An Erratic Tale - the effects on the X100 of the sticky blades syndrome.

As I wait on Fujifilm Canada for a waybill to send in my X100, I thought I’d show you guys the effects of the now infamous sticky blades syndrome. This is a hardware defect that causes the aperture blades to stick, essentially not closing down to the correct value. The results? Wildly chaotic exposures baby.

The easiest way to see it in action is to do a simple test, as I did here:

1. Choose a room with controlled lighting.
2. Place the X100 on a tripod.
3. Set the aperture to f16, the ISO at 200 (no AUTO) and the shutter speed to whatever value will give you a usable exposure. Set dynamic range to 100 as well.
4. Disable the flash.

With this setup everything is in manual mode, which means every single frame should look the same right? Here’s what happens when I try it:

Notice the EXIF and time stamp. I can recreate this over and over. Sometimes it takes longer to kick in but it always does at some point. Needless to say this can seriously mess with consistency and how you expect the camera to react at given settings. It makes exposure compensation highly erratic.

The effect is also visible if you look into the lens as shown in this video.

So my X100 will be taking a little trip to the mothership. Fujifilm Canada promises a two day turnaround. Hopefully there won’t be the type of mixup I went through with our emails… They somehow “lost” the replies (plural) I sent with my info, resulting in 8 days of radio silence. But… Bygones.

As long as this gets fixed, I’ll be a happy shooter.

Crossfire

Sometimes I fall into myself

I wander stoically
from room to room      thru family or friends
acquaintances
     strangers;
lurking in shadows      anticipating shapes to move into the crossfire.

I hear nothing.
I wait with hunting eyes
for a brief moment struck with light. 

 

These go to eleven - more XPro1 samples and other stories.

 

Aaannd… I’m done. I surrender. There’s no use in even trying to fight this anymore. Apologies for talking about it again, but barring some unforeseen bugs when it finally hits the streets, as soon as I can afford it I’ll be adding the X-Pro1 system to my arsenal. This is not about shiny new things or the lure of greener pastures… It’s about zeroing in on the right tools for me. And I’m ready for a change.

Earlier this week I wrote about new official samples released by Fujifilm and how impressed I was. Last night I downloaded yet another set of samples, this time from lensTip.com via Fujifilm Poland. This was the proverbial push overboard.

All the pics were shot by photographer Wojciech Wojtczak and they’re original out of camera JPEGS, with NR disabled and sharpening set to low. No 100% crops or pixel peeping this time folks: just look at the tone in these images. Heck, just look at these images, period. Wow.

Again, I downloaded the full-size files and loaded everything in Aperture 3. I then played around, pulling them a little more into my color palette just to see what I could get. Case closed.

The site even does an interesting comparison between the X-Pro1 and scanned in Velvia film shot with a Mamiya. There are obvious differences in curves and tone between the two but I quickly fixed these in Aperture. What’s interesting is how very film-like the X-Pro1 pictures look to my humble eye.

I don’t know what it is about the Fuji output, but it kicks the crap out of anything I’ve ever gotten out of my Nikons. I’m not talking specs here, just raw feelings, entirely subjective stuff. It feels more… alive.

So many things have changed this past year. I used to shoot exclusively in raw and never thought in a million years I’d even consider JPEG - and yet the X100 made me do exactly that. I still shoot raw mind you. But what used to be dogma just isn’t so clear cut anymore.

My world changed with the X100 and as a result the path before me has shifted. The lines have blurred. Nothing’s a given. Photography is a highly technical art form, but I’ve always felt it feeds off randomness and chaos. For some intangible and unknown reason, Fujifilm gear is somehow reintroducing randomness into my world, organic chaos. And I’m re-evaluating workflow and shooting style to accommodate that on a professional level. If it means slowing down, then I’ll slow down. I don’t shoot sporting events. I can afford to do it and I have a sneaking feeling it could bring my work somewhere else.

Edge 80

That said, I won’t be getting rid of my current Nikon gear. For one, I need a telephoto and the 70-200mm f2.8 is a superb lens. It would probably pay for the X-Pro1 body but getting rid of it isn’t an option.

This week Lensbaby released a new optic for their system: the Edge 80. As the name implies, it’s an 80mm focal length with an f2.8-f22 aperture range. It looks pretty stunning and might find its way to my gear bag.

I’ve always loved the original Lensbaby, the old plastic version with the rubber rings aperture system. I usually have it glued to f2, with all the crazy blurriness and CA associated with it, the reason being that I personally don’t like a super clear and delineated sweet spot. I prefer a more feathered look.

This new optic allows tighter levels of control over DOF. It’s still a niche effect mind you, but this makes it possible to do a much more subtle job of it.

It also seems to be a new, more serious class of optics for Lensbaby. Full details and a stunning gallery from photographer Fritz Liedtke on their site.

Links

UK photographer Derek Clark and I share some very similar passions and his new documentary photography site has me feeling… Well, jealous. What a brilliant idea. The site will revolve around stories, told through Derek’s pen/keyboard and eye. There are two stories up already and he’s added a contact form to encourage local people to submit themselves to the process. I really love this. It’s rooted in community, words and images. Brilliant.

Soon he’ll be shooting with the X-Pro1 too. I seriously hate the guy. Check it out at derekclarkphoto.com

Another UK photographer who’s work I really like is David Charlwood. He posted a two-part series this week entitled ?? . Part one shows the pictures, part two goes behind the scenes. All shot with a 50mm f2 lens. Gorgeous natural light work (unless I’m mistaken, in which case David will hopefully correct me). Part one is here, part two here.

Avedon

The Strobist linked to an old (1995) PBS American Masters documentary on Richard Avedon which is now available on YouTube. I watched it last night, mesmerized. Avedon was a force of nature and sheer will. His ability to destroy conventions literally transformed photography overnight, profoundly and forever. The amount of soul-shaking imagery he produced during his lifetime is mind-boggling. Transformative.

It’s a 90mn show cut up in 10mn segments. A bit of a pain but well worth it, believe me. Strobist has a playlist but it stopped working for me at some point. Here’s the link to the first segment on YouTube.

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It was well after midnight when I finished watching Avedon. But I had to shoot something. Self, X100 1/125 f16 ISO 200.

Have a great weekend.

Wowed | X-Pro1 sensor delivers. Seriously.

“I hate looking at my 35mm based images at 100% when editing. I can nail the shot but at 100% they just fall short in the details.”

Zack Arias wrote that in his Why I Moved to Phase One post. Personally it’s something I always felt as well but eventually came to accept as a given, as one of the realities of the digital 35mm medium.

Nikon’s marketing push for the D800 — and especially the D800e — boasts of new levels of quality and detail, claims of storming the medium format gates at less than a third of the price point. As I recently wrote I expected to be floored, to be totally and unequivocally wowed by those D800 series files. I wasn’t.

This isn’t to say the D800 won’t be an amazing camera. Like any other tool it will bend to its master’s will and produce outstanding results in the right hands/eyes. It’s obviously a top notch piece of gear.

But I’m now 98% certain it’s not for me. I simply can’t rationalize the tradeoff in overhead, both in CPU cycles and file storage, from the files I’ve seen. I don’t see it. Period.

And the following happened yesterday: I downloaded new full-size samples from the X-Pro1 off Fujifilm’s official site… And I opened them in Aperture 3.

This time, I was floored. Wowed? Yup.

Phase wowed? Get real.

But as opposed to Nikon, I believe Fuji have achieved the right balance with this new X-Trans sensor and their approach to resolving the low-pass filter conundrum. And I’m convinced this is also the best megapixel count for an APS-C sensor. 36MP is pushing it — sorry.

Bottom line: I want to work with this system. Not just play. Work. There’s no way around it.

UPDATE Darren Eagles rightfully pointed out the following on the Real Photographers Forum FB page:

“The D800 is a Full Frame sensor, not APS-C!! This is apples and oranges. Get your facts straight before spouting online!”

Ahem… Well, not sure I “spout” per say… But this was certainly a huge mind freeze on my part. Of course the D800 is a full frame sensor not APS-C. What I was mentally comparing it too was the D4’s similar 16MP count which feels like a better fit in my entirely subjective humble opinion. But then I didn’t write that at all, so my bad. /UPDATE

Here’s one of the new pictures and an approximate 100% crop:

That’s a lot of frizzy hair holding its own. It’s from the 35mm 1.8, shot at f5.6. Here’s the same lens at f2, same deal:

The 60mm 2.4 yields equally impressive results. For some reason I’m not quite as taken with the 18mm but perhaps it’s just due to the available samples.

You’ll find these and more on the X-Pro1 special site.

Beyond the detail, I’m again finding something in the images that I can’t quite explain. But it’s exactly what I find in the X100 files as well.

Something.

Maybe I’m coming home…

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Completely unrelated: I’m struggling with incorporating banners on this site. I always feel a little cheap when I try to place ads, even if they’re on topic. But I am a B&H affiliate and referrals would certainly be welcome. So I’m going to place the simplest banner I can find at the bottom of each post. Hopefully this won’t feel too intrusive.

Les Années Waverly | Pat Hamilton at Quai des Brumes in Montreal.

An evening with old friends last night at Quai des Brumes in Montreal: Pat Hamilton’s launch of Les Années Waverly, his new album… Well, unless you factor in that the songs themselves were recorded 10 years ago — let’s call it an intense gestation period ;)

Great musicians on stage: Bernard Falaise on bass, Claude Fradette on guitar, Rémi Leclerc on drums and Rachel Therrien playing trumpet on a beautiful song entitled Jupiter.

I wasn’t there to take pictures but obviously I had my X100 with me. Shot the pics below at ISO 4000, just to see…

By the way, my X100 seems to have developped the sticky blades syndrome. Yay.
I’ve had a few questions about it via Twitter so I’ll be posting on the topic later in the week.

On with the show…

P.S I’d love to link to the album but I don’t think it’s available anywhere yet. I’ll keep you posted.