Bajillion-x Megazoom

Olympus' 26x zoom SP-590UZ

An interesting thing about the “Megapixel Wars” is that the public’s fascination with megapixels as a selling point have somewhat waned.  I don’t have particular evidence of this – perhaps it’s just media emphasizing it less, or perhaps even that I’ve become so jaded with the numbers that I’ve mentally blocked it out. And in any case, I’m certain that any such effect that’s been noticed has purely been with the semi-educated consumer – there are still millions of consumers who have no idea how to evaluate cameras aside from megapixel count.

But as the emphasis on megapixels seems to recede, another emphasis over ever-skyrocketing optical zoom ranges mounts.  Back in the old days, ultrazooms hit 10x (something like 38-380mm or 36-360mm equivalent), and inched up to 12x and pretty much stopped there.  About two years ago, Olympus changed the dynamic of this race completely with its groundbreaking SP-550 UZ which packed a whopping 18x (28-504mm) zoom.  Olympus had about a 6-month monopoly on this range, but ever since then, manufacturers have been pushing their lenses to ever stratospheric heights.

A lot of people have decried this extreme push in lens design, which certainly has its drawbacks.  The SP-550’s 18x lens was universally panned for delivering terrible image quality, and no camera since then has really been able to deliver that kind of zoom range in a lens that is up to par with the previous generations’ more conservative 10x or 12x lenses.  Unlike pixel count, however, which past a certain point doesn’t given any usable advantages for most users and applications, a larger zoom range will always add more versatility.

So PMA saw the introduction of no less than 5 such ultrazooms (4 new releases and one North American re-release) having 20x+ zoom ranges.  A quick summary of them:

20x Ultrazooms

So we can see the zoom count is continually creeping up and up, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see an ultrazoom packing 30x in the next 6 months or so.  Depending on whether your glass is half-full or half-empty, I think one interesting aspect is that the zooms are growing in the wide-angle range as well as the telephoto, though perhaps not in equal proportions – if we take a 36-360mm 10x zoom as our baseline, from a few years ago, today’s 26-624mm (4x) cameras are about 27.8% wider on the wide-angle end, and 73% longer on the telephoto end.  This is disproportionately skewed towards the telephoto end, but it’s nice to see these cameras offering a significantly wider angle at all, compared to the earlier days of digital cameras when developing 10x lenses meant keeping the same 36mm starting point and just changing the 108mm telephoto end to a 360mm.

An interesting note is that both Canon’s SX1 and Sony’s HX1 ultrazooms are their first non-SLR cameras to feature a CMOS, rather than CCD sensors.  This isn’t an outright positive – CMOS and CCD are simply different technologies, without one being inherently superior to the other.  Historically, CCD sensors have produced better image quality, although CMOS has an inherent advantage in readout speed and Canon’s CMOS sensors for their DSLRs have beat out every other manufacturers’ CCD sensors in terms of high-ISO noise for a half-decade now.  For what it’s worth, Canon’s SX1 CMOS seems to perform slightly worse than the very similar Canon SX10, which uses the same lens but a CCD sensor, according to a head-to-head Cameralabs comparison.

A bevy of ruggedized cameras

Olympus has been hammering away at this niche market for years now with its mju line of waterproof cameras.  The other big players seem to have finally jumped on the bandwagon, with Canon’s D10, Fujifilm’s Z33, and Panasonic’s TS1.

It’s a bit sad to see another innovative market or feature that Olympus found, targeted, and penetrated first, only to eventually lose that ground to other bigger players who seized on their innovation.  Then again, this is a huge boon for consumers, not only because it offers more selection, but frankly because Canon, Fujifilm, and Panasonic know how to execute and produce quality cameras in a way that Olympus can only dream of.

Fujifilm's ruggedized Z33

Canon introduces the compact ultrazoom SX200 TZ-killer, Panasonic one-ups everyone again with the ZS3/TZ7

Canon SX200 IS

Panasonic has had a long and successful run with its TZ series of ultrazoom cameras.  They first introduced their 10x, 1.6in thick TZ1 in 2006, back when the only 10x+ cameras on the market were huge, bulky ultrazooms like the Canon S3 (3in. thick), Sony H5 (3.6in.), or Panasonic’s own 5.4in. FZ30 behemoth.

The TZ was an ideal blend of versatility and compactness, which more or less made it the ideal travel camera, especially as one of the few cameras (much less ultrazooms) to offer a 28mm wide-angle lens at the time.  Even when Canon and Sony attempted to mount some competition with their own ~2in. ultrazoom releases in the past year, they were still significantly bulkier and lacked the all-important 28mm wide angle end.

Finally, 3 years after the release of the original TZ, Canon appears to have come out with a viable contender in the SX200 IS, a 1.5in compact sporting a 28-336mm (12x) f/3.4-5.3 lens.  It’s also got the ability to record 1280×720, 30fps video (720/30p).

Panasonic ZS3 (aka TZ7)

But like clockwork, Panasonic’s already rolling out the next generation of cameras that, on paper at least, offer more innovative features and better performance. The newest TZ7/ZS3 continues Panosonic’s recent trend of setting 25mm as the new wide-angle standard, featuring a 25-300mm 12x lens at f/3.3-4.9.  The ZS3 also features a 1280×720, 60fps video mode (720/60p) (though with this level of processing throughput, one wonders why 1080p couldn’t be offered), and even allows you to utilize the optical zoom while recording (something which many cameras, Canon SX200 included, surprisingly can’t).  Following the trend of some other high-end Panasonics lately, the ZS3 also seems to be offering an oversized sensor, which allows it to deliver “full-frame” coverage for its lens and offer the same angle of view irrespective of aspect ratio (so you won’t get cropped off images when shooting 16:9 video on a native 4:3 sensor).  The Panasonic ZS3 also offers a 2.3fps burst, and 6fps burst in a 3MP mode, compared to the SX200’s paltry 0.8fps.

Sony, meanwhile, just pumped out its H20 compact ultrazoom, which still tips in at a bulky 1.9in and features the same boring restrictive 38-380mm zoom.  On the other end of the spectrum, Samsung introduced the HZ15, which features a 24-240mm 10x zoom.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about image quality (and the oft-repeated stigma that Panasonics can’t do low-light), here’s a comparison between last generation’s Panasonic TZ5 at ISO1600 and dcresource’s recent review of the Canon SX200 IS at ISO1600.

So for now, it seems, Panasonic still rules the roost as king of compact ultrazooms, and on paper the ZS3 appears to be the perfect camera for anyone looking for maximum versatility and portability in a single package (i.e. travel photographers).

Depending on the market segment you were interested in, this year’s PMA could have offered a healthy bounty, or simply have been a dud.

DSLRS

If you were in the DSLR market, there was barely anything new emerging on the landscape.  Neither of the big two – Canon and Nikon – released any new DSLRs, with just two specialty tilt-shift lenses from Canon and a “normal” APS-C prime in the new 35mm f/1.8 AF-S DX from Nikon making headlines.  Pentax, in what seems to be an ongoing niche market they’re targeting, came out with a 15mm f/4 pancake.  And Sony, surprisingly, produced nothing of note.

Nikon 35mm f/1.8 AF-S DX

Nikon 35mm f/1.8 AF-S

For the Nikonians out there, the new prime is an encouraging sign that Nikon is finally getting with the program and pumping out AF-S lenses for its entire range.  For one, this gives a modern and fast-focusing midrange prime for APS-C crop users, which will finally provide an alternative and offer some competition to Sigma’s 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM which was previously the only lens in this market segment.  Canon still lacks a real solution for this range, forcing users into the bigger and much more expensive 35 f/1.4 L.

Secondly, this, along with Nikon’s release last year of the 50mm f/1.4 AF-S, shores up the set of lenses available for its D40/D60 users, who previously had no midrange large-aperture prime solutions that were capable of autofocus.  I’ve long borne a grudge against Nikon and its ridiculous limitations on its entry-level cameras (or perhaps more fairly, the clueless consumer who would buy into Nikon’s marketing without properly examining the specifications and capabilities of these particular cameras), but even I’ll admit now that, with relatively affordable 35 and 50 primes in tow, the fatal lack-of-primes flaw with the D40/D60 can effectively be buried.

Olympus E-620

Olympus E-620

Press Release

Olympus released a new midrange DSLR in the E-620, which essentially updates the E-420/E-520 to current technology.  There’s nothing particularly notable with this release, feature-wise (though we’ll see how actual image quality and noise performance stack up), although it’s a little puzzling that Olympus, originator of DSLR live view as well as sensor-shift stabilization, dust shaker, and a number of other DSLR firsts, has gotten beat to the DSLR video punch badly by Canon and Nikon, and still hasn’t implemented a video recording feature yet, even though this should be a somewhat trivial software hack, at the very most.

Panasonic GH1

Panasonic GH1

Press Release

Cavalry for Four-Thirds (or should I say, Micro Four-Thirds) arrived in the form of Panasonic’s GH1, however. Panasonic’s G1 that came out just a few months ago was already an eye-popping camera, becoming the first interchangeable lens, large sensor camera to forego a mirror and optical viewfinder in favor of using a live-preview feed to the camera’s rear LCD or electronic viewfinder full-time, thereby opening up an enormous potential in body and lens size scaling, as well as image capture.

The GH1 is a somewhat minor update to the G1, essentially adding the ability to record video.  It was a noticeable hole in the featureset of the G1, and DPreview’s Photokina interview with Panasonic back in October tried to shed some light on this issue.  If it wasn’t apparent then, it should be readily apparent now with the GH1 that Panasonic really wanted to do DSLR video right, rather than just tack it on as a half-baked feature.

Nikon rushed out video for the D90 badly, and the result was pretty much a joke – no controls whatsoever over the exposure parameters used (it basically functions in full-automatic), mono sound, and worst of all no ability to autofocus.  It basically served to satisfy any video geek’s curiosity of producing video using sensors much larger than commercially-available video cameras, but worthless for actually producing usable video.

Canon’s 5D Mark II was a little better thought out, providing actual autofocus, but still leaving out the manual exposure controls and providing a weak mono mic.

So in comes Panasonic’s GH1, which on paper seems to be the first DSLR (or EVIL, I should say) which does video right.  The featurelist is extensive:

• 1920×1080i recording (captured at 24fps?). Sadly this is interlaced rather than progressive-scan, but this still gives far higher quality than Nikon’s 1280×720 video.  The perhaps more interesting (and odd) feature is that the sensor actually captures at 24fps, but gets upconverted to 60 interlaced fps.  This plays back better on NTSC televisions, but I know that I’ve been clamoring for a 24fps mode to give motion a more “cinematic” look.  Not knowing nearly enough about video, I suppose with 60fps interlaced that’s upconverted from 24fps, there should be a way to downconvert back to 24fps.  Or perhaps a capture rate of 24fps is all that’s really needed.  We’ll see.
• Full-frame angle of view.  Most DSLR sensors use a 3:2 aspect ratio for their sensors, and this inherently runs into a problem when recording video, because the most common HD video resolutions (1920×1080 or 1280×720) have a 16:9 aspect ratio.  The obvious solution to me is to simply record the video in a 3:2 aspect ratio (1920×1280 video), and give the user the option of using this or cropping it afterwards (most HDTVs automatically adjust for different aspect ratios anyhow).  Of course, Nikon and Canon, being stupid and wasteful, simply lop off the top and bottom hundred pixels and give you a 16:9 ratio crop from the 3:2 sensor, which effectively gives a 1.05 crop factor.  I know, not the end of the world, but why needlessly limit the full capabilities of your system?Panasonic’s GH1 goes a bit overboard in my opinion and implements a full hardware solution. The sensor is now slightly oversized, and allows for both full-frame stills recording in 3:2, as well as full-frame video recording in 16:9 (they’re just using slightly different parts of the sensor).
• Articulating/rotating screen, which allows for live previewing from a vantage point other than directly behind the camera. One of the most frustrating aspects of shooting video with a DSLR (or any digital camera, realy) is that the videographer must compose based off of the rear LCD, which necessitates that they remain in a position some a foot or two behind the camera.  This is limiting in some instances where it’s just not practical or physically possible to place oneself in that position, and restrains composition somewhat when one can’t view the LCD.  Given, Nikon’s D90 and Canon’s 5D are still cameras with video added on, and this is a change that adapts the camera better to video use, which is not necessarily a cost other companies were willing to take in light of the target market.  But in terms of videography, this one feature makes Panasonic’s GH1 infinitely more usable.
• Onboard stereo sound. We’ll have to wait until some more samples start floating in, but Panasonic’s GH1 at least appears to have a much more capable stereo microphone than the junky mono one found on other cameras.  The mic is also placed at the top of the flash head (near the hotshoe), which will likely help keep it further from noisy things like the lens.
• Lenses optimized for video. Perhaps the most exciting announcement of all is Panasonic’s new 14-140mm f/4-5.8 lens that is specially optimized for video.  Auto-focus is claimed to be “silent”, and the lens also features a “seamless” aperture, rather than the harsh 1/3 stop jumps most lenses are restricted to. Reading between the lines, I’d expect the lens to autofocus a bit slower than others, and billing seamless aperture as a feature seems to imply the ability to adjust aperture while recording, though it says nothing for manual control of this.
• Selectable aperture/shutter speed? This one is still a big question mark, as this isn’t ever explicitly mentioned in the official press releases.  However a number of previews indicate that there is some form of user control in this mode.  LetsGoDigital.com’s preview of the GH1 mentions that “Shutter speeds and apertures can be set to preference…” which is a positive indication.  We’ll see how this actually gets implemented, but any form of control would be fantastic over the mostly automatic control seen on other cameras so far.

Sigma Lenses

Sigma, however, was busy this year, announcing an array of interesting lenses at PMA.

Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 HSM

Press release

First up is an update to Sigma’s popular 10-20mm f/4-5.6 ultrawide for crop sensors.  Coming in significantly cheaper than Canon’s 10-22mm, and significantly wider than other options like Nikon’s 12-24, or Tokina’s 12-24 or 11-16, the Sigma was somewhat of a go-to choice to get the ultrawide angle of view on crop.  Like a lot of lenses, however, the 10-20 was plagued by allegations of quality control issues, specifically lens decentering which left one side sharp but the other somewhat blurry. The new update features the same 10-20mm focal length, but this time with a constant f/3.5 aperture.

While any updates are welcome, I’m not so sure an update for the 10-20mm was the highest on everyone’s wishlist.  Sigma certainly has had some of its thunder stolen when Tokina launched their 11-16 f/2.8.  I haven’t used this lens myself but it’s reportedly tack sharp and boasts an f/2.8 aperture and the usual solid Tokina heft and build quality, and a lot of photographers have flocked to this when looking for a more premium-grade ultrawide for crop.  While the new design and constant f/3.5 certainly gives hope that the optics will be sharper, I almost never found sharpness to be a huge issue when I had the original lens, and I think most issues that folks complained about were more quality control issues, rather than a fundamental flaw in the lens design.  And while the new f/3.5 aperture is larger, it’s only by a 1/3 stop over the f/4 of the old lens at 10mm, which is what photographers are using these types of lenses at the vast majority of the time.

It’s shaped up to be a good midrange ultrawide, and assuming a similar price to the f/4-5.6 it’d still be the lens to get, value-wise.  However with optics that I can’t imagine being improved by much, and a barely larger aperture, I can’t imagine the appeal in this lens for anyone who already owns an ultrawide, much less anyone who owns the f/4-5.6 version.

Sigma 50-200mm f/4-5.6 HSM OS

Press release

Next is Sigma’s budget telephoto, the 50-200 f/4-5.6 HSM OS, also designed for crop cameras.  Until very recently, the Sigma and Tamron 70-300 zooms were the budget lenses to get if you were looking to do telephoto on the cheap – they weren’t very expensive and also weren’t particularly sharp, but were still a heck of a lot better than the 70-300mm or 75-300mm junk lenses that the first party manufacturers were producing.  In the past few years we’ve seen a plethora of shorter range telephotos in the 50-200mm or so range crop up, many of which came supplied with image stabilization that benefited image quality immensely, yet were still offered at bargain $200 prices.  This 50-200mm lens finally brings IS (Sigma calls it OS – optical stabilization) to the table, but on top of this also features Sigma’s fast, fast hypersonic motor (HSM) focusing, which is similar to Canon’s USM or Nikon’s SWM and is essential to shooting fast action and tracking moving subjects with enough speed.  At around the same $200 price point, this could be a killer lens for budget sports shooters using crop.

Sigma 18-50 f/2.8-4 HSM OS

Press release

Sigma also announced a new standard zoom for crop cameras in the 18-50 f/2.8-4 HSM OS.  It’s an intriguing lens, not the least of which is because it’s the only APS-C standard zoom I know of that offers f/2.8 and image stabilization, outside of Canon’s 17-55 f/2.8 IS.  Previously the only other option for those who couldn’t afford the 17-55 IS or for those poor souls with cameras that couldn’t mount Canon lenses (kidding!) would have been either Tamron’s 17-50 f/2.8 or Sigma 18-50 f/2.8, neither of which offered image stabilization (nor faster sonic focus motors).

That said, I can’t help but feel that this lens is a bit of a compromise since it’s not actually a constant f/2.8.  It’s an intersting upgrade path for those looking to move up from a basic 18-55 kit lens, but it doesn’t offer a fully appealing solution to anyone who already has an upgraded lens – those with larger zoom lenses (like the 18-200’s and 18-100’s out there) already have image stabilization and face a dramatically smaller zoom range in exchange for only about a stop extra in aperture, if that.  And photographers who are already using 18-50mm f/2.8 lenses, which I imagine are the most interested customer base for a lens like this aren’t going to be fully warm to dropping a stop on the telephoto end just to get image stabilization (and HSM, if they really want that).

An 18-50 f/2.8 IS shouldn’t be hard – Sigma already makes one without the IS, and it doesn’t necessarily take a complete redesign to fit in a stabilizing lens element.  Maybe that’s in the works for the near future, or perhaps Tamron beats them to the punch with a 17-50 f/2.8 VC of their own, now that they’ve developed their own IS system.  In any case, someone should close in on this opportunity soon – it may not matter quite as much to Canon users but those using Nikon are for sure clamoring for such an option, and Nikon is going to release a 17-55 f/2.8 VR sooner or later (although this will probably cost $1800… so that midrange market should mostly remain intact).

Samsung NX System

Samsung NX mockup

Press Release

Photo Gallery

Hot on the heels of Olympus/Panasonic’s Micro Four-Thirds system, Samsung announced their very own mirrorless, large sensor, interchangeable lens camera system, to be called NX.  The term Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens (EVIL) has been floated around a lot (although I find the use of acronyums rather than a simple initialism to be pretty cheesy here), but Samsung is calling these cameras “hybrids”, which I think will become equally silly once such cameras become the norm and there are no longer any DSLRs to give context as to what these cameras are “hybrids” between, exactly.

Anyhow, as for the actual system; I won’t go into the full details (you can read Dave Etchells’ excellent report on the similar Micro Four Thirds system), but in essence the NX system still uses interchangeable lenses and a large sensor, but foregoes the mirror necessary for the optical viewfinder, and instead uses live preview exclusively.  The lack of a mirror lets cameras and lenses to be engineered much smaller, and the focus on electronic rather than purely optical displays has some interesting potential.

Details are fairly vague at this point about NX.  We do know it’ll use an APS-C sensor, which instantly gives it a step up over Micro Four Thirds in terms of potential image quality, but at the same time sets a higher floor for the camera and lens size.  The release date for the system is set for the second half of 2009.  From what we can tell from product photos, the new body will definitely be very slim indeed, and Samsung definitely seems to be playing up the use of pancake lenses on this system.

Samsung has been ridiculed in photographic circles for a long while, just by virtue of not being an old camera company.  This is pretty similar to the way Panasonic (“They make microwaves!”) was treated in the early days of Lumix, but ironically enough Panasonic is now a huge player and one of the leaders in R&D and market innovation (far, far more than traditional camera companies like Canon and Nikon).  So it’s exciting, though not that surprising, to see a company like Samsung once again taking the lead and pushing out a camera like this long before Canon, Nikon, et. al. even come close to it (though of course Olympus and Panasonic get credit for pushing out Micro Four Thirds long before even Samsung).

Some talk on the interesting non-SLR announcements (of which there were many) to come.