LEDE ON
This week I write about new products, existing (Adobe), announced-but-not-imminent (Ricoh), and upcoming (additional new cameras coming in September). So it seems only appropriate to also say something about Apple, as they have called the press to the big circle for a launch-a-thon soon (on the 9th). The big anticipated camera news from the fruit company is that they’ll finally introduce variable apertures on an iPhone. Probably not more than two settable apertures, but a lot of us are scratching our heads about this, as the math of small-sensor-size has us already deep in the diffraction zone, so it’s unclear to me that there’s all that much real visible impact.
Unless, of course, Apple is doing something on the computational side. For instance, many smart phones already use a stream of images taken around the the chosen one to help reduce noise. What if they did the same with aperture? That would help them build a better depth map and computationally adjust subject and background accordingly.
Most of the initial speculation on why Apple is adding an aperture to the iPhone camera basically says “will help limit overexposure.” I wasn’t aware that my current iPhone was having any significant problems with that, but…maybe.
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News
Who Needs Interchangle Lenses?
With the success of the Ricoh GRIV, Ricoh has decided to once again clone the same camera, but this time with a 40mm equivalent f/2.8 lens (the original is 28mm equivalent), to be called the GRIVx. Instead of interchangeable lenses, it seems Ricoh is suggesting that you buy shirts with multiple pockets. But don’t worry, you have time to order those new shirts, as Ricoh only made a development announcement, and the target date for actual release is “Winter 2026 or later.”
This isn’t a new tactic for Ricoh. They’ve done the same thing before, for example with the GRIII and GRIIIx models. And speaking of which, at the bottom of the press release Ricoh indicates that all the GRIII models will go out of production in October, due to some parts no longer being available.
As for details on the GRIVx, Ricoh basically published the same spec sheet as the GRIV, with the primary difference being the lens (eight elements in six groups, three of which are aspherical). The lens does have a macro mode, focusing down to 4.7” (0.12m) instead of the usual 7.9” (0.2m). You also still get the direct in-camera crop capability, this time at 50mm and 71mm.
Now let’s see, is my 28mm GR in my left or right shirt pocket?
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News
Adobe Cloud Rains Features
This is starting to almost become a “be careful of what you wish for” horror show. So before getting to several interesting new features in the latest Creative Cloud releases, let me back up a bit and describe the popular sentiment when Adobe switched to subscriptions: the basic idea was that the monthly tithe was too much and Adobe wouldn’t really keep innovating regularly once they had you under contract. I argued that this wouldn’t likely be the case, and it turns out I was correct: we’ve seen an unending stream of Adobe adding interesting, useful, and sometimes first-mover features to their products.
Photoshop seemingly gets better about every time I need to do a deep session with it. But that’s becoming a bit of a problem, too. Many of the things Adobe is adding now end up changing workflows. Or at least require you to think about changing your workflow. And the constant flow of tech changes, not just within Adobe’s software but with OS’s, other apps, AI, security, et.al., is starting to get tiresome, even for those of us who’ve been riding the tech wave for decades.
Which brings me to the new features. In particular, the two that are most interesting this time are the addition of Glow to ACR, and the addition of a Light adjustment layer to Photoshop. Both are welcome and useful, but they really are forcing me to not only rethink my Photoshop workflow, but prodding me to go back and start re-editing photos.
Glow comes in three types, one of which is an Orton-like effect, another of which is a diffusion block removal (to help better mimic a film era look). I tend to apply Orton techniques, but have been doing that after demosaic and other adjustments. Now Adobe gives me the ability to do it along with demosaic. The look from ACR is a bit different than the one I get from traditional techniques, so now I have to evaluate which look I like better, and if it’s ACR’s, then my workflow changes. As an aside, Adobe made some odd decisions with Glow (highlight changes when sliding left, not right, for instance, and shadows vice versa), and as usual, there’s a lot of potential nuance you have to navigate. However, this new feature is very nicely done overall, and the fact that Glow works both globally or with a mask is also interesting. Indeed, that last aspect alone will probably cause me to use it in my (new) workflow.
Meanwhile, the Light adjustment layer is effectively the Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks sliders isolated out into a new adjustment layer. How this impacts my workflow is that I sometimes find that I want to make an adjustment to those for something, so I duplicate a layer, then apply Filter > Camera Raw Filter to get to those sliders, make my adjustments, then go back and mask it in the layer. This new adjustment layer allows me to do the same thing more quickly, and non-destructively. (Some might ask why I don’t use a Curve layer. In my experience, getting fine nuance via curves is trickier and more time-consuming. And on my laptop screens, the actual curve component can be quite small, making it even more difficult to get exactly the effect I want.)
I should note that I stopped saving most of my photo edits in Photoshop PSD format a while ago. What’s been happening is that with all the changes that we keep seeing in ACR and Photoshop, I’m better off rebuilding any image from the raw file than trying to mess with layers and adjustments I’ve previously made. As I wrote earlier, be careful what you ask for, as Adobe seems to be providing you a constant stream of it.
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Old News
OM Digital Solutions Now Management Owned
I hadn’t fully caught this when it happened, as I was out in the bush and then returned to have to deal with a family emergency, but OMDS changed hands this year. Originally, Olympus spun their camera group off to Japan Industrial Partners (JIP), the same group that salvaged (or is it savaged?) the Vaio when Sony spun their laptop group out. In April, the OMDS management team—most of whom were originally at Olympus—acquired 100% of the company and JIP is no longer involved. Thank goodness, since JIP is like most equity investment firms: they play the spread between interest rates and free cash flow to make money. Decisions they’d make about products are dictated from protecting that spread.
The good news is that this latest iteration of OMDS claims they’re back in the innovation game, and they’re teasing a new m4/3 Pen-type model to debut on September 9th. The bad news is that at 150k total camera units last year (that includes 30,000 Tough7), OMDS is re-starting from a weak position. Last years sales were about US$225m, and that produced a US$10m loss. We all hope that the New Pen helps them grow. Check back in a couple of weeks for my thoughts on the new camera.
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Commentary
September Showers Now More a Drizzle
At the moment I expect at least three new significant cameras to be launched in September after Labor Day (the New Pen I just mentioned is one of them). Several months ago I was anticipating six September splashdowns. One was the Ricoh GRIVx (see above), though this has turned out for the time being to be just a premature development announcement. I’ve just been made aware that two more that were going to be launched in September have been pushed back. Despite that, it seems that the camera makers are coming out of hibernation now. We should see a modest stream of new products starting in September and lasting through November. We may even see some items appear during the holiday buying season, though that’s a lower possibility. Dealers have already spent their cash loading up inventory by early November.
What I’m wondering about is not so much new products, as they’re inevitable, no matter why they might have been delayed. The real issue I’m interested in at this point is cost. Sony recently took the introduction of their FX5 as an opportunity to adjust all their cinema camera pricing upwards. I’m pretty sure that we’re going to see another round of price bumping soon, which is in conflict with what people expect at the end of the year.