Key: R20120102-085212

I’ve been wrestling with the idea of making vs. taking photographs. Of course many photographers would say that even when they discover a “found” image they are making a photograph, due to all the creative things they are doing with the light, composition, etc. and on afterward into post processing. But I am talking about something much different–the difference between being inspired by a found image vs. coming up with an image in your head and then going out and realizing that–making it happen.

I really struggled with trying to figure out why it was so hard for me to make the latter kind of images. It’s something that I want to work on and develop, and I know that part of that is just putting in the time working that way until it is as comfortable as the other. But part of me was just not satisfied with not understanding the source of the difficulty.

Today I read a post by Brooks Jensen that neatly summarized probably the most important aspect of the problem. It is essentially the difference between photography and painting: in (found) photography you find an image and then you pare it down, element by element, subtracting things until you have the image close to what you “saw” in your head when it caught your eye. In painting you are doing the opposite: adding elements, until the scene is built up into something interesting. In short, it is a fundamentally different way of working. In the end you are exercising the same sorts of decisions and skills at the time of pressing the shutter, but the beginning part is so different that I am just not familiar with starting from that end.

I hope that I have articulated this well enough to get the point across. I know Brook’s post helped me understand at least one of the barriers standing in front of me that I could not see, and now seeing and understanding it, I might be able to make some more progress in getting over that barrier. It’s fair to say that painting lessons or other creative forms of art would probably be a huge help here, but my “art time” is limited. At least I can practice my “brush strokes” photographically.

Key: R20110630-112204-crop

I recently had a chance to visit New York City. I’m not certain, but I think the last time I was in NYC for any length of time was in the late 1980′s. I had heard various things about NYC being “cleaned up” in the last couple of decades, but nevertheless I was struck by the remarkable change the city had undergone. In short, it felt like a different city. The trains were clean and efficient; it felt reasonably safe to walk around at night (although I was only in Manhattan and Brooklyn) and I was only once approached by a panhandler. In my previous visit I felt like I was forever walking a phalanx of beggars. Perhaps my visit was a bit charmed, but it really felt like a different place.

The food and the sights and the street scenes were all classically NYC interesting, but the main thing that I want to write about today was a trip to the International Center for Photography to see the Elliott Erwitt exhibit, which runs until sometime in August. I was interested in seeing the show from the moment I read about it, and when I realized that we would be in the area I put it on my “must do” list for the NYC visit.

The show is a retrospective of Erwitt’s life’s work (he was born in 1928) and features a self-curated selection of large prints, several books, and other miscellanea. The 100 B&W prints are printed in various sizes. With the current trend towards huge prints, many of them are unfortunately printed much too large–I can only guess at the sizes of these, but some of them must border on 40 to 50 inches on a side. In my opinion, these larger prints suffered badly in some cases from huge, blotchy grain that distracted from the subject matter even viewed at respectable distances for prints of this size. I am guessing he was mostly a Leica 35mm shooter, and a 35mm frame can only be blown up so large before it begins falling apart. The smaller prints (15-30 inches/side) fared much better, retaining gorgeous tonalities and transitions, and allowing the viewer to move in closer for a more intimate encounter with the subject matter.

The exhibit showed off the Magnum photographer’s incredible photographic versatility and featured examples of street, documentary, photojournalist and portrait work. A few of the photographs are iconic: portraits of Marilyn Monroe, close-ups from the volatile Kruschev-Nixon meetings, humorous dog-human juxtapositions–I recognized many that I wouldn’t have put a name to beforehand. My favorites were the street and documentary prints, which often illustrated Erwitt’s sense of humor. This quote from the exhibit sums those up nicely:

“Above all, Erwitt is noted for his offbeat sense of humor, a rarity in photography. Throughout his work, Erwitt combines gentle whimsy with ironic observation of everyday life. Often his works involve visual puns that make the viewer look twice; such clever comedy requires that every picture be organized with great elegance and precision.”

Perhaps these resonated with me the most because they are precisely closest to what I would say is my own style, which I have described to others for a while now as often humorous or whimsical in nature (although not always so subtle). I can only agree that humor is a rarity in “serious” photography (no pun intended); it must be done with “elegance and precision” in order to keep the viewer from immediately dismissing it into the genre of the snapshot and vernacular. I don’t know all the reasons for this, but it is the same in any branch of art: most art is serious, and the goal of many artists is to make you think, make you angry, make you uncomfortable–anything but to make you smile or laugh. Yet humor and laughter are staples of our human emotions as well; why shouldn’t art evoke them? It’s taken me many years of photography to begin to see my own style emerge, and I feel like that is something I’m finally beginning to get a handle on. While Erwitt’s style is different, he’s one of the few very successful photographers in which I can see an affinity for humor, and it’s refreshing and strangely familiar to see it.

Despite some minor flaws in the presentation, all in all I feel the Erwitt retrospective is a very interesting and worthwhile show. If you will be in the NYC area before the end of the summer, I highly recommend stopping by the ICP on 6th ave midtown and checking it out.

In this part I move on to the topic of scanning. If you are a new digital-based photographer you might not have any need for this information, but if you shoot and scan film, or like me, are old enough to have old stocks of slides and negatives from the pre-digital days, you may want to scan these so that you can integrate them into a digital archive or print workflow. I’m on my second film scanner. The model I’m currently using is the Epson Perfection 700, a flatbed scanner that has some inserts for batch scanning a number of slides or negative strips at once. The resolution is high enough on this scanner that it is more than sufficient for the lenses and technique that I used back in the film days. Here is a picture of the scanner all loaded up with a set of 12 slides.

I’m going to cheat a little bit again and point to some older posts that I wrote about my scanning workflow almost exactly two years ago. The posts are still highly relevant, since I haven’t changed my scanning workflow one iota since then and I constantly refer back to those posts as reminders when I fire up my scanning workflow. Without further ado, part 1, part 2 and addendum.

For those who don’t wish to follow up all that information in one go, here is a basic summary:
In my early days of scanning, I quickly settled on a commercial program called VueScan, by Ed Hamrick. He sells a version of the program for Linux, Mac and Windows. It looks and behaves more or less identically across all the platforms. Although the price has gone up a bit since those days, this is still a very good product at a reasonable price. I looked at the open source alternatives such as xsane, etc., but they just didn’t match up with the feature set and workflow potential of vuescan. As you can see from the posts, there are many, many settings–this is not a program for novice users. It has a steep learning curve, but once you have mastered it the reward is an efficient, powerful and flexible scanning workflow that is almost unrivaled by any other scanning program period. The posts above describe a two step workflow that results in the RAW scans being saved, and then subsequently “developed”. The key thing here is that if you perform the first pass correctly you never have to go through the tedious scanning process again–like camera RAW files, you can reprocess the scanner RAWs as many times as you like from the hard drive. My second pass is usually to process the RAWs into TIFFs (again using vuescan), and after that I can edit them using GIMP or Raw Therapee for further processing, or run a batch operation using ImageMagick to sharpen, possibly downsample and convert to JPEG for the web.

Excellent product, highly recommended. According to his web site, there is now a decent book describing a workflow using vuescan, and I only wish that had been around when I was learning it. As it was I remember scouring quite a few web pages and a suffered a few false starts before I finally figured out the subtleties of the program and how to make the most of it.  Nothing like having to scan the same batch of slides again and again to encourage you to figure out how to avoid those mistakes.

Key: R20110123-155615

Regular readers may be wondering what happened to my series on a Linux-based photography workflow. I haven’t forgotten it. I was interrupted by a business trip to Japan and some out-of-town visitors. I have a couple of articles almost done on that and those will be coming up soon.

Meanwhile I leave you with another column I wrote for the local photography club newsletter.

======= =======
The 1/250 Second Banana

Dear Readers,

Do you have an interest in your photographic legacy? I am referring to your body of photographic work and your association with it after you move on from this world.

It’s an interesting question to think about. For some, it is all about the journey, and not about the legacy; they could care less what happens to their photographs after they are gone. For others, it may be important to keep the photographs available and even documented/organized so that their children, grandchildren or interested family historians can have interesting material to sift through. For some photography is enough of their life’s work that they would like broader recognition of some kind. Many artists are not appreciated so much in their time, but only after they pass on. Some may already have a body of prominent work, and have historical or financial considerations to consider. Finally, even the most mundane photographs may be of great interest to anthropologists and historians of the future, to understand what life was like in our times. Imagine a researcher 1000 years from now recovering and decoding digital images or negatives from a carefully preserved and documented time capsule.

If you are interested in a photographic legacy for any of these reasons, it is well worth your while to think about what you can do now to aid those will come after. If you follow photography news on the internet you will no doubt by now have heard of Vivian Maier, a slightly eccentric french-american nanny that spent most of her life in Chicago and amassed decades worth of mid-to-late century street photography shots, mostly taken with a Rollei TLR. She did not make any concerted effort to organize or show her photography, and consequently almost no one knew of her work. After her death, several boxes of hers that were in storage were auctioned off at a business that routinely sells abandoned items. The boxes contained a few prints, a number of developed rolls of negatives, and even more rolls of undeveloped film. They were purchased by a young Chicago-area businessman named John Maloof who had an interest in real-estate: rummaging through the boxes, he recognized some of the locations in some of the prints and thought that there might be some historical interest. Although not a photographer himself, after spending some time examining the prints and negatives, they began to capture his imagination. Vivian clearly had a very good eye for street photography. He began to scan some of the negatives and prints and post some of them on the Flickr street photography groups, asking if there was anything interesting about the work. Due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback and interest he received, he began to educate himself about photography, street photography and Vivian Maier. Who was this interesting and reclusive woman? Well, long story short, due to his efforts there is now significant public interest in her work, and a show of her work is now on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through April 3rd. Maloof and his associates have raised money to make a book and a film about her life. It seems certain that she will be ultimately be recognized somewhere in the pantheon of important street photographers of the 20th century.

With a great story like this, it is easy to overlook the fact that her boxes of photographs could very easily have ended up in a landfill. Plastic and paper being what they are, it is unlikely that she would have any legacy, however minor, but for a very lucky break. If she had taken any steps in thinking about her photographic legacy she might have improved the odds greatly, and perhaps received at least some recognition during her lifetime. There are two important lessons here: one is to try and show your work to people, and the other is to try to insure that your photographs are safely protected, organized and documented. Accomplish both and you greatly increase the chances that you may receive some recognition for your work in this life, and perhaps more importantly, that someone else with an interest in your work may find it after you are gone, possibly resulting in posthumous recognition or at least making it of use to others.

Although digital images may seem ephemeral, being only bits on some kind of storage media, they also offer a very compelling way to safeguard your work because they can be duplicated without loss of quality. By copying your files to multiple media, and storing them in multiple locations (for example, a cool, dry room in your home, a safe-deposit box at the bank, and a secure location on the internet), you greatly reduce the chances of a catastrophic loss of your work. Mold, theft, fire, hurricane, etc. will not deprive you of your work. If you shoot film, or produce hand-altered prints, I highly recommend scanning your work to afford the same kinds of protection. Be sure to check the locally-accessible media periodically, and transfer to newer, safer formats when possible. This does not have to be onerous; once or twice a year might be sufficient.

When storing your work, consider carefully the importance of widely used and understood image file formats like TIFF and JPEG. Proprietary RAW formats come and go, and due to the short-sighted and protective nature of camera companies some of these formats have even contained encrypted parts. Due to the huge number of JPEG images out there it is very likely that someone 200 years from now will have a way to view one. Whether we can say the same for the unique RAW format of a Canon DSLR camera that sold from 2003-2004 is highly questionable.

Finally, consider the ways in which you can make your work visible/accessible to others. Not only is this helpful in receiving possibly useful feedback, but you greatly increase the chances the someone will recognize or remember that you have a body of photographic work, and when you pass away, it may receive increased scrutiny. Shows, magazines and other short-lived exhibitions are good for creating interest, but they tend to pass quickly. Nevertheless they increase the likelihood of someone taking further interest in your work. Consider longer term exposure: is there a place where you can donate a piece of work that will hang for a long time? Making a book and giving a few copies to interested family or friends is also good. Putting your work online in a web site is yet another way (and there is a synergy here with having an off-site copy of your work). For a web site it is important to remember that just creating a web site is not enough to drive interest (if you build it they will not necessarily come); usually one needs to engage in activities that drive traffic and eyeballs to the work (e.g. blogging, marketing, etc.). Still, just having the work internet accessible means that someone could discover it more easily, and that could be significant.

Time to wrap up. I hope that I have made the point that no matter what kind of photographer you are, there is a case for a photographic legacy, and that it is worthwhile thinking about it. Perhaps your decision is not to leave a legacy, and that is a reasonable choice, if consciously made. Perhaps that was Vivian’s decision. Yet I think that was not her decision. The fact that she carted these boxes of things around from employer to employer, and finally into storage tells me that they were very important to her, and that she was thinking a little bit about her photographic legacy. But Vivian Maier got lucky that John Maloof found her work just in time. Even back then she could have been more careful.

Till next time,

Eric Jeschke

ps. for more information on Vivian Maier, visit her article on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier) and follow the links at the bottom.

Key: R20090619-102632-levels

I’ve been thinking a little bit about folios lately.  For years I’ve wanted to put together a portfolio of real physical prints.  I think I’ve always put it off because I imagined it would be a lot of work to comb through all my vast image collection and try to pick out the best ones, and then painstakingly print them and bind it all up nicely.  Nevertheless, the idea continued to bubble up to my consciousness again and again. It seems like it would be a very helpful exercise to develop further as a photographer.

Enter the folio.  The difference is perhaps insignificant in all but a few letters, but to me it means all the difference: a folio is just a set of photographic prints about a theme. In other words, a less daunting, and far more manageable task. And again, other bloggers are giving me food for thought.  Over at the Landscapist, Mark Hobson has been talking up folios for a while now.  He provided a link to the excellent Brooks Jensen page What is a Folio? I like the way Brooks thinks.  His elegant and clear ideas about folios and edition printing resonate with me.

Finally, Paul Butzi got my brain really humming with a couple of posts on his journey with folios, which is all wrapped up with his efforts to get a PDF book generated for his SoFoBoMo photos.  Feeling like I’m drafting in his thought pattern here, it got me thinking about my own LaTeX based SoFoBoMo book–the more I thought about it the more logical it seemed to simply add another file that would share the same web and print photos as the book, but be targeted to a folio.

So I dived in and, sure enough, LaTeX gets another star for time saved. In almost no time I put together a simple 12 image folio based on a subset of the images in the book. The web version weighs in at 3MB and you can check it out here–I really like the way this turned out. Now, granted, it seems a bit absurd to make a artsy folio about a whimsical chickens book, but that’s not the point. The point is that I made a folio–finally.  And I have a great system in place to make another one that can be more considered.

From Brooks’ description, I got the basic notions down of the title page, a single front matter page, the images, and a colophon.  Clean and simple. The web version adds the image key for each image to the bottom of the page.  You may have noticed that I like to provide the key for each image whenever I post an image: it’s extremely helpful when communicating with others about your work to have no ambiguity about which photograph one is talking about.  I tried adding titles, but in the end I felt that leaving the photos untitled allowed my eyes to explore the images with less distraction.  Somehow the key is not as distracting as the title, to me.

The higher resolution print version of the folio leaves the image pages unadorned with any text whatsoever.  This version is sized for US letter, a standard ink jet paper size here in the states. My plan is to print out the PDF onto a nice set of Harman Fiber Gloss AL or similar. I print most of my photos with Photoshop on a Mac, so I’m going to have to do a little experimentation to see if I can print a PDF and get the same quality of ink jet output. I would assume that the Mac/Adobe will honor the color profiles in the PDF images and do the right thing, but we’ll see.  Finally, I will have to figure out a nice enclosure like Brooks shows to enclose the leaves of the folio.

I have to admit that I have not been too keen on the idea of a PDF for an online folio in the past. I’ve looked at several, and always felt that somehow it was a little backward/awkward for something that you could put up on the web directly, vs. embedded in a PDF.  But I’m warming up to the idea.  I think that it might actually make you stand out a little more from the crowd.  If you put a PDF out there, lots of folks will pass it by; they are in too much of a rush to rapidly click their way through more of the morass of photos that is the web.  Someone that takes the time to download your PDF and open it up might take a more considered look, might just linger a little longer. It’s a slightly different environment (which, BTW, looks great in full screen presentation mode–try it!).

The final kicker that sells whole idea is the print version.  The PDF was designed originally for precise layout of print documents; an heir from the postscript tradition. So it should be a great format for producing a printed folio–one of the holy grails of my journey as a photographer.  Some might feel that a nicely done photo book serves the same function as a folio.  Umm, not quite.  Go read the Brooks Jensen article linked above: he makes a good case for the folio.  The main point is that the viewer is interacting with prints, not a book.  And they can mat and frame them, etc.

Now I just need to get a few folios under my belt and I have a feeling it will feel like I’ve produced a portfolio…

Well, sorry to go on so long about this, but I keep adjusting my work flow to fit the changing requirements of the images, and I thought I would keep you informed. If you are coming to this fresh, you might have a look at post 1, post 2 and post 3 first.

The earlier slide sets I had been scanning had a lot of water horizon shots, and because tilted water horizons bug me (unless trying for that effect), I felt the need to rotate the scanned images to level, and so I set the “Border (%)” parameter of Vuescan to 5% to give me essentially an extra bit of space for cropping around the fairly good auto crop selection, since I was rotating and cropping manually afterward. The rotations were often minor, and due to slight slide mismount or angled position in the batch slide holder as, or more often than, photographer composition errors.

However with the more recent sets (photo here a typical example from one) I feel no urgent need to rotate. Indeed, I’d be hard pressed to figure out which way to rotate and how much, without a level horizon to guide me. So I began setting the “Border (%)” setting to -1%, in order to crop off the slight black borders that were being included in the automatically selected crop (it’s fairly conservative about your borders). This yields sets in which I don’t have to manually post process every picture afterward, but only the occasional one. Again, just to be clear, this is in the second pass from scanned RAWs to baked TIFFs. I’m still including the 5% extra border in the initial scans to RAW, just to be safe. And having the RAWs on disk means I can rescan the entire set to TIFF without loading a slide, in a fraction of the time. Sweetness.

Again, using the load/save settings feature of Vuescan made it easy to save these settings under the name “raw-scans-to-cropped-tiffs”.

On the scanning front, I posted a few days ago about how I’ve been cranking my large collection of old analog photography through my epson scanner to digitize it. This is merely an update, an addendum, on a couple small refinements to the process that I’ve incorporated. You may want to read those posts if you want any sort of context for what I’m about to relate next, which deals with the arcana of vuescan.

I found that due to the slides not being so perfect in the mounts I was doing an awful lot of minor rotating in post processing. So I began to religiously set the setting for “Border (%)” (in the “Crop” tab) to 5%, which adds an extra amount around the automatically selected crop. As I mentioned before, I’m kind of lazy about post processing, and since the auto crop worked so well I wasn’t going to fret a lot about a few pixels lost here and there on an edge. But if I’m ending up rotating many of them anyway, I’m going to need to crop after the rotation. In that case, no sense losing any pixels whatsoever.  So I started dialing in the 5%, which adds a small black border to all the slides where the mount is being scanned.

If you set that parameter, you are best off also setting the “Buffer (%)” parameter (also in the “Crop” tab) also to 5% to avoid reading all that black into the white balance calculation (this is during the second scan, from RAW scans to TIFFs). I’m using the “White Balance” setting for choosing color, which seems to do something more or less like an Auto Levels in an image editor. So far I’m pretty pleased with the results, although I’m sure with a good deal more trouble I could eke a little more out of the slides. But I’ve still got a lot to go, and I can always reprocess the RAWs again any old day I want to.

I also discovered this lovely feature of loading and saving the settings. So I have two settings files, one for slides to RAWs (DNGs) and the other for second pass post processing, RAWs to TIFFs.  Using the batch scan feature and just scanning to raws means I can crank through a few dozen slides in a typical work day, and lots more on the weekends.   I have two other tools for sharpening and converting to JPEG, and uploading to Flickr.  I’ll describe those in a future post.

Part II of II

In my previous post, I described my current process of scanning slides and negs into RAW DNG files. In this post, I describe the post processing pass to convert the DNGs to more “baked” forms of files: TIFFs and JPEGs.

Once a basic raw scan is available as a DNG, there might be several ways to “develop” it. Currently, I am using VueScan to reprocess the RAW files into 24-bit losslessly-compressed TIFFs. The TIFFs can then be post processed further using an image editor or batch converted to JPEGs, etc. In the future, I might use a different technique, and having the RAWs around means I can “redevelop” them again if I decide later that there is a better way to do it, ideally without having to scan the slides ever again.

I usually postprocess to Adobe RGB color space for TIFFs with a color profile embedded in the file. There are other color spaces possible, but from what I have read it is best not to use too large a color space for your images. Adobe RGB seems like an all around good compromise, and has the benefit of wide support, especially in DNG files. I have a color profile for my laptop display and the results are fairly accurate, to my eye, from VueScan’s post processing.

Here are the settings that I use:

Input:
- Task: Scan to file
- Source: File
- Files:
 (DON'T
FORGET TO SET THIS!!)
- Media: Slide film
- Batch scan: List
- Batch list: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
- Multi page: off
- Frame number: 1
- Preview resolution: Auto
- Scan resolution: 3200 dpi
- Rotation: None
- Skew: 0
- Mirror: on (very important to prevent work in postprocessing!)
- Auto scan: None
- Auto save: Scan
- Auto print: None
- Scan from preview: None
- Lock film base color: off
- Default options: off

Crop:
- Crop size: Maximum
- Multi crop: None
- Lock aspect ratio: off
- Border (%): 0
- Buffer (%): 0
- Preview area: Default
- Default options: off

Filter:
- Infrared clean: Light
- Restore colors: off
- Restore fading: off
- Grain reduction: None
- Sharpen: on
- Default options: off

Color:
- Color balance: White balance
- Black point (%): 0
- White point (%): 1
- Curve low: 0.25
- Curve high: 0.75
- Brightness: 1
- Brightness red: 1
- Brightness green: 1
- Brightness blue: 1
- Slide vendor: GENERIC
- Slide brand: COLOR
- Slide type: SLIDE
- Scanner color space: Built-in
- Printer color space: ICC Profile
- Printer ICC profile: path-to-ICC-profile
- Printer ICC description:
- Printer IT8 data: printer.it8
- Film color space: Built-in
- Show IT8 outline: off
- Output color space: Adobe RGB
- Monitor color space: ICC Profile
- Monitor ICC profile: path-to-ICC-profile
- View color: RGB
- Pixel colors: off
- Default options: off

Output:
- Default folder: path-to-scan-folder
- Printed size: 8x12in
- Auto file name: on
- TIFF file: on
- TIFF file name: @.tif
- TIFF size reduction: 1
- TIFF multi page: off
- TIFF file type: 24 bit RGB
- TIFF compression: On
- TIFF DNG format: off
- TIFF profile: on
- JPEG file: off
- PDF file: off
- OCR text file: off
- Index file: off
- Description:
- Copyright: my-name
- Date: desired-date
- Log file: on
- Log file max size (MB): 2
- Default options: off

Prefs:
- Language: English
- Crop units: inch
- Printed units: inch
- External viewer: off
- External editor: off
- Browser: mozilla
- Graph type: Image
- Button 1 action: None
- Button 2 action: None
- Button 3 action: None
- Button 4 action: None
- Auto refresh: on
- Display raw scan: on
- Splash screen: on
- Histogram type: Linear
- Animate crop box: on
- Thick crop box: on
- Add extensions: on
- Substitute date: on
- Warn on overwrite: on
- Warn on not ready: on
- Warn on no scanner: on
- Exit when done: off
- Beep when done: off
- Beep when auto eject: off
- Use temp file name: off
- Anti alias text: on
- Anti alias image: on
- Enable density display: off
- Enable raw from disk: off
- Disable scanners: None
- Enable sliders: on
- Enable spin buttons: on
- Enable popup tips: on
- Enable sample images: on
- Startup tip: 0
- Image memory (MB): 2048
- Window maximized: off
- Window iconized: off
- Window x offset: 96
- Window y offset: 41
- Window x size: 1728
- Window y size: 1080
- Font size (pt): 9
- Option panel width: 340
- Default options: off

Click the “@” sign by the “Files” setting and point VueScan at the first file in the series that you want to postprocess (note: DON’T forget to do this or you will likely process the wrong files–VueScan defaults to the first likely RAW file it finds in the folder, and that may not be the one that you want to start with). I use the “List” setting under “Batch scan” for the post processing pass, because there is less likelihood of reprocessing images you weren’t intending to (VueScan’s interface could be better on this, to be sure). Then set the Batch list to the set of frames to process (usually the entire set, or “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12″).

Under the Crop tab, you may want to adjust the “Buffer (%)” setting to the same figure as you used in “Border (%)” (if you upped that figure from 0 during the scans) to avoid computing too much black into the color settings calculation (auto white balance).

Make sure the “Frame number” setting is set to 1 and hit “Preview”. All the files will be read in and preview images generated. Here again I give a quick look over to make sure that everything looks OK, paying attention now to white balance, exposure, correct cropping, mirroring, etc. This is the time to make adjustments if necessary.

Once satisfied, I hit “Scan”. The post processing is much faster than the scanning of course, since it is only reading in the RAWs from disk, applying the chosen post processing effects, and spitting out the baked files. Now the RAWs are around 100MB each. On my 2 GHz Core 2 Due laptop, it takes around 2 minutes to process all 12 files in a batch. Afterward, there are 12 new TIFF files in the output folder. These I examine with an image viewer and, if necessary, do further post processing in a separate image editor, possibly after refiling the current set of slides and whilst scanning a new batch of 12.

With the slide loading, preview, scanning and the post processing, one batch of 12 takes around an hour to do. My mode of operation is to load a set when I get up first thing in the morning, another set or two when I get home from work, and a final set or two in the late evening. Weekends if I’m around I can process more sets, while puttering around the house or doing other tasks.

Using this process I am slowly working my way through years and years of negatives and slides, and getting great results.

[Look at that guy--he's on top of the world...in more ways than one!]

Part I of II

I’ve finally got some traction again in my quest to scan all my old negatives and slides. I shot analog for some 20 years before my first digital camera, and I have thousands of old negs and slides (mostly slides). It’s not just a matter of convenience to have all these photos in digital versions; it’s a race against time. Where I live, mold is a fact of life. Scanning is my only hope of saving these memories for the future.

I’m scanning them all using an Epson Perfection V700 scanner. Although I find scanning tedious, I really like this scanner. Things I like about it are that it scans at a fairly high resolution, can scan up to 12 35mm slides at a time, has holders for 35mm film strips, slides, medium format film, large format film, as well as being able to scan prints on the platen. It has Digital ICE infrared dust and scratch removal, which works wonders and saves gobs of time in postprocessing. It’s fairly fast, as these scanners go, is reasonably quiet, and produces good looking results (with the right software and settings).

Finding good software to match it has been work, but I’ve settled into using VueScan (version 8.5.04, on both Linux and Mac), by Ed Hamrick. VueScan is a powerful piece of software, but the user interface is a bit arcane and it’s difficult to figure out all the settings. In all fairness, however, I’ve never found scanner software that was easy to use. Documentation is a bit sparse, although it seems to be well used by many photographers, and useful bits of information can be found on various message boards. I’m going to do my part here by describing the process I have been using. I hope it is helpful to someone else.

One of VueScan’s powerful selling points is the ability to scan to RAW files (like a RAW camera capture). My process is to first scan the slides to RAWs, and then reprocess the RAWs to TIFFs in a secondary pass, which is very fast, since it is reading the RAW files from disk. If I get the RAW scans right, then I never have to rescan the slide; VueScan makes it possible to apply all adjustments, including the ICE dust and scratch processing, from the RAWs (since the infrared channel is saved in the RAW file). This is extremely powerful and flexible and all the same arguments that apply to RAW camera images apply to RAW scanner images. Furthermore, VueScan allows you to save your RAWs as DNG files, which means there is a decent chance that your files will not be orphaned in some proprietary RAW format.

I’m scanning at 3200 dpi, 64 bits/pixel (R-G-B + infrared). This gives a RAW file of a little less than 100MB and is generally around 4280×2896 pixels. For 35mm, with the films and lenses I used back then (not to mention my technique), 3200 dpi is plenty of resolution–any more would be simply wasting disk space.

Here then, is my process. Note that this is heavy in detail on both VueScan and the Epson Perfection V700:

LOADING THE HOLDER:
In a batch scan of twelve 35mm slides, the slides are scanned top to bottom, right to left. So I load the slides top to down from the right to the left. Don’t forget when refiling the slides afterwards in the folders, if you use a different scheme, like left to right, top to bottom.

Load slides emulsion side down, and load them with the correct viewing orientation (portrait or landscape); don’t worry about keeping them all in the same orientation. This prevents you from having to do a lot of rotation afterwards in postprocessing.

Slip the holder into the designated spot on the scanner and close the lid.

SETTINGS FOR INITIAL SCANS:
Click the “More” or “Advanced” button at the bottom of the VueScan GUI to enable the advanced options, and then fill in the tabs. Here are my settings for the initial scan in (note that not all of them are relevant to the RAWs).

Input:
- Task: Scan to file
- Source: PerfectionV700
- Mode: Transparency
- Media: Slide film
- Bits per pixel: 64 RGBI
- Batch scan: All (need to set Multi Crop on "Crop" tab for this to show
    up)
- Frame number: 1 (ditto)
- Preview resolution: Auto
- Scan resolution: 3200 dpi
- Rotation: None
- Skew: 0
- Mirror: on
- Auto scan: None
- Auto save: Scan
- Auto print: None
- Number of samples: 1
- Scan from preview: None
- Multi exposure: off
- Lock exposure: off
- Default options: off

Crop:
- Crop size: 35mm slide
- Auto offset: on
- Multi crop: 35mm slide
- Auto rotate: on
- Lock aspect ratio: off
- Border (%): 0
- Buffer (%): 0
- Preview area: Default
- Default options: off

Filter:
- Infrared clean: Light
- Restore colors: off
- Restore fading: off
- Grain reduction: None
- Sharpen: on
- Default options: off

Color:
- Color balance: White balance
- Black point (%): 0
- White point (%): 1
- Curve low: 0.25
- Curve high: 0.75
- Brightness: 1
- Brightness red: 1
- Brightness green: 1
- Brightness blue: 1
- Slide vendor: GENERIC
- Slide brand: COLOR
- Slide type: SLIDE
- Scanner color space: Built-in
- Printer color space: ICC Profile
- Printer ICC profile: path-to-the-ICC-profile
- Printer ICC description:
- Printer IT8 data: printer.it8
- Film color space: Built-in
- Show IT8 outline: off
- Output color space: Adobe RGB
- Monitor color space: ICC Profile
- Monitor ICC profile: path-to-the-ICC-profile
- View color: RGB
- Pixel colors: off
- Default options: off

Output:
- Default folder: path-to-scan-folder
- Printed size: 8x12in
- Auto file name: on
- TIFF file: off
- JPEG file: off
- PDF file: off
- OCR text file: off
- Index file: off
- Raw file: on
- Raw file name: scan0001+.dng
- Raw size reduction: 1
- Raw file type: 64 bit RGBI
- Raw output with: Scan
- Raw DNG format: on
- Description:
- Copyright:
- Date:
- Log file: on
- Log file max size (MB): 2
- Default options: off

Prefs:
- Language: English
- Crop units: inch
- Printed units: inch
- External viewer: off (sometimes on)
- Viewer: gimp (only if above setting on)
- External editor: off
- Browser: mozilla
- Graph type: Image
- Button 1 action: None
- Button 2 action: None
- Button 3 action: None
- Button 4 action: None
- Auto refresh: on
- Display raw scan: on
- Splash screen: on
- Histogram type: Linear
- Animate crop box: on
- Thick crop box: on
- Add extensions: on
- Substitute date: on
- Warn on overwrite: on
- Warn on not ready: on
- Warn on no scanner: on
- Exit when done: off
- Beep when done: off
- Beep when auto eject: off
- Use temp file name: off
- Anti alias text: on
- Anti alias image: on
- Enable density display: off
- Enable raw from disk: off
- Disable scanners: None
- Enable sliders: on
- Enable spin buttons: on
- Enable popup tips: on
- Enable sample images: on
- Startup tip: 0
- Image memory (MB): 2048
- Window maximized: off
- Window iconized: off
- Window x offset: 96
- Window y offset: 41
- Window x size: 1728
- Window y size: 1080
- Font size (pt): 9
- Option panel width: 340
- Default options: off

DOING THE PREVIEW SCAN:
Position the Frame number setting to 1 and press “Preview”. This will generate a preview scan with thumbnails. I give this a quick once over to see if there is anything seriously off, and to verify that the automatic crop detection is working well. Some people would recommend to not choose the automatic crop, but to set for “maximum crop”. Not me. I have thousands of slides to scan. I’m lazy when it comes to scanning. The more things I can get right from the first scan, the better. So far I find the automatic cropping to work very well. Every few sets of images there will be one that it had trouble with (usually something with lots and lots of white or black), and I’ll just rescan that one slide with maximum crop and then crop it manually in postprocessing. You may want to play around with the “Border (%)” option to add some extra space around the automatic crop, if you go that route and are having trouble with too tight cropping.

DOING THE SCAN:
If the preview looks good I hit “Scan” and go off to do something else while the scanner does its thing. With these settings it usually takes around 45 minutes to do 12 slides (1 batch). After the designated period I’ll come back to find 12 new DNG files sitting in the output folder.

In Part II I’ll describe the postprocessing workflow for generating the TIFFs (and/or JPEGs) from the RAW files.

by Eric Jeschke

Last update: Mon Mar 31 08:42:22 HST 2008

(Summary of updates at the bottom of the article)

Introduction

I recently purchased a Ricoh GX-100 digital camera, because, well… I just love serious compacts, and it’s about time for a new camera. The main things I was looking for in the upgrade were a wide-angle lens, RAW mode, full manual controls, image stabilization, and a decent lens. Given the rapid introduction of camera models in this age, I’ve decided to publish my review early in the hopes that it will help anyone considering this cam, and update it as I learn more about it. The camera has already been out for around a year, so if anything this review may help some people still sitting on the fence regarding buying this camera now, or waiting for the next version, or who may be interested in picking up the GX-100 at a bargain price later.

Initial Impressions

Out of the box, the GX-100 was a little smaller than I expected, but larger in length than the Casio EX-P600 and considerably larger than the Fujifilm Finepix F31fd (you may wish to refer to both of those linked reviews to explain some of the criticism, good and bad, that I will heap upon the GX-100 in this review). It is a little too large and heavy to realistically carry in a shirt or pants pocket, although it might be at home in a cargo shorts pocket. It is certainly suitable for a coat pocket, brief case, purse or backpack. The photo of the three cameras hopefully gives some idea of the size difference.

The build seems a little flimsier than I had expected, based on Internet descriptions. The case seems to be a robust flat black metal with a nice rubberized grip, but the controls don’t work as smoothly as I would expect, and don’t give the feeling that they will take much abuse. The pop-up flash seems quite flimsy and there is the usual, barely attached rubber flap covering the USB and video out ports. Sadly, this seems to par for the course with the vast majority of digicams. At the initial street price for this camera ($600+) I would have expected more. At the price that I got it ($440), it seems grudgingly acceptable.

On the upside, I had read a few reports of “lens wobble” (i.e. the lens feels loose), but it does not seem overly so to me (mine certainly doesn’t wobble, but does move slightly if you push it). Similarly, I had read that the lens racking out and focus is (audibly) noisy, but that too, does not seem overly annoying, at least compared to my other cams, just a bit more noticeable in a very quiet place, perhaps.

There is a metal tripod socket located in a reasonable place near the center bottom of the camera. The battery/media slot door feels a bit flimsy, but does close with a reassuring click. The camera takes SD and SDHC cards up to 4GB.

The camera package includes a handy, lightweight, external charger. I picked up a spare Li-ion battery so that I wouldn’t get stuck with a dead battery while out shooting. An extremely positive feature, the camera can take two AAA batteries in a pinch, although you will want to use NiMH if at all possible, the camera is only rated for something like 30 shots on a pair of standard AAAs. Still, that the camera can take them at all in addition to the proprietary battery is impressive. Power drain will be discussed later in the article, but I’ll note here that the camera does get warm after being on for a while. Unfortunate, since that undoubtedly increases the sensor noise.

There is no built in optical viewfinder on this camera. Some may find that to be a serious omission. I do not, since it helps keep the camera size down, and I generally prefer to compose on the LCD. An accessory electronic viewfinder is available (I did not spring for it…yet), as are several options for rangefinder style optical viewfinders that plug into the hot-shoe on the camera’s top. The electronic viewfinder seems to have an even split of opinion on the internet forums as to its quality and effectiveness. The LCD is a good size (2.5 inch), is bright and very readable from reasonable angles of view. With 230,000 pixels it has good resolution as well.

Startup is decently quick for a digicam and the camera feels ready to shoot without much hesitation. Mind you, this is not a DSLR, but it’s respectable. If you’ve been shooting with a camera that has a built-in retracting lens cover (as I have), you’ll have to get used to popping off the Ricoh’s lens cap before you turn the camera on. Although the lens cap is a more solid, uncomplicated protection for the lens element, I must say I’d gotten used to the hassle-free, uncluttered convenience of having a built in lens cover. Aiding the responsiveness, the GX-100 also has the (thankfully) now-common shooting-priority image review mode, by which you can press a dedicated play button to review images, flip back and forth, zoom, etc. and then return immediately to shooting mode by simply pressing the shutter release button.

The GX-100 presents itself as a mass storage device when plugged into a USB port with the cable. This is desirable, since no special drivers are needed. It makes full use of USB 2.0 high speed transfers, so image copies go fairly quickly, although I find I get better speed from a dedicated SanDisk SD reader.

Handling and Features

The GX-100 menus are straightforward to navigate, and many users probably will not need to crack the manual to operate the camera. The camera feels comfortable to hold, the molded grip in front providing a good hand hold (but also bulking up the camera a little). Overall, the camera feels solid, and falls comfortably to the hand, with most of the controls in the right places. It is definitely easier to hold than either the EX-P600 or the F31fd, albeit at a cost of a larger package.

Although I was not overly impressed with the smoothness of the controls, I was impressed with how the adjust wheel and rocker combo controls work at changing common settings. You push in the adjust rocker on the back of the camera with your thumb, and up pops a menu of four available settings. These are user-assignable, and I’ve assigned mine to exposure compensation, ISO, white balance and AE mode. You then select the setting by nudging the rocker right or left with your thumb, followed by adjusting the setting by turning the wheel in front with your forefinger. The whole process can be done with one hand with the camera in shooting position, very much like a DSLR. Since the exposure compensation is automatically selected after the first press of the adjust rocker, it is quite fast to dial in exposure compensation, a necessary and frequent operation with this kind of camera. Dialing a wheel also seems faster and smoother than multiple button presses on the 4-way toggle, although that method will also work, if you are used to working that way. I’m sort of left wondering, however, if they couldn’t have included 5, or 6, or 10 settings on that rocker switch. I’d like to have Focus Mode on there as well as some other settings.

There is one caveat about the rocker switch. When you are in macro mode, pressing the adjust rocker puts you into an AF point selection mode. This mode is a handy one to have for the critical focus one often needs in macro work. Unfortunately, the display does not indicate that your other settings are available as well (the ones you assigned: WB, ISO, etc.) Just toggle the rocker to the left or right and you will then see the other settings. This also begs the question of how to engage focus point selection when I am in non-macro mode. Can it be done? There is nothing in the manual on that. Typically cameras that have focus point selection (e.g. the EX-P600) let you do it regardless of whether you are in macro mode or not.

The camera does have a live (shooting) histogram (a critical feature), but luminance only, no separate RGB channels. It also has a 2/3rds cross hairs for composition, a feature I use a lot. Unfortunately, Ricoh has chosen not to allow both histogram and cross hairs to used at the same time (something I do all the time on my Casio), so you are forced to choose one or the other.

One of the real pluses of the GX-100 is the two user customizable modes “MY1″ and “MY2″, which select SETTING1 and SETTING2 respectively. These modes are on the mode dial, and selecting one instantly recalls the user’s choices that have been saved for that setting. Almost any user adjustable setting on the camera can be saved to those modes, including zoom position. This sort of thing just immediately endears the user to the camera, and makes it efficient to use.

For those of us that sometimes like to work in JPEG, the camera has separately adjustable sharpness, contrast and saturation (“color depth” in Ricoh-speak) controls. These can (in fact, have to) be set for the custom user SETTING1 and SETTING2, so you need to be in “MY1″ or “MY2″ mode to use them. This is not a big limitation, as I normally shoot on these two settings. Unfortunately, they cannot be used in conjunction with B&W mode. If you choose B&W mode, you cannot adjust the contrast except in post-processing.

Lens and Focusing

The auto focus on the GX-100 is a bit slow compared to my comparable digital cameras. In fact, the occasional hunting that it does reminds me of my old Nikon Coolpix 990, a camera that is circa 2000. In 2008, I really don’t see a good reason for that, especially as this camera uses a combination of contrast and phase detection (using a separate detector on the front of the cam in addition to the CCD signal). Of course I do turn off the focus assist light, because that is incredibly annoying when photographing people. But I do the same on my Fuji F31 and it focuses much faster. That said, I’ve found the auto focus fairly reliable so far.

As a serious compact, the camera has manual focus capability, and like most cameras of this ilk, it works OK. I really wonder how big it would make the lens to have a manual focus ring (probably “fly-by-wire”) and a real, manual zoom ring. The zoom ring in particular would save a lot of power drain, and be welcomed by the class of user that buys this sort of camera. The camera also thankfully features an infinity focus setting, and (bonus!) a “snap” (hyperfocal) setting. The latter is extremely useful for street and candid photography, because there is no AF lag whatsoever, and coupled with the huge depth of field of this sensor/lens combo, you are almost guaranteed to get your subject in focus.

There is a custom “Fn” button (exactly one) on the top of the camera, that can be assigned to one of several options. The factory default is for AF/MF switching. If you have it set this way, a great feature is that you can press the shutter halfway in AF mode to lock the focus, then release the shutter button and press the Fn button to switch to manual focus and the camera will retain the focus of the focus lock. This allows you to let the camera do the initial work, and then you can fine-tune the focus (e.g. for macro work). Another press of the Fn button returns you to AF mode.

The Ricoh lens on the GX-100 is highly touted. It is tack sharp, and nicely contrasty, with very little distortion or vignetting. I haven’t used it long enough to get a feeling for chromatic aberration or purple fringing, but by other published reports it is very good in this regard. The maximum aperture is 2.5 at the wide end, and 4.4 at the long end. For this size lens, those are pretty respectable figures. The aperture is advertised as having a 7-blade design, for smooth bokeh.

The 3X zoom range is 5.1 to 15.3mm (same as 24-72 mm in 35mm equivalent terms). This wide angle is absolutely liberating on a compact camera, and something I have been wanting for a long time, since I did a lot of landscapes in 24mm with my film cameras. It’s clear the public wants more wide angle lenses on their compacts and the manufacturers are following suit, if slowly. Panasonic comes to mind as another maker who has gotten the message. Of course, it would be a more useful lens if it was a 4X, but I know there are some big trade-offs in lens design once you go this wide, and I for one would rather have a sharp 3X lens than a not as sharp 4X lens. At the long end of this zoom, 72mm is sufficient for doing portrait work, even if I have to work a little closer to my subjects than I would sometimes like.

Another really interesting and unique feature of this camera is the step zoom. On my Casio, I complained about it’s “step zoom”, in the sense that the zoom steps were too discrete, and it was difficult to zoom to exactly the crop you wanted without resorting to some footwork. Well, with the GX-100, if you enable it, there is a really discrete set of zoom steps. The difference is they are tied to known focal lengths: 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 72mm. This is different than having a zoom that isn’t quite smooth. As others have pointed out, this is really like having 5 focal length primes in your bag, because the focal length is shown on the LCD. I’ve found this feature to be really desirable, and basically leave it on all the time.

One of the negatives of the Ricoh zoom is the dreaded “digital zoom”. Most digicams have this feature, where once you zoom to the long end of the optical range, the camera will continue to zoom using “digital” zoom (i.e. cropping). I absolutely detest this feature. The bad news is that the GX-100 doesn’t let you turn it off…unless… you are shooting in RAW. I wish Ricoh could provide an option to disable it (it’s just a firmware issue, after all).

Another outstanding feature of this lens is macros. At the wide end, a 1 cm limit! And at the long end : 4 cm. This allows for some really great macro opportunities. Even though I complained earlier on the way the AF point selection was initiated, I am glad to have the feature on the camera. It is exceedingly useful with the camera on a tripod and doing macro work. I just wish Ricoh would figure out a different way to turn it on.

All in all, a very fine lens on this beast. And that translates into great image potential. I’ll mention one final negative regarding the focus. There is no facility for focus bracketing on this camera. A high-end feature, perhaps, and yes, not many other cameras of this size have it either. But my Casio EX-P600 does. And it comes in very useful sometimes, particularly with macro work. I wish the Ricoh programmers could add this to the camera’s firmware.

Sensor, Metering, Exposure and Image Quality

The GX-100 features a 1/1.75″ 10.1 megapixel CCD sensor. I wish I could say something nice about this sensor, but I can’t. The pixels are tiny, and there are more of them than there should be. It’s noisy. And the dynamic range takes a hit. And if you understand these things and accept them as the trade-offs that they are, it’s mostly good news after that. Like my EX-P600 I pretty much have to stick with ISO 80 or 100 for smooth, buttery images (even then, noise is visible at all ISOs, if you look hard for it). ISO 200 is definitely usable, but beyond that it starts to go south pretty quick. As many have pointed out, however, Ricoh takes a pretty hands off approach to noise reduction, and their “Ricoh color engine” processing leaves noise mostly showing up as luminance noise, and not so much the more objectionable chroma noise. Furthermore, you have RAW processing (DNG format–yay!) to get the best results you can with state of the art post processing tools.

The picture gets even sunnier if you are the sort that likes B&W imaging. The GX-100 noise looks quite acceptable as “grain” in B&W images, whether straight from the camera, or processed out of RAW. I have been shooting a lot more B&W this last year or so, and I think this camera is only going to encourage me farther in that direction. The B&W images really have a great, gritty look to them. That was a selling point for me, seeing all the great B&W work on the Ricoh forums around the net.

If B&W is not your bag, don’t despair. The GX-100 has great color too, with the “Ricoh look”. Fuji is also known for their great color (that’s why a lot of wedding photographers shoot with Fuij DSLRs) and I have this recurring fantasy about “what if” Ricoh, Panasonic and Casio had licensed the Fuji sensor used in my F31fd (6 mpix, 1/1.7″, great low light capability) and put it in something like the GX-100. Ah, one can dream.

One of the big pluses for me with this camera is all the options for aspect ratios. You have 4:3 (my favorite), 3:2 and even 1:1 (although 1:1 cannot be used with RAW–why?). I love the option of being able to compose and shoot square frames. A 16:9 option would be nice, pity they didn’t add that as well. Oh, and while you are at it, Ricoh, how about a panorama stitch assist?

A couple of notes on metering, a very important subject for photographers. You need to know and understand your meter, and be able to trust it. It doesn’t matter if it is “off”, so long as it is consistent about being off, and how much it is off. The GX-100 has a tendency to clip highlights, like many compacts, and while I’m still getting a handle on the metering for this cam (it takes a while), it feels like a consistent -0.3 or -0.7 EV will be dialed in most of the time (sure wish there was a -0.5 setting!). It would be nice if the GX-100 had full time, always “hot” exposure compensation buttons, like my EX-P600, because I use that a lot. Fortunately, as I described earlier, the Ricoh system is pretty efficient with the adjust rocker and the wheel at changing EV compensation. Bottom line, metering is not particularly accurate, but it is consistent, and judicious use of exposure compensation will take care of clipped highlights. This may be a good time to mention that the GX-100 has a “blinking highlights” display in playback mode, which is very useful for a quick spot check of clipping.

There are the standard AE matrix, center and spot metering modes, of which I use all three frequently. I especially like Ricoh’s analog-y “needle match” exposure indicator, which is very easy to see and understand. One absolutely “must have” feature for me is an autoexposure lock (AE) button. Fortunately, the user-customizable “Fn” button I described earlier can be set to do this, and even better, the camera retains the setting until you press the button again (perfect for stitched panoramas!). As a super bonus, if you are in manual exposure mode and press the AE lock, it causes the camera to set the exposure to the auto exposure value, from which you can then tweak it. Nice!

I will take this opportunity to complain about the location of the Fn button, which, on the top of the camera, is not in a very good location for an AE lock button. Ricoh should either add a dedicated AE button in the right spot (a la the new Sigma DP-1) or (better) add more customizable Fn buttons, some on the back of the camera. Trust me, Ricoh, users would love more Fn buttons!

The camera includes AE bracketing, perfect for doing HDR images, or just making sure you nailed the exposure, but frustratingly the bracketing only goes to +/-0.5 ev. It would be nice if one could at least go out to +/-1.0 ev.

There are the expected Auto, Manual and Aperture-priority modes, but interestingly, no Shutter-priority (what gives? I use that all the time on my other cameras). There is also a very nice Program-Shift mode, which is basically Auto, but allows you to roll the front finger wheel to scroll through all the shutter/aperture combinations for a given autoexposure calculation. This is slick, taken straight from DSLR-land, and probably reduces the need for shutter priority (although I still wonder why they omitted it). The mode dial also sports the ubiquitous “scene” modes (sports, landscape, portrait, etc), which are of little use to the enthusiast segment this camera is marketed to, but, like more megapixels, face detection, smile detection and all the other gimmicks, seems to still find its way onto “serious” compacts (thankfully the Ricoh dispenses with most of the others).

White balance controls are typical, with a manual WB option that works like you expect. There is even a WB bracketing option, although it doesn’t let you choose the amount in degrees K. That would be really useful. No, this WB bracketing just brackets by a preset amount. It still may be useful for when the WB can not be accurately determined. I haven’t really shoot enough color with this camera yet to report on the accuracy of the AWB, but I will update this when I get a better feel for it.

The GX-100 offers an “Auto-HI” sensitivity setting, which chooses a higher ISO, if possible (the upper limit can be set via a menu setting). This is a handy setting if you are shooting moving subjects in low light situations, where a higher shutter speed is preferred over the image stabilization feature, but you are working fast and don’t want to be messing about in manual mode. Unfortunately, there is no setting where one can limit the upper ISO chosen in the default “Auto” mode. This would be a very useful addition to the firmware or for a future model.

The camera is a little slow to write files, and I’m testing with a SanDisk Extreme III and JPEG. I attribute this to the camera hardware and software combo, not to the card. Much has been said in various forums about the slow RAW write speed, and a need for buffering, and I’m sure Ricoh will address this in future models. Part of that solution should be to allow the user to turn off the recording of a JPEG file in addition to the RAW–currently your choices are JPEG or JPEG+RAW. Not having to write the JPEG file will certainly speed things up a little, and save some space for the user. Major, major, kudos to Ricoh for choosing DNG as their RAW format, which instantly makes the camera’s files usable with most modern RAW image processing workflows and greatly increases the chances that the user will have to work with the RAW files well into the forseeable future.

Since I have only had the camera a short time, I can provide only a brief observation on the overall image quality. And that is, cautiously, so far I am quite pleased. I had set my expectations low, considering this was a 10.1 mpix 1/1.8″ CCD, and that was wise. Living with noise is part of living with a small sensor digicam (although I pray fervently that the DP-1 will change this and jump-start a new market segment for serious compacts). And, as many have noted, you fight the noise, or accept it and make it work for you. I think the latter zen approach is what Ricoh does with this camera, and I find myself aligned with that style of thinking.

I will update this section later with some more concrete thoughts about the IQ as I gain more experience with the camera.

Miscellaneous Aspects and Features

I generally dislike the look of flash pictures, and avoid using flash if at all possible (mostly this means I don’t have a lot of experience with flash, since I see a lot of excellent work over at The Strobist). With that disclaimer, here’s my take on the GX-100′s flash. It’s decent, and covers the basics. I’ve already mentioned that I’m not a huge fan of the flimsy pop-up design (although the visible absence of a flash on the front of the camera might make some museum person comfortable, in a pinch). The flash does cover the wide 24mm setting, which is a plus, and there are the usual settings, including my favorite use for flash: a slow-sync night scene mode. Some users have lamented on the forums about the lack of flash compensation, which is definitely a reasonable complaint for Ricoh to address in the future. No, the saving grace for the GX-100 is the presence of a real hot-shoe on the top of the camera, which opens up a world of possibilities for attached and remote flash, external viewfinders, GPS geotagging, etc.

There are a couple of settings on the camera for continuous shooting and high speed shooting. Since I almost never do any of this kind of shooting, I’m not really qualified to comment, but my casual opinion is that these basically gimmicks, because the images are small and recorded together as one large (that is to say, regular) image file. Might be useful for analyzing your golf swing or something. I doubt I’ll ever use it.

One feature that I miss on the GX-100 is a sound recorder mode. It is excellent for recording field notes when one is out shooting. Of course, you can use movie mode for this, but that wastes a lot of space for just generating an audio file. It also comes in handy for impromptu interviews, music recording, idea brainstorming, etc. The camera does have an annotation feature for photographs, and it works reasonably efficiently, but annotations are limited to 8 seconds of audio. Another request to Ricoh…audio record mode, please? That produces a WAV file? No time limit, except due to card space?

Another feature I miss frequently that I find on my other cameras is a “world date” feature; basically, this allows you to set a second timezone into the camera, and then toggle between the “world clock” and the “home clock”. This is exceedingly useful when traveling, and spares you having to reset the clock on the camera, in the case where you want to record the local time of capture in the EXIF data of the photos.

Other notable omissions: remote shutter release, either via a small wireless remote or via the a USB connection (you can use the self-timer, but it’s really no replacement), a calendar playback feature (to review photos by date–handy when traveling), a decent movie mode. You can quibble about whether some of these are necessary in a “serious compact”; I’ll argue that for this genre of camera, why not? They are there on some of the competitor’s models.

A cool, somewhat unique feature that the Ricoh does have is a built in intervalometer, allowing you to do time-lapse photography, or remote unattended photography without having to tote an extra gadget along.

A note about the image stabilization feature. Once of the selling points of this camera for me was that it features a real, CCD-moving image stabilization feature, something my other cams lack. I can report that this feature works well, and I leave it on by default. It is totally in the background and you can just set it and forget it. Reports are that it doesn’t work as well as in some other cameras. Since I have no others with this feature I can’t comment on that. But I have appreciated this capability almost immediately: I notice my hand held shots in lower light are much sharper at speeds that would give me trouble on my other cams. Thumbs up.

My initial experience with battery life is that it is only “fair”. You will definitely want to order an extra battery to have along; I’m seriously considering ordering a second spare, for 3 batteries total. The CPU and hardware are perhaps not the most efficient, compared to some other cams. I will report back my average number of pictures in an update to this post, but so far I’ve not been overly impressed,.. or depressed.

Conclusion

This is definitely a preliminary conclusion, and interested readers should check back to this section later on to see what, if anything, has changed in my opinion after using the camera for a few months. I decided to post my review early, because my experience is that if I don’t, the GX-200 (?) will be out before I have the review up. The camera has already been out for around a year, so if anything this review may help some people still sitting on the fence regarding buying this camera now, or waiting for the next version, or who may be interested in picking up the GX-100 at a bargain price later.

Overall, this is a great compact camera for the serious, thinking photographer. It is definitely not a P&S (“point and shoot”–that term is so overloaded that almost no one can look at this camera and not call it that, but you would be soooo wrong to think you could get good results from just pointing it and shooting on auto). No, this camera requires thought, but will delight the user once they have mastered it’s idiosyncrasies (true of every serious camera).

The lens is superb, the noise reduction very “hands off”, and the handling is pretty solid and ergonomic. RAW mode, image stabilization, full manual controls and good customizability (is that a word?). All in a hardy little package. Sure, there are some nit-picks in this review, but many of them are simply software (firmware) issues, and could easily be addressed by Ricoh in the future. So, without further ado, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good

• Nice grip, general ergonomics, good size (although I am always looking for smaller, the Fuji F31 size really fits in a pants pocket with the same size sensor!)
• Rocker adjust switch + wheel
• “MY1″ and “MY2″ user-customizable modes
• Superb lens, reasonably fast aperture, with good zoom range and excellent macro capabilities (goes wide to 24mm equivalent!)
• Nice step-zoom mode and 1:1 aspect ratio option
• RAW image capture in DNG
• Full manual controls
• Real hot-shoe
• “Hands off” noise reduction
• Built in intervalometer
• Workable image stabilization

The Bad

• Manual lens cap ( I know this is debatable, some may call it a Good)
• Some missing things: shutter priority mode, audio recording mode, more customizable Fn buttons (or dedicated buttons for AE lock, etc), remote shutter release
• Only fair battery life
• AF a bit pokey (slow)
• Cannot disable “digital zoom”
• Write times a tad slow, especially so for RAW
• Cannot adjust contrast or sharpness in B&W mode
• Image quality could be better, including video (movies)
• Digital zoom cannot be turned off except via “step zoom”.

The Ugly

• Flimsy pieces on an otherwise solid build: the USB cover, pop-up flash, etc. I would file these under “Bad”, except that the camera was so expensive at first launch that this is inexcusable.

Things that Ricoh should improve

Here is a single list of all the things I wished for throughout this review, collected into one place, plus a couple of others.

• Enable AF point selection in non-macro mode.
• Add a built in neutral density filter, like the one on the Canon G9. Very useful in bright light situations.
• Add one or two more custom function buttons, and improve the placement of the buttons (they should go on the back, where the thumb can reach them. Basically, I want an AE lock button in the right place!).
• Provide a way to turn off “digital zoom”
• Add focus bracketing
• Add shutter priority mode, audio recording mode
• Add world date setting and calendar playback mode
• Add a user-settable upper limit to ISO in Auto ISO setting
• Increase the possible range of EV bracketing to at least 1 stop (current limit is +/- 0.5 EV)
• Remove the need to store a JPEG with every RAW
• Add flash compensation
• Allow contrast and sharpness to be used independently with B&W mode
• Allow simultaneous use of the “thirds” composition lines and the live histogram.
• Have the option of a histogram showing separate RGB values
• Have a built-in lens cover (I’m still waffling on this actually)
• Quieter operation
• Improve AF speed
• Provide a way to remotely control the camera (esp shutter) through USB cable or wireless remote
• Improve file write times, buffering, esp. for RAW
• Smoother controls (but robust!)
• Better battery life (manual zoom alone might do it)
• Less flimsy flash, port cover, battery door

And these are big, and possibly unreasonable wishes:

• A larger, less noisy sensor (but only if the camera size does not increase significantly)
• Manual zoom
• A 4X zoom range would be nice, but only if it doesn’t decrease the sharpness of the lens significantly. Keep the wide end based at 24mm (this may be entirely unrealistic, but this is a wish list, so there it is!)

Addendum

1. I’m aware that the review currently lacks color images. I will be adding some…
2. Modified notes on digital zoom after a reader pointed out an error
3. Modified notes on adjust rocker switch and AF point selection after a reader pointed out an error