Thanks all

Yes, Chatham Historic Dockyard was surprisingly (?) interesting. The submarine and its little hatches would have been difficult with a dSLR - you have to be quite nimble to get around!

(Tickets are 12 month, and English Heritage get 20% discount. Spent most of the day there and didn't have time for about one third of it - so will revisit! Kids thought it was great - especially with all the machinery. Getting the full tour of the Victorian Ropery was very good too.)

The MX-1 performed very well indeed, and is a superb little camera.

Think I'll revisit the PP on some of these shots...

Matt

No problem!

Sorry to query: the first three are a DA55-300 lens. Only the last is the D-FA100mm macro

First real outing with the diminutive MX-1. Performance is excellent - especially in the low-light, cramped areas. I was very pleased with this little beastie!

All shot in RAW+, processed in LR5 with my lens profile (needs more work!) and QPcard 203 colour profile.

Chatham Historic Dockyard (highly recommended!)

Enjoy!

1. Submarine - incredibly dark and cramped. Couldn't imagine spending up to 3 months living in this
ISO800, f/1.8, 1/15s, 6mm



2. Rope
A little tweaking in LR, but the DoF is from camera



3. Red



4. Love the tilty screen



5. Operations room
ISO400, f/1.8, 1/45s, 6mm



6. Rope strands at the impressively long Victorian Ropery



7. A touch of forced perspective

Both available

Mauro,
I've had some interest in the K10D - awaiting confirmation this week.... So it might be available.
Yes, the *ist-D is still available
Matt

Jeff - it still winks when you take a shot

Will let you know.

It's very labour intensive - printing appropriate test chart, lighting, positioning and shooting. I ended up shooting at 6mm, 12mm and 24mm each wide open and at f/5.6. Each configuration takes 9 shots!

I have not done anything at macro distances yet (partly because the 1cm macro means I need some kind of teeny-tiny chart!!). Hopefully I can add to it later.

Matt

Just some niggles that I really wish could be updated with firmware (hint, hint Ricoh!!)

I know these aren't high priority for this level of camera, but I can still wish...

* There is no option to save the last JPG as RAW. The dSLRs and Q allow you to press the AV/AE-L button to save the buffer as RAW. Really, really would like this!

* You cannot delete, or zoom, the image from the initial preview. You've got to wait for the preview to disappear, press Play, then do those functions. That's a shame. Being able to delete a dud quickly is very helpful

* You can't seem to stop the red focus assist lamp from blinking when you take a shot! Really? Would love a custom option to stop this annoying behaviour - especially for candid shots Think I'm going to have to use tape...

* There's no "Stop AF on half press" option. I've trained myself to use the "AF" button on the dSLRs. Would be nice if the "OK" button did focus (like it did on the *ist-Ds) if the AF was stopped on half press.

* The custom image options are fewer than the other cameras. "Portrait" is one of my favourite colour modes. Not a big deal, but would be nice!

* (EDIT) When viewing by folder the MX-1 shows the starting image number, but not the number of images in the folder Shame - all the other cameras show the total number of images (which is so helpful!)

* (EDIT2) It is missing the initial zoom facility of the other cameras. It's helpful to start at 4x rather than having to scroll through from 1x


Some other tips that may help:

* Face detection is a pain to turn off! You have to enable the "Memory" (Capture page 3) option (Memory page 2 - "Face Detection") first, then turn off Face Detection in Capture page 2. If you don't set the memory option the face detection just keeps coming back


Overall though, I am stunned at the output from this beast. The lens is very versatile and sharp (beats the Q with 5-15mm with a heavy stick!). 1cm macro mode along with the flippy screen is very good indeed.

If you're wondering whether to get one for walkabouts - just do it

Matt

Just some info...

I received my MX-1 yesterday Could not wait to get some RAW files into Lightroom, and of course there are no camera profiles.

Spent some time early this morning setting up the Adobe Lens Profile calibration charts (shot 54 images at three different focal lengths, in two apertures). The whole process was significantly easier than I had feared (but still a fair amount of it!)

Now I have a Camera Raw profile for lens distortions.

While I was at it I have also produced a colour profile from the QPcard203.


I'm going to test these over the next week and see how things go. Most likely I will submit the lens profiles to Adobe as it would be good to see general support for the MX-1.

Initial tests (with rubbish subjects) look great. The lens on the MX-1 is a real gem.

Matt