It’s a question that comes up at least a few times a month: “What happened to Tack Sharp?” The alternative, which seems to come up more frequently, is a variation of the simple statement: “You and Dan need to reboot your podcast. Seriously.” It’s obvious the demand to listen to Tack Sharp is there. So, why aren’t Dan Benjamin and I making ’em for your pleasure? Why does the Tack Sharp homepage say that no new episodes are being made?

The flip off-the-cuff answer is that Dan and I always had a hard time coordinating time to create each episode. We live in different time zones, Dan’s a morning person and I’m a night owl. I travel incessantly and Dan has a fairly set family schedule. Each time we recorded, it was a minor exercise in schedule negotiation. But, really, that’s not really the issue. That’s just a handy excuse.

The real reason Tack Sharp isn’t on the air is that there isn’t any demand from customers for it.

You might be thinking, “Huh? What do you mean there isn’t any demand? Just look at all the requests you get!” True, there’s listener demand. But—I really hate to be this blunt, but you should already know this—you’re not the customer in this equation. The customer for Tack Sharp in an advertising-supported business like 5by5 Studios is the advertiser.

The growing number of high quality shows that 5by5 produces shows that Dan has cracked the code on building an advertising-supported podcast empire. He knows how to find customers for his product. I’m pretty sure that if anybody could sell Tack Sharp, Dan could. The fact it hasn’t happened says it all. I have no doubt that if somebody approached 5by5 with a deal that could make Tack Sharp financially solvent, Dan would be on the phone with me in 1/125th of a second.

Ok, so if 5by5 isn’t interested in it anymore, how about doing it under some other flag? I’ve looked into that. Dan’s kindly offered to let me take the Tack Sharp name and fire it up the podcast somewhere else. My good friend Patrick Lenz has expressed strong desire to team up with me on it. We’ve gone so far as to trial a few things and I owe him one (or three) for that. But—and it took me a while to realize this—it’s highly unlikely that I could do any better than Dan at finding advertising to support it.

Fine. What about doing it for the love of it? Given an infinite amount of spare time—and a bit more cash in the bank to support the effort—I’d love to do it that way. But, that’s not sustainable in the long or even medium run. All we’d do is get y’all excited and then fade out again.

I miss Tack Sharp too. I hope to collaborate with Dan again sometime—maybe do a guest appearance on one of his other shows sometime. And I hope to collaborate with Patrick as well on something I’ve not yet mentioned to him. But, for now, Tack Sharp is on ice despite the fact that there’s a sizable demand from listeners.

I know. It sucks. I’m not happy about it either.

On the other hand, you know what I am happy about? I’m happy that Dan was able to use the experiences from launching The Talk Show with John Gruber and doing Tack Sharp with me to build out 5by5 Studios. It wasn’t obvious at the time that he’d be able to make the jump from something that was a hobby into a viable enterprise. I’m incredibly happy about that.

San Francisco based performer Joshua Walters gave a talk at the TED Full Spectrum Auditions in New York this last May about his bipolar condition. Far from seeing it as a negative, he sees it—at least the hypomanic part of it—as a positive and argues for embracing mental skillness.

Joshua Walters at the TED Full Spectrum Auditions in New York City.

His presentation, titled On being just crazy enough is up on TED.com. Stand out line: “There’s no amount drugs you can take that can get you as high as if you think you’re Jesus Christ.”

Yesterday, I explored the High Line and Meatpacking District with my friend Thaniya Keereepart. While walking about, the conversation turned to architecture and I mentioned that Richard Meier was one of my favorite architects. A few minutes later—after saying, “Oh, I’ve got something to show you, then”—Thaniya had us standing inside the courtyard of the Westbeth Artist’s Housing project which Meier had worked on in the late 1960’s.

Balconies in the Westbeth Artist’s Housing courtyard in the West Village, New York City.

Fortunately, I had my super spiffy 14-24mm lens with me and could go wide as I pointed my camera upwards. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my tripod with me which would have been quite useful as not all that much light was filtering down. Instead, I leaned on technology and cranked up my ISO to 1600. If I had a do-over with a tripod, not only would I shoot at base ISO, I think I might stack a few shots and try processing as an HDR to see how it a version with a blue sky compares to this rendition.

On my way home from the UK last month, I posted about my dream to travel light. As it turns out, I didn’t wait too long to start implementing it. I haven’t picked up an X100—though I have been frequently checking the various camera stores. I have, however, acquired a 13" MacBook Air and have been using it as my only computer for the last week while on a trip to New York.

My 13" MacBook Air in flight on CO 1585 from Newark NJ to Portland OR.

As a general-purpose laptop, the new MacBook Air is as awesome as everyone says it is. Lightweight, surprisingly speedy, and gifted with impressive battery life, Apple’s marketing is dead on. It is the perfect everyday laptop for most users. But what about for using it for something more demanding? More to the point, the question you probably have for me is: How well does it work as a laptop for a photographer?

The answer is that as long as you can live with its limitations, it’s a surprisingly decent travel photography laptop. I’ve totally enjoyed it while working on planes and trains and in cafés. It’s done everything I’ve asked it to since I bought it, including working through my photos and posting a few along the way. I even used it for light client work while in New York where I needed to quickly shoot a few dozen images and then deliver a finished photo on the spot.

So what are the limitations of the Air? One is the lack of a discrete GPU. This affects applications that can take advantage of it, like Aperture. In my experience so far, it’s most noticeable when importing a big set of photographs and waiting for the initial churn of preview generation to finish. Also, judicious use of Preview mode is called for when browsing photos. If you’re using Lightroom or other applications which only hit the CPU, however, you won’t miss out on the acceleration you didn’t have to begin with.

Another limitation is the speed at which you can get data on and off the MacBook Air. Without using a Thunderbolt display or a huge Promise Pegasus disk array, the current choices are USB 2.0 or WiFi. This means a bit of patience is required whenever you’re making big data transfers, such as to push a big set of photos from the laptop to desktop once you get home after a trip. This limitation should ease as more Thunderbolt options arrive—I really would like a Thunderbolt port expander with Gigabit Ethernet and FireWire on it—but that will take time. For now, it’s a bottleneck that has to be dealt with.

The bottom line is that if you need a single computer for your photography and it has to be a laptop, you really should be looking at the 15" MacBook Pro. The quad-core CPU, the discrete and fast GPU, the ability to use 8GB of RAM, and the external port options are all extremely useful on a primary photography workstation. On the other hand, if you have an iMac or Mac Pro where you do the bulk of your photo processing, the MacBook Air serves as a great lightweight companion to take on the road. And for all those non-photographic things you do while traveling—email, web browsing, writing—the Air is a shining star that’s a joy to use.

The Fuji FinePix X100. It’s one of the more talked about and lusted after cameras on the market right now. It’s also one quirky beast full of contrasts. Reviewers are quick to point out every annoying flaw, yet are also quick to tell you how much they love it and the resulting images. Thanks to a generous friend, I finally had the chance to test drive it myself for an afternoon.

Before I say more, however, let me state that this is not a full review. It’s barely a quick review. In fact, it’s really a set of personal impressions based on several hours walking around town playing with the camera in hand. There’s no science here. Just my own unfettered opinion. Got it? Good.

Fuji FinePix X100 • Exposure: 1/550 @ f/5.6 ISO 400

First off, if this camera were an automobile, it’d be the strangest mishmash of BMW, Fiat, and Nissan that you could imagine. If that sounds schizophrenic to you, then congratulations. You’ve taken your first step to understanding this camera.

The top and front of the camera are instantly comprehensible to anybody that’s ever used a manual camera. Dials on top for shutter speed and exposure compensation. Ring on the lens for aperture. Brilliantly, the shutter speed and aperture controls both contain an ‘A’ detent—presumably meaning Auto—which obliterates the need for a separate exposure program switch. Aperture priority, shutter priority, full program, and full manual modes fall out of how you’ve set these two controls.

In thirty seconds, I was perfectly comfortable. I looked through the viewfinder and was pleased to see it was set to the OVF mode. I framed and then snapped my first photo. I was pleased as punch that the shutter was barely audible. Perfect. I was starting to really like the camera and then I went to look at my first photo and check out the camera’s settings.

As I came face to face with the display screen part of the user interface, my comfort evaporated. It was like being in a dream where one second you’re driving a 3-series sedan down a spirited road and then the next moment, your car is suddenly a Fiat econobox and the next corner is coming up way too fast.

Fuji FinePix X100 • Exposure: 1/58 @ f/2.8 ISO 1600

I’m not going to pull any punches. That elegance in having the manual aperture and shutter controls set the exposure program by deduction isn’t anywhere to be found in the menu system. It’s a complete mess that is only barely disguised by the beautifully rendered super-smooth high-resolution text.

If you are a creature of habit, you can probably deal with most of this stuff once and then avoid most of it. Unfortunately, there’s a few useful things buried in the menus that you’ll want to tweak on demand, such as ISO and Auto ISO settings as well as the control for the ND filter. Sure, you can lift one of these things up to the function button on the top panel for quick access, but you’ll still have to dive in for the other items. From my experience so far, you really want that function button to bring up the ISO menu.

Speaking of ISO, the most surprising thing about the X100’s controls to me is that there is no manual dial for ISO. In the days of film, the only way to affect sensitivity was to choose a different film. These days, ISO is as important a factor in the exposure equation as shutter and aperture. It should be settable using the same interface modality as the other two bits. Sure, it’d be one more dial, but it’d complete the manual control set.

Fuji FinePix X100 • Exposure: 1/750 @ f/4 ISO 200

Once I’d fought with the menus and set things up the way I wanted, I focused back on mastering the viewfinder. Simply put, the viewfinder is worth all the hype. The optical viewfinder (OVF) mode where LCD overlays are used to present frame lines and additional shooting information over the rangefinder image is a joy to use. Even better, you can turn on a histogram and level display.

The electronic viewfinder (EVF) mode—activated with a small discrete lever on the front of the camera—gives you all of that and a 100% pixel accurate framing on a 1.44 megapixel display. It’s not perfect. It could really use double the resolution. It would also benefit from being able to vary its brightness more as it’s dark compared with ambient light in sunlight. Regardless, it’s the best EVF I think I’ve ever used. All other camera makers should aspire to make EVFs at least this good.

Between the dual-personality optical/electronic viewfinder and the screen on the back, you’ve got three different ways to compose and shoot. And, much to Fuji’s credit, the X100 manages to present quite a bunch of information in the viewfinder fairly cleanly. If only you didn’t have to deal with the craptastic menu system to set it up. It’s NASA levels of awesome wrapped up in a delivery system only Nissan would love.

Fuji FinePix X100 • Exposure: 1/340 @ f/4 ISO 200

As the afternoon progressed, I kept going through a cycle of feeling a bit more comfortable with the camera, then running into a wall of confusing behavior. First and foremost on the list of maddening behavior is how modal taking a photograph is when image review is on, especially when shooting RAW. You release the shutter and then wait for the camera to write the image. While the camera writes, all you can do is look at the image you just took. You can’t immediately press the shutter to take another photograph. When the camera is done writing, it displays an “OK Next” notice. It dismisses easily with a trip of the shutter, but the fact that you’re locked into the image review until it appears just feels way too modal.

It didn’t help that it takes a while for the X100 to write out RAW images. Uncompressed RAW files from the camera weigh in at 20MB each compared to the compressed 14-16MB files that come out of my Panasonic GF-1 and Nikon D3S cameras which also sport a 12 megapixel resolution. A little lossless compression would go a long way in terms of both write speed and archival space needed to store the resulting images.

The fix for the modality—as I found out in a Twitter conversation with Thomas Brand—is simply to turn image review off using the Tool/Set > Image Disp > Off menu. When image review is off, you can click away multiple times just like you’d expect to be able to without any perceptible delay. Also uncovered in that conversation is that you have to use a fast Class 10 SD card and—this part is very important—format it in camera. The X100 moves quite a bit faster when you do this.

Fuji FinePix X100 • Exposure: 1/1800 @ f/5.6 ISO 400

The last annoyance I’ll touch on here is focus. It’s a strange beast on the X100. Autofocus on the camera isn’t exactly fast and sometimes it randomly refuses to focus on anything, no matter how many contrasty bits you put into the focus area. I’ve not sorted out any rhyme or reason to it yet. As well, the fly-by-wire focusing is usable, but only barely so and it requires a trip to the manual to figure out how to get a zoomed manual focus assist view.

Yet, as quirky as the camera is to use, it’s all worth it you see the resulting files on your computer. They are simply amazing for a camera that can easily drop into a jacket pocket. They have the kind of plasticity in processing—meaning that you can really push sliders around in Aperture or Adobe Camera RAW—that I’m used to only seeing in files from a digital SLR. No doubt, that’s because the sensor is an APS-C sized one of a modern design.

Even better, the sensor performs well at higher ISO settings. To my eye in my test shooting today, it looks like ISO 1000 is excellent. ISO 1600 is quite good and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it in almost any situation. Even ISO 3200 results in very usable files based on test shoots of my car in my dimly lit garage. Things only really break down after that point.

I can’t overstate how big a deal having a usable ISO 3200 is to me. Combined with the f/2 lens, I think that there are very few places where the X100 can’t comfortably operate and make decent photographs. It’s a potent package, for sure.

Fuji FinePix X100 • Exposure: 1/200 @ f/11 ISO 400

If final image quality from a rangefinder package is what it’s all about, then the X100 scores the points that matter. Yes, it’s quirky—to put it mildly. On the other hand, if you can deal with the menus and the occasional temper tantrum that keeps the X100 from focusing on something, it can be a complete joy to use. I wouldn’t heartily recommend it to most people, but I’d support any photographer’s decision to obtain and use it.

As for me, well… Before today, I’d just about talked myself out of picking one up if I happened to find it in stock at a camera store. All the rational reasons factor in. It’s not cheap. More cameras are coming. You know the drill. Now that I’ve experienced the camera first hand for a while, however, and had a chance to get familiar with both its quirks and the workarounds for them, I’m not so sure. I might be picking one up after all. There are a few bits of gear around here that I should sell off first, but I have a feeling that I won’t like it when I give this one back. Not at all.

A quick message from my sponsor: The LoopIt from Luma Labs works perfectly with the Fuji FinePix X100 with either a PodMount or using a split ring attached to one of the camera strap lugs. It’s what I used to carry around my test camera for several hours walking around downtown Portland and it was comfortable the entire time.

Comments and Feedback

Aleksandear Vacić tweeted that Steve Huff reports that speed issues are taken care of with a 45MB/s SD card. Thomas Brand chimed in along similar lines and in conversation indicated that a Class 10 card was the magic bar. His comments also helped sort out the review modality and I’ve edited my comments about that appropriately.

Josh Puetz asked if the shots here are straight out of camera. The answer is that they aren’t quite out of camera, but they’re close. At this point, I’m most interested in the results from the camera as I’d normally post them. All the images are from RAW files processed through Aperture with basic white balance, color, crop, and levels adjustments and the like. I probably spent a half minute to a minute or so tweaking each image.

On August 24th, I posted some X100 tips after aqcuring and using the X100 for a few weeks.

In the early days of weaving together the social web, we had to make our own link tags to connect things. Open bracket a href equals quote link unquote close bracket. We also had to walk to school up hill both ways in the snow, but never mind about that. As things progressed, we ended up with cute little embedded buttons to post a link to something to FaceBook and Twitter and to flip bits on Reddit or Digg. This made things easier for normal people to link things up at the expense of some visual bric-a-brac. Useful, even if a bit ugly when not done with care.

Then, as the various social network APIs continued to evolve, something horrific happened. All that ugly but somewhat useful bric-a-brac has been turned into a scoreboard that’s now attached pages and posts all over the place. Worse, it seems that many sites are using the biggest possible versions of these widgets so that you can’t miss ’em. The graphic above is an 100% crop from a site I’ll leave nameless.

Sure, it’s nifty that the tech exists that let’s you tap or click a button on a website and have a number update to indicate that your vote has been tallied. It was fun the first twenty times. Months later, however, I have to say that I’m not into it any more. In fact, I’m not really sure who those scores are really for. Am I supposed to be impressed that 9 people +1’d your page? Or 90K liked your post on FaceBook? Or, should I feel sorry for you that nobody Dugg your site?

Truth is, I don’t care about any of that. I shouldn’t care about any of it. If I want to favorite or share your page, I’m going to do so on the merits of the content. I’m going to do so for all the same reasons that Anil Dash does when favorites stuff.

You know what these huge-ass scoreboards make me think of? They remind me—both in motivation as well as basic design—of those dorktastic page counters from the mid-nineties that those of us online at the time played with momentarily because, well, everyone else was.

Earlier this evening, I went up to the Vista House on Crown Point to get out of town and watch the sunset light up the Columbia River Gorge. I found a good spot on the wall over the old highway and hung out for a while looking at the scenic panorama around me. As I sat there, I heard a motorcyclist making his way up and, on a lark, decided to put my vantage point to use.

Motorcyclist rounding Crown Point on the Historic Columbia River Highway.

My camera was set up for the landscape, but I knew that in the light I was looking at, I’d get about the right shutter speed for a panning shot. As the motorcyclist made his way underneath me, I had time for four quick clicks and then he was gone. This photo is the best of the group. It wasn’t the shot I expected to make when I drove out today, but I’ll take it.

My dear friend Pinar Ozger really wanted to photograph her own wedding. She proposed setting up a few cameras here and there and hiding a PocketWizard in her bouquet to trigger them. After all, being a photographer, she knew which shots that really mattered to her. Her fiancée and his family, however, didn’t agree with her approach. Instead, they encouraged her to bring somebody else on board. So, she asked if I’d do it for her.

I didn’t say yes at first. After all, we were an item for a while and while we’ve kept our friendship, the potential for awkwardness was high. I don’t mean that in a bad way, mind you. Just consider the following two questions: How would you feel about shooting an ex’s wedding? Or, how would you feel about your significant other’s ex shooting your wedding? The answer to both of those is very much dependent on a whole lot of factors, isn’t it? That’s the kind of thing I’m getting at.

She persisted, however, with the full support of her fiancée. Each time, her vision of what she wanted and how I could provide it for her became a bit more clear. She also made it clear that if I didn’t do it, nobody would. High praise, really. I warmed up to the idea and eventually agreed. This last Saturday found me with cameras in hand photographing John and Pinar getting married.

I’m really glad I decided to do it. From a Turkish dinner night with shish-kebab and köfte to a lobster shore party, quiet moments in the trees of Maine making photos to the raucousness of late-night jam sessions, the quietness of the venue the morning of the wedding to the thrum of the dancing after the ceremony, it was a great three day event. A seriously good time was had by all. I got to see both families come together to make something wonderful happen. And we all wish Pinar and John the best in their life together. May all their dreams come true.

Along the way, I was a combination of photographer and bride’s assistant. Sure, there were a few almost-awkward moments, but they didn’t last but for a second before everything felt just right. And, I took more than a few good photos. Where are they? Well, I’m going to let Pinar publicize her selection of photographs first. Ever the photographer, she wants to be the one to reveal to the world what her wedding photos look like and I’m more than happy to give that to her.

Almost two weeks ago, I had the chance to take a Fuji X100 out for an afternoon. After using it for a day and really getting a chance to get to know it, I took the plunge and bought the camera. Since then, I’ve learned a lot more about it. As I’ve used it, I’ve sorted some things that—at least for me—smooth away some of its rough edges.

The John Hancock building on a cloudy day in Boston, Massachusetts.

First and foremost, the biggest happiness to my happiness with the camera came when I turned off image review. You can do this using the Image Disp > Off option on page 2 of the Tool/Set menu. This stops the camera from making you wait on it to take your next shot. The downside to doing this is that if you do want to immediately review your last image, you’ll have to wait until data is flushed from the buffer to the SD card. There’s no free lunch here, but if I have to choose, I’ll always put the priority on making images rather than on reviewing them.

Turning off image review also happens to be the one of the steps to enabling super-discrete shooting. The next step is to toggle the camera’s view mode so that it only displays information through the viewfinder. When you do this, the only externally visible clue that you’ve tripped the shutter is the activity light on the back of the camera blinking amber/green as data is written. A bit of gaffer tape can fix that, if you’re so inclined.

The last step is to turn off all the sounds and the focus assist lamp. You can use the camera’s silent mode—on page 1 of the Tool/Set menu—to accomplish this. Now, thanks to the X100’s very quiet leaf shutter, you’ve got a super stealthy camera that gives very little indication of when you’ve tripped the shutter. I’ve found this to be rather sublime, especially when making casual photos in social settings or out and about town.

The grid of windows on the John Hancock building reflect the sky on a cloudy day.

When it comes to focus, there are two essential things you need to know. First, if you do venture into manual focus mode, you can use the AFL button to engage an autofocus cycle—exactly like using the AF-ON button on the higher-end Nikon DSLRs. I find myself using this quite a bit when I want to pre-focus and then have the freedom to roll off a few shots in a row without waiting for autofocus between clicks.

The second thing you should do is turn on the corrected autofocus frame option on page 6 of the Tool/Set menu. When you’re using the OVF, this enables the display of more information about your focus point and helps you better manage the parallax shift in the viewfinder that occurs at closer focusing distances. Really, I don’t know why this isn’t just on by default.

The right wing and engine of N451UA as seen from seat 7A climbing out of Boston.

Finally, you really need to carry an extra battery or two with this camera. This comes up in many of the X100 reviews out there. Even forewarned, however, I found it quite surprising how many times I’ve needed to change the battery. Put it this way, if I’m shooting here and there while walking through town, I won’t make it a full day on a single battery. The other surprising thing is how little warning you get. Once you notice the battery meter come off of full charge, you might as well just change the battery. Full exhaustion is not far off.

At this point, it feels like I’ve settled in and made friends with the X100. I’ve also made peace with some of its quirks, though there are a few things that remain annoying. It’s definitly a passionate photographer’s camera, not a tool for the average Joe. And that’s just fine by me.

In the middle of a catch-up-on-everything day, I made this photograph of my assistant over lunch with the Fuji X100. Liza cooperated for just a moment and the lens—wide open at f/2—rendered the scene well. Just sharp enough where it matters and soft everywhere else.

Elizabeth Lepage at the Daily Cafe in Portland, Oregon.

This photo isn’t quite straight out of camera. Despite having the live histogram in the viewfinder, I dorked things up and underexposed by a bit over a stop. At ISO 1600, that can be a pretty bad mistake. Most cameras don’t have enough oomph in the RAW files to recover from that well. The Fuji does. I was able to push in +1.3 stops of exposure in post without much of a problem at all.

I’m on the road again. This time, I’m taking a road trip south to California from Oregon. I’m overnighting in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon and will be aiming for the northern Sierra tomorrow morning to see what I can find as I take the longish way to the Bay Area.