The RED machines have been improved into a better modular system, which is very exciting. Unfortunately, they have also been delayed until at least 2010.

On the other hand, the rumours about the 5D MkII were close, but not quite. 15MP turned out to be 21MP, which is impressive. The weather sealing, not so impressive. But it is a great camera, and I’ve had one for about 2 months now. My only gripe? Those big Canon lenses are bloody heavy. Luckily, I have a few manual primes which work pretty well with an adapter. I guess you can’t have it all.

I still reach for my film cameras. They are so, er, light…

So when you read blogs about the latest big thing, in my case recently, the Sigma DP1, you are usually getting the opinion of someone who really, really wants this thing to be good. Even if it is not.

The DP1 looks like a marvel on paper. The (Foveon) sensor is giant-sized amongst its rivals, which means it should be less noisy, and have better dynamic range than most. By all accounts, it seems to. The optics seem reasonable. It is quite a capable camera. People are comparing them to SLRs, and suggesting the DP1 is more like an “affordable” digital rangefinder. The wheels start to wobble when you find out that the focal distance (minimum 16cm) is quite limited and the lens is only f/4.0—especially when compared to rival cameras. Image-wise, it should be better than its rivals, but it doesn’t seem to be significantly better, and new images would suggest that it is amazingly better. But some things are pretty disappointing, like the very slow write times. Up to 12 seconds a shot… perhaps less with a faster card.

But everyone wants it to be good.

Enter Carl Rytterfalk, blogger. You can’t say that he isn’t enthusiastic about the DP1. His posts cover a range of excitement, disappointment, workarounds, and excitement again. Luckily, he is posting informative stuff on the camera… and some entertaining videos (he also blogs about the Sigma SD14, similar sensor but in an SLR body). The nice thing about his reviews are that he is unapologetic in his enthusiasm, but he doesn’t ignore the problems:

Btw, as someone said at the forum already - turning off quick preview makes the DP1 faster between shots. And I also tested a normal SD card that came with another camera - it’s SOOOO SLOW! It really takes ages. So please. Use fastest card you can find, it’s a huge difference!

Timed save times RAW (light blinking):

SanDisk Extreme III 4GB: 2.5s

Canon SD SDC 32MB: 10s

Time before you can take another shot (single mode): 3.8s and quick preview off.

If you look at his site, you’ll see he’s thorough. He even compares it (somewhat tenuously) to the RED Mysterium sensor.

It is also worth considering that so-called “bloggers” could be paid shills for whatever company they are promoting. Ever wondered how some of these guys get their hands on stuff way before everyone else? On the other hand, now that bloggers “get there first” with reviews, you have to wonder at the number of posts that are less to do with reviewing and more about soothing buyers regret. People like Carl Rytterfalk, excepted.

And the camera? Its quirks guarantee it will be a cult hit.

More reading.

When Aperture 2.0 came out. I was pleasantly surprised to see that apple had dropped the price to $199. Early reviews of the software claimed that the speed issues were also solved, and the the new version was super fast. So far, so good. When I go take a closer look at the specs however, I am astonished to see that Apple Aperture still had no Curves. Thanks right, after all the criticism, Apple still decides to leave out the most flexible color correction tool available. I understand that Aperture is not supposed to be a full replacement for Photoshop. I don’t expect Aperture to have some esoteric Photoshop feature like Gradient Map, or be able to execute complicated layer based photo editing, but I am talking about Curves here.

And the follow-up:

Why did I decide on Aperture over Lightroom? It was the ease of use, and overall feature set that brought be back to Aperture over Lightroom. The full frame mode is GREAT. I can flip through all the images and quickly rate and process the best ones checking for focus. The full RGB levels editor in Aperture is actually MORE flexible than Lightroom’s curves. HOW? The ability to adjust the “quarter pointsâ€� on the levels graph allows one to emulate curves. It’s a little tricky to get used to, but after I figured it out, it all became clear. And, with the ability to adjust the red green and blue separate, I can do 90% of what curves can do.

And a different review going the other way:

I spent a couple of days with it and to be honest couldn’t see anything that would stop me pushing ahead with my migration to Lightroom. Ironically some of the new search options (â€�have adjustmentsâ€�) actually made it easier to manage the data migration. And whilst speed had improved, it still wasn’t snappy in the same way Lightroom is.

It seems to me the number one Aperture plug-in would be a curves tool. Number two would be Noise Ninja (or similar). And if only there was a way to save “looks” like there is in Lightroom, although someone has developed a work-around… (can’t find the link, but basically it was making a library of your favourite photo’s with their preset looks, and lifting and stamping from them - simple, but workable).