The SKX007 has arrived

The SKX007J arrived from Singapore much to my delight. Sadly, the rigors of real life are preventing me from writing even a terse review at the moment so I'll just a let my photograph do most of the talking until some free time comes my way.

(What I will say, though, is that is that it's a lot of watch for the money and I really the love the heft of it.)

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More G9 goodness

I had a chance during the Thanksgiving weekend to take some tripod-stabilized, low-ISO (i.e, 80) shots at Edwards Gardens in Toronto. The G9's image quality is hard to fault under these conditions. (The RAW originals were processed using Lightroom 2.0 which is based on Adobe Camera Raw 4.5, as far as I can tell).

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Odds and Ends

I've been using the Orbita Sparta 1 Mini winder for approximately three months now and really have nothing but good things to say about it. The winder is as close to silent as one could ever expect and has quite a small footprint. My Seiko Spirit has even shown a very slight increase in accuracy since I started placing it on the winder each night (a 1 sec/day improvement).  I was afraid initially that the supplied watch cushion was not going to hold up to daily watch strappings but it has proven to be more resilient than I thought.
 

The one criticism I do have is that the unit doesn't have a power switch (which necessitates yanking the plug every morning when I remove my watch). This is a very small point, however, and, given the price of the winder, it may be expecting too much.

All in all, I highly recommend it.

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Canon has released the much-awaited Powershot G10. It has a few interesting improvements but, overall, doesn't represent a sufficient upgrade over the G9 to stir my interest much. 

Things that I like about the G10:

• The low end of the zoom starts at 28mm (24mm would have been even nicer)
• The hand grip has been redesigned to be a little larger and easier to grab on to
• The DIGIC 4 sensor (by all reports) appears to be less noisy (ceteris paribus) than the G9's DIGIC 3 sensor
• The already awesome 3" LCD monitor now has 460,000 pixels (up from 230,000 for the G9). This should be a boon for manual focusing.

Things that don't sound so hot:

• They kept the same 1/1.7" sensor as before. I realize moving to a larger sensor would have bulked up an already chunky camera even further but, for me, the gains in image quality would have been worth whatever bulkiness ensued
• Canon appears to have capitulated to the "more is more" faction and crammed 14.7 megapixels into the same 1/1.7" sensor (the G9 was already overburdened with 12.1 megapixels). The one thing this camera didn't need was more pixels.
• They failed to return to the legacy of earlier G-series cameras and include some truly fast glass. A zoom with a maximum aperture of f/2.0 (or even a zoom with a fixed f/2.8 aperture throughout its range) would have been far more useful than more pixels.

I think I'll just hang on to my G9 until Nikon finally comes out with a sub-$1,500 CAD full-frame DSLR body.

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I pulled the trigger on a new Seiko SKX007 automatic diver (an SKX007J to be precise). It's in transit as I write and I will provide a full review shortly after its arrival. (I briefly toyed with buying a Sumo or a Samurai but I was pretty certain my wife would never put up with the additional cost of these two. The SKX007 had the cardinal virtue of affordability going for it....)

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Watch winder

I finally received my Orbita watch winder today (I was fortunate enough to get into the beta program for the Sparta Mini model). It's far too early for a review but my initial impressions are all positive. The unit feels sturdy, holds my watch securely, and is absolutely dead silent. I can keep it right next to the bed and never hear a thing.

My biggest concern at this stage is what impact it will have on my Spirit's daily rate. The watch has been performing in stellar fashion in the 12:00 o'clock up position overnight and I'm hoping the winder is not a step backward.

I'll report back in a week or two with the results....

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Miscellany

• I finally got to see my father's Seiko 5 (an SNXE99K, I believe) and it was quite nice. The lume was more than respectable, the bracelet was solid (although integrated), and it was keeping time to the tune of +5 sec/day. For a 7S26 movement (7S26B, to be precise), that's not too shabby at all.

• Nikon has announced its new D700 SLR. Although it's still way beyond my price range, I can see that one day soon, my decision to hang on to all of my existing Nikkor lenses will be vindicated. The cropped DX sensors that prevailed at Nikon for so long rendered most of my wider lenses worthless (my beloved 24mm f/2.8 reduced to a boring 36mm). When a full-frame FX Nikon finally drops into $1,500 territory, I'll be back in the saddle again. :)

• I ran into another small shortcoming of the G9 this Saturday. Its inability to stop down to less than f/8 prevented me from achieving exactly the effect I was looking for in the shot below. I really wanted to blur this more and have the golden grass as a nice wash over the green background but there was simply no way to get my shutter speed below 1/20 sec. The G9 comes with a nifty electronic neutral density filter (good for a 3-stop light reduction) which certainly helped matters, but dropping another 2-3 stops to f/22 or f/32 would really have enhanced the final result. I guess diffraction exacts too high a toll at such tiny apertures.

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More on the Canon G9

Some observations from my first month of shooting with the G9...

One, I've been wholly won over by the G9's RAW mode. The additional storage required for the images is a small price to pay for the tremendous flexibility you gain when it comes time to edit/develop. More than anything, I love the ability to swing the white balance in whatever direction I choose. With a JPEG, you can play around a little, but with RAW, there's really no limit. (A healthy portion of my admiration for RAW is probably due to my introduction to Adobe Lightroom, but that's another story.)

Two, I really wish that the G9's zoom was biased a little more towards the wide end. Back in my F3HP days, my Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 was far and away my favourite lens. With its tremendous depth of field, excellent sharpness, and extended spatial perspective, it produced gorgeous images and helped to turn the mundane into something a little special. The bottom end of the G9's zoom, however, is pedestrian, at best. There's simply no way to make the foreground loom when you're working with a 35mm (effective) perspective. If the engineers at Canon are reading this (fat chance!), the one thing I'd love to see in the G10's specification is a 28mm (or wider) starting point for the zoom. The average consumer seems more impressed by the telephoto end of things, sadly, but I would gladly step down to 180mm (or even 135mm) at the far end, if I could start off at 24mm.

Three, a larger sensor would be nice. Not so much for more mega pixels, less noise, etc., but mostly for reasons of depth of field. As things stand right now with the G9's 1/1.7" sensor, a 210mm focal length (35mm equivalent) is achieved at just 44.4mm. This certainly makes for a physically compact camera but it also means that while you've got the magnification of a 210mm lens, you've got the depth of field of a 45mm lens. It's really tough to blur the background, even wide open, when you're shooting with a 45 mm lens. I understand that the idea of full-frame sensors in compact cameras constitutes something of an oxymoron, but even a little improvement in this area would translate into less depth of field which, at the telephoto end, anyway, would be very much appreciated, indeed.

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Price drop

I just noticed that Seiya has reduced the price of the Seiko SAGH005 automatic chronograph nearly $400.00. It's still awfully rich for my blood, of course, but if this price drop is a harbinger of the future for other Seiko models more in my price range (e.g., the Sumo), it would be a pleasant occurrence, indeed. Picking up a blue Sumo (SBDC003) for under $400.00 CDN would certainly make my day.

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Foiled!

Just as I was about to pull the trigger on the purchase of a Seiko SNKF11 (the BFS) for my father ( Father's Day gift), I received an e-mail from him telling me that my mother had just picked up a new Seiko 5 for him. Argh. Back to the drawing board.

P.S. It's a very nice little watch, of course, but my mother's timing is execrable.

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Seiko SCVS013 in 100 words or less...

Once again, time is running short and so I'm going to have to settle for an ugly, point-form review of my latest watch acquisition, the Seiko Spirit SCVS013. I'm a raw, green newbie to the world of automatic watches (having been seduced just a little less than a year ago by the siren-like forums at TimeZone), so feel free to disregard my comments if you feel they're not very learned.

Pros:

• Simple, elegant dial
• Blued hands
• Stainless steel case (no plating to wear off; no base metals to corrode)
• Seiko's in-house 6R15B movement hacks and handwinds
• Large easy to handle crown makes handwinding a breeze
• Keeps superb time (averaging +2.5 seconds over the past 6 months)
• Incredible value (sub $300)

Cons:

• 37mm dial is a touch small by today's standards.
  
• Included strap is of very nice quality (shell cordovan, I believe) but far too short for my thick wrists
• Date is aligned just an erg-fraction too high in its window (but that's picking a very tiny nit, indeed)

The SCVS013 represents tremendous bang for the buck and I find myself eager to add another Seiko automatic to my collection. If I had the money (which I don't), I'd buy the 300M Marine Master. As things stand financially, however, it's probably going to be an SKX007 or a Sumo next....

(Note: The picture was taken with my A70 not the G9 discussed below.)

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Sub-mini review - Canon Powershot G9

Sadly, I didn't even have the time this week for a "mini" review, so point-form first impressions of the G9 are going to have to suffice.

Pros:

• RAW mode!
  
• Beautiful 3" LCD screen (sharp, bright, contrasty)
  
• ISO dial on the top of the camera makes selecting the sensitivity a breeze
• Rangefinder styling and rugged metal case
• Image stabilization (it really works!)
• More control over flash compensation/output than on my old A70
• Rear-curtain sync
  
• Much less flare/better contrast when shooting into the sun (vs. A70)
• Surprisingly fast handling (once you get the lay of the land)
  

Cons:

• Maximum aperture a little disappointing (f/2.8 throughout the zoom range would have been nice)
• I miss the AA batteries of my A70
• LCD screen really needs some kind of cover/protector
• ISO 1600/3200 unusable when shooting colour (too much noise)
• No ability to take multiple exposures

All in all, a very nice camera, indeed. I'm not certain it's going to make me forget my Nikon F3HP any time soon but it's certainly a major step up from my Canon A70.

More to follow....

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