Hail and Farewell Little Photographero

This is the last image taken by the Mars Rover "Spirit".  No, the title is not a typo.  This little hero soldiered on operating years beyond original expectations, Spirit eventually got mired in martian dirt and then ran out of power.   Last week, NASA stopped trying to contact Spirit after numerous attempts.  Farewell little guy.  You done good.

Dylan Post-Birthday Quiz

First of all, happy 70th Bob and many, many more to come.  You have spawned entire college courses across the country.  Quite an achievement for a kid from Minnesota.  I'm embarrassed.

Now for the quiz.  A camera is prominently featured on the cover on one of Bob's albums.  Can you name the album and the camera?  If you are correct, you will win my thanks and admiration and some self satisfaction.

Escaped My Notice

While everyone (myself included) has been drooling over the Fujifilm X100, Samsung has been quietly working away on its mirrorless line, the NX series.  The other day the company posted a page about lens design on their website here.  It contains some very interesting Q and A as well as video interviews.  I found the mock-up image below the most exciting.

 

What Up With That? 2

In addition to DPReview, DXOMark has published their findings here.  Just for fun, I ran a comparison with my D700 to see how the X100 would fare.  The overall score of 73 to 80 was not that bad.  But, when it comes to low light ISO performance, the X100 gets blown away.  Not surprising I guess since that is the Nikon’s strong suit.  Concerning dynamic range and color depth the two cameras are even.

I also revisited the DRReview conclusion page.  The list of cons is pretty long (13) for a camera at this level, but maybe the reviewers are just being picky.  There are, however, some critical flaws that make the camera undesirable, at least for me.

Camera lock-up while writing to card.

Need to set ISO for each exposure mode.

Slow autofocus compare to the best cameras of this type.

Unresponsive manual focus.

Firmware.

Nice try Fuji, but I’m keeping my $1200 for now.

What Up With That?

From The Online Photographer

DPReview has published their in depth review of the Fujifilm X100 here.  I encourage you to read it if you are interested in the camera, but it’s a real mixed bag.

A quote from the summation:

The X100 is an exasperating conundrum of a camera, combining excellent image quality, solid build and a superb viewfinder with sluggish operation and eccentric, buggy firmware. If you're prepared to put up with its numerous oddities and faults then it will repay you with superb results.

At 73%, it won Sliver, but you can do better.  Maybe a firmware upgrade will help. So…we wait.

President Lincoln Sits (and Stands) For Brady

The Disunion Civil War blog on The New York Times website has a fascinating post about the May 16, 1861, photo-shoot of President Lincoln by Matthew Brady.  There are tidbits about the sitting as well as Civil War photography in general.  Highly recommended.  Best of all, following this link won’t cost you a cent.

The D700 Takes A Trip

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

I think that my Nikon D700 (in the care of my friend BB) is somewhere in this picture.  See you soon old friend.

The Death of bin Laden

There is a flickr slideshow here.  The images, although uncredited, are doubtless the work of Official Photographer Pete Sousa.

Fujifilm X100 on NYT

David Pogue has published his take on the Fujifilm X100 here.   Despite The New York Times new policy, using the link won’t cost you a dime.