The brain seems to be working a bit today
Doing my occasional trawl of DPReview, after a slew of their PMA entries have just flooded in from the RSS feed, I came across this article which intrigued me:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08013003sonyalpha1st.asp
Dave (of being my officemate and letnash’s fiancee fame) is a filthy Sony/KonicaMinolta user and as such I keep an eye out for stories that I can use to taunt him, and this one straddles the annoying line of taunty at the same time as being cool for his camera system of choice. The point in this case is LiveView (or whatever capitalisation you wish to use).
It is an option available on every (afaik) non-SLRs digital camera and one that is increasingly appearing on SLRs including, to my dismay, the Pentax K20D, the next step on the rungs of Pentax’s camera range for me. My dismay is caused by the methods of liveview which are various but generally involve some annoying shenanigans and detriment to camera functionality. The two main ideas that I’ve heard of so far are:
- A half silvered mirror – so half the light does the bouncy path into the users eye via the viewfinder and the other half hits the sensor, allowing the user to see what the sensor sees. My problem of this seems obvious – you end up with a dimmer image in the viewfinder and a half brightness image on the back of the camera, making both of them worse than a standard viewfinder image.
- A flipped up mirror during LiveView – when you turn the live view on the mirror flips up removing the viewfinder from the light path so that all the light hits the sensor. This is better than above, but as the article above says you normally have to then have the mirror flip back down for autofocus or metering (as the those systems are often in the viewfinder light path).
Then Mr Sony comes along and has a slightly different idea – rather than fiddle around with the main sensor, stick another sensor up in the “prism” box and then twiddle a mirror in the viewfinder light path to direct the view to that dedicated live view sensor. You don’t get the exact sensor view, but you get a good approximation of the viewfinder, but on the back of the camera. I’m rather fond of this idea and am rather jealous that Mr Sony and his intelligent minions have knocked a rather different approach. However, there are still problems: you need a mirror up in the “prism” box, rather than a nice pentaprism, so you won’t get as nice a viewfinder image; you don’t get the sensor image, so depending on the matching of the live view sensor to the main sensor you might get very different results between the live view and the actual photos you take. But, it looks like a step in the right direction.
Random Posts
Posted: January 31st, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments
Comment from billyabbott
Time 31st January 2008 at 3:27 pm
It’s not one I’ve ever actually written down before…
Comment from vatine
Time 31st January 2008 at 4:06 pm
Aha. I honestly do not know if they’re pronounced differently (not having apronounciation key at hand). On the subject of things that plays games, connected to a TV, I must say I am getting urges to find a C64 DTV stick, then go mad with soldering irons and extra ports.
There is something magic about a breadbox-shaped computer being grafted into the INSIDES of a joystick!
Comment from billyabbott
Time 31st January 2008 at 4:25 pm
I have a Megagun II somewhere for all my NES in a joystick needs and have so far stayed away from the C64 joysticks. The one you link to has Cyberdyne Warrior on, so I may have to find one.
Comment from vatine
Time 31st January 2008 at 4:35 pm
That one also has on-board pin-outs for a PS/2 port (plus glue logic) so you can attahc a keyboard and the pin-outs for a Commodoe serial port, so you can attach a chain of 1541/1571 floppy drives.
Comment from pfig
Time 1st February 2008 at 8:52 am
if only slr’s weren’t such clunky contraptions…
</flame>
on other news, i seem to have told boncey to come over, have beer and develop some film. would sir be interested in that?
Comment from billyabbott
Time 1st February 2008 at 10:30 am
Sounds like a top plan – he and I were discussing such things the other day. It might even give me the kick I need to buy my own tank.
And as for big clunky SLRs, this seems to be becoming less vapourlike:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08013108sigmadp1.asp
It’s on the way to what I’m after…
Comment from blech
Time 1st February 2008 at 12:22 pm
Unfortunately Sigma have been promising the DP1 for so long now that I don’t trust it ever to come out, and the rumours on pricing have it as being well above the entry-level SLRs. Still, we’ll see, eh?
Comment from pfig
Time 1st February 2008 at 1:38 pm
you don’t need to buy a tank just to try things out, you can use mine (that was actually my original idea, have people try their hand at developing to make sure it was something they wanted to do).
however, if we use only one tank we’ll have to have a big beer break between every person trying, so things can dry up.
Comment from billyabbott
Time 2nd February 2008 at 12:46 pm
In my film days I shot a bunch of black and white and had a nice darkroom to work in for developing and printing, so I wouldn’t be so much trying it out as trying to get back to the ‘good olde dayes’. I’ve been meaning to get a tank for a while but always ended up not finding all the bits I wanted at the same time, leading me to wait to buy things.
However, it seems my local Jessops still stock chemistry, although not tanks, so if I get a tank I should be good for consumables afterwards. All I’ve got to do now is starting shooting more film…
Comment from billyabbott
Time 2nd February 2008 at 12:48 pm
I don’t actually want one (F4 too slow and 28mm equiv too wide for my liking) and it does still sound rather vapourlike, but I can but hope as it’s on the way to what I would want – stick a 35/2 on the front and we could be talking.
But you are indeed correct, let’s wait and see…
Comment from pfig
Time 2nd February 2008 at 2:42 pm
you want silverprint. mind you, their “secure” order form is just that, a form served over https. then they have formmail.pl processing it.
Comment from vatine
Time 31st January 2008 at 2:44 pm
Dave? Odd name for a woman…
It’s one of those tricky words (”fiance” is the male and “finacee” is the female). I mostly know it because it was mentioned as a Probable Source Of Error in English class, way back when.