Q and X-5 head to head battle!

Last year during the Pentax Q closeouts, my wife decided this was the right camera for her.  Something very small, quite talented and at a decent price would suit her well.  This was a real surprise to me as it missed out on a few features she likes a lot - but OK order placed.  It wasn't quite that simple, as she wanted us to have identical cameras to work with; that way she could see how I shot the same subject and learn what to do, or (equally likely) find that her ways worked best for her.  So two black Qs soon reached us.  I have enjoyed my time using the Q, though in no way can it replace a K-5 in most situations.


And now the loop repeats, this time with the soon-departing X-5.  Now here are the features my wife likes on a camera: both the tipping LCD screen and some variation of a viewfinder, in this case a basic electronic one.  These two features caused us to begin with two Lumix G1 micro-4/3 cameras before the Qs came about.  I found the silver X-5 for under $120 and figured I would show it to her, just in case.  We could try the Q and X-5 out for a while, compare and contrast, and pick the camera that worked best for her.

Round one!
And... it's over.
Well, it was simple really.  The screen and VF won out over the Qte factor of the Q even before they were powered up.  No drama, no exhausting tests, nothing.  I shall now seek a black X-5 and sell off one of the Q pair.  This tells you just how cute the Q is in person, that my sweetie would choose it a year ago despite its lack of a few features she cannot be happy without.  It turns out that she did not want to change lenses either, so the advantages of the Q was really not for her.

So: now that we have a winner, how are the images?  Oh yes, that's probably worth knowing right?  Thankfully the test shots are quite nice, especially after shifting to spot metering.  Close-ups and far-outs are crisp, details are clear, fringing not bad.  I do wish the X-5 allowed for raw images as the 16mpxl backlit sensor could conceivably do a fine job... alas it's jpeg only.

I'm planning to keep one Q for a while at least, as I want to test its usefulness on a telescope; I bought a Q-1¼" telescope adapter but had to pack the gear away for our upcoming move before giving it a tryout.

. . . . . . .

UPDATE: black body acquired, though it was less of a bargain.  As of now only silver bodies are being refurbished it seems, so a brand new black X-5 will have to do!

hello goodbye

So here are three cameras with different sensor sizes, and the zoom lens that covers wide to light telephoto work. 

If you like headaches, here goes: each sensor sees its lens as if it were a 35mm film camera with a 28-80mm zoom lens attached.  The Q lens is f/2.8-4.5 while the others are f/3.5-5.6, so it sounds brighter - but wait, formulae available on the web can 'prove' that the equivalence is actually much closer, and it can be clearly demonstrated that ... [enough: where's my ibuprofen bottle?]

Whatever.  Three cameras that can do very good things up to the limits that each sensor imposes, or that physics imposes upon them.  Larger is better for the sensor, smaller is best for most camera users, and the compromises each company makes will bring different opinions into play.  No reason to get a headache, really!

This is a gathering and a farewell party, as the blue Lumix G1 will be going up for sale.  With the Q's arrival it will become our "talented smaller-sensor" camera, and we will become an all-Pentax family.  This was shot with the K-01, so the Pentax Trifecta is in place.  If I become royalty I can afford the 645D and acquire the Royal Flush, but not before.

The micro-4/3 format is quite versatile and has many things going for it.  I won't bash the G1, especially as it was the first of its m4/3 kind and still serves many people very well.  We needed our small cameras to be really really small - so the Q will serve us better.

kidding, right? Right?!?

Somehow, I'm not.  Another camera is on the way.

I recently despaired of getting another camera for my wife, despite my certainty that a yellow K-01 would prove irresistible.  We have similar Lumix G1s so that would be the vehicle that allows us to shoot 'identical' images, so she would learn to see what I see on the same subject.  The G1 is a great camera with some nice features, and it's an ideal learning tool, but my wife's health is such that even micro-43 is pretty bulky for her use.

As Pentax did with the K-01, they now do with the Q - drop the price to a fraction of its original MSRP and watch them vanish.  The K-01 cured me of new cameras... but I failed to account for the cuteness factor as applied to my wife.  She found it absurdly cute and small and felt that the sub-$200 price was worth a dent in our budget.  Saying this actually meant a sub-$400 price as she still wants us to have identical cameras to shorten her learning curve - so here we go, again.  The sale includes the standard zoom lens of about 28-85mm so it is not shown in the image above (that's the prime lens).  Still let's face it, this is a really small camera!

Talented too, by the way.  Its backlit 12Mpx sensor can do quite well to iso1600 or a bit more, and it has raw abilities for personalized processing for sharpness, noise and everything (unlike jpg with its fine but compressed images that don't decompress the same twice).  I really liked the Fuji F550 (until it hit the pavement, hard) for its 1/2" sensor with raw shooting, so part of this will be familiar to me.  Many things, actually - the menu system is almost a mirror copy of the larger Pentaxi in my collection, so my learning curve will likely be quite short!

So the Pentax Trifecta is complete - do not hold your breath for the Grand Slam, as the $10k± 645D will not be in my financial league for the foreseeable future.  Plus it's kinda big.

image from quesabede.com

Oh hey, did I mention the adapter to allow K-mount lenses to work with the Q?  

That DA40 pancake lens just mutated into a 230mm telephoto... so they tell me.

that was fun!

All that driving for a dumb picture?

Well not exactly.

---

The weekend of May 20th had several things going for it.  On a personal level it was the seventh anniversary of my first date with my future wife.  Yes the Republic fell and the Empire was established, and Darth Vader was encased in black plastic.. pretty sad overall, but we consider it a nice evening anyway.  We chose to travel on the 20th to commemorate that date and our 5th wedding anniversary; that happened in January but we were forced to delay our party.  To make it worth heading south there was the annular solar eclipse cruising past Oregon on its way to Texas.  These are not the stunners that total eclipses are, with the prominences and huge corona blazing in a starry sky, but they are worth seeing anyway (if you have filters to protect your vision!).

So off we went.  This event also came close to cancellation, as we intended to go Saturday for a far more leisurely ramble toward totality - but instead we dashed down Sunday, arriving at a suitable site with about 10 minutes to spare.  I brought three cameras - the Lumix G1 and 45-200mm lens got the tripod, the K-5 and various lenses was in hand for versatility, and a film camera was used for the occasional shot, the first film I've exposed in about a decade.  Overkill most likely, but if you own them why not use them?

We made a cheap pinhole camera to use when cameras had the filters attached, then popped the filters on the binocs for the big views - or just held the filters to our eyes and saw the action unfold in natural scale. Several groups of clouds threatened to intervene but they passed above the sun instead, so we had very little atmospheric interference with the show. The sky faded toward twilight yet visibility remained great; impressive how less than 10 percent of the sun can still provide that much light! The wind faded to nothing during the eclipse, where it had been brisk and gusty in the afternoon heat. Shadows looked decidedly weird, a feature I remember from 1979's total eclipse that a few of us viewed from near Mt. Hood. And then the moon caught the far edge of the sun, and the event was essentially over. We packed up slowly and drove back into thick mid-level clouds, which brought the solar show to an ignominious end.

It should be noted that my film experience was not great, and makes digital imaging feel so much more 'right' now.  I bought batteries for three film bodies, only to find that the 'best' of them (Pentax ME 'SE') had drained them overnight; apparently it was not set to Lock and that's bad.  The second ME body was not closing convincingly, so the film could fog at a very bad time - so I stole its batteries and put them in the SE body.  Since that had drained the other batteries I wasn't sure of that - so this left the Ricoh XR-10 as my safest bet.  That camera came through but it was an awkward fit since I did not get to read any instructions first!  The film took almost $10 to process and the drug store failed to print most of the eclipse shots.. guess the computer figured they were blank and decided not to print!  I will try that SE in the near future.. maybe it can catch the Venus transit?  p.s. it sure is weird not seeing the captured image on the back of old film cameras.. :^)

the updated kit - today's version :^)

A week after speculating on missing gear I have a 15mm. A month after seeking and finding a 35-70 lens for my manual-focus kit I have my favorite 28-105 again. When does it end? Obviously about two weeks after I'm dead, since I could go suddenly after placing a bid.

 So am I happy? Well, I'm a naturally happy guy so that doesn't quite fit - but I am satisfied, which is the equivalent in gear-lust terms.  The lenses in my possession only lacks a super-zoom and for now that's OK; the K-5 is a camera that still leaves too little missing to cause me any concern.

•  Today's AF kit: Sigma EX15, Pentax DA18-55, EX/DG50 macro, DA55-300. 
• The MF lightweight kit: Rikenon 28P, 35-70P, 70-150XR. 
• The MF 2-lens (or video) kit: Vivitar(Kobori) 28-105 and 70-150XR. 
• The alternate kit: Lumix G1, 14-42 and 45-200 OIS zooms.
• The full-frame-sensor kit? 15, 28, 50 primes, 28-105 and 70-150 zooms!

Good stuff all, and plenty of time to learn it all (assuming  I do not go suddenly!).  And now the film bodies, which now consists of two Pentax MEs and two Ricohs (XR-10 and KR5 super).  The Vivitar 28-105 came with a leather-wrapped ME 'SE', a special edition with diagonal split-image focusing screen.  Pretty cool, and now my lead body for the rare use of film.  I really want to learn more about the XR-10 that came with the 35-70 Rikenon though, it shows some interesting features from the early days of electronic cameras.  I need to download a manual so I can brush up, and to figure out what the button near the lens-mount does!

more coming soon ..

back to the G1

The F550 suffered a fatal incident.  After taking a few photos I went to put it inside my jacket pocket, but before getting there it escaped both hand and pocket, and hit the concrete. Hard. It never responded properly again.  Oh well, glad I paid about half-price for it.

So what about a replacement? I looked at F505s and newer models, but decided that for now my small camera should be the one I already have - so once more the G1 sees the photons of day. Easier on the budget, and though a bit dated on features it's still a great camera. I really like the flip screen, it's great for odd-angle and flower shots.



Here it is on a fun scene, a brightly-painted house with daphne and bamboo out front.  I tweaked the raw image a bit, but not much.  This is a pretty 'honest' rendering of what I saw, and the camera and its sub-kit 14-42 lens did just fine.  The G1 kit lens was the 14-45 but I let it go to save $100.  This one will do.

Here's a collage of two more close-ups from my sunny-day walk home from work.

More tests of the G1/GH1 sensors

 

I was considering a rearrangement of my Lumix gear in favor of a G2. I like both my G1 and GH1 but have mixed feelings about each. On the other hand, selling both and grabbing something else is not financially practical! I therefore tried another test to see why I find a benefit to the GH1 sensor elusive. It rates higher at dxo's vaunted website, so something about it should be valuable!
Confining myself to indoor images, I found my wife's purse near a bright window and decided to see how the two cameras handled the absurd range. With both set to similar parameters (iso160, 1/10s f/3.2 using the Oly 17mm prime) I put the cameras on the floor and gave it a shot.
First up, the G1 is fainter for the same image. Its abilities to capture detail look similar but were hampered by that; I tried a second image with +2/3 EV, but that was much too much so discarded. I stuck the two RAW images into a Picasa collage, then boosted the fill light a bit. In this test, unlike the previous ones, the GH1 does look better. Its color balance holds up with less chroma noise, which had appeared before. This time I was more gentle in the fill boost, I guess, as the banding on the sensor was not apparent (I could see it with a larger boost though). Given this result I'm less inclined to let the GH1 go.. but a few more tests could be worth while.

G-1 and K-7 parrt 1: the weigh-in

Clearly this part holds no surprises: the G1 is smaller in every way, though just slightly in overall length. Lens is smaller and very light. The K-7 has my lightest DA lens on it, the WR 50-200. On the scale the K-7 weighs in ready to shoot at just over 1kg; the G1 so equipped is 600g.



I also recorded the capture sounds on my little Casio with both about a foot above the cam. Sounds were surprisingly similar but K-7 screw focus whines before the shutter while the G1 has a very soft whir that probably didn't reach the microphone.

Clearly the K-7 lives up to the 'enthusiast' label with higher-res screen, the top LCD panel and the weather sealing. Those will be hard to top, but the flip screen on the G1 is a point in its favor. The investment was small, so let the games begin!