This could be very interesting. The long-rumored micro 4/3rds camera that is actually tiny, unlike the G1?

Rollei ended up in an interesting position at the start of the medium format digital revolution. See, Rollei has generally made cameras that are even higher-end than the notationally high-end Hasselblad, giving you a bunch of really nifty features that weren't available elsewhere. And, instead of developing a 645 system, like Hasselblad's H-mount, they kept at their 6x6 format, merely offering decent 645 backs for it.

Well, now they, and Leaf, have announced the Leaf AFi 10, which is the first digital camera to have the same nice egronomics as my RB67, where you can select a horizontal or vertical orientation by sliding the sensor. If I was a digital shooter, I'd be coveting one right now.

So I didn't expect this. I don't even like posting on my sites during the day, just the evening or the morning. But Leica announced their S2 digital SLR system, which pretty much takes the smallest sized medium format digital backs sensor sizes and wraps an SLR system around it.

Much depends on what happens when folks get their hands on it and how it gets marketed. Leica has a habit of launching technically superior cameras that are purchased primarily by rich doctors and not by professional or even amateur photographers.

There are a lot of half-truths going around about photography. Generally, the various photographic equipment companies spread one or two of them, and then the various photography magazines and megasites play along because they realize that to go against what the photography companies want is a great way to not get access to the latest and greatest for review.

The Panasonic LX1 interested me, a long time ago, but never enough to get one. The new LX3 looks cool, assuming that there aren't any big stupid design errors lurking.

The lens goes out to f/2.0 and they brazenly decided to NOT add more pixels to the same size sensor as the LX2 had, instead making the sensor a smidgen bigger but at about the same resolution. Plus there's a flash hotshoe.

It's looking like the market for cool compact cameras for people with high end SLR cameras is heating up.

If I look at the advances in sensors and sensor processing that are coming out of the labs and sometimes even shipping in products, I realized something interesting. The game has changed at the research labs. See, previously, the goal was to make a sensor that had the highest resolution. Now, the goal is to still ship sensors with more megapixels but without changing the "real" resolution. And this may be a good thing.

Some months ago, I closed a stock photo sale and used the proceeds to add a new camera to my collection. I made the jump to medium format.

Just a quick note that I'm going to be helping demo the Nokia N95 (which has one of the better cellphone cameras on the market right now) next week.

Just when we thought that Kodak was out of ways to improve films, they got even finer grain out of the 400NC and 400VC films

As I mentioned in March, Nikon would eventually have to go full-frame. Well, they finally went there and announced the D3.

Some years ago, I helped a now-former-co-worker with his moviemaking. My biggest contribution was being the caterer and making sure that his cast and crew was the best fed cast and crew in the entire bay area film scene....

One of the central arguments of the 4/3rds mount was that digital camera sensors were destined to stay small, thus, a new mount for these smaller sensors, with a smaller lens throat and registration distance so that the lenses could be smaller and lighter, only covering that 4/3rds mount size. Of course, Olympus kinda screwed it up.

The idea of making light that's brighter than the sun is a source of constant amusement whenever I use it. If I wanted to do this sort of stunt with video, we'd be talking the sort of lighting gear that they used in the days of Technicolor that left actors and actresses complaining about eye damage from the bright lights...

Power lines, a mountain bike, and the trail downhill.

The Anza-Borrego Desert taken by the Nokia N95