Man I hate progress. Just when you think you have the perfect camera body (or audio gear, or smartphone, or automobile); just when you think your little automotive or electronic universe is perfect, some snooty set of engineers, employed by a busybody manufacturer, goes ahead and makes an improved version of your toy.

You find yourself staring at the brochure (or more likely now the web page) for the new creation.  You breathlessly review the device’s new specifications and capabilities and just hoping that its ancestor, which you currently own, has not been made completely obsolete by the new arrival.

Unfortunately, the manufacturer has no desire to take you off the hook, or to give you any comfort in the knowledge that you currently possess a device that is still adequate to the task.  Their marketers want very badly to convince you that it is absolutely essential to sell your current device and possess their new offering which is so much more advanced, that you might as well not even own your current camera (or audio gear, or Smartphone, or automobile).

And it works.  One by one the pages of eBay sprout multiple new auction offerings of the old device, as their owners work to raise the capital so that they acquire the new model. And generally, it will be a model, that if you’re lucky, is perhaps 5% better overall than the device it replaced.

But when the UPS man finally arrives with your new toy, for you the consumer…no, the aficionado, your universe is complete. You’re back on top.

Now, we’re all I think, to some degree or another subject to these impulses.  You wouldn’t be reading this blog if you weren’t interested enough in camera gear and photography to waste a portion of your day perusing these articles.

And I wouldn’t be writing these articles if the subject didn’t interest me.  But it’s important to keep one’s head squarely on one’s shoulders.

Nikon has just released the D7100.  I’ve written extensively on its predecessor articles which you can read here and here.  I thoroughly enjoyed the D7000 and it will continue to hold a valuable place among my collection of camera gear.

The new camera has several interesting advances:

It sports a 24 megapixel Toshiba sensor, which  is similar to the 36 megapixel sensor of  the D800e in that it lacks a “low pass” filter.  It should thus have noticeably better resolution than the D7000, which has only 16 megapixels with a filter.  Nonetheless, the current resolution has proven to be very adequate for most of my needs ( the image above for instance, was significantly cropped).

Though more megapixels can be useful,  they  will be so only if they do not if adversely affect the low noise levels, and particularly the wide dynamic range of the current D7000 sensor. In fairness however, most often with Nikon sensors, the newer ones are strikingly better than their predecessors in most attributes.

The D7100 has a new autofocus system which is said to be more sensitive than the old one.  The autofocus points are also more broadly spread across the frame.  That’s a good thing.

There’s some improvement in burst speed, add a new crop factor (1.3x) which yields an image reduced to 15 megapixels, but allows you to access the camera’s highest burst speeds (seven fps in the crop mode, as opposed to six fps for the D 7000 in full resolution).

There are improvements to video capture including the addition of stereo microphones.

And like the D600, there is now a lock button on the mode dial.

To me, as a landscape photographer, the usefulness of upgrading to the D7100 would entirely depend on the sensors characteristics.  If the increase in resolution is accompanied by simultaneous dramatic improvements in high ISO performance (an achievement Nikon does tend to pull off) then the newer camera may be worth acquiring.  If the gains are in resolution alone, that I suspect I might acquire one when the market is right, i.e.; when the used market for the D7000 is still good, and the 7100 refurbs or discounts start to appear.  Time will tell.

Remember I own a D 600 which makes resisting this new offering much easier.

Obviously we need  fo people  to purchase goods, if we’re ever to improve the economy of our country, and for that matter, that of the globe.

But as always I urge caution when new models of our beloved equipment become available.

For unless they offer significant improvements in capabilities, specific to your usage patterns, then the newest model is unlikely to be a good investment.

Now, none of this applies to you if you own a much earlier camera body, particularly one that is a couple of steps below the 7000 series.  If you need what the D7100 offers, and can afford it, then by all means enjoy.  I believe you’ll be buying a fine photographic instrument.

However always remember that the addition of a new model does nothing to alter the quality and function of its predecessor.  I suspect we could all improve our output as much, by better utilizing the features of our current camera gear as by buying the newest model.

Take a deep breath and think, before you push that “confirm purchase” button on the screen.

I didn’t think I had much more to write on the Fuji X Pro 1.  Since my original review, it has become one my main photography tools.  I have grown to accept the limitations in terms of raw file conversion and auto focus, in exchange for the brilliant image quality this camera generally delivers.

Several events recently however have caused me once again to revisit the camera and its work flow.

I have been using Adobe Camera Raw as my main conversion software and a trial/ beta version of Capture 1 for my more critical images, particularly landscape images with fine detail.  One Sunday morning recently, I started to process some files that were shot the day before.  I opened Capture 1 (the beta Pro version) only to find that it had expired, taking with it  the trial version I downloaded prior to the issuance of the beta.  Well, no matter,  I figured I’d go to their website thinking that I could download Capture 1 Express. This is a stripped down version of the full program including only the core features, including the raw file converter.  At $99 it seemed a reasonable deal.

Unfortunately, it turns out that and the Capture 1 has shrewdly withheld X trans-sensor support from the less expensive software.  This may just be a matter of the “Express” product being an earlier software version, though it is easy to suspect that, given the superiority of their software in the case of the Fujis, they’d like us to spend the full $300.

Momentarily frustrated by this, I retrieved the X Pro 1 box, and retrieved the software disk, which includes the Silkypix based-raw file converter that came free with the camera.  I was aware peripherally, that there had been several software updates to this.  Sean Reid of “Reid Reviews” compared this software to Capture 1, and Adobe Lightroom, and felt it was second only to the Capture 1 results in image quality.  Given the circumstances I figured I’d give it a try.

Doing some research, I discovered that there had been a further  update of this converter (ver.3.2.13.0), one more advanced than the one Sean tested.  I installed the original disc, and updated the program from the website.  As I had a bunch of files converted with Capture 1, I decided to reconvert them with the Fuji software for comparison.  I also compared conversions by ACR.

This is a good example. It’s from the original X Pro 1 article.  It was shot with the 60 mm lens, and I marveled at the time how sharp it was.  If you “pixel peep” the Adobe version you can see the smearing, and “watercolor effect” people are talking about.  I didn’t really notice this effect until I reviewed the Capture 1 version  which has much better preservation of fine detail ( BTW I did try to sharpen the Adobe version).

I then converted the file using the updated Fuji software. To my eye there is a  very similar gain in resolution over the version converted by ACR making the Fuji and Capture 1 versions essentially indistinguishable. This held true over multiple conversion comparisons.

Silkypix has a reputation for being awkward to use, and for the first couple of images that was true.  After converting perhaps 20 images, I began to get a feel for it and now feel much more comfortable with the work flow.  I still cannot find a way, like you can with Capture 1, to have it open converted images in  Photoshop (I’ll keep working on this however). Still, given that it’s free, I think I can put up with its few shortcomings.

Parenthetically, I thought it would be interesting to compare conversions of my Fuji X 100 images between the Fuji program, and ACR.  One particular landscape image, was accidentally acquired at asa 1200.  I always like the Adobe conversion.  But arguably the Fuji version was perhaps slightly more detailed with significantly better handling of noise (using raw file converter’s default noise reduction settings).  I’ll have to keep looking at this.

Another issue to discuss is the newest firmware issues for both the X Pro 1 body, and the 35 mm F1.4 lens.  No I’m not a person with a lot of beefs about the XP1 focusing speed or accuracy.  I use this camera for more deliberative photography.  If I’m going to a sporting event, I generally take one of my Nikons.  I do however desire that the auto focus to be as fast as possible. The new firmware,  version 2.03 is said to improve the accuracy of the auto focus system.  This is apparently particularly so for 35 mm when its firmware is upgraded (ver. 2.02) at the same time.

I upgraded both the camera and the body.  Prior to doing this, sitting in  my deliberately poorly lit studio, I attempted multiple times to obtain auto focus lock on 7 different low contrast objects in the room.  I was only able to lock focus on 2 of them.  After the upgrade, I was able to lock focus on 5 of the 7 objects.

This effect was true both for the 35 mm lens, and the 18-55 mm zoom.

The 35 mm did behave somewhat differently after the upgrade. Before ultimately locking, the lens swept up and down it’s focus limits, before establishing focus.  This was different behavior than prior to the upgrade.

That day I went out to shoot some images for my local state park where there was a winter festival occurring.  In good light, I found that I could merely press the shutter and shoot the image without waiting for focus lock.

I did this multiple times, and the auto focus was very accurate.  I believe this is an improvement from the previous level of performance.

In summary, the most recent software upgrades, for the camera, and the bundled raw file converter, have once again  improved the overall experience with the X Pro 1.  I still hope that Fuji fixes the auto-iso issue that everyone complains about and finds further ways to improve the auto focus.  I also wish that Adobe would put the time into their raw conversion software so that it would equal the performance of Capture 1 and Fuji’s version of Silkypix.

Overall however, I’m pretty damn content.