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Throwback Thursday: the ups and downs of running DCResource

24 Nov

My friends would (hopefully) say that I’m not one to toot my own horn, but since this weekend marks the 20th anniversary of my foray into the world of digital photography websites, I’m taking the liberty. Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1997 I founded the Digital Camera Resource Page, aka DCResource. The site is no longer updated (that probably wouldn’t go over well with my current employer), so it remains as a sort of time capsule to days past.

In this Throwback Thursday I’m going to share my story of how I stumbled into the world of digital photography and the rollercoaster ride that followed.

I’m fortunate to have been an early adopter of many technologies. Prior to my first year of college I spent a summer working in a research lab at UC San Francisco, where we had a computer connected to this Internet thing. On it were copies of NCSA Mosaic 0.86, TurboGopher and Eudora (for e-mail). When I started college at UC San Diego in Fall of 1994 I was selected to test out a “cable modem,” which back then was larger than a VCR and had a five figure price tag. Goodbye 28.8kbps dial-up, hello sort-of-high-speed Internet.

The combination of three different thing resulted in the creation of DCResource. First and foremost, thanks to my job at the UCSD Bookstore, I was able to get my hands on early consumer cameras from Kodak, Apple and Casio that were up for sale. Second, I had already dipped my feet into running my own website, in the form of PowerWatch, which covered Mac ‘clones’ made by Power Computing, which (after the return of Steve Jobs) eventually closed down. Using the successful model of PowerWatch and noticing the lack of any sites covering digital cameras, in November 1997, in my college dorm, the Digital Camera Resource Page was born.

The original site design by Delane Barrus, who was involved in the website for the first few years.

The goal of DCResource wasn’t to be the most technical site out there (Imaging Resource and DPReview would arrive a year later to handle that), but to be the most accessible to the average person. Even now, I still get feedback from folks who thought that the site succeeded at doing that.

The early years of DCResource were pretty busy, with more and more companies entering the market with their plasticky, VGA-resolution cameras. In addition to the big names, companies such as Agfa, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba were all in the market at the time. If you ever owned any of those, consider yourself old. At the time, your camera either used SmartMedia (ugh), CompactFlash or floppy disk. I wrote about new ‘4X’ speed CF cards and troubles getting the FlashPath SmartMedia-to-floppy adapter to work on Macs.

Back then there was no content management system to hold reviews, so everything sat in static HTML files. Users e-mailed their camera reviews to me, which were often cross-posted on rec.photo.digital on Usenet.

In the first couple of years it felt like the site just wasn’t taking off. I considered closing it down, but kept it going, working on it in my spare time in and after college. As people started to gravitate away from film and toward digital, I realized that I was just a little early.

The purple version of DCResource launched in 2000. I made a mobile version of the site around then, designed for Palm VII PDAs. I still think that’s pretty awesome.

When it came to camera reviews, I quickly established a standard that lasted for the entire life of the site. Besides being accessible, I wanted to be as consistent as possible. The layout was always the same: intro, what’s in the box, software, look & feel, how many photos fit on a memory card, menu options, photo tests and conclusion. (I always use the term ‘tests’ loosely, since there was never any DPReview-level science involved.)

In every sample gallery I included the same set of photos taken in SF’s Chinatown as well as at Stanford University about 40 minutes to the south. I’d take out groups of cameras at a time (my record was 10 at once) since the weather in SF is so unpredictable. I’d do my best to arrive at the same time on each visit.

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Around 2001, I realized that keeping my site open was a good idea. Digital cameras were selling, and traffic was going up. I finally had good access to cameras to review, and back then, you could have a full review published on launch day. In the early days, it felt like the cameras manufacturers needed websites like mine (and others) a lot more than they do now. I quit my day job and started to run DCResource full-time.

The year 2004 was the beginning of what I (and probably many of my peers) called the glory days. Technology moved so quickly that some photographers were upgrading cameras every year, and that’s in addition to first-time buyers. Business was booming.

You know what they say about ‘all good things,’ right?

Unique visitors over time, minus the actual data. Traffic peaked during the 2006 holidays.

On June 29th, 2007, consumer digital photography changed forever. That’s when the original iPhone was announced, and for most of us in the publishing world, it was all downhill from there, though I didn’t know it at the time. Manufacturers didn’t either, because in January 2008 they collectively released 80 cameras at CES, again, most of them being compacts, with little to differentiate them. They still hadn’t gotten the memo a year later, with 75 cameras announced.

While DCResource’s traffic was slowly slipping, it didn’t really hit home until after the 2009 holiday season, when I saw that my unique visitors were 60% of what they had been two years prior. It wasn’t panic time yet – I kept going without worrying too much about it, because as long as I was still making a good living, everything would be fine…

The ‘orange’ version of the DCRP website launched in 2004. I still think it looks great today.

2011 was panic time. The time to sell the site for anything except peanuts had long since passed (DPReview was acquired by Amazon four years earlier), and regret set in. I remember thinking “if only I had hired a salesperson while times were good,” – not that it would’ve made a difference at that point. While I still took most of my photos with my DSLRs, I was reaching for my smartphone more and more often.

The next year, manufacturers announced 55 cameras at CES. The problem was, nobody was buying them, and since DCResource leaned toward the consumer end of the spectrum, it was starting to hurt. I starting tapping into my savings (gotta pay the mortgage) so it became obvious that it was time to get back into the workforce and resume running my website on the side. While Silicon Valley had tons of tech companies to choose from, running a digital camera website for almost 15 years was an unusual thing to have on your resume.

The sheer ridiculousness of the number of point-and-shoot cameras on the market inspired me to make a family tree of Canon’s ELPH ultra-compacts.

Around that time I was in touch with none other than Simon Joinson, who, along with Phil Askey, I’d known for several years as friendly competitors. Simon had expressed an interest in adding me to the DPReview team for a while, which was both a good opportunity for me and an excuse to move to Seattle, one of my favorite cities. Later that year, I accepted a position at DPReview, took a 3+ week trip to South America and Antarctica, and then drove myself and two partially sedated cats to Seattle. Since then, my brain has been stuffed with technical details (thanks Rishi and Richard), and my photography has improved as well (my old ‘work’ now makes me cringe).

Naturally, I feel very fortunate for the opportunity that I had to leave the corporate world behind and build one of the original, and for a time one of the biggest photography websites from the ground up, almost entirely on my own. Sure, in retrospect I would’ve done a few things differently, but it was a good ride while it lasted.

As 2017 comes to an end, I’m concerned that smartphones are following the same path as compact digital cameras, since they’re so good now that there’s less need to upgrade every year. That said, there is still a lot of innovation in this space, and smartphone photography is a lot more advanced than it was just a few years ago. While I don’t know (yet) whether computational photography is the next big thing, I’m strapped in – ready for another ride.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: the Samsung NX1 is still impressive three years later

20 Oct

We usually dig a bit further into the past for Throwback Thursday, but decided to make an exception for the Samsung NX1. Announced just three years ago, the NX1 is the camera that still leaves us wondering what might have been had Samsung decided to remain in the camera market. Alas, we’ll never know.

On paper, the NX1 had impressive specifications; the camera that landed in our laps still felt rough around the edges and a bit, well… unfinished when it arrived. Samsung diligently improved the camera through a series of firmware updates over the following months, and the NX1 ultimately became a much more refined, responsive machine.

On paper, the NX1 had impressive specifications; the camera that landed in our laps still felt rough around the edges and a bit, well… unfinished when it arrived.

The ‘post-multiple-firmware-updates’ version of the camera delivered technical innovation, pro-level performance, and a fantastic user experience all in a single package, earning it one of the highest scores we had ever awarded to a camera at the time, and winning the 2015 DPReview Innovation Award.

In addition to impressive performance, the NX1 held up well in extreme conditions. When shooting in 0ºF (-18ºC) conditions the camera kept going as long as I did.

We highlighted this innovation in our review of the NX1, writing “One can almost imagine a group of Samsung engineers sitting in a conference room and having the spec sheets of every leading APS-C and four thirds camera dropped in front of them, along with a directive to outperform the whole lot. And here’s the crazy thing – to a certain extent they seem to have pulled it off.”

The NX1 was a mirrorless camera that looked and performed like a high-end DSLR. It included a hybrid AF system with 205 phase detect autofocus points covering 90% of the frame, and in burst mode could shoot up to 15fps. Impressively, in our testing the AF system was able to keep up.

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The AF system on the NX1 was very quick to keep up, even when shooting fast moving subjects at close range at 15fps in burst mode. In this example, the camera tracked Richard with a cloud of AF points that covered his body and the bike and kept him in focus, though there are minor differences in terms of where the camera focused on him between frames. Manually selecting an single AF point would have given us more precision. (Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 S at F2.8)

It also delivered the goods when it came to image quality. Built around a 28MP BSI sensor, it held its own against the best APS-C cameras of its day. The ISO-invariant sensor also made it possible to push shadows 5EV in post without paying any additional noise cost (when shooting at base ISO).

Even the ergonomics and shooting experience were excellent. It was comfortable in the hand, with most dials and buttons in easy to reach places. The bright and crisp OLED EVF had no perceptible lag (a common challenge back then), and was the first electronic viewfinder I really fell in love with. In our review I commented, “Once I started shooting with NX1 it was easy to forget that I was using an EVF and I just got on with taking photos.”

The NX1’s OLED electronic viewfinder impressed us with its bright, crisp image and fast performance. Its layout was also well-designed and easy to use.

The NX1 also excelled at video. Unlike many cameras – even some the ones we encounter today – there was no sense that video was wedged in to fulfill a spec sheet requirement. On the contrary, the NX1 was clearly designed with video in mind. The interface was excellent, included tools such as peaking and zebras, and the oversampled footage exceeded the quality of the Panasonic GH4, our reference camera for video at the time.

Ironically, the only major complaint we had about the NX1’s video was that it was a bit too forward looking.

Ironically, the only major complaint we had about the NX1’s video was that it was a bit too forward looking: it relied on the advanced H.265 codec, something that many computers and editing systems are just now beginning to handle well.

Samsung also gets a nod for having the first (and still one of the best) Wi-Fi + Bluetooth implementations we’ve seen.

Video on the NX1 was outstanding, exceeding the quality of the Panasonic GH4, our reference camera for video at the time. The user interface for shooting video was also good, taking advantage of touchscreen controls for many functions.

There seemed to be a lot of commitment from Samsung to getting the NX1 right, including numerous firmware updates that improved performance and added functionality over time. (A bit ironic when you consider the fate of the camera.) Let me share one behind-the-scenes anecdote about how all those updates impacted our review of the camera.

I actually wrote two entire reviews of the NX1. The first review was less than a week from publication when Samsung released a big firmware update; it included so many performance improvements and feature updates that I had to scrap the entire review, go back and re-test the camera, then write another one. The review you read on the site was actually the second one I wrote.

Despite its age, the NX1 is still remarkably competitive with today’s top APS-C cameras, and Samsung seemed to be investing a lot to develop a strong line of pro quality lenses as well. It’s interesting to think of what the camera market might look like today had Samsung not exited the business.

Click here to read our full review of the Samsung NX1

Samsung NX1 Sample Gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: Google Nexus One

05 Oct

On October 4th Google introduced two new smartphones: the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. These phones pack the latest 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processors and large displays, along with the impressive AI systems that make these devices stand out from many of their peers.

You have to be a real phone aficionado to remember the Nexus One – Google’s first smartphone (codeveloped with HTC) – which debuted in 2010. In 2017 terms the One’s specs are almost laughable, with its single-core processor, half gigabyte of RAM, 5MP rear camera and whopping 3.7″ display. The Nexus One actually had two different displays. It initially shipped with a PenTile AMOLED display but later switched to a Super LCD that promised better power efficiency and color accuracy (though saturation and deep blacks got worse as a result). It also had a trackball reminiscent of Blackberry phones of that era.

The phone launched with Android 2.1 (Eclair) preinstalled and supported voice-guided navigation and voice-to-text transcription. Not long after the One got upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo), which added support for Adobe Flash (which was short-lived), a new home screen and Wi-Fi tethering. The final update the Nexus One received was to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), as its hardware couldn’t keep up with subsequent versions.

Were you one of the lucky few who owned a Google Nexus One? Let us know in the comments.

View our Google Pixel 2 launch coverage

Product mockup by Zach Vega.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: Sigma SD1

28 Sep

The Sigma SD1 was an APS-C DSLR that featured the then-new 15MP (times three) Foveon X3 sensor. Previous models, such as the SD15, had 4.7x3MP sensors with a 1.7x crop, so this was a pretty big jump in resolution as well as a move to a more common sensor size. Foveon sensors capture color in a completely different way than Bayer sensors, with each 15MP layer capturing a primary color. Thus, 45MP of total data is captured at 15 million locations, to give what the company claimed was equivalent to a 30MP Bayer sensor.

Other features on this SA-mount camera include an 11-point ‘twin-cross’ AF system, 3″ 460k-dot LCD and a weather-sealed body. The SD1 was originally announced in 2010 with an MSRP of $ 9,700 but the company then emphasized that it expected it to have a ‘street price’ nearer $ 7,000 by the time it hit the market in mid 2011. Early the following year, the camera was renamed the SD1 Merrill and relaunched for a more down-to-earth $ 2,300.

As with all Foveon ‘X3’ sensors, while the SD1’s low ISO resolution was great, image quality fell apart quickly as the sensitivity climbed.

For those who wanted to carry around something a bit more ‘classy,’ Sigma released a model with a burl wood veneer, which was priced at €10,000, at least in Germany, where it was announced. The body was described as ’emphasizing the camera’s premium appeal by adding a casing made from Amboyna Burl, an expensive and decorative veneer taken from complex growths on a Southeast Asian tree. The case takes around 60 hours to cut, mill and polish.’ Wow.

Sample Gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: the Canon PowerShot G1

21 Sep

It wasn’t the first ‘prosumer’ compact on the market, but it did check off a lot of the items on enthusiasts’ wish lists at the time. The Canon G1, announced to the world on September 18, 2000, offered a great deal of manual control options, a hot shoe, Raw capture and a fully articulated 1.8″ screen. That line would eventually evolve into the present-day PowerShot Gx X series – but it all started 17 years ago this week.

Read our full Canon PowerShot G1 Review

Canon PowerShot G1 sample gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: Alpha A700, Sony’s first high-end DSLR

10 Sep

Turning ten years old this week is the A700, Sony’s first high-end DSLR after fully taking over Konica Minolta’s camera business. With plenty of Minolta DNA underneath its Sony Alpha branding, it debuted in September 2007 to take on the likes of Canon’s 40D and Nikon’s D300. Our 33 page (!) review, published in December of 2007, details the strengths and weaknesses of the camera, and includes musings like “Whether the lack of live view has any real relevance in a camera at this level remains to be seen; we doubt it.”

Did you own the A700? Let us know in the comments.

Read our full Sony Alpha 700 Review

Sony Alpha A700 Sample Gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: the Nikon D700

24 Aug

Back in 2007 (yes, that really was 10 years ago), the D3 made quite a splash in the digital camera world. It was Nikon’s first ever full-frame DSLR, and while it couldn’t compete with Canon’s EOS-1Ds Mark III in terms of resolution, it did come with some of the best low-light performance around.

Less than one year later, Nikon blew everyone away by offering a ‘baby D3’ in the D700. With remarkably few significant disadvantages – shooting speed, a single card slot and the 95% coverage viewfinder being the significant ones – the D700 looked a bargain, getting you D3 image quality for $ 1700 less. Not bad, Nikon, not bad.

There have been ‘compact’, full-frame followups over the years, but it didn’t look as though Nikon was really interested in offering a clear successor to the D700. The D800 had tons of resolution but gave up some speed, the D610 had an unimpressive autofocus system, and the D750 made some shutter mechanism and build quality compromises, despite its all-around capability.

With the D850, can we concretely say that Nikon has finally created the spiritual successor to the D700? We’re not sure we’d go that far, but what the D850 does represent is a return to Nikon throwing almost everything it can into a pro-grade camera body with very competitive pricing. As with the D700 versus the D3, the D850 makes a compelling argument to ignore the D5 unless the extra frames per second and the built-in grip really matter to you. In many ways, it will be a better camera for many photographers than a D5.

So as you soak up the specs of Nikon’s newest full-frame offering, we invite you to take a trip down memory lane and revisit our original 32-page review of the Nikon D700 to see just what made that camera so special (and see how it got a whopping 25 ‘pros’ to only 3 ‘cons’).

Read our original Nikon D700 review

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: the iPhone 4S

10 Aug

Credit: Gabriele Barni

Late 2011 was a period of big changes for me. I had just finished up college, an internship, and landed my first ‘big boy’ job at Puget Sound Energy doing photo and video for their communications department. It was also around this time that I got my very first smartphone, an act which would forever change my perspectives on photography.

Okay, well, it was my second smartphone that did that. My first was a Blackberry Bold, which was a Puget Sound Energy company phone, and I very briefly thought that it was amazing. I was wrong. You see, wanting to keep my work and personal life somewhat separate, I figured I should purchase my own smartphone for personal use. So I picked up a just-released iPhone 4S, and the Blackberry felt prehistoric in comparison.

With a decent camera in my pocket at all times, I of course started an Instagram account and promptly put a photo of a bagel sandwich up for all the world to see. Yes, this is literally the first image on my Instagram profile, and it’s probably damaging my credibility to this day.

A lot of people credit cell phone cameras with the death of the compact camera, but I think the iPhone 4S was one of the first cell phones with quality that could really rival the PowerShots and Coolpix’s of the day. In high school, VGA camera phones were all the rage, but a lot of us still carried around a dedicated compact camera for ‘real’ photos.*

But with the iPhone 4S, you got an 8MP sensor, a reasonably fast F2.4 lens, 1080p HD video recording and a Retina high-density display that was probably the best display I’d ever seen up until that point. Suddenly, for an average consumer to get appreciably better image quality, you had to step up to a reasonably high-end camera, and that’s why I think the iPhone 4S was the final nail in the compact camera’s coffin.**

Of course the Sony RX100 came out the following summer and, though it did inspire eventual competition and somewhat stemmed the hemorrhaging sales of compact cameras, the $ 650 MSRP was a sign that dedicated photography tools capable of truly better output than a phone were going to be pushing ever further up-market. In other words, further out of the reach of average consumers, reinforcing for those consumers that a camera someone already has on his or her phone is going to be good enough.***

For the benefit of mankind and my personal friendships, I got over my strange obsession with posting images of my meals, and started taking pictures of other things. Cropped to taste.

In any case, I was lucky enough to have a DSLR at the time for more serious work, but whenever I didn’t want to lug that around, the iPhone 4S was there. I even ended up preferring the phone to an original Olympus Pen Mini for casual photography because of its speed, overall image quality and the ability to quickly share images to the web. Without Google Drive or Wi-Fi pairing, it was an ordeal to get images onto the iPhone from any source other than the internal camera.

In fact, looking back on my own photos from early on with the 4S, I’m struck by how often I thought that an Instagram filter was an improvement, when really, some more careful framing and more conservative editing would have been better advised. But maybe there’s more to it. I can see now that the iPhone 4S’s camera was good enough that it wasn’t the limiting factor for me at the time, it was just my own skill and taste (or in this case, a lack thereof).

This is one of the less egregious crooked horizons and ‘filter jobs’ I could find on the early days of my Instagram account, but it still looks darn overcooked to me these days.

Something about how most of the images I can find from this camera are uploaded and super compressed and all that.

As I grew in my career and as a photographer, I ended up getting a cheap Moto G when the iPhone 4S started to feel a little dated. I should have known better. I had become absolutely addicted to having at least a decent camera in my pocket at all times, and images from the Moto G just looked washout out and ‘cheap’ in comparison to the iPhone, despite having the same 8MP resolution.

That ‘addiction’ to a decent camera is something that has reached epidemic proportions throughout the world. For better or for worse, photography has been democratized and commoditized, and there just isn’t any going back – and while yes, we can thank smartphones in general for that, the iPhone 4S was one of the more influential players in changing the way that we view smartphone cameras and smartphone photography.

Photo by Scott Everett

* ‘Real’ photos usually included my 1980 Datsun 210, or trying to perfectly time the shooting of an unopened soda can with a bow and arrow. You know. High school kid stuff.

** The advent of 1080p video capture in phones is also probably why Flip and other pocket camcorders disappeared seemingly overnight.

*** After having gotten used to the iPhone 4S, I still thought for a while I had a need for a cheap, carry-everywhere camera, maybe with an optical zoom. So I got a Canon PowerShot A1200 at Costco, and the photos were absolutely horrible in comparison to the phone. For a long while, I swore off ever having a camera that lay somewhere between my iPhone and my D80.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: Adobe Lightroom 1.0

04 Aug

As an amateur photographer, I joined the Adobe Lightroom beta primarily to gain access to the latest version of the ACR Raw converter. I hadn’t expected it to completely change the way I worked.

I can’t remember how I first heard about the public beta of a new photo editing product from Adobe* but, according to Adobe’s Lightroom blog, it must have been after July 23, 2006, when the Windows version of the software became available.

Having used Photoshop since university, I’d seen it become both more powerful and more complicated. I had friends working on their Biochemistry Ph.D.s who were just as dependent on Photoshop as I was, in preparing photos for publication in the magazines I worked on, but who relied on a different set of tools than the ones I used.

I’d quickly become frustrated with the limited software my camera came bundled with

The purchase of a Raw-capable superzoom (one of those decisions I now flinch at), quickly left me frustrated with the experience of using the limited software it came bundled with, so I found myself processing my best images, one at a time, staying late to use my work computer.

Clearly this wasn’t a way of working that was either a) sustainable nor b) scaleable (to use two words that would never have occurred to me at the time). So the idea of being able to access the power of Adobe Camera Raw for free, rather than having to find hundreds of pounds for my own license of Photoshop seemed appealing.

Lightroom meant that, weeks after first processing an image, I could go back and backtrack on some of my changes and, with fresh eyes, produce something better, without the need to fill my hard drive with multiple TIFFs, saved along the way.

As the name hints, Lightroom was intended as an analogue for the film-era darkroom. Unlike Photoshop, which had become all things to a very diverse set of uses, Lightroom was just the tools required for photographers. The terminology of the tools was intentionally photographic: exposure adjustments, measured in EV, white balance measured in Kelvin.

In essence its editing tools were simply those of Adobe Camera Raw, only with the ability to process more than one image at a time. That and a crop tool that, while it seemed incomprehensible and backwards compared with Photoshop’s behavior, quickly began to seem not just obvious, but indispensable**.

The real power of Lightroom, though I didn’t immediately spot it, was in how it imposed a structure on your workflow. It cataloged the images you ‘imported,’ and gave you the tools to sort and tag those images, then pushed you through a logical process of first editing and then outputting your images.

At first I, along with many other beta participants, found the ‘Shoots’ categorization confusingly out-of-step with the way I thought about arranging my files on my computer (the two were connected when you imported files but could diverge if you moved the files or their associations). Adobe recognized this and adopted a more explicitly folder-based pattern with a later update.

What’s this? I can take a series of edits I’ve applied to one image and selectively apply them to others? Mind. Blown. (and, more importantly, time saved).
Used with kind permission from Imaging Resource’s original coverage.

In these early versions, all edits were whole-image corrections: every change you made affected every pixel in the image, meaning its role was very distinct from that of Photoshop. There was some ability to export to Photoshop if you needed to make localized edits, but it meant Lightroom wasn’t quite the ‘all you’ll ever need’ tool I was hoping for.

However, so long as you didn’t immediately rail against being forced to make changes to your workflow, the pattern of importing, sorting, editing and exporting became second nature. So, although I was initially just rushing through the import stage to get to the ‘Develop’ editing module, I quickly found that my life was easier if I engaged with the workflow as a whole.

In those early versions all edits were whole-image corrections: every change you made affected every pixel in the image

By the time I started work at DPReview a year or so later, I was regularly shooting huge numbers of images and appreciating the way adding ratings as part of the import process could help me home straight in on my best shots so that all of my efforts to crop, polish and tweak were focused on my strongest images. I could also take some of the edits I’d made to one image and apply them to similar shots, as a better starting point. It saved so much time, even though I never used the Print or Web output modules.

When the beta finally ended, I thought I’d revert to my existing way of working: selecting and then working-up single images at a time in ACR. But no, once I’d become accustomed to being able to quickly organize, prioritize and process only the best images from every shoot, I couldn’t go back.

I’d discovered that not having a workflow was unworkable

The idea of having to manually trawl through and select images, before processing each one, one-by-one, suddenly seemed exhausting. I’d discovered that not having a workflow was unworkable.

The inability to go back and find or fine-tune existing edits was the factor that finally tipped it for me. I bought a license for Lightroom v1 within a couple of weeks of the beta ending. For a lot less than the cost of Photoshop, it should be noted.

By the time it was launched, Lightroom had officially become ‘Photoshop Lightroom.’

The first full version, launched just over ten years ago now, was still pretty basic. Adobe had learned lessons from the beta, but by today’s standards, it was pretty primitive. Redeye and spot removal tools (cloning, rather than ‘healing,’ if my memory serves me correctly) finally brought the first localized corrections. But brushes and gradients didn’t arrive until v2.0, eighteen months later, so there were still plenty of occasions I needed to export to a pixel-level editor.

It would also be many years before Adobe began to add manufacturer JPEG mimicking color profiles, thus putting an end to a million ‘why do my pictures look flatter in Lightroom’ threads on the DPReview forums. Lens corrections and the ability to add, as well as remove, noise and vignetting were also some years off. But, for me at least, the core concept worked.

The quality of processing and the power and subtlety of the available tools has only improved since then. It’s also, with a few hiccups, tended to get faster over time, which is pretty rare.

Compare this screen-grab from Lightroom v1.0 to the one at the top of the page and you’ll spot a host of additional filtering options.
From Imaging Resource’s original coverage.

It’s strange to find myself looking back so fondly, since my job essentially precludes me from using Lightroom: I regularly shoot with cameras it doesn’t yet support, have to deliver unedited, straight-out-of-camera JPEGs and deal with large numbers of remote files that become irrelevant, the moment a review is published.

Adobe’s monthly license model, to my mind, runs counter to the longevity benefit of building a database around my images

I’m also aware that the latest version of Lightroom is getting to the stage that it has a range of tools I’ll simply never use. That it risks developing the kind of Photoshop-esque learning curve that it was originally intended to circumvent. There’s always the threat that it’ll eventually be permanently ingested into Adobe’s Creative Cloud monthly license model (which, to my mind, runs counter to the longevity benefit of building a database around my images).

Yet, if I found myself with the time to shoot for myself again, the first thing I’d do is to buy a standalone version of Lightroom and pick up where I left off. Because, for all that I’ve tinkered with other Raw converters, I really like what it forced me to do, all those years ago: focus my time on getting the best out of my best photos.

*There’s every chance it was this story
** These days the crop tool in Photoshop mimics the Lightroom way of working

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom

18 May

Announced in 2004, the Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom wasn’t the first camera with a focal range starting at 28mm, nor was it the highest resolution camera at the time with its 8 megapixel CCD. What made the C-8080 interesting was the amount of work that Olympus put into the lens, claiming that it was designed to be on par with the Zuiko Digital lenses found on its DSLRs.

The lens had an equivalent focal length of 28-140mm and an impressive maximum aperture range of F2.4-3.5. It used three ED glass elements to reduce chromatic aberration, something not normally found on a compact camera. In DPReview’s testing, seeing CA in the real world was a rarity. The lens was threaded and supported both telephoto and wide conversion lenses. One bummer about the lens was that the zoom was electronically controlled, rather than mechanically, a feature found on the Minolta DiMAGE A2 and Sony DSC-F828 at the time.

Those are who are familiar with the Olympus E-10 will definitely notice some similarities with the control layout and LCD/viewfinder placement.

The C-8080WZ wasn’t the smallest camera out there, but there’s a lot of glass plus an EVF and tilting LCD that you’ll see in a moment. It was made of magnesium alloy that Phil Askey said was ‘heavier grade than we’re used to seeing.’ Phil also complimented the well-designed front and rear grips.

Something worth pointing out is that the camera had an external phase detection sensor (to the left of the Olympus logo). Phil’s review praised the fast AF speeds of the camera, though he was less keen about how quickly the lens zoomed and that there were only five ‘stops’ along the way.

The C-8080’s 1.8″ LCD could be pulled away from the body and tilted up or down. The resolution of 134k wasn’t great, but hey, it was 2004 (the user interface from back then is worth a look, as well). There’s also a pretty big electronic viewfinder, which had 240k dots.

The camera had two memory card slots: one for CompactFlash and the other for – you guessed it – xD Picture Cards. Sadly, despite all of the semi-pro features on the C-8080WZ, it only had one control dial.

So what about photo quality? The C-8080WZ tied for the best resolution among a group of five 8MP cameras, with low noise at high ISOs. The lens had very little barrel distortion but some unexpected pincushion distortion, though Phil noted that it was unlikely that you’d notice this in the real world.

In the end, the C-8080 Wide Zoom earned a coveted ‘highly recommended’ award, due in large part to its lens. The main negatives were the aforementioned zoom speed and number of stops issues as well as camera lockup while Raw images are saved and an aging menu system.

Do you have fond memories of the C-8080 Wide Zoom? Share them in the comments below. And let us know if you have suggestions for future Throwback Thursday articles!