darknj

I use both Blackrapid and Peakdesign's slide. There are pro and cons on each side: - I have had failure with Blackrapid a couple of time, the hook point can mis lock and make you think your camera is attached while it is not; visual verification is mandatory if you then to hook and un-hook your system on regular basis during the event. - That being said, the Blackrapid is really super easy to work with, except when I need to take really low or really high reach or extend the camera past the hanging point. - Peakdesign slide feels more steady, after all if it is around your neck, or shoulder you feel it, the hook points are solid and they can be annoying to remove, which is good for me. - But it's not as fast as the Blackrapid, you need to fiddle a bit too much to get the camera back into view to snap at something that is unexpected. Or you need to leave your camera hanging at your neck, which I really hate, I rather have it on shoulder and the camera on the side or back than in front of me on my chest. Another point, if you need to use tripods, Peakdesign might be better as it doesn't need to use the bottom screwing slot, which allows easy camera transport between spots. In general, if I travel only with just the camera I will take the Peakdesign Slide and have it on shortest distance and keep the camera on the back, if I have a camera bag with me and need to fiddle a lot with lower/higher shots and swap lenses, I will use the Blackrapid as I would have more mobility with it and still keep the camera hanging against my hip when not needed. Sidenote, I have medium grip on my X-T1 so the plate is not going to block the battery door.

The Nikon 1 is a nice little system, and the AW1 is clearly in a small niche on its own as there are no direct competition with it. You just need to keep in mind the limitation of the system, meaning, keep ISO as low as possible. Up to 800 is still ok, 1600 is starting to pull it and 3200 is downright bad, I would not use it for anything than FB thumbnails or places where the quality is secondary. That aside, small camera with silly reach and even smaller lenses, I mean 81-297mm F3.5-5.6 equivalent for 110g ?! The fault with the system is the critical lack of quality lenses, the 18.5 F1.8 is nice, the 32 F1.2 is simply superbe, the rest goes from "not that shabby" to just "meh". But for the past year, Nikon has been working on 8-9 prototype lenses for the system, one of them being a longer zoom (10-45 F4.5-5.6) for the AW1 and a wide angle (7.2-13.6 F3.5-4.5) also for the AW1. Some of these lenses look super appetizing on paper, F1.8-F2.8 for standard zoom lens (9-30), a fisheye lens too along a new super zoom (70-300 F4.5-6). Plus, the V4 hasn't been announced yet, so quite a few things for me to look forward to in 2016-2017 for that small system.

Do be careful with Toshiba, they are quite good at the core, but they have the nasty habit of breaking down starting from the peripherals, keyboard, DVD player, card reader,... All the Toshiba I ever had for a long time started to break from small bits and pieces, which is annoying because the rest of the system is still fine.

What about Microsoft's Surface 4? You would need an external DVD player but that could hit all your needs. Or close to.

I looked at the WD My Passport with integrated SD card reader, it looks really nice. Haven't got the chance to test it out yet, but seriously considering to, I just need to know if there is a way to perform an auto backup of the SD card that gets slide in. If so, I could be buying one very soon.

I do agree with you Milandro, but you and I have different expectation than the masses. Just looking at the X-Pro2 or X-T2 expectation threads is filled with plenty of demands for a good video camera and possibly 4k internal recording. I don't know, am I really the only to see that all consumers are asking for 4k cameras just for the sake of having it and brag about it ? That by NOT having that 4k video feature would allow other features to be integrated, like a DSLR level AF ? A better CPU ? More room for larger battery ? IBIS ? Or so many other goodies I would love to have on a still camera and not some kind of hybrid cross over.

That's partially true, I still have an old Nikon D5000 in the house and anything above ISO 800 on the camera is just a smudge of pixels, which would happen a lot indoor. You would still need to pay decent money for something that would be able to hold ISO 3200 decently plus price of the lens, but you would get a better AF speed. If I were to pick something for myself now, I would either go with the Nikon D5500 or the much older Nikon D300S but neither solution would be smaller than X-T1 plus 23mm lens.

Most of those are using GoPro now or an cheaper variant of it. And with more and more softwares that are able to pull stills out of movies, the stills pictures are being eaten on all front. A good example is the higher demande for 4k camera capabilities, even from Fuji users.

Not that one, it's just a fancy card ready with slow WiFi module inside that cost 5 times the price of a decent cabled card reader. The speed of the Mobilelite G2 is incredibly slow, takes close of 20 min to copy over 10Gb of data, that's around an hour for just a 32Gb SDcard transfer. Far from most of our needs. A dedicated USB3 or even USB2 card reader would be faster that this speed, even chained behind an USB hub. Side note, a lot of the utrabook have dedicated SD card slots too now, specially starting 13" size

Bah... Can't be worse than what Nikon did with the D600 and its oily/dusty sensor. A friend of mine who went for a D600 last year, after Nikon's announcement in March noticed the issue during a trip in the US, he wasn't aware of the problem to begin with and just went to get the camera changed in a local Nikon shop, he was refused service from Nikon US and again back in Belgium. I had to use my Gold NPS status to push things around and get the camera fixed. As long as there are expectations and deadline, companies will push to get there even if it means rushing things. The video game industry is a perfect exemple of rushed products by release date and slowly fix them for the next 6 months or so. So yes, they messed up but still came out clean about it and offered a way to correct that in a temporary way before offering a real fix later on. Not really pretty sign, but still a lot better than most of the manufacturers out here.

Too much of a niche product, I don't think Nikon even sold much of that mode, I don't even think they were able to break even on the production cost.

Asus has a nice ultrabook with it's UX303/305 series, it's 13.3" screen size along expendable RAM and can easily swap SSD from the system, CPU i5 to i7, can have a dedicated GPU, touchscreen and tri/quand HD screen, about 1.5kg power cable included and less than 2cm thickness. The drawback is on the screen tho, it HAS to be calibrated, from the factory settings, it has a nasty yellow tint. I got one which I take out with me on events where I need to be able to process the picture quickly and make small adjustments on the raws before uploading them to different galleries.

Not going to quote Warwick's post as I don't want it to feel like I am intruding into his personal choice but I want to use the points raised to offer a more nuanced reply. As a father of young child and a soon to be born baby, the X100T isn't fast enough for me, specially with those teleconverters, the AF slows down noticeably and it's bloody expensive for just a fancy "magnifying glass". Granted it's a good quality one, but really it's just fancy glass to me. It might be good enough for general purpose, but clearly ill-advised for a parent with young child. Once time passes and the young one learns to stay still for a least a single second, then yes, the X100T could be a better camera in many social gathering. Side note, the X-T1 with either the 18, 27, or any of the 35mm wouldn't be drawing much attention either. That's the advantage the X-T1 has over the X100T, you can change your lens to suit your needs and not just a couple of teleconverters... People keep saying that the 23mm is big, but it's really about the size of the 18-55 kit lens @18mm. The 23mm has its size mostly due to the F1.4, it would be much smaller if Fuji made it also F2 but that would kill the X100 series market. The silent mode is also present on the X-T1, so kind of a moot point here. It truly boils down to: - Bigger but better chances to get that picture at young age. - Smaller but better to carry around when doing family trips past 3 years old child.

If you don't mind a bit shorter FoV, give the 35mm F2 a try, it's quite fast to focus and relatively small enough to be carried in a bag with plenty of other things without taking too much space. The smallest lens available is still the 27mm F2.8, it's okay speed wise and not as sharp as some other XF lenses, but you would need to compare both images side by side to really see the differences.

It will do fine under some rain but don't leave it out during the whole time, there are still way too many parts that are exposed or not that well isolated for it to be called waterproof. Don't gamble your gear over some marketing speech or even misconceptions over the product. If you really need something that would need to take whatever weather you plan on travelling to and still benefit from interchangeable lenses, get a Nikon D4S, that camera has proved itself quite numerous time in both very hot, very cold and very wet conditions, including being swong against an ice wall during the climbing, please ensure weather sealed lenses. Now, if you want a true interchangeable camera that is waterproof without a casing, I know only of the Nikon 1 AW1, albeit there are currently 2 lenses but a couple more might come at later date.

Kind of hard to say at the moment. The X100 series is what started the X series, so somewhere it's like the great granddaddy of your X-T1. Instead of offering direct advice I would rather give you a few pointer. - Do you want a small compact camera or something larger but more versatile with different lenses available ? - Would the size of the 23mm bother you if you were to use it as the single lens on your X-T1 ? - Do you need/want a second body ? Any of the X100 series camera still take wonderful pictures, they work in a bit of different way than your X-T1, after all, they were designed to be a "niche" product. The X-T1 was made to please a lot more photographers, from enthusiast to protogs along the curious starter with control freak tendencies. The X100 series was made to slow things down, you take the time to think about your picture, about the framing, the light,... in a world were everything has to go fast now, the first X100 was really a pleasant surprise. The camera wasn't anything major but it had that small thing that made you go back to your roots as photographer. The design of it was also very nostalgic for a lot of long time shooters. Pricewise, you could easily get an X100S for the cost of the XF 23mm F1.4 lens. That's also worth some considerations. If I were to make a choice now, I would maybe tend toward the 23mm, since I do also have a young son and a baby to be born soon, I would prefer to have something a bit more nervous as body to be certain to get the pictures rather have the opportunity missed.

Make sure that you really need the bag, I got mine a decade ago because I was still lugging around DSLR and truckload of glass along it and the bag HAD to be heavy duty. The Billingham cost a fortune if purchased brand new, it's almost outrageous. Then again, my bag is still in good shape, you certainly can see the uses and mileage it got from the years but still a trooper bag and takes in whatever you take it out for. Now I am slowly retiring the bag because my gear got smaller and lighter, I don't need that much gear with me, nor is it heavy. So yes, the bag is now too large for my needs and serve as container bag for gear that is not used on regular basis (essentially anything non Nikon 1 nor Fuji X). I know that a one point it was almost a bragging to own such a brand bag, not the Hadley line but the 5 Series, it meant that you were serious about your gear. Now, it still kind of prestige but almost snobish to have one when your gear got a lot smaller/lighter. Long story short, I can not recommend those bags enough, just make sure you really need it, not just want one for the heck of it.

Or do it Nikon style with that Small World contest they have every year. Photomicrography competition, that should be macro enough even for the most hardcore of us. I really don't think we would all agree on what Macro should be in the photography world, and that's good. Diversity for a whole specie is good, it allows more branch to appear and other to develop in ways that nobody would have foreseen.

The two camera work in very different ways. The X-T1 would feel more "nervous" almost eager to take picture, the X-Pro1 feels more calm and steadier. At least that's the feeling I got when I tried both cameras. Unlike Paul, I wasn't really convinced by the X-Pro1 hybrid view finder, the part OVF and EVF didn't really worked for me. It is good to have the option to use either when needed but, I don't know, it felt weird when I tested it out. I guess I like my view finders to be either full OVF or full EVF, not a cross of both. One thing that was not mentioned, if I missed it, my apologies, but do be careful with long lenses or lenses with long lens hood, it can get into your OVF, or so I have been told. Since I only had the 35mm to test the X-Pro1 I can not say for certain if that is indeed the case or not nor how bad it is, but reports does exist about it. That aside: - Same sensor. - Older CPU to process the image. - Some physical differences. In the end, nothing really major nor earthshaking. It still takes pictures and like so many people before me, it's the spongy thingy that 10 cm behind the view finder that makes the differences.

Yep, they just decided to not use it to make the lens. One thing you have to understand for any product manufacturing, when designing something, it can really take years between the first draft and the first actual product. Manufacturers can sometimes decide to move some project faster than others but it would change a lot of things also in the resources needed to make the product and see if the factories are actually have a spot for your order(s). So question isn't if that technology was available or not at the time of design, but rather what price it was when it was designed. Most often than not, the cost is the first factor in a product design before pretty much anything else. The rumored X70 is a good example, the designs for it started years ago and we might get it in 2016 but there could be quite a technology gap between the draft versions and the first production ready model. We know for example the Nikon D5 was already in test phase in early 2015 but it will be announced only in early Q1 2016, in the meantime a full year has passed by with tons of new technology that got released and/or existing tech made cheaper.

Yep, quite normal. That lens is noisy, but mostly because your ears are relatively close to the camera thus you hear a lot of its noise, about a meter away it's barely audible, I would say around 35 db noise level. It can be distracting the first few times but once you get used it, you don't really hear it that much anymore. The 35mm F1.4 was among the first lenses launched with the X system about 3 year ago, so yeah, its ages shows.

Got it too, could be a webpage error when requesting a download link, the system provide your browser with twice the same file. That can happens sometimes, nothing really dramatic about it. If for whatever reasons you want to get maniac with it, check the hash files and compare both values, it will be the same.

Well, that's a FF sensor at work there and that 40+ MP monster. Glad that you finally found something that suits you, it's always frustrating to feel being held back because the tools don't fit the needs :]

It's not the first time one of the subsidiary does/say something that the main branch disapprove. We have had akin situation even on the same office where the PR would make announcement while the rest of the board would back that subject down. Anyway, it's just a couple days away. If there is anything, that's cool. If not, well it's not like we were missing those extra features nor are they complete game changer like the FW 4.0 where the AF speed was drastically improved.

The long eye cup will help you greatly with that. I had the standard one until my first event in the summer, the very same day I went for the long eye cup and solved a lot of my visibility issues.