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...

Because I view my "primary" cameras as being best carried as clusters of heavy but high-quality hardware, I've realized that I'm really a Serious Compact junkie without realizing it.

I've been nursing a desire to save up a bunch of money and go to the Polaroid 20x24 studio for a session. I guess I still can.

I wrote a blog entry 2 years ago in response to Nikolai's post on the subject and I kinda wanted to return to some of the things covered, since I've done a lot more shooting and understand some of the numerical figures much better...

13.5 megapixels (meh), built in GPS (really cool), 28mm equivalent on the wide side (good), and built in Ethernet, which I've never seen before. Also, the new RAW format only works with Windows, which is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

So I'd actually thought of this before the announcement but didn't post anything about it.

This should let Olympus/Panasonic/Leica make a digital camera that looks sort of like an M-series, but with more modern conveniences than the M8 has. It'll have all of the advantages of a serious compact camera like the G7 or G9 including video recording (note the 16:9 aspect ratio) but with much improved image quality.

Plus, it allows Olympus to recover their investment in cooking up the four thirds system, much like the four thirds system let Olympus recover some of their investment in the OM system.

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.

Once you get to the point where you can remember to take the lens cap off, load film or a memory card into the camera, and remember to push the shutter button when things look interesting through the viewfinder or LCD, you are finished with being dumb, right? Not really. Everybody has a bad day. Here are some that I've encountered...

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.

There's a fine line one treads when people wearing anything less than the sort of clothing one might wear to a formal dinner are involved in art: Where does something cease to be art and start becoming un-artistic pornography?

I've been pondering lately what I need to get my lighting gear back together. See, I've been bleeding strobes. First the one 383 super ended up in the bay, then my MS-1 failed, then my other 383 super failed, which leaves me the Sunpak Digital Flash and my Sunpak 144PC. The Digital Flash is OK, albeit low in power and the 144PC is what I use to trigger flashes, so that's just not comfortable.

NYC finally realized it just didn't work to require absolutely everybody to carry a photo pass.

I've come to realize that my tripod needs to be replaced. Like, right now...

So I told Mimu that I'd tell everybody she went on a rampage and broke all my gear, because after our shoot, I was down one flash, one lightstand, and one tripod....

Impressed by the 50 megapixel Kodak sensor? How about a 60 megapixel sensor that's actually full-frame 6x4.5?