#480. The Welsh Weekend

jean pierre (pete) guaron says:

Wales is one of the prettiest places on Earth – sounds like you could have fun with that idea, Paul. The photos are great, too – but there’s no meta data?

You can skip the rest of this comment if you prefer – it’s not on topic anyway.

You can all shake your fists at me – I’ve looked at the Sony & Fuji range – if I was re-equipping (which I’m not) there are some interesting cams in there, but really, all I want to do at the moment is replace my compact. It was kind of fun, it certainly hit one target (being able to slip it in my pocket so I didn’t get caught out, with no cam on board). But the sensor is absurdly small in a lot of those cams (including mine) so I decided to bite the bullet.

Fujis and Sonys are more interesting as half frame or full frame, but I already have a half frame and a full frame which I’m perfectly happy with.

I fell out of love with Panasonic because I’ve now had three “unfortunate experiences” with them, and after a brush with their euphemistically named “customer relations” people, I have given them the boot. I simply won’t consider anything they are connected with ever again – not even the Leica D-Lux, which is a Panasonic rebranded with the red dot.

The Sony RX100 Mark IV looked interesting, till I started uncovering a heap of unfortunate experiences other people have had with the RX100 (all of them it seems – the Mark I, Mark II, Mark III and even the Mark IV) – with pointed comments about the lack of QA and the fact they’re made in China. Not in the habit of playing Russian roulette with thousand dollar bank notes, so I dropped that idea too.

Then I came across the Canon G1 X Mark II. It intrigues me. In some respects it resembles some of the pro DSLRs, with a bigger sensor, a relatively low pixel rating, but larger pixels, and producing quite good photos. So on the basis it ticks most of the boxes for me, I’ve bought one – $50 cheaper than it should have been, because the camera store has moved on to newer models and hadn’t revised the price of their remaining G1 X. It’s kind of weird in some ways, but quite extraordinary what you can do with it. I think it will be good fun, to play with – and although it works its wonders in mysterious ways at times, its performance in low light is astonishing. But it’s decidedly “unusual” in the set up of the controls. Neither fish nor fowl – neither “point & shoot” nor pro controls. I can’t figure why it’s designed that way, but it’s part of the challenge.

If I wanted to be rude, I could do it with ease.

It comes with an 80 pp pocket set of notes called “getting started”, which will achieve roughly that & no more. But if you want the manual, it’s a hefty 240 page user guide – which opens by saying “Make sure you read this guide . . . before using the camera”. A strange opening statement, since nothing and nobody tells you to obtain a copy of the guide – or, indeed, to read any of the guide – before you start. And if you were content with the pocket set of notes, you’d never even know you were cautioned not to start without reading the user guide, because you would never have seen the user guide, which is the only place carrying that warning.

Not that it worries me – but you are encouraged to buy a Canon UV filter for it – which you can’t fit onto the lens, without buying an adapter ring (something you wouldn’t know from Canon’s two guides on the camera). And if you DO do that, then you can’t fit a lens hood to the camera. Apparently you have to choose between having a filter and having a lens hood. No competition – I’ll take the lens hood, I don’t hunt for flare on my photos – LOL

I suspect I’ll find more. But I don’t care – it’s a fun piece of equipment and I can use it to experiment for a few years, & learn some of what I’ve missed, jumping past the pro range of DSLRs to start with a D810 as my first full frame digital.

Pluses are the zoom range (shock horror! – OK, it’s kind of like a point & shoot, so a zoom is socially acceptable), a screen that tilts, the screen has touch-screen, and while it may not have 55MP, the sensor is far larger than most point-&-shoots, and the pixel size is larger than most cams, giving some interesting effects that I really do want to look into. Everyone seems to go nuts over pixel numbers, but I’m more interested in what the photo looks like when I’ve printed it, and I have serious doubts as to whether 55MP hits the target within the limitations of existing technology. Maybe at some future date we’ll be offered the opportunity to “have our cake, and eat it too” – to have giant pixel numbers, with no side effects to worry about and superb colours, detail, dynamic range and all the trimmings. Maybe – but I’m already in my mid 70s and might not live that long.