Here’s one example, from a photography blog that I (mostly) like, Sound Image Plus:

Well as far as I’m concerned they can ‘Go forth and multiply’ or words to that effect. CS6 is the last time they get any money out of me. I will have nothing to do with a company that tells me how I should work. I will have nothing to do with a company that forces me to do something I do not want to do. They can stuff their ‘cloud’ where the sun doesn’t shine, I want nothing to do with it.

Why the vitriol?

First of all, I don’t see how this is dictating how one should work. The difference between CS6 and CC is that instead of buying a box of discs in a store, you’re downloading stuff to your computer. You’re not working through a browser, you’re not working through some cloud connection, you’re working off software that has been installed to your hard disk, just like every version of Photoshop in the past.  The major difference is that when the software starts up, it will check to see if your subscription is still valid and if it isn’t, it will not run. Otherwise, your workflow remains the same.

The drawback in this model, I suppose, is that if I bought CS6 and never purchase an upgrade, CS6 will run forever without my spending another dime.  If I subscribe to CC, it will not run forever, it will only run as long as I keep paying.

For me, the advantages of CC outweighed the disadvantages.  The biggest advantage for me was that I could get one subscription and install that one subscription everywhere I work.  A Lightroom license gives you both the PC and Mac versions but a Photoshop license does not.  So when I wanted to get into Photoshop, if I wanted to run it both on my desktop Windows PC and my laptop MacBook, I would have had to buy it twice – at $699 each (currently discounted down to $601 on Amazon).  So that’s $1,200.  But with Adobe CC, and because I owned an earlier version of Photoshop, I was able to subscribe to the Photoshop-only portion of Adobe CC for $20 per month, $240 per year, and get both the Windows and the Mac versions.  So I saved almost $1,000.

CS6 is offered in a bewildering number of packages at a variety of prices. On the low end, the “Design Standard Student and Teacher Edition” retails for $449.  On the upper end, the “Design and Web Premium” edition lists for (gulp) $1,899.  My understanding is that if one goes for the full Adobe CC package, that’s what you’ll get, at a cost of $600 per year instead of $1900 per pop.

So at the end of a year, if you don’t renew your subscription, you’re out $600 and have no software to run (your files and projects all remain).  Versus spending $1900 and having something that would run forever.  But I don’t need all those bits – and Adobe has various levels of subscription packages ranging from a Photoshop-only package to the whole shebang.

Some think that Adobe is doing this as a way to combat piracy.  That’s just ignorant.  As Adobe themselves have admitted, since the software is downloaded to your computer, hackers can and will be able to get at the underlying files, work out an installation package and a hack – and I think that’s already happened.  (As someone who occasionally earns income as a photographer, I decided early on that if I don’t want people pirating my work, it would be unethical for me to pirate other peoples’ work – and that goes for the tools I use as well.)

Clearly Adobe expects to make more money this way. They’re not in the business of losing money and they have to increase their revenue every year, just like any other company.

At the end of the day, this is Adobe’s product and they can price it and sell it however the hell they want and the market will decide if it’s right or not.  If the model works, if they’re making money, this will continue.  If it doesn’t, it won’t.  If you don’t like it, don’t buy it, don’t subscribe to it, download Gimp for free and work with that instead.

Me? I think that all this noise is coming from a vocal minority and that the majority of people will see the advantages and fall into line.  I think this is merely the next evolutionary step and not the final state. Some day in the relatively near future, when bandwidth gets even larger, when internet connections are even more ubiquitous, when browsers become more advanced, you will no longer download this to your computer, you will work through a browser.

So me, my biggest complaint was that it took Adobe forever to get CC to Hong Kong (my subscription is through the US) but hopefully they have now worked that out.  Their web sites still suck though.

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Most photography blogs are really good for giving you GAS too.  Bad reviews seem rare to me.  Now in part that’s because most equipment from the bigger companies is rarely bad. Some stuff is better than others of course but to a certain, general, vague extent, it’s all good.

But then there’s that other extent, where it’s all GREAT!!!!!! I suppose some people get excited by everything, but some want to keep their suppliers happy and others want you to like it so you’ll click on an associate link and buy it.  Some people test more thoroughly and scientifically than others.  I suppose at the end of the day it’s where it needs to be – read as much as possible and make up your own mind.

Today’s case in point is the relatively recent Fuji X100s.  I read all the reviews of this camera with great interest because if I could afford one, I’d buy it today. But I can’t afford one.

Now Zack Arias is a respected professional photographer. He makes great photos. He loves his new Fuji X100s.

Fuji is the new Leica and the x100s is the greatest camera I’ve ever owned.

The DSLR is dead to me.

Would I use the x100s at a wedding? Hell yes I would. Wouldn’t think twice about it. Would I shoot it on a magazine assignment? Yes. Portrait shoot? Yep. Promo shoot? Yep. And have.

I’m tellin’ you though. From my heart. The x100s is my desert island camera.

I love the X-Trans sensor. It’s sharper than my Canon full frame sensors.

My gosh, that’s a pretty powerful endorsement. And the photos that accompany his review are also amazing.

And he’s not the only one.

From the I-think-very-popular Fro Knows Photo:

As much as I loved my Fuji X100, the X100s is that much better and is quite possibly the best camera I own.

I’m not sponsored by Fuji. I have nothing to gain by singing their praises, but man, I am shouting from the mountaintop because the Fuji X100s is amazing.

For me, it’s the perfect camera.

If you search around, you’re going to find a whole lot more reviews like those.

So maybe I’m feeling a bit of sour grapes. Because, as I said, I think I’d like to have one but I can’t afford one. Is it something I truly need or is it GAS? I suspect it’s more the latter. But, under the heading of “seek and ye shall find,” there is at least one person with a web site not jumping on the Fuji bandwagon any time soon.  Diglloyd.

Here he writes:

Sure it has a faster AF and higher resolution sensor, but most of the design warts seem to have been cemented in, with no real improvements in usability.

I know the Fuji X100s has all the right checkbox-list of features in the marketing materials, but these days I’m looking for intelligent design; sensors are getting so good that what really makes the camera is the ease of use and well thought out features: less is more and more is less. Good design is about the right overall feature set with every little detail nit-picked and forced through a rigorous usability filter. The X100s fails miserably in this regard.

And here he writes:

Fuji ostensibly designed this sensor to avoid moiré. But the cure is worse than the disease: more digital artifacts, not fewer

The lens looks to be poorly corrected at closer range, exhibiting a glowing halo effect.

I expect to see more negative posts from him in days to come.

So who do you trust? Do you trust the guy who says it’s the greatest camera he ever owned or the one who says it fails miserably?  Arias’s photos are great but he’s a great photographer and I think there’s a dozen other cameras out there that would have given him the same results. Diglloyd takes close-up shots of burlap bags and tree trunks to illustrate his concepts, which they do, but who takes those kinds of photos in the real world?

Of course the truth is likely somewhere in between.  The X100s is the bestest camera ever this month and next month everyone will jerk off to the spec sheet for the Ricoh GR.

Me? I’m hoping to get rid of this GAS. Or maybe get a raise at work …

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Standing guard in front of Tai Om Village, much like the Colossus of Rhodes, no? Except probably unlike the Colossus of Rhodes, a minute after I took this photo all the village dogs came over and took turns peeing on it.

Here’s a crop that shows how well the sensor from the Sony RX100 performs.

All of the RX100 photos I’ve been posting have been from RAW – though honestly, to my eyes at least, I’m not seeing a huge difference between the JPGs and the RAW files.

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And here’s a crop from the above.

Is it as sharp as my D800? No, of course not. But it’s certainly good enough. And since I do crop a lot, having a 20 mega pixel sensor certainly doesn’t hurt.

Maybe some time I should do a post on how horrible it is to have to shoot when you only have an LCD screen and not a viewfinder. Exact framing is all but impossible, especially in bright light. I wish there was an accessory viewfinder available for this, but without a hot shoe I suppose there’s no way to mount one.

And you lose the stability one gets when one holds a camera with two hands, elbows bent, up against your face. Fortunately Sony’s image stabilization works pretty well to compensate for that.

Now with some cropping and a few other minor adjustments:

As you should be able to see, the detail is fine enough to clearly make out the two characters on those red signs on the door.

I love wandering around in Hong Kong and coming across classic shops like this one:

I suppose this sort of image cries out for a black and white treatment, huh?

Always something interesting to see along Sai Yeung Choi South Street on a Saturday.

A bit further down the street.

Doesn’t really look much like RDJ, does it?

Well, as I said in the subject for this post, random shots.

But overall, yes, the Sony RX100 is so small and light that one can easily bring it along for the day without having to think twice.  And you can pull it out of your pocket, turn it on and grab a photo (or, ahem, snap a shot) with one hand, which is nice. The small size will definitely be an advantage for remaining inconspicuous or looking like a tourist when shooting crowded streets.

I’m not finding the Sony menus as annoying as I was anticipating. But I’m still not really familiar with the controls – it’s not like a Fuji X camera where everything is right there on dials in front of you.  I need to get a bit more used to the controls and start getting the hell out of “P” mode.

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Checking the photos that were on the memory card in the Olympus, I noted that it was almost two months since I’d last shot with it.  Let’s face it, as wonderful a camera as it is – and it is indeed wonderful – once a lens was on it, it was almost as big as my regular DSLR so I’d end up just going out with the D800 with a 50mm or 35mm on it instead. When the guy I was selling it to was checking it out, I realized as he was checking to make sure the touch screen worked that I had forgotten it even had a touch screen!

Some people told me to consider the Panasonic LX7 (or the Leica D-Lux 6, essentially the same camera). The smaller sensor put me off. Then for awhile I was considering the new Fuji X100s, which is getting some really strong reviews. I love the ergonomics and control on the Fuji, not to mention the hybrid viewfinder, but finally the combination of single fixed focal length lens and the price put me off.

So then I thought, what about the Fuji X20? “Over 50 improvements over the X10″ goes the hype, and most of the reviews I’ve read on it said to believe the hype. Again, great controls. Optical viewfinder now with some actual useful information displayed in the viewfinder.  No anti-aliasing filter. And a zoom lens that is at F2.8 at the telephoto end.  I’d had the X10 for a brief period and ended up really disliking it. Of course a big part of the dislike at the time was the inability of Adobe products to properly handle the RAW files, something that has finally been resolved.

But in the end I came back to the Sony RX100. The major deciding factors for me were the larger sensor and the fact that it is small enough to fit into pants pockets.  And I admit I was swayed by the Sony’s 20 megapixel sensor vs. the Fuji’s 12 megapixels, even though I know that the two sensors are technologically quite different.   Last was the fact that I was able to get a good price on it. The list is, if I recall correctly, HK$5390. One shop offered it to me at HK$4980 and I almost said yes. Then I went to a shop where they know me and managed to get it – full box set and Sony warranty – for HK$4450.  (At the moment the asking price for used ones on DCFever is HK$4200, so I think I came out okay here.)

Anyway, I got home late, it’s crappy weather, and after I charged up the battery just fired off a few random test shots in P mode with auto ISO.

This shot is ISO 320, 1/30th of a second, f1.8.

And here’s Bogey ….

This is 800 ISO, f1.8, 1/30th of a second. To be honest, I did do a bit of processing in Lightroom to this. Here’s a crop:

I think the sharpness is there though there’s a bit more noise at ISO 800 than I expected.

Well, the weekend is here and hopefully I’ll get out of the house a little so I’ll try to find something interesting to shoot over the next couple of days.

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I know that some people think I’m crazy for selling off the Olympus. It’s a wonderful camera. But my financial situation changed soon after buying it (used) and I am not going to be buying a series of Micro Four Thirds lenses, especially when I already own around 10 Nikon lenses.  The other reason is the size.  Yes, the body is a lot smaller than your standard DSLR.  Even so, once you slap a lens onto it, it’s big enough. And by that I mean big enough that I needed a camera bag to carry it around, rather than slip it into a coat pocket. It got to the point where I started leaving it home and going out with my D800 with a 35mm or 50mm lens on.  And that meant it got to the point where I was leaving it home and not using it.

So as wonderful as it is, it just doesn’t make sense for me to own a camera that I don’t use.

So the question is, what next?  There are two cameras that I’m looking at, and they’re very different from each other.

The first is Sony’s RX100. It’s a true pocket-sized camera with a large sensor and a decent zoom lens. There’s no optical viewfinder and the maximum aperture on the zoom lens goes down to F4.9 once you’ve zoomed in a bit. The control layout is a bit odd, I have never liked Sony’s menu system, and you have the charge the battery in the camera.

The second is Fuji’s X100s.  It’s twice the price of the Sony. And it has a single fixed focal length lens. I loved shooting with the X100 but was frustrated by the slow auto-focus and by Adobe’s inability to deal properly with the RAW files.  All of that is said to be fixed now.  And it has the same APS-C sensor as the X-Pro1 now.  But double the price.  And jacket pocket sized rather than pants pocket sized.

Right now I really don’t know.

Some have suggested the Panasonic LX7 (or the equivalent Leica D-Lux6) and I know the Nikon Coolpix A is getting some good reviews but so far neither of those seem that appealing to me. I’ll try to take a closer look at them.

I know some of you have commented on this recently.  Any newer thoughts?

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• Olympus OM-D E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera with M.Zuiko 12-50mm  f3.5-6.3 kit lens
• Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm F1.4 ASPH lens for Micro Four Thirds
• Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lens
• Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens
• Nikon AF-S VF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED lens
• Nikon AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens

Out of all of these, it pains me the most to sell off the Nikon 14-24mm.  It’s part of what some refer to as the “holy trinity” of Nikon’s f/2.8 professional zooms. It’s an amazing lens but I don’t use it that often and need the cash more right now.

I’m also rather sad to part with the 105mm lens though truth be told, I’m hard-pressed to recall the last time I used it.  Selling it will leave me without a macro lens but I don’t seem to shoot macro.

And that Panasonic Leica. As others have noted, the lens is so good that it almost justifies getting into M4/3 just to be able to use this lens. Except I’ve found the Olympus to be too large for my purposes and I am not in a financial position to start investing in a whole series of M4/3 lenses so that’s pretty much that.

As I said, please feel free to contact me if you’re interested in any of this gear or share with your friends if you think you know someone who might want some of this.

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I’d previously posted a scan of this photo on the blog, which is how they found it.

I’m thrilled to be included in the magazine, even if it’s just a tiny photo I took back in my college days.  BTW, my friend Kevin Westenberg is a staff photographer there.  (He’s an amazingly talented photographer, check his web site!)

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