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Fuji Announces Real 3D W1, Groundbreaking 3D Point-and-Shoot

Real 3D W1

Fuji today announced quite the groundbreaking system: a camera, viewer, and printer all aiming to bring true 3D photography to the masses. The highlight of the announcement is the camera, the W1, which manages to perfectly sync two lenses through a 3x zoom range, or you can de-link them and take two 2D images with one click at two different focal lengths.

And it’s sexy. Look at it over there.

Is this a gimmicky camera? Oh my yes. Certainly. Am I gaga over it and expecting quite a few people to be interested in it, you bet. Whether 3D catches on or not will remain to be seen, but you can’t argue that this is one of the most sheerly innovative technologies to hit the compact market in a long, long time.

Word is it’ll come out Septermberish, we’ll have to wait until closer to then to see if we can get our hands on this. Stay tuned, dear readers.

Fuji Announces 4 New Models, Roberts Adding Them As Special Orders

Finepix F200EXR

Fuji, one of the few major manufacturers that have been absent from our virtual shelves, are soon to find themselves added to our site as special order items, just in time for four exciting new product announcements. We’re working on getting Fuji items, including the existing and well-reviewed Finepix F200EXR, the first camera to feature Fuji’s new EXR sensor which I talked about way back here.

The new products are worth a little breathing room, so I’m going to throw them up as individual posts. But, exciting times when we add new lines.

Fear No Water

hair-flip Sometimes the possibility of getting wet is the last thing on your mind. I mean dead last, not even occurring to you, stop afterward with the dripping wet shell of a formerly valuable electronic device in your hand and a sinking ball of regret infesting your stomach. You know what I mean? Sometimes there are just more important things in life. Like bikini girls. OK, or waterfalls, sue me for being particular to bikini girls though.

The point is, and it’s a recurring one here on RAW, there are cameras for those of you who prefer to not stand on the sidelines. For those of you who live near large pools of water, or near a pint glass for that matter. For those who want to shoot in the rain, pool, beach, nearest waterfall, hurricane (not recommended, all the same) and so-on and so-on.

And, these cameras are less and less niche every year. We now have 14 of them (OK, some of them are just different colors, but I know there are over a half dozen good, reliable models that fear not the presence dihydrogen monoxide anymore). We might soon have a couple more if we get some things going we want to. It used to be solely Olympus’ game, but now we see other notables like, oh, Canon, say, and somewhere out there a waterproof Fuji, fleshing out the ranks.

So, this post is for you, makers of fearless cameras. You enhance our beach experiences, and the next time I encounter a young and attractive person flipping hairfuls of water, I shall not stand aside, timid, afraid for my camera, but shall rush in–indeed where fools dare not go. And all shall be good.

Olympus Stylus 9000: Mega Zoom, Mini Body

Olympus has just shipped us the new Olympus digital camera Stylus 9000. It is one of the smallest mega-zoom cameras on the market today. The zoom starts at 28mm and goes all the way to 280mm! All of that in an ultra compact body. This is the smallest Stylus yet with this kind of zoom power. Panasonic has a couple of models out there that will give the 9000 some competition in this segment, but this camera is very impressive. The shutter lag is very minimal and the flash recovery seems above average.

Olympus is now including a micro sd memory card adapter with this and most of their lineup, so you aren’t stuck using the proprietary XD card format that is exclusive to Olympus and Fuji. Micro SD cards are very available and very resonable on price.

There is a new feature on this and other new Olympus models called the “Beauty Mode” that smooths out complection to give people a more pleasing look. Sounds gimmicky I know, but I’ve tried it and it really does work.

When you are doing your digital camera comparisons, don’t miss this one! It looks like it will be a great camera for those wanting a lot of zoom in a pocket sized digital camera.

The tech of the future?

Right now the photo market is full of a lot of highly competent DSLRs with slightly different specialties. The D700 Nikon digital SLR camera, for example, is a low-light king. The Alpha 900 Sony digital camera is a high resolution monster, Canon digital SLR cameras are famed for having great dynamic range across the ISO range.

And if Fuji can follow through on its promises, we might soon have a new breed of camera starting to arise that has to make no compromises and specialize in one of those fields while sacrificing a little of the others.

Announced recently for a compact camera, but with potential application in larger sensors that has a lot of advanced amateurs watching with interest, is the new EXR technology. At the foundation of this technology is a restructuring of the traditional Bayer filter. The Bayer filter is a filter over the sensor on basically every digital camera going and tells the camera how to see the world in color, and not just values of light.

On the left is a traditional Bayer filter. A row of alternating Red and Blue and then a row of Green (turns out our eyes favor green pretty heavily). On the right is the pattern reworked for their EXR technology. You can see there’s still twice as much green as red or blue, but the new trick is that there are two pixels of each color next to each other at all times.

Further beyond that is that one pixel is high gain, it absorbs light very quickly. The other of the two is low gain, absorbing light slowly.

What’s all this mean, especially in relation to low-light, resolution, and dynamic range? What Fuji is saying is that the sensor can be switched between three different “modes.”

On is resolution. You can tell the sensor to use every pixel traditionally, which gives you high resolution.

The next is dynamic range. Those two pixels, the high and the low gain? The high gain lets shadows expose quicker, the low gain protects highlights. It halves the resolution, but should give a fairly notable increase in dynamic range by treating each type (high/low) as a different image and then combining the data, sort of like in-camera HDR.

The third is low light. Since the two pixels side-by-side see the same color, the camera can “bin” them together. This halves resolution, but creates a pixel twice the normal size, which means the picture will have less noise by nature. It sounds like it can do further binning, effectively letting you get unbelievable ISOs at the cost of resolution, not noise.

Time will tell what impact this has on the market, but as far as photo tech goes I think this is one of the neater announcements I’ve seen in some time.

Bullet-Point Updates

Sorry I’m so quiet right now, I’m busy back here getting the help department ready to go and filled with all tose useful shopping tips and technical tidbits I’m famous for wasting your time with.

So, here’s the ultra-super-quick update of things I’m behind on mentioning:

1. My beloved E-3 Olympus digital camera had a recent firmware (which DPReview has so far failed to mention), which improved some focus situations and in a rare move for Oly, added a feature: I can now switch my af point with the 4-way controller, mostly just like you wonderful Nikon digital SLR camera users out there.

2. Speaka Nikon, I’m sure you’ve all heard about the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G, which for all you DX users will be as close as it’s going to get to the 50mm f1.8′s of ye olden days. That price point is pretty sweet, two, color me envious this time.

3. The Panasonic G1 updated its firmware

4. Canon updated firmware for the G10, and of course there’s the 5D Mk II firmware update that’s been out for a bit.

5. Fuji’s new EXR technology looks poised to change the game if it works as well as they claim (and in general their past tech has, although there usually seems to be one minor niggle that people hang it for, I’m hoping EXR overcomes this because it stands to revolutionize low-light shooting.) I’ll talk about my thoughts on this once I can get a moment to breathe this week.

Back to the Basics

The time was 2007, and CIPA (the Camera & Imaging Products Association, representing Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Kodak, Casio, Panasonic, Sigma, Hoya, and Fuji) showed that the score was thus:

Digital Cameras: 6,926,337

Film Cameras: 720,475

Through November last year, CIPA reported 11,199,175 digital cameras shipped. It’s pretty hard to argue, digital has won. But, even with the plethora of Nikon digital SLR cameras and Canon Powershot digital cameras and Sony digital cameras and blah blah blah out there, there’re a few things about photography that haven’t changed. Not as a result of image stabilization, nothing to do whatsoever with megapixels and ISO, and they don’t care whether you’re using a point-and-shoot or a DSLR.

They’re the elements and principles of design and composition.

Now, I’m sure Chuck and Jody at the least are intimately familiar with these, but here’s the shakedown for those wondering how design matters to their photography.

Design, as an art field, is the purposeful application of art as a form of communication. It uses, as its foundation, a handful of basic principles that are derived from visual Gestalt theory and human psychology. In short, these points are the underlying points for all visual arts, and that definitely includes photography.

There are, typically, seven “elements” of design:

If I were to ask you to tell me what camera I have pictured over to the left, I’d forgive you for answering “The Nikon D200.” I really would. But, it’s actually the Fuji S5, a surprise I ran into myself when reading up on it again.

Fuji wisely built their DSLR off of a mature and developed system, Nikon’s, giving it support for Nikon lenses (like the 18-70 DX pictured) and Nikon flashes (at least through the SB-800).

So, if it looks and works like a Nikon, what makes it different? Super CCD SR Pro In this case, the sensor is the real star. Fuji has developed a highly specialized sensor which reportedly performs very well for reproducing skin tones, and which boasts a capacity for 2 stops more dynamic range than other sensors of similar types. It uses two different pixel types, a large “S” type to provide higher sensitivity, and a smaller “R” type to retain highlight details and provide better dynamic range. With about 6 million of each, it delivers a total of 12 million pixels of resolution while attempting to imitate the color and response of film. Is it for everyone? Not from what I’ve heard, but if you’re shooting weddings and studio work, times where highlight retention and skin tone reproduction matter most, it’s definitely worth the look.

Fuji S5

The boss and I get an email, at the same moment look at each other, and at the same time say, “wow did you see the email on the S5 price drop”, great minds think alike. In the world of digital SLRs there are few that do better on the colors of skin than the Fuji S5 and it takes all of the great Nikon lenses and Nikon flashes. It just might be the best way to enter the digital world if you have Nikkor glass, but have yet to purchase a Nikon Digital camera or just need to upgrade to a more professional camera. Wait for it….the new price on the Fuji S5 is $899.97.

Oh yeah, and here is that other great mind, Bruce, our fearless leader.

A thousand words worth

The Downtown Brain Center of the Photo Processing Operation.
Any photo processing expert and a recent commercial will tell you that it’s not a picture until it’s printed. Here at Roberts Imaging we have our fair share of photo processing experts. We have a full service photo-lab. Let me repeat, we have a full service photo-lab at both locations of Roberts Imaging. Sure you can stumble into any number of grocery store/one stop convenience/drug stores/hyper-retailer and find a freestanding ‘kiosk’ card reader with a “photo-center”, but they won’t have a full service photo-lab.
At both Roberts Imaging locations we have a professional staff, with dedicated lab employees who just make images from your film or digital files, not one of them also works in the garden center, or stocking greeting cards. If you have a non-digital SLR camera and you are shooting film our downtown store can process C-41 negatives or E-6 slides within 24 hours. Our Carmel location can do the C-41 film in house and can turn over slides within 4 or 5 days depending on when you drop it off (the slides come downtown and are returned via our own company vehicle).

Randy “The Gnome” Cox, our downtown lab manager has a collection of antique cameras, and has been working in the photo-processing arena since the days of George Eastman. In fact if you ask nicely he might even show you his flash powder burns from his days following with Matthew Brady. Nobody knows how old the Gnome is except the Gnome, The Gnome knows. So why would you trust your timeless memories and images to anyone but the timeless one himself. O.K., I have to admit, Ivan, Jeff and Scott are pretty good too, and John Cornwell’s lab staff in Carmel are also more than competent.
Whether you still shoot film or are (like) totally digital, whether you use available light, on camera flash or use professional studio lighting you will get your best printed results from a true photo-lab with imaging professionals. We also have two ‘kiosk’ style self serve machines downtown and one in our satellite Carmel store where you can still select some editing and crop features as wells as quantities; the difference here is that our lab techs go through each image for color and contrast accuracy at the printing stage after your requests are sent to the lab. You should see Randy hitting the color, brightness and contrast buttons on the printer console, his fingers fly like an virtuoso on a favorite

piece of music. Of course the ‘kiosk’ machines take all types of memory cards, the popular SD memory cards and compact flash cards from all makers including Kingston, Sandisk Cards and Lexar Cards as well as the proprietary Sony Digital camera Memory Stick and Memory Stick Duo, and the xD cards from Fuji and Olympus Digital cameras as well. Even Mini and Micro SD’s, if you have SD card adapter. These machines will also read your files from a CD and our lab experts can print from flash drives and DVD files as well if you can give them the file names (you cannot preview them here). If you can’t make the trip to downtown or Carmel because the excellent pricing on our cameras is too tempting you can even sign up on-line and FTP your images over the ether, and we will package and ship them back when finished via UPS Priority mail. Be sure to take advantage of our on-line specials, and save even more. A good picture is worth a thousand words, a bad one may only elicit the four letter variety!

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