Digital Photography Hardware

The Panasonic Lumix G1 (also here on PhotographyBLOG) will be the first of the micro 4/3rds cameras, it will have a flip out 3 inch display (it looks like it is fully articulated and can be turned face in to protect it, yeay! this was a feature I really loved on my Canon G1) with a 460K pixel resolution (which still might not be enough for manual focusing). It has a very high 1.44 million pixel resolution viewfinder (so that might be enough to do manual focusing on, but I found that the 900K pixel view finder on the Minolta A2 was not enough for this so I am expecting this will will not be enough, however Panasonic is using a different technology which effectively stacks the RGB pixels so it might be a much sharper display than the traditional pixel count implies.). It got HDMI output too, so you can inflict painful hours of slide shows on your friends and relatives. Digital Photography Review has a preview of it here.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 started shipping at the end of Oct'08 (actually a little ahead of schedule) and the first full review of a production model is here. [6630]

An additional feature that could be used with this would be for the camera's normal autofocus system to pick its typical targets and identify those of them that will be in the hyperfocus zone with circle outlines and those of them that will be out of focus (because they are too close) with X's. This way the photographer can see if the hyperfocus coverage includes the significant features, and if not he can either increase the f-stop, reduce the zoom or switch over to one of the conventional modes.

Another variation on this is for you to enter the maximum and minimum focus distances and then allow the camera to control the f-stop to meet your requirements as you zoom the lens. In this mode the camera would control the exposure by adjusting the shutter speed. The point of this is for fast point and shoot candid work (say high school year book photography) as it eliminates the shutter lag due to focusing. [5147]

• he calls for an APS-C sized sensor, which would be a very good thing from the noise perspective (but this will make the lens larger so he accepts a smaller zoom range). The resulting zoom range of 28-70mm is useful for much photography (especially landscape type work) but the 70mm end is going to be too short to appeal to a lot of people. I have found that with the 28-210mm range of my Minolta A2 I rarely need more zoom, and in the times I do I'm looking at something so far away that I'd probably need a 500 or 1000mm lens to get a decent photo anyway. Back in the late 70s and 80s when I did 35mm film photography I typically found 135mm adequate and considered the 200mm telephoto "exotic". The Minolta A2's lens is about the same physical size as may 35mm camera's 50mm lens, largely because of the film-size issue, the A2 has a smaller sensor that APS-C (but its larger than somthing like the Canon G series), and I'm sure today that a sensor of this size could be made with low noise up to at least ISO-800.
• I don't see much need for additional screw in optics (i.e a 2x converter) as they tend to be so bulky (as big as this camera!) that you're not going to be carrying them with you - it is better to make the basic lens a bit bigger to get a bit more zoom range (using a folded optical path you probably could fit a 28-150 or even 200 lens with a bigger sensor in a pocket size camera).
• I agree with the need for standard screw-in filters, I often make good use of a polarizing filter.
• I find his specification of only having a live-view LCD and no optical view finder built in refreshing, he's missing two points though, first you need the view finder to be articulated, both so you can look down when shooting waist level and so you can look up at the camera for an overhead shot; the second point is for you to be able to do manual focusing the Minolta A2 shows you need at least a 900K pixel resolution (and even then that's often not enough).
• The internal buffer should hold 10 shots in RAW, and in motor drive mode it should pre-capture some frames (i.e. once the focus is locked it should capture frames even before you finish pressing the button) and save a number of these at the start of each sequence.
• The battery pack should be standard AA size (not another custom lithium pack that needs a custom charger), using two NiMH cells normally and regular AA cells if you get caught in a tight spot, I wouldn't mind only getting 200-300 shots out of a single pair of NiMH cells as they are so cheap you can always carry a few sets with you to do something big.