REVIEW: FUJIFILM X100VI - Is it better than you smartphone?

FUJIFILM X100VI 40.2MP APS-C with 23mm f/2 Lens

It’s been since 2019 that I’ve reviewed a Fujifilm camera and that’s a shame. I forgot how much I’ve enjoyed the Fujifilm platform. If my memory serves me correctly the original X100 was the first X series camera I ever reviewed!

While there are numerous improvements that addressed my complaints of the early x100 and x100s, the form factor and purpose remain the same – and that’s a good thing. What’s more, the support for teleconverters means that you can get a little more functionality out of this fixed length permanently attached lens – if you so desire.

Overview

You can click the photo at the top of the article to get all the specs at B&H, so I’m not going to bore you with that. I’m also going to get closer to the modern era by introducing this camera with a video overview instead of a wall of words:

It’s a super well built and designed camera that really has few faults for someone interested in this formfactor and feature set.

Real World Images

Click here to see a gallery of some of the photos I took using the X100VI during my time reviewing it. As usual, these are all straight out of the camera with one notable exception. This camera supports HEIF, but Zenfolio doesn’t provide a good way to give you direct access to them, so I had to convert all HEIF files to JPEG (when applicable). Inline images were resized by Zenfolio, but you can download full size originals of the images that Lightroom converted from HEIF to JPG for inclusion in this gallery.

Here are my thoughts on a few photos that I found worth discussing:

Here’s one of the first pics I took with this camera right out of the box with the camera default settings and before I bothered to read the manual to refresh my memory on how to set the autofocus point:

f/2 @ 23mm for 1/125 sec at ISO 1250

As you can see the bokeh is fabulous and the detail is quite good in the raindrops despite, literally pointing and shooting like a newbie to cameras would do! If you want to know what do you really get over a cell phone, here’s a good place to start looking!

I was also pleased that for ISO 1250 that it looked this good to begin with. This particular photo was the exact in-camera JPEG as I hadn’t discovered yet that it supported HEIF at this point in the review.

Here’s another impressive handheld shot at only 1/35 sec yet the gloomy day required ISO 8000! The detail and default processing was amazing:

f/5.6 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 8000

I was super impressed with the detail of the fine grain details in the center of the flower that didn’t get destroyed by in-camera noise reduction, and the default color was fantastic!

Here’s a jaw dropping example of the quality of this lens and the in-camera images event at ISO 5000:

f/6.4 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 5000

I’m very pessimistic these days about lugging cameras around as cell phones have become so good, but this definitely reminded me that I might need to spend more time with the latest cameras again as this was a very impressive result!

Here’s a pretty boring photo, but again these were camera default settings doing pure point and shoot (except I did manually set the aperture). In this case I was too lazy to lay on the ground, so I just held the camera down at the level of the slug, tapped the screen like I’d do with my phone and took several photos:

f/8 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 5000

This did pretty good knowing how I took the shot – especially with a 23mm lens not known for being a good focal length for macro photography.

On a camping trip to the North Cascades in Washington, I woke up to see this beautiful scene so I grabbed the camera and just did a quick snap before going back to bed.

f/16 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 800

This shot would be one of my first experimentations with a large f stop number to see if there have been massive improvements with diffraction, but ultimately that didn’t appear to be the case.

A little later I’d try again (below), but still the trees in the background are pretty soft for f/16:

f/16 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 500

In brighter conditions at a low ISO, the f/16 results were significantly better so the poor quality of the previous two photos may have been attributed to the fog and losses caused by noise reduction.

f/16 @ 23mm for 1/40 sec at ISO 125

By this point I had also enabled the Velvia film simulation mode which Fujifilm is famous for, and it did not disappoint. The colors were amazing for this scene – if you like vivid images. If not, there’s a wide variety of film simulations to suit your taste.

I love the Velvia film simulation in the woods, but some might be turned off with how it crushes some of the shadow areas as shown at the base of the trees in this shot:

f/11 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 2000

It also gives the water a more of an unnatural tint so some might find it better to manually process a shot like this from raw to get the best results.

Without resorting to manual settings or flash, I just took this picture of Kai (yeah, he’s grown up) the way a newbie would using default settings:

f/2.8 @ 23mm for 1/150 sec at ISO 125

This is a type of shot where modern phones with their in-camera HDR can’t be beat – the results are very disappointing, so amateurs will need a better understanding of light (e.g., turn Kai into the light and avoid harsh backlight) or they’ll be frustrated compared to what they see they can accomplish with their phone.

Case in point, here’s what a iPhone 13 Pro photo of Kai taken in the same exact spot looked like straight from the phone:

Apple iPhone 13 Pro f/2.8 @ 9mm for 1/121 sec at ISO 64

So, if your goal is to take advantage of the shadows and get a more creative lighting shot then iPhone will be frustrating, but if you want a no brainer shot that is easy and just does HDR perfectly, it’s still tough to beat the best smart phones.

Here’s another example where the lighting was much more favorable:

f/4 @ 23mm for 1/250 sec at ISO 125

Yet, despite great light and God’s soft box being out in full force, with no exposure compensation the image was rather dark. Again, compared to the iPhone where the results were much more pleasing:

Apple iPhone13 Pro f/1.5 @ 5.7mm for 1/1377 sec at ISO 50

Right after this shot I started experimenting with the eye auto focus feature and got a much better result:

f/2 @ 23mm for 1/480 sec at ISO 125

This made me suspect that the default metering was to blame, so had I changed that setting I could have got results that are actually superior to the iPhone.

This also made me think about selfies – the feature that smart phone users seem to love the most. While I was out on the lake with my wife, I took a shot of my ugly mug completely blind but using the eye auto focus feature:

f/4.5 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 160

This time, despite the sun setting with mediocre light, it did great. I’m also pleased to report that my old face didn’t destroy the camera. The Velvia mode made my skin appear a little more red than I’d like, but the rest of the scene looked great.

I was very satisfied with the quality of the lens and the super sharp details found in so many of the photos I took:

f/8 @ 23mm for 1/35 sec at ISO 500

This combined with great high ISO performance and visually satisfying colors (IMHO), made me happy to have this camera with me for my trip to the mountains.

I got a chance to give the burst mode a shot out on the ice, and while my framing was terrible, the results were good for this class of camera. Shooting on ice is tough so this is where you’ll need to experiment with the exposure compensation (+2 in this case), the white balance (florescent), and much more:

f/2.2 @ 23mm for 1/500 sec at ISO 1250

For the shots in this series I used the eye autofocus to see what it could do and I was satisfied with the results. I sucked, but the camera did its part. The iPhone was much easier to use, but I preferred the color I got using the X100 VI.

Video

While I did experiment a little bit with the video features, those who know me know that I’m not really a videographer. As a result, I can only say that it offers a wide variety of formats and settings that are certain to be superior to results found on a phone,

Viewfinder

The viewfinder on this camera supports both optical as well as digital, and that’s a good thing. The optical offers a traditional photography experience whereas the digital offers a way to see photos as they will appear on your computer or phone even in the harshest sunlight. It also provides a way to save battery when you elect to enable the EVF and turn off the rear display.

Conclusion

Once again I was reminded of the magic of Fujifilm and wasn’t disappointed one bit. Thanks to the Q menu, the touch screen and great controls, I was able to quickly dial in my favorite settings in a hurry to get the shots that I wanted. While I haven’t included many of those photos here for personal reasons, I do find this to be an extremely easy camera to use for those who understand the settings and features it offers.

I never had any battery life issues and could easily go a few days under normal usage without having to worry about recharging. When I did, I appreciated the support for USB-C to get a quick charge right in the camera.

Overall, this is a camera for photographers – not newbies – mainly because the best results will be achieved by knowing how to dial in the best settings. If you want smartphone results, use a smartphone, but if you are wanting better control over the lighting, color, shadows, and shutter speed, then this camera is going to be much more satisfying to use. If that's you, then I highly recommend this camera. 

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today, or click here see other great cameras in the Fujifilm X-Series line up.

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles

Printing Your Memories with the EPSON SureLab D870

Want to print a large number of photos blazingly fast at a price that doesn’t break the bank, yet has a professional look and feel? I did, so I wrote this review to see if the EPSON SureLab D870 lived up to its promises and my very high standards as a professional print master, print book author and Senior Program Manager of the Microsoft Windows print team for 3 years.

If you are here just for the review of this printer designed for professional photographers then you can skip the next section. If you are a photography hobbyist or someone with a lot of photos that you wish you had time to print, then you may enjoy the background story below about why I am writing this article.

Background Story

According to my photo library management software, Mylio, I have roughly 450,000 photos saved on my NAS and for my phones I have 100,000+ in Google Photos plus 22,000 in iCloud. Now out of those roughly 572k photos I’ve made about 30k public and shown my family about another 10k or so on top of that. Let’s assume I’m being too conservative though and say that the total number of photos seen by eyes other than mine is really 72,000 photos. That means I have a half million photos that have never been seen by others, and that’s from someone who is internationally known for photography AND printing!!!!

Now I will admit that because I shoot in burst mode, there’s probably plenty of photos that my eyes have only glanced at once or twice. However, this past March I had a lot of time to think as I drove from Seattle to Texas (and back) to bury my Dad. While I was at his place in a rural Texas town I found myself enjoying old family prints from the time before digital photography. It kinda hit me like a ton of bricks that I wasn’t judging these photos for their composition, sharpness, color, etc… – I was just enjoying the walk down memory lane.This reminded me of a common complaint from my wife who tells me “you have all those photos, but they are useless because I can’t even see any of them”.

Now we do enjoy plenty of photos on our Meural digital frames as well as the fantastic photo frame experience of the Google Nest Hub Max, so if you aren’t doing that I still highly recommend that. My wife enjoys printing her cell phone photos with her Epson PictureMate, and I’m a heavy user of my EPSON P800 and P5000 printers for my fine art photography work. However, there’s a decade of digital photos that live on my redundant NAS storage devices that really need to be combed through so I can print those memories to be enjoyed the good old fashioned way – by holding them in a hand – long after me and my NAS devices, digital frames and phones are long gone. More importantly, they need to be enjoyed by my kids and future grandkids (hopefully) as I have enjoyed the print photos my parents and generations before them took.

As I was driving through beautiful places like Moab, Utah during my long drive I got to thinking about how sad it would be if my family couldn’t enjoy the experience of seeing my photos because they got lost due to some digital tragedy after I was gone. Sure I have lots of digital backups, but what if those after me just simply stopped tracking all of that data and ultimately it was lost? What would be left? Just the prints – and most likely just the ones in good old fashion photo albums or printed photo books.

Now my success with this blog has given me a benefit many of you don’t have, so my cost at trying photo print services, printing photo books, archiving photos digitally, making professional prints, etc… is usually $0.00. With the cost excuse out of the way, I still have my wife complaining that she doesn’t know happened for most of the years we were dating and the first 10 years of my sons life outside of what you see on the blog (which is also what’s on our digital frames). Why is that? I have no excuses, right?

Well, it turns out that I still work 60+ hour weeks despite the fact that I’m not blogging like I used to. I’m also the father of 4 children which includes active 11 and 4 year old kids who need to spend time with Dad when he stops his workaholic days, so my free time usually begins around 10:00 PM at night (which was the start of my blogging work day years ago). Weekends end up being family time as well, so I’m lucky to get 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there to do activities that I enjoy – like editing or printing personal photos. With these constraints, I find myself getting deeper in the hole each month as I still shoot photos regularly, but I fail to find to edit or print photos that aren’t for my clients or blog. Simply put, my cherished personal photos don’t get prioritized – sound familiar?

Sure, I occasionally tell myself I’m going to do it and then I find myself falling into the second trap – I end up going through a few dozen photos and then spending all my personal time editing one or two of these photos. At this pace it would take me a few centuries to accomplish my goal of leaving prints that memorialize my wonderful life for generations that come after me.

When I had this discussion with my wife she challenged me – why don’t you just identify the best family photos and JUST PRINT THEM. She insisted – don’t waste your time editing them because its better to leave the memories behind than it is to have them lost because you couldn’t let the professional photographer inside you forgive yourself for not making professional images. She even went so far to remind me about my strict policy of publishing photos on the blog for camera and lens reviews that are 100% unedited (all are in-camera JPEG), so why couldn’t I do the same for my digital memories and “just print the damn things”.

Again, is any of this ringing a bell with you?

Well, its my own love of photo editing and desire to have my important pictures that have been a mental block keeping me from doing what I needed to do, so I made a pact with her and myself that I’d finally address this problem. My objective – to print my collection – but obviously not all 500k+ photos – just the memories through the years.

I started with my 2007 photos collection – the year I got serious about digital photography (after years of “thankfully” being a film photographer with prints – albeit very bad ones). After 3 months of pouring through – just that one years worth of photos – I identified about 460 images that seemed to be worth printing. I took 22,271 photos that year, so roughly 2% were what I’d consider “family classics” that I’d want to hand down to generations after me. They also represent just over an hour of printing by the amazing SureLab D870.

Wow – after the long battle of pouring through all of these photos – and admittedly probably spending too long in Lightroom doing minor tweaks on some of them – it took me 3 months to pinpoint the photos and a little over an hour to have a big stack of 4x6 prints to put in a photo album or at least a shoebox (guess what I actually did :). I didn’t have to then upload them to some service and fight with its UI, I didn’t have to deal with a ROES system for a service built for volume printing, I didn’t have to fight the crappy tools to build photo albums that never preserve my desired aspect ratios so I end up spending weeks to build a simply 20 page “book”.

No, this was much easier – I just dumped all of the files out as Full Size JPEG’s, went to the folder in Windows Explorer, selected all of the photos then did a right-click and Print (which launches the native Windows Photo Print Wizard). 

REVIEW: Epson SureLab D870

EPSON describes this printer as “The fast minilab printer for demanding small-format photo production”, and I’d say that actually hits the nail on the head. This six ink dye-based ink printer is optimized to print 4" x 6" prints in as fast as 8.3 seconds (using 720 x 360 dpi) and up to 430 4" x 6" prints, 275 5" x 7" prints, or 140 8" x 10" prints per hour – that’s screaming fast!!!

This means if you are a school, event or wedding portrait photographer you can print the bulk of your photos on this printer very quickly even if you have a huge amount of photos to print. What’s more, the Epson SureLab Luster Photo Inkjet roll paper and Epson UltraChrome D6r-S Light Ink Cartridges are extremely affordable, so you will not only save time but your cost per print will be peanuts compared to SureColor professional printers – yet they will have that same high-quality professional feel same in the hand to your clients. While its true you will sacrifice the archival and tonal range characteristics of the UltraChrome^® inks, it does allow you to have more competitive pricing for the time and money you’ll save with this solution. You can also still use your professional pigment ink printers for the larger prints sold at a premium price.

Simply put, if you print a lot of prints for your business – this is a no-brainer purchase that will quickly yield a return on your investment as you enjoyed with your 70-200 f/2.8 lens! However, I’m not and many of my readers aren’t either.

I decided to review this printer with a slightly different intention – does this printer make sense for the hobbyist to print their collection and can it produce results that are better than the typical low budget print services (e.g., Costco, Walgreens, Shutterfly, etc…).

How I Printed 495 Photo Print Jobs

I identified the photos I wanted to print in Lightroom and then exported out all of my pics as full-size sRGB JPEG files to the same folder. I would then select all, right click and choose print. This launches the Print Pictures wizard whereby I set the settings as shown above and then then clicked options to modify the printer driver as follows:

Don't forget to change the Color Management setting to ICM for best results!!!!

This gave perfect borderless prints, but the prints were dark. This was easily corrected by changing the Color Management to ICM with no other changes necessary in the Advanced… settings.

Like all borderless printing, if your aspect ratio of your images don’t match the output you are going to lose quite a bit of picture detail. As a result, you may choose to NOT do borderless to avoid that. If you go down that route some 4x6 prints taken from 3:2 aspect ratio source images may have a small white line on one edge of the photo but its not bothersome to me.

Sorry Mac users, I only tested on Windows 10 1909 over USB, so I have no comments about using this printer from a Mac.

I did successfully print to this printer from Lightroom and Photoshop, but this method was by far the fastest and recommended to me by my friends at EPSON. After much experimentation, I agreed and stuck to this method throughout my time with this printer.

Oh and if you are wondering why I had 495 photos – well that was just the limit I gave myself for each year worth of photos.

Actual Observed Performance

When printing 4x6 borderless prints I observed it took an average of 7.2 seconds per print which excludes the nearly 2 minutes it took for the Windows Print Wizard to create the print job and then another 4 minutes it took Windows to spool the 6GB print jobs (495 photos) I would throw at it. I excluded that as my Windows system is getting a little old so a faster performing system might be much quicker.

Conclusion

Pouring through tons of photos to identify the ones you want to print is really the big time sync. I completely underestimated how long this task would take – especially given my crazy busy work schedule. I could have been less picky when pouring through 20,000+ photos per year, but 500 pics creates a pile of photos over 6 inches tall that then need to be dealt with later (e.g., put in a photo album, or even organized in a shoebox). Sadly when printing this any when the photos pile up they don’t end up in a meaningful order, they just get mixed all together out of order. This means I ended up with a huge pile of photos that needed to be sorted once again by hand.

I definitely think the quality of the luster prints I got was very good but obviously not as good as I can get from my SureColor printers with a complete color managed workflow in Lightroom/Photoshop or with Epson Print Layout.

For a consumer who can afford a large format printer or $2000+ lens, I think this is definitely a great investment to print your own 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 or letter size prints at home – especially now during COVID-19. I’d much prefer to do my own than send them off to a service – especially with the hassle of having to upload all of the photos and configure the settings for the photos (or god forbid dealing with horrible ROES systems).

Obviously if you are the budget conscious type or one who thinks Costco / Walgreens / Shutterfly prints are just fine, then go for it. I’m not that type as I’m pretty picky and I don’t like a big pile of prints that don’t look even close to color accurate to me.

If you are a wedding, event, portrait photographer, etc.. – this is a no brainer investment. Yes, you’ll still want a SureColor printer for your large prints and the Bride’s wedding album, but for everything else these prints are going to look very professional and make your clients happy.

The only knocks I really have against this printer is that the lack of pigment means these prints aren’t going to last as long, which I care about for archival purposes. That said, I think they’ll look significant better in 40 years than the prints my parents took of me and had developed at the drug store, so really its more of an academic discussion than anything else. If a photo was so important that it needed a 200+ year archival lifespan then I’d print it on the SureColor anyway – and it won’t be hundreds of prints!

So, if you can afford it – get it. Its a big upfront investment that will pay off quickly thanks to super inexpensive ink and paper. The performance will give you back valuable time and you'll avoid being the most hated family member for sucking all your household bandwidth uploading photos to print services.

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today.

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• Printing Series 
• Epson Legacy Papers Reviews & Tutorials
• Epson SureColor P800 Review
• Epson SureColor P5000 Preview
• Epson Perfection V850 Pro Scanner

Enjoy these and more on the Reviews tab as well as Ron's Recommendations.

Sales Tax Reimbursement with Payboo

Don’t forget, with the B&H Payboo card most buyers can get the sales tax reimbursed. Click here to learn more.

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

REVIEW: Peak Design Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod

Peak Design Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod

Years ago I did my tripod recommendations and I settled on a Gitzo GT1541 with a RRS BH-55 head. I also did a tripod head comparison where I switched from the RSS to the Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 sp (Single Pan) head as my primary ball head of choice.

During some end of year business spending a few years back I also picked up a Gitzo GT2531EX to simplify the process of shooting macros, but the reality is that I usually preferred to the GT1541 so it was used more in the studio than in the field.

All told I probably spent over $2000 for the two complete carbon fiber tripods and ball heads that I still own to this day. With as little as 30 minutes with the Peak Design Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod I found myself wanting to sell all four of them (seriously, make me an offer) so can get this awesome tripod and head combo!

Hands On Thoughts

So lightweight and practical I actually found myself overusing it!

Right up front what I loved the most about this tripod was its lightweight but highly usable built-in ball head design. It addresses the bulkiness challenges I deal with for both my existing ball head and tripod combos I own today, without losing any functionality that I enjoy today. I especially enjoyed the speed and ease at which I could attach and detach my camera with complete confidence.

What surprised me even more was just how well this tripod is built – every detail and texture seems to be meticulously thought about so it makes you feel like Apple designed it. Just take a look at how nice the fast to operate (compared to Gitzo) angle adjustments are below:

Outstanding design and build quality

That knob shown on the right is for height adjustment of the center column, and it has a wonderful soft tactile feel that just screams quality. You can also see the cool looking carbon fiber pattern legs in the shot below.

Sexy Carbon Fiber legs with no pinch height adjustment

Of course pretty means nothing if it doesn’t work well, so I put this camera to use right away with a Sony a7R IV with a Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS Lens and it never once had any stability issues. I took shots for as long as 25 seconds in portrait orientation as shown below and never did an ounce of shake get introduced into the shot both indoors and outdoors – even with my kids running around me while I was shooting.

Rock solid stability even in portrait orientation

Here’s the result of the shot taken above:

Sony a7R IV with 24-105mm for f/16 @ 36mm for 6 sec at ISO 100

I also found the useful head almost flawless. My only real gripe was the bubble level was very hard to see as shown below, but if your camera has a level (as the one I was reviewing did) then its not really a big deal. Here’s an overhead view of the head:

My biggest complaint about the head is that the level bubble is hard to see

I also agree with other reviewers that the plate for the camera needs support for screwing on with a coin vs requiring a tool which I lost about three times during my review – the last time for good as shown below in the slot where the $20 USD tool once lived:

My recommendation is to NOT leave this plastic mount with the toolkit attached to the tripod as the odds are high you’ll lose it.

Below is a photo that shows the universal plate installed, although the lack of a metal lip does mean you have to re-tighten it time to time to avoid drift when shooting in portrait orientation:

Arca Compatible Standard Plate fits all cameras and only cost $20

It Does Everything Very Well

This thing can almost get to table top size as well as full size

My most heavily used accessory is my Leica Tabletop Tripod & Large Ball Head combo. I literally don’t go anywhere without it, but while I had this tripod out on loan it never left my bag. I enjoyed that I could use this one as a slightly larger but still super low table top tripod (as I did in this random shot when I first unboxed it) as shown above.

Front heavy lenses like the one shown above were no issue for this very solid tripod and ball head combo. I never had any issues with drifting for long exposures either – something that frustrated me with my Really Right Stuff BH-55.

Even my big Canon 1DX Mark II with the 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM lens was no problem for this tripod in portrait mode, but L-Brackets are available for those who get stressed seeing this setup.

Hands On Video

I very rarely do hands on videos, but this tripod just begged for it. Sadly when I got out to shoot I had an equipment failure with my mic so my apologies for using the built-in mic of the iPhone XS Pro with rushing water in the background:

Video Review
(sorry for the bad audio, my remote mic broke)

How Low Can It Go?

It really can go lower then your mama's ever seen it in her life time

If Ludacris was a photographer, he’d approve of this tripod for its ability to get the low shots as shown in these two iPhone snaps I took while out shooting with this tripod.

Even portrait orientation I never would've imagined did not even in my right mind

See the photo above to compare to see how low this tripod starts at compared to my Gitzo GT1541 with a Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 head mounted on it. Yet even when you put both at max height, its not much shorter as shown below:

The actual tripod is only 2.5 inches taller but the big Arca head on the Gitzo adds another 4 inches of shooting height.

Click here to see a full view of both side by side iPhone snapshot if you are interested.

Easy To Carry Around All Day Long

Because my old tripod was so big I used to carry it on the outside of my bag, but when I did that with this tripod it seemed so unnecessary as shown above. As a result, I started putting it inside my back when I could which was very convenient – especially when sitting down with my bag on my back.

This is a really big deal when you are travelling or hiking with a bag on your back all day, so to say I was excited about this is an understatement.

But Wait There’s More – Mobile Phone Support!

One of the coolest, yet simplest features of this tripod is the fact that the center stalk hook actually hides a cell phone attachment in it. It’s so small and subtle that I almost missed this wonderful feature.

An excellent cell phone tripod mount included and nicely hidden in the center stalk

This is the best cell phone tripod I've ever used

Conclusion

My New Favorite Tripod In Its Cool Box

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I love this tripod. Yes, its expensive but if you consider the fact that it has a ball head included then its actually about $500 USD cheaper than most recommended carbon fiber tripod and head combos.

If your budget is tight and you don’t mind an extra half pound of weight and 20% less stability then you can save $200 USD (at the time this article was written) and get the aluminum version. At that point its cheaper than the average ball head and you get the head, mounting plate (again which usually costs extra), a great mobile camera mount, and carrying case.

Simply put, this is is the best tripod and head combo I have ever seen so I highly recommend it.

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today at B&H.

You can also see some cool videos and more details about the carbon fiber and aluminum models on the Peak Design website.

Other articles you may enjoy

Enjoy more reviews on the Reviews tab as well as Ron's Recommendations.

Sales Tax Reimbursement with Payboo

Don’t forget, with the B&H Payboo card most buyers can get the sales tax reimbursed. Click here to learn more.

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

COMPARISON: Topaz GigaPixel AI vs ON1 Resize vs Photoshop

\We’ve all seen the ads that show incredible resizing that seems to recover tiny photos into something better than before, but honestly I don’t believe ads like that. The skeptic in me sees source images that appear to be blurred with heavily sharpened after images which don’t tell the tale of what really happened. It makes no sense to me how an image could get better on upsizing, but I do see how upsizing could improve to get closer to the original source image by with improved algorithms that understand what data is lost on downsizing.

To help separate fact from fiction, I decided to take an engineering approach to do an analysis of how the resizing tools I have at my disposal really perform. To do this I started with an original image at full size, then created scaled down versions at 50 percent and 25 percent in Photoshop. I then took these smaller files and upsized them at 2x and 4x to see how they compared with their original file to better understand what was lost.

Methodology

Photoshop CC 2020 21.1.2  Save for Web Settings

I took the full-size original JPEG’s and downsized them in Photoshop using the Save for Web (Legacy) feature with the settings shown in the above screen shot with the percentage set to 50% and 25% using Bicubic Sharpener. Its been my experience that this technique works best for downsizing in Photoshop, but your results might vary if you chose a different technique. To avoid hard to interpret data, I intentionally avoided using Photoshop and its “auto” option as then I’d end up with Forrest Gump downsizing.

I then passed the 25 percent version into the software below for a 4x upsizing and the 50 percent version for a 2x upsizing and compared these results against the original. If you have a better way, then stop reading and go for it. The remainder of this article is for those who agree with this approach and are curious about the results / my findings.

A Little Background Info

I’ve been writing about Topaz Labs products since July 2009 and ON1 (then onOne) since PhotoTools 1.0 in 2008. As a side note, onOne acquired Genuine Fractals in 2005 for what many still think is the best resizing software ever built.

I’ve also been using Photoshop since version 6.0 in 2000, so I know these products well and have relied on them for quite some time. That said, advancements in resizing don’t happen very often so my last article on the subject was in 2013 when onOne Perfect Resize 7.5 came out. In that article I also compared Lightroom and Alien Skin BlowUp, but I’ve long abandoned both for resizing when making prints.

I will say that Photoshop CC 2018 drastically improved its resizing, but I didn’t write about it since I still thought that ON1 still had the best product on the market. However, curiosity did get the better of me so I decided to do a software comparison for the first time in years to satisfy my need to know which is best.

Topaz Gigapixel 4.7.1

Topaz Gigapixel 4.7.1 Batch Processing UX with Preview

This product is optimized for batch processing of high quality resizing, so I really appreciated the clean UX and ability to customize each line item separately vs a batch where all must be done the same exact way. You can also multi-select to change some or all of the items in the batch to the same settings.

Simply put, this is how every UX should be for batch processing – I LOVE IT!

My biggest gripe is that the preview rendering is painfully slow so I turn it off normally. However, it is nice if you want an idea of what kind of results you are going to get in advance on a particular region of your image.

Topaz Gigapixel 4.7.1 Batch Processing UX while running
I love how it shows processing time in minutes and seconds

After you’ve set up your batch processing, go to bed or go watch a movie – its going to be busy for a while!

Yeah, Gigapixel AI does a great job but at a huge cost – its painfully slow. Granted my Windows photo editing system isn’t a $53,799+ USD Apple Mac Pro (at the time of this writing) which certainly will be much faster, but my system still performs better than most i5 based laptops on the market today. It also enjoys 32 GB of RAM and dual M.2 SSD’s, so this is the first product I’ve used on that really made me wait.

Gigapixel 4.4.2 vs 4.7.1 Performance Analysis

Topaz Gigapixel AI 4.4.2 Single Image Resize UX 

When I first started doing this test I was using Gigapixel AI 4.4.2, but then I upgraded and re-ran my tests using 4.7.1. I noticed a 62% increase in performance of version 4.7.1 on the 2x upsizing of the 50 percent files and a 46% increase in the 4x upsizing of the 25 percent files. As a result, I can definitely say that Gigapixel AI 4.x users should upgrade to 4.7.1 or later for a significant increase in performance. The Canon 5Ds file sizes did increase to 20% larger for the 25 percent file and 7% for the 50 percent file when using 4.7.1 vs 4.4.2, but the quality of the 50 percent version seemed identical. The 25 percent version seemed slightly better with the 4..4.2 version, but only when pixel peeping at 100%.and not enough for me to give up the performance improvement of the newer version.

My conclusion is you should definitely upgrade to the latest version as the time savings are significant without a measurable Impact in quality.  To see for yourself, view the 4.4.2 version of the files in the gallery against the original and the scale-2.00x & scale-4.00x versions created in 4.7.1.

ON1 Photo RAW 2020.1 Resize Feature

Resize is built into the ON1 Photo RAW UX,
but sadly its batch mode shown here doesn't support percentage scaling

While it was formerly a separate product, ON1 has incorporated resize as a feature in its standalone UX for quite some time. You can also access it directly in Photoshop as a nicely integrated feature via File | Automate | ON1 Resize 2020 which is my preferred way to use it. The UX is simple and they have some nice presets for resize.

My favorite feature is its gallery wrap feature which is a must have if you do that type of work, but sadly its not even an option in Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI.

Performance wise its pretty close to on par with the performance of Photoshop itself, so for the past decade its been my go to solution for resizing images prior to printing.

Overall Resize Performance

Times shown for Gigapixel are in minutes and seconds
All others were 0 minutes and the seconds value shown after the first semicolon

As I would have suspected, Photoshop is the fastest followed by ON1. That said, I think if you were working natively in ON1 as your end to end workflow then ON1 might be the fastest, or at least comparable to Photoshop.

Yes, Topaz Gigapixel is painfully slow despite making significant improvements in the current release. However, its batch processing support is excellent – by far the best of the pack – so you could realistically set up a bunch of files to convert and kick off the job before you go to bed and all files would be resized by the morning. Photoshop and ON1 don’t have the luxury if your target destination is JPEG and you want to resize by percentage.

Overall File Size Changes

This is stats for nerds who want to see how big the files are after the resize compared to the original. The Original column are the sizes of the the source file then the sizes saved to disk after being downsized in Photoshop.

Changes in File Sizes

All percentages shown are relative size to the original for each section. From a file size standpoint, ON1 gets the closest to the original size which is what I’d consider the best case scenario. Gigapixel has the most data, but that might be able to get reclaimed by re-saving the file in Photoshop as JPEG compression will reduce file sizes on each save.

Image Quality

This section briefly discusses my findings for 2x and 4x resizes using a series of 5 test images.

5Ds

Canon 5Ds using the 24-70 f/2.8L II lens
1/125 sec at f/9.0, ISO 100, 70mm

This image taken with a 50.6 megapixel camera presents a huge challenge thanks to the gradient in the background as well as the details in the jacket, the blown out white spot on the shirt and the detail in the hair and iris of the blue eyes.

4x Resize

Click to see how the 4x upsize from Gigapixel destroys Photoshop

This was probably the worst performance for Photoshop of all of the tests done. To be fair, I didn’t try every interpolation method it offers so Photoshop performance could probably be improved with a more patient comparison of all of the methods it offers. That said, Gigapixel is on par with the original even when doing a 4x upsizing.

2x Resize

Gigapixel was clearly the best, but in this case Photoshop and ON1 were about the same and did an excellent job. Neither was as good as Gigapixel, but close enough that I wouldn’t leave Photoshop to use Gigapixel unless my target output was a large print.

Focus Bracket Flower

This image was made from a focus stack made with the Fujifilm GFX 50s at f/11 @ 64mm for 1/100 sec at ISO 100 using fifty-eight 1 step frames! The pollen detail and shadow details are impressive so its a great image to see how much gets lost and restored after resizing.

4x Resize

Click to see how the 4x upsize from Gigapixel is almost as good as the original!

Like the 5Ds image, I thought the Gigapixel 4x upsize was mistaken for the 2x upsize because the quality was so good that it nearly matched the original. I had memories of Blade Runner when doing this comparison, so it made me realize the some things are worth the wait if the best details are necessary.

Photoshop didn’t do very well and ON1 disappointed me quite a bit here.

2x Resize

Gigapixel was amazing with the upsize – its additional sharpening made it look better than the original to me! Photoshop came in last of the pack, but not bad by any means.

Landscape

Fujifilm GFX 50s using GF32-64mm F4 LM WR lens
f/10 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100, 64mm

Probably the weakest image of the bunch, I included this one due to the bokeh in the background and all of the details in the moss. I was also curious to see what would happen to the blown highlights and crushed blacks after resizing as those are typically the places that resizing does a horrible job.

4x Resize

ON1 looked embarrassingly bad against Gigapixel and was even beat by Photoshop

This proved to be the toughest test for ON1 as it was definitely worse than Photoshop. For a moment, I thought I had accidentally run Topaz Labs Simplify on ON1 as all the detail left the bark and green branch as shown above. Even Photoshop retained more detail, so this was a huge surprise for me.

2x Resize

This were much better here where Gigapixel was the best, but ON1 still had an advantage over Photoshop.

Studio

Fujifilm GFX 50s using GF32-64mm F4 LM WR lens
1/125 sec at f/10, ISO 100, 64mm

This image has the advantage of a solid white background so in theory there shouldn’t be new background artifacts introduced, but it has the challenge of a blue eye and a suit and tie with a challenging pattern.

4x Resize

Gigapixel had the best performance on the eye
(easier to see the advantage when clicking the link above)

ON1 had the worst performance on the eye by far, but the rest of the image was good. Next up was Photoshop which did a decent job, but the image above is misleading until you click it to view it at full size as the details in the eyelashes and iris are clearly better in the Gigapixel image.

Gigapixel had a flaw in the jacket when face refinement was turned ON, but its fixable

One disappointing discovery is that Gigapixel did have a flaw on one spot of the jacket, but everything else looked good. This was caused by me turning on Face Refinement for this file only AND it only happened on the 4x upsizing – not the 2x. When I ran it again with Face Refinement turned OFF the problem didn’t happen. Since there is a workaround and this is a pattern that was easily corrected in Photoshop using content aware healing, I didn’t consider it a huge issue. However, it is something to look out for when resizing when using the Face Refinement feature.

2x Resize

All were excellent, but Gigapixel had a little extra sharpening that made it better than the original. Not an obnoxious amount, but enough to make me just say wow. Next up was ON1 which had an almost perfect match to the original but was just a tiny bit softer on the eye lashes. Photoshop did a good job but it was definitely the worst of the bunch.

Bookshelf

Sony a7R III  using the Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS lens
15.0 sec at f/8.0, ISO 100

The Sony a7R III has a high quality sensor but the lowest megapixels in this lineup with only 24.2 mp. This is offset by is phenomenal dynamic range and arguably the sharpest lens in this lineup, The bookshelf shot is my long-standing test of dynamic range and performance win the shadows and specular highlights. There’s a little distortion on the left side of the image caused by my sensor not being 100% perpendicular to the bookshelf, but its still a good source image for resizing thanks to the texture details, highlights on the books, patterns in the spine of the blue strip poker book and the wood in the shadows.

4x Resize

Gigapixel was strong, but ON1 looked bad for text and paper detail
Please click to view a larger version

Once again, Photoshop was stronger than ON1 because its text anti-aliasing algorithm was much stronger (which makes sense given their history in typography). However, Gigapixel really blew me away in how well it brought not only the text back but the details of the pages of the spiral bound book as shown above.

2x Resize

Once again, standard results – Gigapixel made the original look soft, ON1 did a good job and Photoshop was respectable but could benefit from additional sharpening.

Overall Image Quality Results

To help quantify my findings I created this report card. I gave a score of 10 to images that were hard to distinguish from the original (or in some cases better than the original), a 9 to an image that was excellent with only a minor softness that could easily be fixed with sharpening. 8 is pretty close to 9 but again, softer  – but most likely corrected with unsharp mask. Anything below 8 is what I’d consider unacceptable results that I would only use for scenarios I don’t care about (e.g., Facebook posts).

I did use the Face Refinement feature for the Gigapixel Studio shot, but I included a version with it turned off to address the only major artifact I found in all of my testing. Since this was an easy workaround, and both images with and without were excellent, I didn’t deduct points for the final result. I could have arguably given it a 7 with face refinement on, but it was such an easy one second fix with content aware patch or healing (and there was a workaround to eliminate it) I focused on the overall result which was easily the best in class.

Overall Photoshop did a good job and for the upsizing I chose the Auto interpolation option as that’s how I typically use it in real life. With a little effort and sharpening some of those numbers could probably get a 1 point boost, but I got tired of resizing images as I quickly discovered what the best product was.

See for yourself

CLICK HERE to download and pixel peep the images yourself. You can review the images for as long as your browser is open and on this review, but you should delete all downloaded images after navigating away from this article.

ALL images are copyright Ron Martinsen – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may not print, edit, upload, relink, modify or otherwise use any of the images in this article or in the gallery without an ink on paper signed contract with Ron Martinsen.

My recommendation is to use Lightroom to pixel peep as I’ve done here in this video:

Conclusion

If your objective is the best quality and you aren’t doing gallery wraps, then Topaz Gigapixel AI is without question the product you want to use. Yes, its painfully slow, but its results are worth the wait.

No, I don’t think its upsizing isn’t as amazing as the ads might suggest, it is the real deal and worth at least using the trial version to see for yourself.

ON1 Photo RAW 2020 has many reasons besides resize to own it, and it is a good overall alternative for those who don’t wish to own Adobe products. As a result, if you’ve got it then I think for most scenarios its good enough – and its fast. It also has a wonderful gallery wrap feature, so I’ll probably continue to use it for its speed.

Not every resize needs to be pixel peeper perfect, so in those cases (which is most common for me), I’ll probably continue to use Photoshop (or Lightroom Export resizing). However, this reminds me that when quality matters that its worth the time for me to collect my images and send them over to Topaz Gigapixel before I go to bed.

Where to Buy?

CLICK HERE to learn more, use the free trial or buy Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI today. Use the RONMART discount coupon code when you check out to save 15%!

CLICK HERE to learn more,  use the free trial or buy ON1 Photo RAW 2020 today. Use the coupon code MART20 to get a 20% discount.

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• Perfect Resize 7.5 vs Photoshop, Lightroom & Alien Skin BlowUp 
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• Fujifilm GFX 50s Review
• Sony A7R III Review
• Canon 5Ds Review
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• NEC PA322UHD 4k for Pro Photo & Video Editing

Enjoy these and more on the Reviews tab as well as Ron's Recommendations.

 

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.