You are joking right? Zack Arias is actually paid to do photography work. And Ray one could easily say Steve Huff is a Leica or Sony shill. Gee let's see the $10,000 dollar camera is better than the $1300 one or well the $2500 + $1000 worth of accessories RX1 is a better camera. Well they should be. Just like I expect a Nikon D800 to be a better camera than a Canon Rebel. I don't even need a blogger to help me figure that one out.
I agree. That's why I said I thought Zach was a better photographer - I should have said MUCH better. And I agree that Steve is a shill for most of the stuff he gets for free, but I think its somewhat to his credit that he's been willing to criticize things about cameras he doesn't like. I don't think he's found anything he dislikes about the OMD, for example, but has been somewhat critical of Fuji AF and some of the Nex lenses I believe. I've never seen him criticize Leica and we'll see if the high ISO banding issue with the new M240 is a big issue or not, but he seems to be REALLY downplaying it, so that could turn out to be shill behavior. Then again, despite his complaints about the X100, he pretty much always had it coming out on top of the Leica X1 and X2, IIRC, so I give him some points for honesty. He's just wickedly enthusiastic about the stuff he likes and I can pretty much relate.
So I wasn't defending Steve. He knows what pays his bills and goes to bat to keep the money coming in. But if I ever tried to run a site like his, I'd probably be accused and plead guilty to the same stuff because I tend to like almost everything I try these days. There are exceptions, but I'll always say that's just about personal preference rather than good or bad - the RX100 isn't for me at all but its an amazing little camera in a lot of ways. So I'd probably come off as a shill too because very little current camera gear sucks at all and I can get pretty enthusiastic about anything, particularly in the relatively early days of using it.
But, as much as I like Zach's work and fully respect him as a professional photographer, he's still a Fuji shill - I don't think there's any question about it. That doesn't mean he doesn't believe what he's saying, but I'd be shocked if he's not getting paid to say it, or at least getting a lifetime supply of Fuji gear. And he says it in some pretty over the top ways. I mean, I really don't believe the X100s is the greatest camera of all time and I doubt he does either, but he's hot for it at the moment and is willing to say that about it. To me, that's pretty over the top and is pretty much what a shill does! And again, if I was as good as Zach and I really liked Fuji as much as he seems to and they were willing to pay me to shout about it, I'd probably do that too. So I don't think I'm being over-critical here. Just calling a spade a spade...
-Ray