GX GARNERINGS

(Postscript: a post linking all the GXR review posts is here .) Reviewing a camera requires some tedious forward planning for the test items, where and what to shoot, the points of interest about the camera, what to compare with which cameras, organisation and presentation of your ideas, so on and so forth. The more cameras one has played with, the more numbed his senses will be. So, testing one camera after the other makes me admire the regular camera testers who write with gusto apart from giving the technical details. In this philosophical monologue, I collected the GXR set for evaluating and wrote a number of review posts. This is the post for some afterthoughts. The links to all the GXR review posts can be seen here . The Yardstick To me, there are several key criteria to judge a serious compact camera. - Does it feature great ergonomics? - Is it reliable in locking focus at a reasonable fast speed? - Does it take some years for the user to outgrow the camera? - D...

Open-air wet markets in Hong Kong are mixtures of the old and new, the East and West. Oldness is found in the way the vendors shout for the shoppers' attendtion, apparently an ancient way of hawking as can be read in the Chinese poems written in the imperial times. Novelties are aplenty simply at a glimpse of the new varities of products and produces from around the world. If you travel to the countries in this part of the world, chances are that you will bump into a number of like markets in the open. That's why the local open-air wet markets represent the way of shopping in the East. But in one area the local ones stand out among those in other eastern countries -- cleaniness. The experience in a wet market in Bali which was infested by flies is hard to forget. Fact is, Hong Kong is no match in cleaniness if compared with Japan and Singapore. After all, being too clean is not Hong Kong's character. To Hongkongers, clean enough is enough. This mentality is also ma...

I half squatted with my GX200 pointing to the awnings as the backdrop, waiting for passers-by to be my subjects and ending up with these photos which I like.

^This bowl-like container is a typical sort of shrine the local people put in front of their shops and homes for worshipping the deities.  The Chinese characters say, "Blessings from the Heavens" Why does Ricoh develop the P10 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 VC, one of the two new modules for the GXR?  If GXR users are after such a focal length, won't they be more interested in one with a APS-C sensor?  Otherwise, they would buy a CX3 of which the sensor is said to share the same back-illuminated technology (probably the same sensor too) because chances are that the P10, even with the same sensor size, will be sold at a dearer price than the CX3.  The CX3 has a better resale value after all. Is Ricoh duplicating its product line of compact cameras for the GXR system? As for the other new module A12 28mm f/2.5, it apparently doesn't have any vibration correction capability.  That's not what I've expected.

Due for sale in Summer 2010 will be the P10 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 VC unit that will include a compact sensor with a resolution of 10 million pixels. The CMOS sensor will be back-illuminated, as with the unit used in the new CX3 camera, which will reduce the impact of noise in low light situations. A GR Lens A12 28mm f/2.5 is due for launch in winter 2010 and will be fitted with a 12 million pixel APS-C sized CMOS sensor. Full text at Amateur Photography .

Source: a Chinese site here   It is named NEX according to sonyalpharumours which has posted several links about the camera here .  This is way better than EVIL, and aptly named for the market it targets.  Sony has also revealed that Zeiss lenses will be available for the NEX system. We really hope that the final product will look nicer too.  Judging from the lack of a hot-shoe, and the video ad by Sony , we can safely guess that the mock-up is fairly conceptual.  This says something too: First, Sony is finally (just now?) waking up to the potentials of this segment of the market.  Second, since Sony feels the pressing need to share the market as evidenced by sharing just mock-ups without a sales schedule at the press conference, it may come up with an aggressive pricing as it did to the full-frame market with its A850. Regarding the size of the APS sensor for the NEX system, does this mean that it is a APS-C size sensor? If you're intereste...

This morning the internet is awash with news about Sony's official announcement to join in the fold of large-sensor compact cameras with interchangeable lenses. The system is dubbed EVIL (bad taste!), standing for the self-explanatory term Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens.   This development is no surprise at all. If you walk on a busy street here in Hong Kong, a fair bet is that you'll come across a dozen of young and lady photographers carrying a GF-1 within half an hour. These compact cameras have increasingly captured the market of young and lady photographers, a.k.a the future market (that's why the EVIL cameras are so colourful; hey, will it have a black body version?). So, it's also a fair bet that Cannon will slip in when the market is more developed (more dizzily jam-packed?) to slice off a lion's share with its versions (certainly for the China's market with the zillion of Cannon fans in the country).   Only mock-ups (ug...

... manifests itself here in causing a pause to earning money for a chance of winning money. Kudos to the men, the fine British cultural heritage has been successfully carried forward – betting on horse racing. This is Sunday. Have a hopeful day!