality of the photos coming off the sensor.

There were a few observations though.

1) The camera tended to under expose. I disliked up the compensation by a third of a stop to get better exposure.

2) The on camera crop worked a treat. I programmed one of the function buttons to cycle through the standard 28mm, 35mm and 47mm zoom equivalent. A clever idea by Ricoh to build that feature in.

3) The jpeg capture was almost as good as the RAW provided that the underexposure was not too severe and could be corrected in post.

4) The black and white "filter" on camera was quite useful. I changed the setting to include some vignetting for better effect. It looked good.

On the whole, I still personally felt that snaps coming from my Fuji bodies were more pleasing colour wise. They also tended to get the white balance and skin tone more natural. The Ricoh may been some tweaking.

I was sure that there would be more snaps from this little gem in the coming fee days. Might take a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon to do a proper walk around Bukit Bintang may be.

A Thing of Beauty

I called my usual camera store to inquire if they have a used Ricoh GR in store after having a look at it at KLPF. I can see it being my designated pocket camera. I was lucky.

They just had a four-month old unit just in from last weekend and it was going for half the original price. Sounds fishy. But I must have a look.

After work, I stopped by the shop on my way home and had a closer look. I was smitten. It came with all the original parts and documentation. Plus it still held Ricoh manufacturer warranty for another 8 months. Shutter count acceptable. A bit of smudge here and there but no big deal. It was an aluminum body after all.

I paid extra for an external charger and a memory card. It still had the original pouch, not that I would be using that. Took it round the block for some snaps. My mind was made up.

I went home happy with the GR in hand. Would need to familiarise with the unit before I could really get the best of it. Maybe a photo walk or two. It was light and small enough to slip into my trouser pocket, although a bit bigger than the Sony RX100 III.

I took a series of snap at the apartment during lunch time and processed the jpeg. I still need to get the colour tone to my liking but certainly it had potential. More experimentation then.