Frankly I need a smaller camera with RAW, and the Canon Powershot G9 fits the bill. No, I am not going to buy it yet, but sometime in the future hopefully. What sealed it was reading Nick Devlin’s experience with it at Luminous Landscape. I came to the realization that what has stopped me more than once in lugging my equipment around is its size. I definitely want RAW, and no point and shoot up to now has that capability.

I feel that the important thing is taking photos, and lots of them at this stage in my photographic development, not super equipment.

Technorati Tags: pentax k10d, pentax k20d, canon powershot G9

What’s the difference between the Sanyo Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries  and regular rechargeable batteries, you ask? They retain their charge longer. Bet you didn’t know that when you charge a rechargeable battery, and you don’t use it, the charge drains?

I’ve had it happen one too many times. Of course, after charging regular non-Eneloop rechargeable batteries and storing it for the next time I need to use it, and then needing to use it, they held no charge. But of course, I said, these batteries were probably never charged. Which of course was not true, I just forgot that I did charge them!

This is especially handy if you need to store extra batteries for your digital camera or flash in your photo bag, and knowing that it will reliably hold a charge when you need it.

Technorati Tags: sanyo eneloop rechargeable batteries, eneloop, batteries, rechargeable

Now, if you are a photographer like me, you will love this gadget. When looking for my first DSLR, I was looking at the features, and I thought, GPS capability would be really cool. Wherever I travelled, after uploading my photos to Flickr for example, they could all be laid out on a map to show where I took a photo. I mean precisely where I took the photo!

I know that the Nikon D200 has this capability (with GPS add-on) but it was out of my price range. Sony also has its own doohickey (the Sony GPS-CS1 GPS) but that came with a limitation, that you needed a computer to further “tag” your photo files. This is where the ATP GPS device comes in, you don’t need a computer to geo-tag your photo files! You just insert your memory card into it (and it supports several: SD, Memory Stick, MMC). The marketing brochure says that it supports all the major camera manufacturers — but I don’t know for sure if it supports the JPEG output of the cameras, or whether the device supports tagging the RAW files also (and of course there are lots of RAW formats out there!)

All you need to do to enable geo-tagging of your photos:

1. Make sure your camera’s time is synced with the GPS device’s time
2. Turn on the GPS device before taking your photos
3. After taking your photos, take out your memory card and put it in the GPS device

Later on when you are at your computer, your already geo-tagged photo files will “automatically” be discovered by any of the photo services that supports geo data in photo files (I know Flickr does), and that will automatically plot the location of your photos onto a map.

Technorati Tags: atp gps photo finder, atp gps, gps

I use a Crumpler 4 Million Dollar Home photography bag, costs about CAD$70 (about the same in USD, cheaper at Amazon dot com).

It’s a shoulder bag, it has one flap and two loops on each side that you can hook your tripod or other equipment with. When you open the flap, on the inside of the flap is storage (the flap inside is mesh), that I store my memory cards, spare batteries for the flash, pen, lens caps, and exposure card. On the bottom front of the bag is another flap secured by velcro, which I store the charger for my camera battery. In the main compartment, I can fit my Pentax K10D camera with Pentax 16-45mm lens attached, and there is room for another lens or a flash. I usually put my Pentax FA 50mm lens in there, but lately because of winter and the low-light conditions I have my Pentax AF360FGZ flash in there.

It’s a pretty compact bag, and you can get the Crumpler 5 Million Dollar Home bag which is much more roomier, but that takes up more space. I find it is the right size for travelling around taking pictures, and even stuffing the whole thing into a larger backpack with my MacBook Pro laptop.

Technorati Tags: photo bag, pentax, k10d, crumpler

Pentax K10D final verdict

One thing should be clear from our comments so far: the K10D is not the greatest performer using its default settings. If you want a camera that takes great-looking JPEGs straight out the box, then look elsewhere. Shooting alongside the K10D with a Nikon D80 really cemented this point home.

But the K10D undeniably offers a lot of features for the money. For starters it’s the most affordable DSLR with environmental sealing. The Shake Reduction may only have offered a couple of stops compensation in our tests, but it’s certainly better than nothing. The anti-dust system may not be as good as the Olympus SuperSonic Wave Filter, but it sure proved more effective than the Canon 400D and Sony A100 systems in our tests. The support for both proprietary and open RAW file formats, along with in-camera processing is also very welcome. And while it’s annoying not to have buttons offering direct access to the ISO and White Balance, the K10D makes up for it to some extent with its Sensitivity Priority mode and a dedicated RAW button.

Had the K10D sported superior metering and better-looking JPEGs out-the-box, it would have easily achieved our Highly Recommended rating. But the fact you need to put some effort into learning the camera when rivals are ready to go straightaway means we can only award it our lower Recommended rating.

At this point you could argue any product needs to be learnt to make the most of it, but in photography you may only have one chance at your shot – and the fact is cameras like the Nikon D80 will get it right almost every time, whereas the K10D often requires some adjustment. By that time your opportunity may have passed.

Ultimately if you’re a beginner or want the easy life, look elsewhere. But if you’re willing to learn how to get the best from the K10D, it undoubtedly represents great value for money and a compelling option. Just don’t expect miracles from the Shake Reduction and be prepared to tweak the settings.

Technorati Tags: K10D, review

Now I can properly evaluate Apple Aperture versus Adobe Lightroom, for my K10D RAW files.

K10D support in Aperture, for 10.4.9
OS X 10.4.9 download

Technorati Tags: K10D, Aperture, Lightroom, 10.4.9, PEF

Technorati Tags: Pentax, K10D, Adobe Camera Raw

• I am between an amateur and semi-pro (or that’s where I want to be)
• I like to use existing light, I prefer not to use the flash at all
• I want to use manual instead of automatic settings, I like to tinker (I am a software developer after all!)
• I don’t have an existing lens collection
• I like in a SLR, in order of importance: image quality (esp. at low light conditions or high ISO), body features, body quality
• I am not too concerned with lens selection, since I am probably going to use only a few good lenses, not a wide range (unless LBA takes over me!)
• I think I will do lots of low-light photography (indoor, night shots, winter shots)
• I will be shooting in moisture rich conditions

The last two points are important, because I live in the Vancouver area, where it is wet almost all the time, and cloudy obviously. I narrowed down my choices to three cameras (all 10MP): the Canon Digital Rebel XTi, the Nikon D80, and Sony A100. The Pentax K10D wasn’t even in the picture yet, until I saw the review at Popular Photography , DPReview and AnandTech [via the OK1000 Pentax Blog].

All of the cameras I mentioned are good cameras — but only the K10D balanced what I wanted in a SLR based on my profile above. Here are some of the features, plus my comments:

• Shake Reduction — the A100 has it too, but Nikon and Canon have that feature only in their lenses, not their bodies.
• Dust Reduction — the A100 and XTi have this feature. Nikon does not have it in their D80
• Weather Seals — none of the other models have this feature, except in their higher end models (Canon 1-series, Nikon D200)
• Pentaprism viewfinder — the A100 and D80 have this large viewfinder mechanism, but the XTi uses a smaller viewfinder that is pentamirror
• Spot Metering — all the other cameras I mentioned have this capability except for the XTi. The Canon 30D has this capability, and I even considered it because of Canon’s “Double Rebate” offer, but then I saw the K10D
• Dedicated RAW button — This is quite useful for the primarily JPEG shooter. This toggles between your current format setting to RAW+JPEG. So if you shoot primarily in JPEG and need to get the next shot off that includes a RAW file for greater flexibility, you can do so easily. Conversely, if you primarily shoot in RAW and want a JPEG also, you can do so using the RAW button (but less useful, see the next point about in-camera RAW processing)
• In-camera RAW processing — Some will wonder, why would you want to do so, when your workflow probably includes a PC for RAW processing later? One reason I can think of is, to free up space on your memory card for shots that don’t need to be in RAW in the first place because you probably don’t need to tweak it further
• Image quality — across the board they look almost the same to me. But the A100 seems to be grainier at higher ISOs so that rules out the A100 for me. The D80 has ISO 3200 which none of the others have, and it has better noise reduction at higher ISOs.
• Body quality — All the bodies seem fine, except for the XTi which seems too small for my hands.
• DNG support — the K10D supports DNG as a RAW format. Not too important for me, but a nice feature to have in the body. Future-proofs your RAW images since DNG is an open spec. However, a 10MP DNG file takes 16MB of space, instead of Pentax’s proprietary PEF format which only takes up 10MB of space. However, the DNG can be further processed on your computer using Adobe DNG Converter, which can losslessly compress the 16MB DNG file to about 10MB. It’s probably uncompressed on the K10D because its faster to do so, obviously for continuous shots. A side effect however, is that Pentax Photo Laboratory will not open these compressed DNG files.
• Top LCD — all of the cameras I mentioned except the A100 and XTi have a top LCD. I find a top LCD invaluable when changing settings.
• Application support — current lack of support for Pentax K10D PEF files in Apple’s Aperture/iPhoto or Adobe Lightroom/Camera Raw, but that might change, who knows when. That’s probably why Pentax included the DNG support, because using the included software on my Mac is just not optimal. [Update] Aperture supports the K10D in the OS X 10.4.9 update, and Lightroom in its recently released version 1.0 (wasn’t in the beta)

So there you have it. I chose the Pentax K10D more for its pluses instead of the other cameras’ minuses. If it wasn’t for the K10D, I would have picked up a Nikon D80 instead. I picked up a K10D body, plus a DA 16-45mm F4 ED AL lens, at my local London Drugs (all the online stores out of province were out of stock). I’ve only had it a day or so, but I think I will need a faster, wider lens — the FA 50mm F1.4 for low-light photography. Also none of the current lenses for Pentax have weather sealing, I hear the ones that do come out in March 2007 (uh-oh, am I getting lens buying addiction or LBA???). Oh, I also took some test photos of my cats, using the K10D.

[Update] I ordered the FA 1.4 50MM prime Pentax lens from B&H, very nice piece of glass, I use this the most, very sharp and I get a few more stops more light compared to my F4 (about 8x more light!), perfect for low-light situations.

Technorati Tags: Pentax, K10D, XTi, D80, A100