Thursday, December 15, 2011

Claiming credit for the word ORB in connection with the Fuji X10’s rather ugly handling of specular highlights …

On 30 November, I posted an article here entitled X10 – White ORB Disease – Much ado about something!

Please click the title to satisfy yourself that I really did coin the term with respect to this issue, which came out originally as “White Disc Syndrome”, or WDS. In my article, I open by explaining that I find the term ORB cooler, so I used it. The syndrome rapidly took over the forums and people began using my term more and more often.

Well … DPReview have just put out what looks to be an excellent review of the 6 major Raw-shooting compacts, of which #2 is the X10 (order or appearance.) And in that review, they mention this issue as something that, once noticed, are impossible to ignore. But here is how they describe it:

As regards still image quality perhaps the only serious fly in the X10 ointment at present is an issue which has been discussed fairly widely among X10 owners, and relates to specular highlights. Simply put, the X10 renders clipped point highlights as disproportionally large, hard-edges 'orbs', which once you've started to notice them, are impossible to ignore.

Of course, the word “edges” in front of orbs was meant to be “edged.” But let’s not let that distract us from the attribution of accolades for coining a term that has become the common description in the press …

Hyuk hyuk hyuk … Smile