Pentax Doesn’t Take Mirrorless Seriously

Today Pentax announced the K-01, its second mirrorless interchangeable lens digital camera (henceforth abbreviated as “mirrorless”), pictured above. Pentax’s first mirrorless was the strange small-sensor Pentax Q, which was apparently designed mostly for the Japanese market and can not be seen to compete with the larger sensor mirrorless systems, like Micro 4/3 and Sony NEX, so it shall not be mentioned again.

Leaving aside the fact that this new camera looks monumentally hideous, a fact that seems to induce Pentax to celebrate it as a feature, it is remarkable in that the K-01 is the first mirrorless camera that does not take advantage of the possibility of a short flange focal distance. The touted selling point is that it takes existing Pentax lenses without needing a converter, the obvious downside being that those are the only lenses it takes.

For many people one of the big lures of mirrorless cameras, most notably Micro 4/3 and Sony NEX, are the possibility of using all kinds of other lenses on them, including old SLR system lenses or Leica M mount lenses. On the K-01 none of that is possible.

Assuming that the people at Pentax are not incompetent (excluding those responsible for the camera’s visual design), my guess is that Pentax just wants to cash in on the mirrorless craze with the least amount of expenditure. No need to design a new lens mount, new lenses, a separate adapter or any of that – the camera is just one product that stands on its own. If it fails, not much is lost, and if it’s successful, money is being made. In other words, this is not a serious entry into the mirrorless market.

Yet Another Leica M9 Bug

The Leica M9 is both the greatest as well as the most frustrating camera I have ever used. In this post I concentrate on one particular bug that has been bothering me for a few months and that I have only recently managed to come to terms with somewhat satisfactorily.

The problem

A few months after buying and using the M9 I noticed that in some shots on higher ISOs it would produce some very disturbing banding artefacts in the noise patterns. As an example, here is a 100% crop from a shot at ISO 2500 (you can download the original RAW file here):

In contrast, here is the same crop of a shot with the same settings where the banding doesn’t show up:

After some searching on the web I found one other person who seemed to have the same problem.

The story

I went through my files and noticed that the banding wasn’t there in the first few months that I owned the camera, so I assumed that something had gone awry in my M9 and I sent it back for repairs. It took Leica no less than one month to process the camera and send it back, with, they claimed, a new sensor. I put it to the test and to my chagrin saw the same artefacts again. Back once more it went, this time returning a bit more quickly with the explanation that they were now able to reproduce the problem and they can’t really do anything about it. They did put in a new sensor again, they said, but the problem would persist. Luckily, I was told, it shouldn’t happen if the battery is fully charged. Happen again it did, however, with an almost fully charged battery, no less, on the first outing with the freshly sensored camera and the latest firmware. Off to the Leica dealer it was one more time. This time they sent me a completely new M9 which immediately proceeded to unnerve me with the same bug again.

At this point I figured that if this problem occurs on two different M9s then it’s probably a bug inherent to the M9, not just the two M9s that I had. If that is the case, however, people would definitely have noticed it, so there was something else that triggered the bug for me but not for most other people. I started trying out different SD cards and behold, with some SD cards the bug would show up, with others not. On those where it did, it would occur more frequently and/or severely with some, less so with others. That despite the latest firmware (1.176), which promised to fix problems related to some SD cards.

Examples

The lowest sensitivity at which I have seen the banding is ISO 640. This is a 100% crop of a black and white conversion of an image taken at that ISO:

Here’s a 50% crop of an image shot at ISO 1600:

Lest you think that the banding is minor and would not show up in a print, please look at the following image at ISO 2500. This is the whole image, not a crop, scaled down to web size:

The banding is clearly visible especially in the top and bottom right corners.

When does it occur?

These are the results of my limited analysis – once I figured out what triggered the bug and how I could avoid it I couldn’t be bothered to do any more testing.

Memory cards

The most significant factor is the memory card. Here’s a shot of the memory cards that I have used in my M9:

The three on the left have not given me any trouble so far while the four on the right have, to varying degrees. Of the four problematic ones, the top left is the worst – every third image or so is broken. Note that all of these cards work without a hitch on all my other cameras. The Sony and Kingston ones are in fact new – I bought them for the sole purpose of testing them on the M9.

Battery charge

If the M9 coughs on an SD card, it will cough more if the battery has a low charge, to the point where almost every single shot will be broken if it goes below 20% or so.

Busy buffer

I am not absolutely sure about this, but it seems that more shots will be damaged if the camera is working on clearing the buffer while I’m shooting.

Feedback

Please let me know if you have the same problem with your M9, whether you found out something I missed or not, either here with a comment or via email.

10 Not Totally Crappy Photos From 2011

What follows is a selection of 10 photographs from 2011 that I’m reasonably happy with. I won’t claim that these are my best photos from the past year, nor do I claim that any of them are great, as this post’s title should already suggest.

Free Libya Protest

I was out on the street shooting in February in Vienna’s inner city when I came across this small protest in support of the opposition against Gaddafi. Of course I could not resist the opportunity and snuck into the protest’s inner circle to photograph. More shots from the protest here.

Sanam

I’ve been working on this studio portrait project on and off for quite a while now. The series started, as series usually do for me, by coincidence with this shot which was almost perfect straight out of the camera. For all the shots since then I had to labor hard, both in the studio as well as in post-processing, to make the lighting match.

Éva

She didn’t like the photo. Pity.

Runner

I’ve been shooting portraits of marathon runners for a few years now but decided last year that I had enough photo material to finish the project at long last, which also frees me to compete in the Vienna half marathon this year myself, where I plan to do some shooting from the runner’s perspective. More runners here.

Ariane

Ariane is a juggling friend who balances and throws stuff and does lots of other awesome things. We took this shot in the Vienna subway passages. It’s a 4 second exposure during which she really did balance that ball on top of her head and not move. Shortly thereafter we were told by two officials that it’s not allowed to photograph in the subway with a tripod without explicit permission. More shots of Ariane here.

Patrik

This young gentleman is Patrik Elmnert, at the juggling convention in Schaerding. It was very dark but this spotlight was on in preparation for light checks for the gala show. Patrik was just jamming and happened to move in and out of the light. I took a few shots of which this one is the best. More photos from this convention here.

LOOOOP

This shot of the poi swinging trio LOOOOP was taken from the back of the stage at the gala show of the European Juggling Convention in Munich. During rehearsals I saw them exit the stage like this but was too slow to grab the shot. A few hours later at the actual performance I was prepared. The whole backstage series is here.

Street

When I saw this lady I instantly knew that I had to try to take a photograph of her. If I recall correctly I maneuvered around a little, probably not too conspicuously, and took this shot from the hip. I don’t think I could have pressed the shutter at a better moment, either. More street shots here.

Burner

I began this series of portraits of people at Burning Man in 2010. This guy, along with two friends, was hanging around near the temple, dancing to the rhythm of a megaphone whose only sound was the word “Fuck”. I was initially attracted by another of the three guys, but when this gentleman took off his glasses I was smitten. More shots from Burning Man, including a few from this series, here.

Temple Burn

While quite a spectacle both the burning of the Man as well as of the Temple are photographic subjects that don’t do much for me directly. The dynamic range is huge, so if you want to have detail on the fire, everything else will be completely black, including the people, who are my main interest. Turning around presents a much more interesting sight, however. People are usually lost in thought, sometimes meditating, their faces lit by the distant flames.

Welcome!

Welcome, dear reader, to my new photography blog! I am splitting this off from my old blog because its main theme over the years, software development, has made me hesitant to post more vigorously on all matters photographic, lest I bore my (tiny) core audience. As I am currently more motivated to do that, however, I decided to start a dedicated photography blog.

Who I am

I’m just some guy who does photography, with no credentials whatsoever. All that should matter for the purposes of this blog, I think, are my photographic work and my writing. If you like the former, I encourage you to stick around and see whether the latter measures up.

Mission Statement

There is no sharp direction I have in mind for this blog, other than being an outlet for my photography and my thoughts on photography and related topics. My guess is that, should I manage to keep this up and acquire a reasonably sized reader community, it will become more focused in the process. If not, it will die a slow, natural death, bemoaned by nobody.

What’s coming

In the somewhat immediate future I plan to post a selection of my favorite images from 2011, talk about the ergonomics of auto and manual focus, write about photography at Burning Man, why I don’t like the Fuji X100, why I both love and hate the Leica M9 and several other topics. I shall try to post once or twice a week and see how it goes from there.

What else to read

If you have the leisure to read only one photography blog, make it The Online Photographer. Should you be able to manage a second one, add Kirk Tuck’s blog. After that there’s lots of choices, depending on what your specific interests are, which I might expand on in the future. If, after that, you still have time for more, I would be happy to count you as one of my readers.

Feedback

Please feel encouraged to comment on this blog, or to contact me personally.