introduction

since i have been using SLR Magic‘s HyperPrime 12mm F1.6 for Micro Four Thirds (from now on, i will refer to the lens as just the 12mm) almost daily in the last couple of weeks, this post will be in a format of a daily photo/video journal sharing my personal usage of the 12mm. so in a way, this post is not completed until i have populated it with all the photos/videos i have taken with the 12mm up to today.

for a proper product review of the 12mm, i recommend the following excellent reviews:

steve huff

eoshd

the phoblographer

a deeper perspective

i basically have made my decision to purchase the 12mm based on the above reviews. so, there is really no point for me to repeat what have been said. even if i did try, i wouldn’t have come up with a review as good as they have done. but you should know that my lens is different from theirs because mine is an actual production unit. i was told issues identified by the above reviewers have been addressed in the final production units. whether those issues have been completely addressed, i can’t tell because i personally do no have one of those lenses to compare to. besides internal tweaking, you’ll also find my lens has a makeover in branding and an all-black finish. the Noktor branding was used in the above reviewing units while SLR Magic is used in mine and all units that will go on for sale soon.

i am writing about the 12mm because in return of having the privilege to buy the lens in advance of it hitting retail, i have agreed to share video and photo footage i create using it. all photos and videos published here were shot using Panasonic’s GH2 with firmware 1.1.

quick specs on the 12mm:

- it is made for the micro four thirds system

- it is a full manual lens, i.e. it doesn’t autofocus and the aperture has to be manually set on the lens itself

- it has a 35-mm equivalent focal length of 24mm

- aperture values are not recorded by the camera

- it has an all-metal construction

unboxing

i ordered the lens in november after learning about SLR Magic’s testers volunteering program from 43rumors. the lens was supposed to be available end of november. unfortunately, their factory in china had experienced power supply problems resulting in delay of shipment. so i was very excited after getting an unexpected call from SLR Magic on 12th december notifying me my lens was ready to be delivered to me. since i live in hong kong, i suggested going to pickup from their office instead – SLR Magic is a hong kong company, so that i could get hold of it asap. i didn’t get to visit their office. instead, Andrew Chan, product manager of SLR Magic, met me at a mall near their office to deliver the lens to me in person. while we chatted about the lens, he suddenly pulled a nex-5 from his pocket with the just announced HyperPrime 23mm F1.7 for E-mount mounted on it! i was pretty mad at myself for not brining my nex-5n with me. i had the a77 and gh2 with me but not the nex-5n!

getting back to the 12mm. i unboxed the lens at a restaurant nearby immediately after i got it from andrew. below are the unboxing photos:

despite having owned two gh2 bodies for a while, i have had only one mft lens until last night – the 14-140mm hd kit lens. for previous works that had required two cameras, i mounted one of my sony alpha lenses on either one of them (usually the carl zeiss 24-70mm) with the other using the 14-140mm. i had been reluctant to invest in mft lenses because i use the gh2 almost exclusively for video works. until panasonic’s recent release of new firmware for 7 of its existing lenses to make them more video friendly (they might be quieter now but i doubt they are any more faster than they had been shipped out of factory), the 14-140mm was the only auto-focus lens optimized for video (by panasonic). but still, none of them has powered zoom (something nice to have especially when shooting handheld).

below is the test video i took with the 45-175mm mounted on my gh2 with official firmware and the 14-140mm mounted on my other gh2 with hacked firmware:

while shooting video the first time with the 45-175mm, i thought i could probably make use of a faster zoom. the zoom felt really slow. when viewing the footage on the computer afterwards, the zooming looked much “faster” and “natural” than i had felt at the time of shooting.

to test the effectiveness of the new power o.i.s. for photos, i took the following two photos using the widest end of the zoom (i.e. 90mm 35mm-equivalent) and the longest end (i.e. 350mm) respectively from the same spot without any support:

shutter speed used for the zoomed photo was 1/13s – that’s like 4 stops below the safe shutter speed of 1/320s. not bad for indoor available light condition.

from what i’ve tried out last night, the new power o.i.s. is much more effective than the “old” mega o.i.s. in stabilizing both stills and videos. i think panny is going to update the 14-140mm very soon with at least power o.i.s.

besides the improved performance, i really like the size of the new lens. it’s overall length doesn’t change during the whole zoom range (like the canon 100-400L i used to have). i know 3.8 times is not a lot in zoom range. but still it got a 35mm equivalent of 90mm to 350mm. when attached to the gh2, the overall length of the body plus the lens is about the height of my sony alpha 70-300mm lens when it is at its shortest.

all in all, the 45-175mm lumix g x is not just tiny but delivers improved performance over the 14-140mm lens. it makes a very discrete long-reaching lens – perfect for street photography. i think i will be using it a lot more for photos than i used to with the 14-140mm. for photos that doesn’t need long reach, i will continue to use my sony nex-5n and the 18-55mm kit lens. meantime, i am waiting for the arrival of the 14-42mm lumix g x lens.

on a side note, i noticed at one point in the parade (when i had lowered the monopod to checkout the GH2 – lucky i did) that the GH2 had stopped recording. i tried to review the last recorded video but it said it’s an invalid format. i turned off the camera and turned it on again to resume recording. i was pretty sure i had lost the footage. when i returned home i gladly found out that not only the file had not gone missing, it was playable. file size of the video is over 4gb though. so i suspect the camera stopped recording because it had hit the 4gb limit. but this doesn’t make sense because AVCHD is supposed to be not subject to the 4gb limit. in the past, before i had the firmware hacked, i’ve had many recordings over 4gb. anyway, i will explore on this later.

i managed to record a few other outdoor scenes using the three cameras. i will be posting them in the coming days.

meantime, i have put together two clips i shot during the musical show “The Golden Mickeys”.

“The Golden Mickeys Song” shot with NEX-5N and GH2:

footage straight out of the camera were used to make these clips. i didn’t bother to record the sound separately but i did use an external microphone on the GH2 (just because it was already there and i didn’t bother to remove it). the microphone used is Sony’s ECM-ALST1 (which i had bought for A55V).

normally i would try to remove all too obvious hand shaking footage like zooming. but i have kept them in these clips because i wanna demonstrate what a difference the powered zoom of HX9V makes and the auto focusing capability of the video optimized kit lenses. the 18-55mm and 14-140mm kit lenses were used on the NEX-5N and GH2 respectively. while i was pulling out the monopod out of my backpack, a staff came up and told me politely that tripods are not allowed (although strictly speaking mine wasn’t a tripod). so i guess these clips really put the image stabilizer into test.

“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” shot with NEX-5N, GH2 and HX9V:

shutter priority mode (with shutter set at 1/50th) and auto ISO were used for both the NEX-5N and GH2.

Except for doing a nice job of copying the look of Nano, the build quality of the knockoff is mediocre at best and the software is badly designed. It not only rip off Nano but is itself a real ripoff. The people who made this should really be ashamed of themselves.

Meantime, my Nano is looking very handsome with its new accessories:

Music
Music is at the heart of every iPod. But with only 8GB of storage, I have decided even before I ordered my Nano that this Nano won’t be my main music playing device. In my latest sync, I have selected only 48 songs from 25 albums to sync with my Nano.

Even with so few songs, I still get to appreciate the usefulness and beauty of Cover Flow. Cover Flow actually makes more sense to me on an iPod than on a Mac computer because it really makes navigation easier and more intuitive on a device that has limited input capabilities. If your albums come with album art, you will really love the new Nano because it makes full use of album art. Besides Cover Flow, a thumbnail picture is placed next to each album title under the “Albums” menu to make navigation, again, more intuitive. Because, chances are one can recognize an album more quickly by its picture rather than by its title. An album art is also displayed in each lyrics page as well. Speaking of the lyrics page, text is much more legible than on the 2nd Gen Nano.

Videos
Video quality of the Nano is much better than I had expected. I don’t have my 5th Gen iPod with me to compare now because it is on loan to a friend. But even at just 50% of the brightness, the videos appear very bright and viewable. For the purpose of demonstration, I have synced an episode each from my iTunes library’s TV Shows to my Nano. iTunes isn’t flexible in allowing its users to choose which episodes of a TV Show to sync with an iPod. It only allows synchronization in accordance with its predefined rules, like the “last 3 most recent unwatched” episodes of a TV show. And once you have selected the synchronization scheme, it will be applied to all the TV Shows that you choose to sync to your Nano. I hope in future upgrades, I can select the particular episodes that I want to sync.

Photos
Because the 3rd Gen Nano has almost twice the screen resolution over the last generation, photos on Nano finally look good. I’ve synchronized over 1,000 photos to my Nano in my latest sync. Besides resolution, there is another noted improvement in the Photos application over previous generations. If an album title is longer than the width of the iPod, it now scrolls automatically so the title doesn’t get truncated. The title appears on top of the thumbnails page also scrolls to make room for long titles.

For some strange reasons, my Nano thinks every photos I took were taken on 6th February, 2040. I don’t know whether it is a bug or not. My photos are synchronized with my Aperture library and their dates are reported correctly in Aperture.

Games
The new Nano came with 3 games pre-loaded, one fewer than my 2nd Gen Nano. I played the iPod Quiz and Vortex in the video below. Gaming experience has improved a lot over previous generations because of the higher resolution of the screen. The background soundtracks of the two games I played are also very good which make the whole gaming experience even richer. I think I will be very likely to get more games from iTunes in the next couple of days.

When Apple emailed me yesterday late in the afternoon that my Nano was on its way, I was afraid that I won’t be getting it until the end of the long weekend holiday. But I had half expected that it would arrive, which is why I had only left home for a quick lunch today. I didn’t want to miss the delivery.

It is now almost two hours since my Nano had arrived and I am really glad that I hadn’t gone with the iPod Touch. This is my 3rd Nano and my 6th iPod. I did struggle a little bit between the iPod Classic, iPod Touch and the Nano which explains why I had only ordered mine weeks after it became available (I ordered it online this Thursday). I already have a 60GB 5th Gen iPod Video which has been serving me well especially when I am on vacation. I finished the whole first season of Lost on it during a strip to Tokyo last year. One season of TV shows with 22 episodes take up about 10GB of storage space. My current library of TV shows has 228 items totaling 96.32GB of space whilst my music library has 2,600 items totaling 60.70GB of space. With the exception of music I bought from iTunes, my music library is ripped from CDs using Apple Lossless encoding which explains why merely 2,600 songs would take up so much space. And then I have another 10,000 of photos on Aperture that I really want to show them off on my iPods. My TV shows library has been growing very fast lately because of the discounted iTunes coupons that I have been able to buy at eBay. My videos and music are stored on a 250GB NAS that has gigabit ethernet connecting to my home network while my photos are stored on a FireWire 1TB hard drive configured as a 500GB RAID 0 system. Both are approaching their limits. Even though Apple markets the new 160GB iPod Classic as the device to hold everything, I had to pass it once I had done my calculations above. I am better off sticking with my 5th Gen iPod if decisions of what to put on an iPod have to make anyway.

With only 16GB of flash storage, it would be even harder for me to select what to put on an iPod Touch. Although it is thinner than an iPhone, the iTouch is still as large as the iPhone because of the 3.5 inch screen that they share. That screen, by the way, with multi-touch is perfect for viewing photos and videos. Since it is very likely that I will get an iPhone when it becomes available in Hong Kong, it really doesn’t make any sense for me to get an iTouch now. The iTouch does have double the storage capacity of the iPhone. But I can always make up that difference with a Nano which I can use it just to store music. Remember I have almost 61GB of music? I can fill all my iPods with different combination of songs that don’t duplicate. I would rather carry an iPhone with a Nano rather than two “iPhones”. And who knows, by the time iPhone is ready for Hong Kong it might already have the 16GB option.

Besides my usage pattern above, I do find iTouch’s lack of a speaker and Bluetooth radio rather disappointing. Without a speaker, I can’t really share my videos or music with others unless they like silent movies. Without Bluetooth to connect with my HSDPA phones, it means I am restricted to using the built-in Safari or YouTube or even iTunes Store within the proximity of a WiFi hotspot. Both missing features, however, are available on the current iPhone, although I am not sure if the Bluetooth software that comes with iPhone allows connection with a Bluetooth modem.

Going back to the new Nano, it is just super cool. I have recorded my unboxing of it in both video and photos. I will try to organize and upload them in the coming days. I have always liked the Nanos. It’s true that they don’t offer as much storage capacity as their siblings but their sizes make them perfect for almost every purposes save a long vacation. I can run without my Polar watch but I can’t run without my Nano with Nike+. Nike+ is the single most important motivation for my running. Nano is just great. And just when I thought my 2nd Gen Nano with Nike+ is perfect the 3rd Gen arrives.

Because it has to house a 2 inch screen, the 3rd Gen Nano is necessarily fatter than the 2nd Gen, albeit shorter. This almost square dimension makes the 3rd Gen not as easy to hold inside my palm than the 2nd Gen especially when I run. It doesn’t matter because I have decided to use the 3rd Gen mainly for video and photos while the 2nd Gen for music. The screen of the 3rd Gen is just gorgeous. Because it has the highest pixels per inch among all the current iPods, videos and pictures appear much finer and smoother than the others.

As far as the hardware is concerned, my only complain is its casing. It has the same stainless steel back found on the 1st Gen Nano and the iPod Classic which just makes it prone to scratches. In fact, I have already scratched mine while putting the 2nd Gen next to it for taking the comparison photos. Also, the metal casing makes any engravings that you have inscribed on the Nano difficult to read when the Nano is placed near light sources.

Even just playing with the new Nano for a few minutes I quickly noticed the many improvements that Apple has made upon it. Operation is smooth and responsive. The new user interface is intuitive in usage and elegant in aesthetics. Cover Flow is really cool. I can’t wait to show it off.

In the previous generations, menus will take up the whole screen. Now all menus take up only half of the screen leaving the other half showing either album art in the case of music or graphical representation of the current feature. It is just neat.

Lastly, if you are going to get a new Nano and you don’t mind the colour of red, try to get a red one. It is only available from Apple direct. Apple donates a portion of every Red Nano to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa, which in itself is a worthy cause. By ordering direct from Apple, you can also get free engraving on the back of the Nano. But I must say the red of the 3rd Gen looks more like pink to me.

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