Random Images This Week
I've been checking out a few small cameras this year and the one which appears to have a firm hold on me is the Ricoh GXR. It's a real photographer's camera, oddly but usefully modular, and probably won't be everyone's cup of tea. The Mount A12 GXR module allows me to use my existing rangefinder lenses - all manual focus, well built and mostly very high performing pieces of glass - on a digital body designed just for these types of lenses.
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| From Abstract |
One thing I've learned - compact cameras with large sensors work for me. I've sold off my medium format equipment and gone small and couldn't be happier.
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| From Vancouver |
While other cameras like the Sony NEX series can be adapted to host such lenses, they were never designed from the outset to support rangefinder glass but by happy accident they work well enough, but not to their full potential. Edge and corner smearing are problems the Sony NEX has with certain lens designs - mostly found at the wider focal lengths.
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| From Ironies |
The GXR having been designed for these lenses does not suffer from these edge and corner issues, and overall goes several steps further, resolving fine detail better. The difference can be striking in fact, all the more surprising given the GXR sensor is an older 12.3 megapixel Sony (they are a big sensor player) design competing against the current 16MP sensor in the NEX. Shooting landscapes at infinity, the GXR resolves more detail - that much is clear. The NEX has its advantages too but those will disappear as the GXR Mount A12 becomes the Mount A16 - inheriting the same sensor as the NEX - early in 2012.
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| From Vancouver |