on auspiciousdragon.net
Two years on….it has been fun. Thanks for reading. My more general photography related writing can be found on Photostream.
My fourthirds gear is for sale via Ffordes. It should be online in the next day or two, but I’m sure that they’ll take phone calls straight away :-)
I’ve been asked a couple of times why I bought the Lumix L1, and/or what I use it for. The answer is quite straightforward:
- a small element of the reason is that I wanted to experiment with an image stabilised camera and at the point I bought the L1 it was the only way of doing this within the fourthirds system.
- the more important issue though is the ergonomics of the camera, or, more simply put, the dials.
For many applications, my camera of choice is a rather old fashioned one which has apertures on a ring around the lens, and a dial on the top plate with shutter speeds on it. I’ve tried more modern designs, but, special purpose uses apart, I always go back to the older style of layout. So, not only was I predisposed to like the L1, but I was also finding that if I picked up a modern camera like the E1 after a day using something older like an OM1, then I would just get hung up on the controls. Whereas, I predicted, with the L1, I could happily switch back and forward without much time and energy cost. There are differences, to be sure, but the L1 is close enough to older design not to cause me much pause.
So, the L1 gets used for ‘oh, that is interesting’ snapshots, where I want the convenience of digital, and am not necessariy worried about having the ultimate in file quality, pixel count, focus speed, or whatever. For me, the camera succeeds, or fails, on its interface, provided that the picture quality is adequate.
The picture quality is adequate (although no more than that – maybe a post for another time), so the rest of this post is about the interface, which is partly excellent, largely good, and occasionally hopeless.
For the main part, the L1 wears its controls on the outside. Just by looking at a picture of the camera you can see that you can access nearly everything that you would ever want to without referring to a manual. And in fact I’ve only gone to the manual once. Everything else that I’ve wanted to find either has a dedicated button, or better, a dedicated dial. For example, the metering pattern and drive settings are altered by levers that run under the shutter speed dial on the top plate. Simple, unambiguous, and obvious. The one exception that I’ve found is that the ‘format card’ command is buried as if it were a once a year operation. Not only is it in a menu structure, but if you start by pressing menu, it is right at the bottom of the tree. You can get there by pressing ‘menu’ and then going backwards, or by pressing ‘play’ and then ‘menu’, but it is awkward nonetheless.
The L1 is a single command dial design, but this works better here than with many other cameras simply because the command dial isn’t trying to double up as an aperture and shutter controller as well. The dial is also very context sensitive and I find it to be well positioned.
There isn’t a lot to say about the aperture ring and shutter speed dial. These are controls that you find convenient or not depending on your tastes. Personally, I don’t think that they’ve ever been bettered, and the L1’s configuration is what I think of as the Pentax variant with an ‘A’ on the aperture ring making the selection of program, or shutter priority, as easy as aperture priority or manual.
If you are used to setting controls with the camera at your eye, then both the aperture ring and the shutter speed dial can be easily operated by feel, but there is one big snag, and it is the sort of thing that stops the L1 being a serious camera. If the body is doing something, like writing a file, then movements on the ring or dial are not reported in the viewfinder until the camera is at rest. The effect of moving the ring or dial is taken into account if you press the shutter, but you can’t be certain what you’ve set without taking the camera away from your face and looking, or by waiting for the camera to get around to telling you. Regardless of any other feeling about the camera, this stops it being useful for a whole range of photography. Given that the camera is taking on board the changes to the settings this is a matter of what the designers have prioritised. Clearly nobody on the implementation team ever took two photos in quick succession at slightly different settings.
The LCD on the back of the camera is well designed and provides the information that it delivers clearly. It can also be set to come on at any time that the shutter isn’t half depressed. Or rather to be on all the time, unless turned off by half pressing the shutter. This goes some way to compensating for the lack of a top panel LCD, but can become annoying if you release the tension on the shutter button as the screen then flashes on directly in front of your eye.
The other big interface issue is the histogram. This is terrible. It has no redeeming features at all. It would seem pretty poor on the cheapest consumer digicam. The blown highlights indicator is at least clear, but is set conservatively.
I’m not sure if you would count the viewfinder as a part of the interface or not, but this deserves its own post, so I’ll write about that next time.
In conclusion? The camera does what I want it to do, and mostly does it well. Given that there is not a whole lot of choice out there for a modern camera with an aperture ring lens design, then if this is something that you would want, then the L1 is OK. But the bad bits let it down a lot. This is not a high grade photo tool.
A top IS enthusiast pointed me in the direction of this video review on cameralabs.com.
It is a fairly lightweight look at the Leica 14-50mm lens, but it does contain a very good demonstration of the anti-shake system in operation on an Olympus 410 body.
What really caught my attention though was the fact that this lens is selling for the same price as the newly introduced E-510 complete with both kit lenses. So, if you have the E1 and the 14-54mm lens, and want to experiment with anti-shake, by far the best way of doing this now is to buy the E-510 for your lens, not the Leica lens for your E1.
I don’t suppose the kit lenses are worth much to sell, but they are decent enough performers according to those who have used them, and on this deal they are cheaper than free.
Not that the Leica lens isn’t a good lens, but, if I recall correctly, the comparison with the Olympus 14-54mm shows them to be broadly equally. The Leica is better wide open and across the frame, and the Olympus is better stopped down and central. But the conclusions that the testers made when doing these comparisons were of only very marginal differences.
Last weekend I had emails from two of the big UK box-shifting web photo retailers. One was still taking pre-orders for the E-510 kits at full price. The other claimed that they were in stock and was already discounting the kit deal. Which must count as the shortest full price honeymoon period on record.
When you look at how much technology you get and how much photographic opportunity you can have, the current generation consumer dSLRs look like bargains. I wonder though, where the margins are, and whether the companies that have chosen to chase this market have a ‘where next’ plan.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I present to you the Fuji Natura S with its 24mm f1.9 lens (full 35mm film coverage).
The pic is a screen grab from this site. Some Fuji advertising material shows how small the camera is.
I haven’t found a picture of the camera with the lens extended, but you know, this is a compact camera, and there is only so much larger that the lens could get. I also realise there is no mirror box to design around. This lens has been designed to a different set of constraints. Some of them help make it smaller, but some would tend to make it bigger.
I’m just pointing out that a smallish, lightish, normalish, fastish lens from a fourthirds company has been done before. They aren’t making one now because they don’t want to, not because they can’t.