Digital Media | Spotlight: Photography | Inside Aperture | Blogs
Camera News Link Roundup
Today, a roundup of a few camera-related links that I've been excited about in the last few weeks:
Canon EOS 450D / Digital Rebel XSi Announced
Last week Canon announced the successor to the Canon EOS 400D / Digital Rebel XTi. The new Canon EOS 450D / Digital Rebel XSi adds a twelve megapixel CMOS sensor, 3.0" LCD monitor, higher capacity battery, and new Live View shooting mode — the first time Canon has made a live shooting mode available on a consumer D-SLR. A pretty impressive update of the XTi, available in April and for pre-order now on Amazon. I've been shooting with my Rebel XTi for about 6 months now, and I'm quite pleased with it. Here's a good preview on Digital Photography Review and one on Photo.net.
The Canon Powershot G9 in Japan
There's a wonderful article by Nick Devlin on the Luminous Landscape about his love affair with the Canon Powershot G9. Nick writes about putting the $500 G9 through its paces on a trip to Japan and how it was his camera of choice for the week over his $5500 Leica M8. I didn't realize how many accessories are available for this camera: the Lensmate lens adaptor and custom grip options can make the G9 into much more than a point-and-shooter. For examples of G9 pics, check out this Flickr pool.
The Ricoh GR Digital II
My gadget lust for the next few months has kicked in and the object of desire is the new Ricoh GR Digital II. This is the successor to the GR Digital, which has something of an underground following that I've been keeping tabs on ever since I read this great piece in JPG Magazine. The GR Digital II is a compact camera and its coolest feature in my opinion is the fixed-focal length 28mm-equivalent f/2.4 lens. A tele conversion lens equivalent to 40 mm is also available. Here's a Flickr pool of GR pics. I may just end up with this camera in the near future... seems perfect for traveling light.
Comments (7)
I have looked into G9 several times, but I have not bought it since I need f/2 and iso1600 with low noise. G9 does not have these features yet.
You can't use Ricoh GR Digital RAW files in Aperture without hacking the raw plist. (as of 10.5.1 and Aperture 1.5.6 anyway) Here's hoping that Apple releases raw support for the GR Digital series soon.
The GRD is a fantastic little camera but as Cody says not really compatible with (this version of 10.5 / Aperture) without some hacking. Even with that the RAW write is so slow that you may only use it rarely in any case.
It is a fantastically discrete little camera and great fun to use.
Pointing out that the new rebel is the first canon consumer dslr to have live view mode seems kind of silly since all the current models that I am aware of are the first models in their category to have live view mode and the only canon dlsr without it now is the aging 5D.
Yes, Cody & Steve, the GR's RAW format isn't supported in Aperture as of this release. I too hope that support for it comes in a future Mac OS X update! For now, I'd be stuck shooting JPEG or RAW + JPEG with hopes that the RAW files are supported in the future.
On now, let see how many years before Apple decides to release a RAW update to serve those cameras... maybe in the next OS... or maybe on Aperture 2.0... but by learned experience it won't be any time soon.
Tick...tock..tick... tock... times goes by and Apple does not even say a thing... or much worse, does do anything about it... in the meantime many Aperture users using the top pro cameras are force to purchase LR and migrate to it.... and Apple does not seem to care.... and Apple won't get them back even if Aperture 2.0 is a killer... not because the product may be good, but because Apple support for Apple sucks.
Maybe if the sold it at itunes or used in the iphone may get instant support....
The RAW write speed in the GR Digital 2 is much faster, and you can take a picture immediately after taking the first, since it now buffers. But yeah, I also have the older GR Digtial and RAW write times were really long.