The Fujifilm X-T3 exhibits very good image quality overall, with excellent detail and color at low ISOs. Further analysis of the high ISO performance confirms it falls behind its predecessor, though.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Kobe Subramaniam/Unsplash |
KeyPoint Intelligence — InfoTrends has released its 2018 US Digital Interchangeable Lens Camera (DILC) Market Study.
The study, which “started as a digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR) market has now evolved into two segments: DSLR cameras and mirrorless cameras (MILCs),” says KeyPoint Intelligence — InfoTrends in its synopsis. Some of the data presented in the study seems obvious, while other tidbits stand out.
Starting off, the study revealed 72 percent of consumers looking to purchase a DILC in the next year currently don’t own one. The study says most of those potential first-time buyers are making the jump from smartphones and point-and-shoot cameras, with 33 percent of smartphone users and 42 percent of point-and-shoot users saying they’re considering a mirrorless camera.
The study also discovered that 30 percent of all camera and/or smartphone owners planned on taking photography more seriously in the next five years. Of the 30 percent, 80 percent plan on labelling themselves as a hobbyist photographer or higher.
KeyPoint Intelligence — InfoTrends says the “study is designed to equip companies that are interested in the DILC market with critical business planning information.” As such, the entire study is available for purchase, but it won’t come cheap. The study costs $ 20,000 and includes a 158 slide PDF presentation, demographic and digital camera banners and tabulations, and Excel pivot tables.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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The Fujifilm XF10 is something of a simplified X70, using the same 28mm equiv. F2.8 lens while losing the tilting screen that made it appealing to street shooters. Still, there’s plenty to be said for a (relatively) pocketable compact with a fast prime lens on board, and we’ve been out shooting with it in the very last of our summer weather.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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ADOX has announced HR-50, a new monochrome film stock that will be available in 135, 120, and 4×5 formats.
According to ADOX, the HR-50 film stock is “based on an emulsion commonly available for technical purposes.” It features “an ultrafine grain” and uses “super panchromatic sensitization,” meaning it’s sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light.
ADOX says HR-50 is particularly well-suited for street and landscape photography, but also works for portraits, although they do recommend using its own HR-50 developer. In the event you don’t want to buy another developer to keep in the darkroom, ADOX says the “gamma [of HR-50 has been] reduced so it becomes perfectly usable for pictorial photography in regular developers.”
According to the press release, ADOX HR-50 also works as an infrared film and handles the use of filters “extremely well.”
Below are a few sample photos provided by ADOX.
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There’s no mention of an exact release date or expected price. We have contacted ADOX regarding this information and will update the article accordingly if we hear back.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Chris and Jordan have been shooting the EOS R for some time now, starting with the launch in Hawaii. Find out what they think of its still photo capabilities and its unique controls, and tune in for probably the first-ever video performance analysis from a swimming pool.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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A study newly published by the US National Library of Medicine NIH sheds light on deaths that occurred while taking selfies. The team behind the study found a total of 259 selfie-related fatalities had occurred between October 2011 and November 2017 from a total of 137 incidents around the globe. Risky behavior is cited as the primary cause of these tragedies.
The researchers conducted their study “to assess the epidemiology of selfie-related deaths across the globe,” according to the published research paper. Selfie-related deaths were categorized into two “causes” categories: non-risky behavior and risky behavior.
Risky behavior accounted for the majority of deaths, 72.5% of which involved male and 27.5% of which involved female victims. India was found to have the highest number of reported incidents, with Russia, the US, and Pakistan following. Falling, drowning, and transport-related incidents topped the reasons for the deaths.
As well, the study found that male victims were three times more likely to die during selfies due to risky behaviors, whereas non-risky behavior was the primary cause of female selfie-related fatalities. A recent example of such a tragedy involved 26-year-old Chinese “rooftopper” Wu Yongning who died after falling from a skyscraper.
The researchers conclude that regions with tall buildings, bodies of water, and other similar perilous places should be declared “no selfie zones” to help protect people from potential injuries or death.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Following approval by the House earlier this year, the United States Senate has passed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act, which was delivered to the White House on October 3, 2018. Under this bill, which grants the FAA federal funding through 2023, law enforcement officials are given the authority to shoot down and/or confiscate private drones if they’re deemed a credible threat.
As noted recently by The Washington Post, the new bill allows officials to shoot down private drones if they’re “identified as high-risk and a potential target for unlawful unmanned aircraft activity.” In these cases, law enforcement isn’t required to have a warrant to take down or confiscate the aerial vehicle.
Last month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) expressed concerns over the reauthorization bill, stating that it had been “stuffed with last-minute provisions that would strip people of their constitution rights.”
Among other things, the EFF pointed toward the warrantless downing of private drones, as well as the lack of a requirement to warn operators when they’re flying in restricted airspace. As well, “the bill still has no process for clearly stating what areas are “covered facilities,” so that the public can know where they are allowed to fly,” the EFF explains.
Critics worry the new authority will enable the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to take down camera drones used during protests and by reporters, activists, and photographers, all without a warrant. Private drone owners also risk losing possession of their drone if it is confiscated without warning due to being labelled a “threat.”
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Tamron has issued a warning to its customers that some of the company’s Nikon F-mount lenses do not work with the new Nikon Z7 and FTZ adapter. Saying only that ‘issues’ have been discovered, Tamron promises that it is investigating, and will provide further compatibility updates once a solution has been found.
Meanwhile, Sigma has confirmed to DPReview that its Nikon F-mount lenses should work without limitation on the new Z7 and Z6 using Nikon’s FTZ adapter.
Read Tamron’s full statement
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Before the days of LCD displays, the only way you could keep track of what speed film you had in your camera was to remember it, select a dial on the camera, or cut out a piece of the film box and place it in a designated area on the back of the camera.
However, not all cameras have ISO dials or places to put a note; and even if they do, some have a limited range of ISO labels to choose from. To remedy this problem, photographer Guy Sie customized a set of 3D-printed hotshoe covers with common ISO ratings on the top so you can easily check what speed film you have inside your camera.
“On my fully manual ’50s Leica M3 rangefinder camera, the ISO film speed indicator dial on the back only goes up to 200 – the fastest speed available at the time. With film speeds going up to ISO 3200 now the dial is basically useless so I don’t bother with it, but then I have to remember what film I loaded last time I used the camera – which might be weeks ago,” says Sie in the project summary. “After screwing this up a few times too many, I modified gcardinal’s hotshoe covers by adding ISO speed numbers to the top. Load your camera, swap out the cover for the right ISO, and never forget what film is loaded again!”
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The set consists of covers for ISO 100, 125, 160, 200, 320, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 film stocks. As is, the numbers on the covers are raised, but if you really want to make them pop, you can give them a little coat of paint or black them out with a permanent marker, as Sie has done with the set he made for his Leica M3.
The files for Sie’s hotshoe covers are free to download through Thingaverse. You can print out at home if you have a 3D printer on hand or pay a few dollars to have some made through online print shops like Shapeways or Sculpteo.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Aside from folks who still shoot film, almost nobody uses the term ‘digital photography’ anymore – it’s simply ‘photography,’ just as we don’t keep our food in an ‘electric refrigerator.’ Given the changes in the camera system in Apple’s latest iPhone models, we’re headed down a path where the term ‘computational photography’ will also just be referred to as ‘photography,’ at least by the majority of photographers.
The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max feature the same dual-camera and processing hardware; the upcoming iPhone XR also sports the same processing power, but with only a single camera: the same wide-angle F1.8 one on the other models. The image sensor captures 12 megapixels of data, the same resolution as every previous model dating back to the iPhone 6s, but the pixels themselves are larger at 1.4 µm, compared to 1.22 µm for the iPhone X, meaning a slightly larger sensor. (For more on the camera’s specs, see “iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR cameras: what you need to know.”)
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More important this year is upgraded computational power and the software it enables: the A12 Bionic processor, the eight-core ‘Neural Engine,’ and the image signal processor (ISP) dedicated to the camera functions. The results include a new Smart HDR feature that rapidly combines multiple exposures for every capture, and improved depth-of-field simulation using Portrait mode. (All the examples throughout are straight out of the device.)
This feature intrigued me the most, because last year’s iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X introduced HDR as an always-on feature. (See “HDR is enabled by default on the iPhone 8 Plus, and that’s a really good thing.”) HDR typically blends two or more images of varying exposures to end up with a shot with increased dynamic range, but doing so introduces time as a factor; if objects are in motion, the delay between captures makes those objects blurry. Smart HDR captures many interframes to gather additional highlight information, and may help avoid motion blur when all the slices are merged into the final product.
The iPhone XS image almost looks as if it was shot using an off-camera flash
Testing Smart HDR proved to be a challenge, because unlike with the HDR feature in earlier models, the Photos app doesn’t label Smart HDR images as such. After shooting in conditions that would be ripe for HDR – bright backgrounds and dark foreground, low-light conditions at dusk – nothing had that HDR indicator. I wasn’t initially sure if perhaps the image quality was due to Smart HDR or the larger sensor pixels; no doubt some credit is due to the latter, but it couldn’t be that much.
Comparing shots with those taken with an iPhone X reveals Smart HDR at work, though. In the following photo at dusk, I wanted to see how well the cameras performed in the fading light and also with motion in the scene (the flying sand). The iPhone X image is dark, but you still get a fair bit of detail in the girl’s face and legs, which are away from the sun. The iPhone XS image almost looks as if it was shot using an off-camera flash, likely because the interframes allow highlight retention and motion freezing even as ‘shutter speeds’ become longer.
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| Shot with iPhone X |
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| Shot with iPhone XS |
As another example, you can see the Smart HDR on the iPhone XS working in even darker light compared to the iPhone X shot. At this point there’s more noise in both images, but it’s far more pronounced in the iPhone X photo.
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| Shot with iPhone X | Shot with iPhone XS |
Smart HDR doesn’t seem to kick in when shooting in burst mode, or the effect isn’t as pronounced. Considering the following photo is captured at 1/1000 sec, and the foreground isn’t a silhouette, the result isn’t bad.
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| iPhone XS image shot in burst mode. It’s dark, but picks up the detail in the sand. |
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| iPhone XS image shot in burst mode. |
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| iPhone XS non-burst image captured less than a minute after the photo above. |
The iPhone’s Portrait mode is a clever cheat involving a lot of processing power. On the iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus, Apple used the dual backside cameras to create a depth map to isolate a foreground subject – usually a person, but not limited to people-shaped objects – and then blur the background based on depth. It was a hit-or-miss feature that sometimes created a nice shallow depth-of-field effect, and sometimes resulted in laughable, blurry misfires.
On the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, Apple augments the dual cameras with Neural Engine processing to generate better depth maps, including a segmentation mask that improves detail around the edge of the subject. It’s still not perfect, and one pro photographer I know immediately called out what he thought was a terrible appearance, but it is improved, and in some cases most people may not recognize that it’s all done in software.
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The notable addition to Portrait mode in the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max is the ability to edit the simulated depth of field within the Photos app. A depth control slider appears for Portrait mode photos, with f-stop values from F1.4 to F16. The algorithm that creates the blur also seems improved, creating a more natural effect than a simple Gaussian blur.
Apple also says it’s analyzed the optical characteristics of some “high-end lenses” and tried to mimic their bokeh. For instance, the simulated blue should produce circular discs at the center of the image but develop a ‘cats-eye’ look as you approach the edge of the image. The company says that a future update will include that control in the Camera app for real-time preview of the effect.
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Portrait mode is still no substitute for optics and good glass. Sometimes objects appear in the foreground mask – note the coffee cup over the shoulder at left in the following image – and occasionally the processor just gets confused, blurring the horizontal lines of the girl’s shirt in the next example. But overall, you can see progress being made toward better computational results.
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One thing I noticed with my iPhone XS is that it produced more noticeable lens flare when catching direct light from the sun or bright sources such as playing-field lights, as in the following examples; notice the blue dot pattern in the foreground of the night image.
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Since I wanted to focus on the Smart HDR and Portrait mode features for this look, I haven’t shot many Raw photos using third-party apps such as Halide or Manual (the built-in Photos app does not include a Raw capture mode). Sebastiaan de With, the developer of Halide, determined that in order to make faster captures, the camera is shooting at higher ISOs, and then de-noising the results via software. With Raw photos, however, that results in originals that aren’t as good as those created by the iPhone X, because they’re noisier and exposed brighter. You can read more at the Halide blog: iPhone XS: Why It’s a Whole New Camera.
Overall, though, the camera system in the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max turn out to be larger improvements than they initially seemed, especially for the majority of iPhone owners who want to take good photos without fuss. Apple’s computational photography advancements in these models deliver great results most of the time, and point toward more improvements in the future.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
