Shooting in the Dark

After reading all the effusive praise people have been lavishing upon the Fujifilm X100s -- particularly it's low-light performance -- I decided to put it to the test during a walk to Union Square last night (right as the temperatures were dropping, and the storm was gearing up).

The ESB, as seen from 7th Ave. Straight out of the camera.

The ESB, as seen from 7th Ave. Straight out of the camera.

I'm still getting used to the camera's controls, and I have yet to decide whether I prefer shooting through the viewfinder or the LCD, but one thing is for sure: the thing is a rockstar at low-light. I'm accustomed to cameras like my G10, which barely likes to go above ISO 400, and even on my 7D groans a bit at 3200. But this thing took 3200 and shrugged it off like it was nothing. I even cranked it to 5000, and while it got a little soft, I didn't see the multi-colored confetti-like noise I would have seen on the 7D. As a bonus, it's svelte form-factor makes it comfy to hand-hold even at low shutter speeds like 1/10s.

I won't go on much more - I don't have that much to add to what's already been said about this camera. For my personal shooting style, it's going to be a bit of an adjustment working with the prime 35mm-equivalent lens, but I can already tell I'm really going to like this camera.

All of the following images are straight out of the camera, except for the second one, which was cropped slightly.

A Serious Imaging Company →

From Dave Caolo on TUAW:

Finally, the message delivered by the iPhone 5s camera is clear: Apple is becoming a serious imaging company. They spent a lot of time on that camera. You don't need a point-and-shoot camera anymore. There's no need to find a cable or a memory card reader. This is your camera.

This is why it's so frustrating to serious photographers that on the other side of the serious imaging equation -- ie. serious image processing -- all we're getting from Apple is crickets.

I remember being all excited and diving in to the Aperture 3.0 update just as my wife and I were leaving for a vacation in Paris. We took that vacation in February 2010. The current version of Aperture is 3.4.5. In contrast, Adobe Lightroom version 3.0 was released in June of 2010. Lightroom 5.2 release candidate is available now on Adobe Labs.

On the other hand, during the keynote, Phil Schiller did say that the new camera system is "for the rest of us", though - for the folks that just want to get take a picture, and let their cameraphone do the work.