Hasta La Gadget!

You have to admire Vivitar. The company has the cojones to sell an all-manual, 35mm film camera in a world where film is pretty much dead, at least as a mass-market product.

I got mail from the Vivitar PR people earlier this week asking me to take a look the V3800N, a 35mm SLR with manual focus, manual exposure and a manual film winder. In short, a camera much like the one I used to use all through school and beyond. So of course I said yes.

The camera comes in a box with everything you need to start, except the film. Along with the body there is a 50mm lens, a pair of button-cells to power the light meter, a strap, a faux-leather never-ready case, a lens hood and — remarkably — a double exposure mask for blacking out sections of the frame.

Which brings us to the surprisingly high-end specs. I won’t say high-quality until I have run a few films through it, but on paper the features are impressive. The lens is a 50mm ƒ1.7 manual focus model with the once-ubiquitous Pentak K-mount (hint — you’ll find lots of very good cheap used lenses for it). That wide maximum aperture means you can throw backgrounds out of focus with ease, as well as shooting in low-light.

The shutter speed goes up to a good 1/2000th second and down to anything you like as long as you hold the button down. Focusing is done by twisting the lens and matching up the split screen and microprism collar in the viewfinder, a very accurate and fast way to do things once you’re used to it.

But there’s a lot more, which shows that Vivitar is aiming at the creative end of the market. There is a self timer (twist the lever to set it), a depth-of-field preview button to stop the lens down and check just what will be in focus, a multiple-exposure button which disengages the film-winder but lets the lever still cock the shutter, a hotshoe for a flash and a PC socket to fire a flash off camera. Finally, the all-mechanical nature of the camera means that you can use a cheap, standard cable release just by screwing it into the shutter button.

The camera body is pretty cheap feeling, but the extensive use of plastic means it’s very light and it does feel solid enough. Looking through the viewfinder is not such a pleasant experience, though: it is small and cramped and — despite the bright lens — quite dark. There is also a distracting reflection of the image off the bottom floor of the box — think of Apple’s wet-floor effect in Cover Flow view and you’ll know what I mean.

This is a shame, as the advantage of a full-frame camera is that it has a big ‘finder. Vivitar nailed the exposure meter, though — it is a center-weighted design with “traffic light” indicators: a red plus and minus sign guide you to the correct value and the green light in the center tells you when you have it right. Easy and fast, and probably my favorite manual meter design ever (it’s pretty common in older cameras).

I’ll be running some film through this weekend, and I’ll have a full write up on it when I get the pictures back from the lab (I didn’t think I’d ever be saying that again). I’m totally looking forward to getting all old-school, though, and dusting off my Zone System skills. The price for this retro experience? Around $170, plus film and processing every time you use it.

Product page [B&H]

At around $800, Nikon’s remote WT-4a should really be called the WT-F. The Wireless Transmitter sends images from camera to computer over Wi-Fi, useful for tethered shooting. It also lets you remote control your camera using Nikon’s (terrible) Camera Control 2 software.

But, like we said, it’s $800. Pete Tsai took a look and though “I can do that.” The other way to hook up a Nikon camera to a computer is via USB, so why not Wireless USB (WUSB)? He bought an off-the-shelf adapter and, with minimal tweaking, got full remote access. The price? $40.

The home brew solution actually runs quicker than the Nikon version, although it needed one small mod to make it useful. Pete’s adapter plugs into a 5v AC adapter, tying the user to a wall-wart. He fashioned a quick AA battery pack to fix this and is currently working on building the whole lot into a camera hand grip.

The $50 Wireless Tethering Solution [Petetek via Flickr]

Photo: PeteTsai/Flickr

“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.”

So said Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap, but only because  didn’t have a SpyderCube. The SpyderCube is more a cube than a spider, and is used for tweaking the white balance and exposure of your photos. Sure, you could just let your camera set on auto white balance (I do) or tweak it by hand later in your RAW processing software (I do this, too), but the SpyderCube is way more accurate, and has something called a “Black Trap”, which we believe, although not mentioned in the specs, is the only thing in the universe from which a black hole cannot escape.

Accurate color in digital photos means that the camera needs to know what color the light is. The traditional way is to throw a gray or white card into the scene, snap a picture and then later, back at the computer, use this known neutral color to set the white balance for the whole batch. The SpyderCube is the same, but with a few added features.

First, it’s a cube, which means that it reflects light from different directions, allowing you to check the colors of main and fill lights, for example. Second, it combines gray, white and black so you can get help with exposure tweaks, too. Third, it has the scary Black Trap, which is in fact a hole into which light falls and never returns. This gives an absolute black value for the scene, as well as the lighter black from the outside faces.

Lastly, there is a shiny ball on top. This isn’t to tempt magpies on outdoor shoots. Rather, it gives a specular highlight, again useful for exposure tweaking. The price of this fade-free resin cube? $60, which isn’t that much more than a plain 18% gray card. I’m not pedantic enough to need one of these, and I usually tweak the white balance for atmosphere rather than accuracy anyway. But some people buy cameras and then spend their weekends shooting test charts and the like. This may just be your perfect toy.

Product page [Datacolor]

The Strobists are on a roll. Not only has the first batch of the community-design LumoPro LP120 flashguns sold out (don’t worry — they’ll be back in stock in a couple days), but Moishe of MPX and David Hobby, the Arch-Strobist, have come up with a new accessory, also cheap, also useful and also incredibly open.

Named the Universal Translator, the tiny cube lets you use pretty much any flash with any camera. Here’s a list of the connections in this little black box:

• Male hotshoe (attaches to camera)
• Female hotshoe (attaches to foot of flash)
• PC socket (allows triggering via PC cable)
• 3.5″ mini-jack socket (attach two flashes via dime-store cables)

That, you will see, covers just about anything. You can adapt any strobe to work with the cable of your choice, you can turn a cheap compact digicam into a wired flash commander, and you can use the minijack to hook direct into PocketWizard wireless remotes. The price is $19, and the only drawback is that they won’t fit Sony cameras or flashes. But then, when you gave Sony your money, you weren’t expecting it to use any standard parts, right?

Product page [Midwest Photo Exchange via Strobist]

Photo: strobist/Flickr

Where most other camera companies are going for 720p video in their nicer point-and-shoots, Ricoh added more photo-centric features to the CX1: in-camera HDR, high-speed sequential shooting and razor-sharp macro. We’ve tested, and we like.

Granted, we also like shooting HD video with every possible thing we own, but it’s nice to see some fairly unique photography-focused features pop up here and there, like in-camera high dynamic range shooting for more balanced exposure in unevenly lit scenes, to remind us that we can use our cameras to take photos too; that’s exactly what Ricoh is going for, and even better, it’s all packed into a nice minimalistic camera body that feels solid and light at the same time and has great style. I like the black one even better than the silver, but the black review unit we received had a faulty lens cover.

Specs:
• 1/2.3″ CMOS Sensor, 9.29MP
• 28-200mm, f/3.3-f/5.2 optical zoom lens (7.1x)
• 1cm macro focusing distance
• 7fps continuous shooting, with 60fps and 120fps 1-second burst shooting modes
• “Dynamic Range Double Shot” mode for in-camera HDR, 12ev stops of coverage
• VGA movie mode
• ISO up to 1600

In-Camera High Dynamic Range
The major selling point of the CX1 is its ability to take two exposures of an unevenly lit scene and combine them into a single shot that more accurately captures what your human eye sees. We did a guide to doing the exact same thing with Photoshop, but the CX1 joins just a few other cameras that do it automatically. And it works.

Granted, you can get much more dramatic results (and way more exposure lee-way) by dumping 7 RAW files into Photoshop, and it won’t work perfectly in every situation (night shots don’t show much effect), but it’s a very cool feature to play around with. And keep in mind, this is HDR of the actually useful, exposure-enhancing variety—no clown vomit colors here.

Here’s an example shot of Matt hard at work making Gizmodo blog sausage:

As you can see, the shot in HDR mode captures detail from out the window above Matt’s head without greatly darkening the rest of the scene, like his face. HDR mode takes an additional second or so to capture and drops your shutter speed down a stop or two, but other than that, it’s indistinguishable from regular shooting. Very nicely done.

Image Quality/Sensitiviy
Overall I found it to be very good—nice colors with a bit of the video-y color palette many other point-and-shoots have but nothing extreme. ISO sensitivity is OK, but not great: ISO 800 is useable at small sizes, but you’ll want to stick to ISO 400 or below to keep the noise in check for most shots:

One thing that’s awesome is the CX1’s macro-mode, as is the case on lots of newer point-and-shoots. It focuses down to one centimeter, has a movable focus point (many macro modes get caught hunting if what you want in focus isn’t right in the middle of the frame) and is razor sharp. Check out this clementine peel:

Shooting With the CX1
It’s a pretty nice experience, due in large part to the wide range of custom functions available. A “Function” button, one of four on the camera’s back, can be assigned one of nine jobs, from locking exposure to bracketing to setting the macro focus point.

And in addition, four quick-access function buttons that pop up when you hit the main “OK” button can also be custom-defined to whatever you want for immediate access to exposure compensation, white balance, ISO, image size—10 possible options. Super-handy.

The 60fps and 120fps burst modes (limited to VGA resolution) are usable, but they’re not as smoothly implemented as other parts of the camera. It’s really hard to know exactly when recording starts, and the output is a practically useless .MPO file, which you have to open in Ricoh’s software, split the MPO out into 120 JPEGs, then, if you want a movie, link them back together in something like Quicktime. That’s what I did here; the results are nice (although limited to one second), but it’s a pain in the ass since even VLC can’t open these MPO files.

Conclusion
In-camera HDR is not a gimmick here—it’s both usable and useful. Which is awesome. At $370, the CX1 is in the same price ballpark as most higher-end compacts, so your choice is basically HD video or the CX1’s unique photo features. The CX1 implements the latter very nicely, in a classically sleek, compact metal body. It’s not a huge surprise that tons of Japanese pros carry a Ricoh P+S in their pocket to supplement their DSLRs.

In-camera HDR works well and is handy

Super-sharp macro mode

Deeply customizable interface

Great-looking body

Decent ISO sensitivity

High-speed burst kind of sucks

No HD video capture

No RAW shooting or manual exposure controls

[Ricoh]