Having scoured the SD card for older photos, I note my preference for framing textures, patterns, and abstracts with the little Sony RX. I expect the imminent arrival of a metal hand-grip to improve handling, as I’m always a little concerned that the sleek black metal body will one day slip from my fingers. It’s already a small camera, and since current second-hand prices for this model are not exactly cheap, replacing it would likely not be worthwhile.
Submerged in lovely green
There’s a small sea vessel beneath the floating seaweed and greenish water. It was one of those days where sun penetrated the water and highlighted submerged structures. I think this photo was made at an aperture of 5.6 and an ISO of 125 – the base ISO of the RX100. Noise is not even really an issue until you get to ISO 400 and above. Even then, modern denoising tools are great at what they do.
A rocky world of sand and seaweed
I especially like the blue in the picture above. Some people suggest that the RX100 biases towards blue/green on Automatic White Balance, but so far I’ve yet to find the AWB setting not to my liking. Of course, seaside photos like this are perfect if settings bias to cooler tones. Nikon cameras traditionally have a cooler bias, but that’s only ever an issue if JPG output is the goal.
Beams and struts
Rarely do I convert a colour image to black and white. Lightroom does provide some nice colour filter options, and I do recognise that black and white images can be powerful. In the photo above, black and white conversion has enhanced the beams, surfaces, and light and shadow.
RX edits
All of the photos in this post are from the RX100’s Raw files. My editing is fairly minimal, and includes some Contrast and Clarity boosts, as well as Vibrance. My sharpening is actually quite spartan, as the diminutive Sony applies some baked-in pre-processing. I believe that some sharpening is already applied, including chromatic aberration reduction, and distortion correction. Consequently, the RX100’s Raw files already look pretty good.
In terms of noise reduction, I don’t do extra at all at base ISO for any camera, as the noise pattern is already so low as to be invisible if print is the goal. I do like Lightroom’s AI-based noise reduction though. It makes pictures at 3200 ISO and above practically noise-free.
I find old ruins fascinating. The real treasure is discovering an abandoned home, off the beaten track, weathered and worn and open to the elements. I wonder who lived there and what they did? I wonder how it came to be abandoned? There were once people in such places, living lives and making memories, and all that remains is rubble and broken space.
What was once a life – 35mm Super Takumar 3.5 on Olympus OMD EM5 Mark II
A fascination with ruins isn’t uncommon. Walking through the rubble and detritus of buildings that were once important to someone is a way of connecting to the past and also reminding ourselves that time moves forward relentlessly. All things begin and end. And we must find joy in the experience of living whilst we can, if we can. Not all lives are equal, it’s worth remembering.
The old green room – 35mm Super Takumar on Olympus OMD EM5 Mark II.
Ruins remind us that everything changes, whatever we do. Next to the behemoth of time, we’re vastly small. In some way this is a comforting thought, as even wars and bad governments will fall to the ravages of time in a way that no person, however rich and powerful, can avert. No doubt, this is a terrifying thought to people who can’t bear the reality that their power and influence will fade, and their lives will be forgotten completely.
Nature’s reclamation
Ozymandias, one of my favourite Shelley poems, provides insight into the eventual ruination of once-powerful empires:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
When the clouds are heavy and the weather inclement, I like to look for interesting patterns and textures in the environment. It’s also a good way to test out the macro abilities of the Fujifilm Finepix S7000. On these old fixed lens digicams, there was usually a dedicated Macro mode button. The S7000 has two modes – Macro and Super-Macro, making it possible to get as close as one centimetre away from the subject.
The details are crunchy enough in the close-up photo above, even before any Lightroom tweaking. I’m not going overboard with the editing, as these are only 8 bit JPGs and don’t contain a lot of information to work with. Small boosts to contrast and clarity, with a minimal increase in vibrance is enough to make it shine. Other settings are my usual on this camera: 12 MP Fine* JPG.
Since we were at the seaside, it made sense to photograph the lovely colours and patterns of the shallows. And in good light, the Finepix is a fine camera even 20 years after it debuted. Just a slight decrease to highlights and a slight boost to contrast and the photo comes alive I think.
Lastly, the photo above intrigues me. The seabed is distorted by the water and there’s something red lying on the sand below. One might almost think there are strange creatures inhabiting the salty depths, throwing out exploratory tentacles.
Next outing, I’ll probably take another camera. Perhaps the Sony RX100 – a camera I’ve had in my possession for a decade and have barely explored. Certainly a nice camera that was once King in the world of compacts – when compact cameras were still a going market concern.
When I became serious about developing skills in photography, I was drawn to the practice of contemplative photography with small and simple cameras in Auto mode. The idea that I can re-frame the world and see it with fresh eyes is attractive because it anchors the mind in the moment. There’s no struggle with too many buttons or camera settings in Auto, and there’s no complex exposure puzzle to solve because the camera does the heavy lifting.
When I purchased my first DSLR – a Nikon D5100 – I was thrust into the world of camera gear. My formerly simple photo walks turned into knotted thoughts about dynamic range, sharpness, and aperture settings. I sought out videos and online forums so I could learn. I purchased even more gear, knowing all the while that people were making great photos with primitive boxes over a century ago.
There’s a joy in this sort of learning curve, and it’s important, but there’s also a cognitive load that removes some of the pleasure of inhabiting the moment – at least for me. Others, I suppose, may find sustainable joy in complexity.
So, how can I re-enter the moment with camera in hand? This is where old digital cameras are useful. Enter the Fuji Finepix S7000 – a prosumer camera announced in 2003 that features full auto and manual modes, a fixed zoom lens with a maximum aperture of 2.8, great ergonomics, a nice EVF, and Fujifilm’s take on the digital CCD sensor: a 6.3 megapixel Super CCD generation IV sensor.
Super CCD – the secret sauce?
Before CMOS digital sensors went mainstream, CCD sensors could be found in most older digital cameras. Most camera reviews at the time focussed on whether colours out of the camera were natural or over-saturated, providing clues as to how camera makers programmed their on-board software to make JPG photos more vibrant and attractive to buyers. There’s a current trend where some people believe that CCD sensors contain “techno-magical” properties and produce film-like results, but as someone who grew up with film cameras – only film looks like film. I suspect that those who believe this are young enough to think they missed out on a digital technology that offers long-lost superiority over current camera output. Frankly, there were plenty of trashy, low quality CCD sensor cameras back then too.
The Fujifilm Finepix S7000 features a Super CCD sensor with a honeycomb patterned Colour Filter Array (CFA) overlaid. Some people think CCD sensors create better colours than CMOS sensors, but people who know a lot more than me are pretty certain they don’t. Anyway, there are other reasons to use old cameras like the S7000.
Using the S7000
I purchased the S7000 for a fraction of its original retail price. Here in Australia, it would have been a top-shelf digital camera at the time of release – the likes of which I’d not have been able to afford. Back then, I’d only just moved on from my first digital camera: a boxy Kodak DSC with 1 megapixel, an awfully tiny LCD screen, no manual controls, and the worst battery life I’ve ever encountered in any modern electrical device.
Oh, what a camera I’d missed! The S7000 is pleasingly ergonomic. The grip is comfortable and the myriad buttons are within easy reach. What surprises me is the EVF – a pretty immersive experience, even by today’s standards, despite comparatively low resolution. Honestly, I had no idea that a 20 year old digital camera could be this advanced! This is mirrorless before we had modern mirrorless.
OK, the camera has some annoying quirks: the slow start-up time, washed out LCD and EVF, the tinny start-up sound I’d forgotten about on these old devices, the photo playback button located on the power switch, 2 separate menu buttons, a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second unless in full manual mode (where it’s a whopping 1/10000th), and the screen that nags you to update the date/time. You can turn off the tinny sounds, including the focus beep and the fake shutter sound, but when you change the 4xAA batteries, the camera forgets all user settings and you have to go in and do it all again. So, I just leave the annoying camera sounds on now.
SOOC – Straight out of the camera
I usually set all my cameras to RAW and edit the photos later, but in the interests of removing cognitive load, enjoying the moment, and exploring the manufacturer baked-in colour profiles of the S7000, I set it to the Fujichrome colour setting at 12 megapixel, Fine JPG. It’s the best way, I think, to experience what most people used at the time and just enjoy a day out.
All of the photos on this page are the S7000’s JPG output. In F-chrome mode the output is high contrast, high colour saturation, and a green bias in the white balance. I think they look pretty nice. In fact, I think the output is remarkable from a 2003 digital camera.
Older CCD sensors aren’t great when it comes to strong highlights in high dynamic range scenes, so I made most of these photos between -0.3 and -1.0 exposure compensation, just to protect the highlights. As you can see on the hulls of the boats above, the detail is preserved well. I do wish the giant black solar panel wasn’t blocking the boat at the back, but that’s life.
Blues and greens are especially nice using the Fujichrome setting, and the contrast is punchy. I barely touched these images in Lightroom – some cropping when required, some image straightening, and the barest highlight recovery and black point. Not that JPGs provide much latitude for recovering shadows or highlights, but I’m happy with that because it means I don’t need to mess around much in editing after enjoying the day out.
For such an old camera, the resolution and detail is excellent, though pixel peeping reveals the sort of softness that most modern photographers would be seriously troubled by. There’s also visible chromatic aberration around strong contrast areas. Still, there’s a pleasantness and immediacy to the images I can’t deny. They’re sharp enough without making the eyes water.
The S7000, through clever software and the honeycomb structure of the CFA, interpolates 6 megapixels to a 12 megapixel output, though you can choose 1, 3, or 6 megapixels if required. It can also output CCD RAW files at 12 megapixels only. I set it to 12 MP Fine JPG setting, as this seemed to be the preferred setting of many users at the time.
A surprising performer
The Fujifilm Finepix S7000 ticks a lot of boxes for me: it’s easy to use, has advanced settings if I want, has fantastic Macro and Super Macro modes (I’d forgotten about the dedicated macro button featuring the cute flower symbol on these old cameras), and satisfies the itch to stop thinking about settings too much and instead focus on the world and the image. The 12 megapixel output is certainly usable, even today, and would easily yield a good 8×10 inch print. It would have been an amazing camera at the time of release and I’m sure it would have blown my mind in 2003. It also proves that today’s complex mirrorless cameras had perfectly capable precedents.
The Rusty Ruin Journal 