Focus On Imaging 2013

It's been time for my almost-annual trek to the NEC for Focus On Imaging, Britains' premier photo geek-fest.

And it really is a geek-fest, judging by the propensity for grey hair, no hair and/or a paunch in the predominantly male crowd outside (I count myself as having 2 of the 3!). But one thing I've never understood though is why people take their cameras and even tripods to this show?

Sorry, I just don't get it, unless just possibly you're hoping to put your body onto a lens you're thinking of buying in order to take some test shots? Even then, you don't need the camera dangling round your neck like some grotesque bit of male jewellery!

Anyway, enough of my whinging. I don't spend hours trawling round and getting into conversations with salespeople about thing's I've no interest in buying, I just home in on the half-dozen or so things I might be interested in.

So here's my list of what I personally found interesting and some observations from this years show:

• Paramo are now distributing F-Stop camera bags. Long story short is some pretty well-designed and made rucksacks with separate Internal Camera Units (ICU) available in various sizes, allowing you to customise your bag depending on how much photographic versus hiking gear you want to carry. I already have some good rucksacks, but the ICUs look interesting and could fit in one of these.
• Paramo also had the £130 Halcon Traveller jacket. I'm a big fan of the full-fat Halcon jacket, but this is a different beast, lighter, not waterproof (probably OK in a shower though, as it should dry quikly), but it does inherit the capacious pockets of it's big brother. It could almost be fashionable to, just may be not in green though!
• Gitzo - always like to look at this stand as it's a rare opportunity to see most of the line-up in one place. Shocked though that the tripod I bought just 3 years ago seems to have gone up by nearly 50%!
• Elinchrom - I'm not a big user of studio lights, but the new D-Lite RX Ones are tiny and feel robust as well as being compatible with loads of accessories, including the Skyport wireless transmitter. If you can live with the 100Ws power then they represent superb value.
• No D7100 brochures on the Nikon stand - why?
• The Focus On Imaging iPad app resolutely stuck on the countdown page (at around 9 days!) as I queued to go in, so my hopes of going 'paper-free' were thwarted as I couldn't access the online floorplan (this despite trying ee's 3G and 4G networks). The app got removed before I got in the hall.

Depreciation

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a quote in to part exchange my D7000 for a D7100. It equates to depreciation of roughly £350 for each of the years that I've owned the older camera. Of course it's only realised if I actually go through with the deal.

I wonder though, how many of us would have spent £350/year on 35mm film and processing, prior to the rise of the DSLR in the last decade?

Of course, back then we bought a film SLR and usually kept that for decades to, so depreciation wasn't really an issue!

And, others will benefit by finding a good used D7000 will soon be available at very reasonable prices - they're already going on ebay for c£500.

Nikon D7100

Nikon's announcement of the successor to the D7000, the D7100, contained some surprises, namely the lack of a low pass filter, and the 1.3x crop mode. Overall, the D7000 has been my favourite and most heavily used DSLR out of all the Nikon F-Mount cameras I own or have owned, the others being Fuji S2, Nikons D80, D200, D300, D2x, D3, D3x (I still own the latter).

The D7000 scores highly in my book for image quality, ruggedness, value and compactness. of course there are other cameras in that list that surely score higher in at least one of these categories, but the D7000 strikes a great balance.

The absence of the low pass filter in the D7100 is intriguing, not least because it screams 'enthusiast' about this camera. Sure, a lot of people who buy this camera will neither know (nor care) about this, and will probably buy it with the inadequate 18-105mm 'kit' lens, which probably offsets any advantage in acuity gained by removing the filter. Oh well.

But, the fact that Nikon is also shipping the D7100 with the 18-105 is further proof of Nikon's confused approach to DX. Here we have an advanced camera (possibly the only camera you'll ever need!), yet pitched at people who can't rationalise a lens choice, and are perhaps instead striving for the bragging rights of 24 over 16 megapixels. I'd warrant that most people would be better served by a D7000 and the Nikon 35/1.8 lens, which together are something of a bargain at the moment.

Pitched so close to the full frame D600 in price, it will be interesting to see how the D7100 image quality compares under critical reviews. Is Nikon really hoping that it's apparent reluctance to iterate the DX lens line, especially at the wide end, is really enough to drive consumers to a 50% more expensive FX model, if the reviews are more favourable to the D7100?

The 1.3x (1.3x1.5=1.95x) crop mode harks back to the 2x crop mode of the D2x, except with a 15 megapixel resolution rather than just under 6 for the older camera. This is great news for those with telephoto needs. I will be delighted to gain 600mm/2.8, ~800mm/4 and ~1000mm/4.5 from my 300mm f/2.8 with 1.4x & 1.7x TC's, more than enough for anyone's needs I would have thought!

The use of the EN-EL15 batteries continues, which is great news for those like me that already own spare batteries and chargers. It's a shame though that yet again Nikon see's fit to iterate the camera base plate and require users to purchase a new MB-D15. Seeing as, yet again, the new grip brings no new features, this seems like a cynical approach to extract yet more cash from it's customers without any value-add.

But, the only other downside I can see is I like my D7000 too much to part with it. That doesn't mean that I haven't already got a part-exchange quote though ;-)

Customisable Cameras

I can't claim to be the originator of this, apart from anyone else, Thom Hogan has been banging on about this for years.

Consider your smartphone or tablet, which is a batch of fairly complex hardware (GPS, camera, phone, Bluetooth, WiFi, 2/3/4G radio, touch screen, proximity detector) all interconnected by the devices Operating System, typically Android or Apple iOS.

The device comes with a standard set of software, plus the ability to install additional software that does what the standard software does, but better, or lets you use all that interconnected hardware in some new or special way.

We've seen a couple of cameras recently that are architected in a similar way to your smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy camera and the Nikon S800c, both using the Android OS. The main driver behind these is their ability to easily share images using social media using the devices net capability i.e. WiFi or mobile broadband.

But what if someone produced a Compact System Camera or DSLR with the ability to adapt the functionality to your particular photographic needs or tastes? Potentially, you would need only 3 hardware sets in your line up: consumer; prosumer; professional. Much of the internals could be shared, but the functionality limited by software.

So for example, all 3 bodies might share the same AF system, but the consumer version software has less features and is slower. The professional model would have fully featured AF, and the prosumer sits somewhere in the middle. Now suppose I buy the consumer model but I later decide that I need faster AF (aka 'the sports pack'). Well, I can buy and download the software to do this, priced perhaps in a way that draws me to the next camera in the range.

By offering a range of such packs (portrait, landscape, black and white?), potentially the user could buy the cheapest hardware and then upgrade it's performance to that of the most expensive model (I'm ignoring here build, weatherproofing, battery life etc. - the sort of hardware features pro models tend to offer). Of course, in this instance, you'd price this in such as way as to make the professional model more attractive from the start.

This dramatically reduces your manufacturing costs, is less confusing for the buyer and gives the manufacturer the opportunity to sell the customer 'value-added' features, at high margin and low distribution costs, as they would be software 'packs'. You could also offer micro packs, for example film types or effects filters.

Mirroring even more closely the smartphone 'eco-systems', you could license 3rd parties to produce software, licensed by the manufacturer and only available through the manufacturers portal, with commission going to the hardware manufacturer.

You could of course sell the hardware including an optional pack, so that your single consumer hardware could come with, say, a sports pack, or portrait pack (priced at a slight discount compared to adding the pack after) depending on the customers requirements.

Will it happen? Well, if it did I don't see any of the established camera makers driving this forward, it would need a more radical and disruptive player to enter the market, and they'd need buckets of cash to get it off the ground.

iCamera anyone? Sign me up for the pro body with the 'manual-only film-era' option please.

Paramo gear - 2 year update

I've used my Paramo Halcon jacket almost daily for the past 2 years, and it shows almost no signs of wear, despite being snagged on thorns, sat on and generally abused. The design of hood, pockets etc., now tested over time, has proved to be as good as I first thought. The Torres gilet, which has not had as much use has some slight 'bobbling' of the tape that runs around the hem, and the Cascada trousers have shrugged off numerous snags and abrasions without a mark.

All in, I think this is excellent gear and well worth the investment - you just need to get used to wearing less underneath, in order to let the fabrics breath as they were designed to do!