Photokina 2012

 

 

Our Sony shooting experience this week included the new Sony NEX-6 compact system camera. And IR founder and publisher Dave Etchell just posted a new gallery of sample shots to show off what the NEX-6 can do.

Here's what Dave said about his experiences with the Sony NEX-6 so far: "You could say that Sony set out...

 

 

Update: Added more outdoor shots, some low-light
Dave Etchells is still out in California shooting with Sony's latest cameras, and he just uploaded sample full-resolution images from the Sony Alpha A99. Dave says that the company's new 24.3-megapixel, full-frame DSLR is "another great camera, very responsive, and...

 

 

Dave Etchells is out in San Francisco shooting with the amazing full-frame 24.3-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot RX1 and we've managed to post a few of his Gallery images. He's having a great time with the Sony RX1: "It's an absolute joy to shoot with. I can't believe how compact it is for a full-frame digital camera,"...

 

 

Fancy picking up a new digital camera or camcorder, but don't want to spend a lot of money? A bevy of new products from Sakar International Inc. are vying for your attention, and not a one costs more than US$200.

Every model in the group has one other thing in common--although it's made by Sakar, it's...

 

 

Planning on buying an action camera any time soon? The number of options available to you--and the number of competitors to the venerable GoPro--are continuing to increase. First JVC and then Sony muscled in on the GoPro's turf, and now Polaroid wants a piece of the action too. (Or at least, C&A Marketing...

 

 

Many of us have been drooling over the new compact, full-frame Sony RX1 that was announced earlier this month. And while the specs are indeed impressive -- 24.3 megapixel fullf-frame sensor, 35mm fixed Carl Zeiss f/2.0 lens, nearly pocketable size -- what we've been really waiting for are some sample photographs...

 

 

During Photokina 2012, Imaging Resource's founder and publisher Dave Etchells interviewed five senior executives from Panasonic about the company's latest technologies and cameras, especially the newly released, single-lens mirrorless GH3.

The panel of executives from Panasonic Corporation included:

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Mr. Haruo Ogawa
President
Olympus Imaging Division

Olympus has been in the news recently for a lot of different reasons -- some good (the popularity and positive reviews of its new cameras, in particular the OM-D E-M5), some bad (financial scandal) and some very interesting (Sony's rumored new...

 

 

Dave Etchells had a chance to sit down with senior product planning and marketing executives from Fujifilm at Photokina 2012. He came away with a lot of insight about Fujifilm's development process, especially the X-Trans sensor, and some nice tech tidbits about the inner workings of the X-Pro1 and the new X-E1...

 

Justin Stailey, Product Specialist, M-System at Leica Camera Inc.

Leica made a splash as Photokina 2012 by introducing five new cameras, headlined by the Leica M, M-E and S. But it wasn't merely alphabet soup -- a lot of thought and technological innovation went into these new releases. Our founder and publisher...

 

John Carlson, Senior Manager of Sales and Marketing, Pentax Ricoh Imaging Americas Corp.

During the Photokina show, Dave Etchells sat down with Pentax representatives from both the American and European continents to talk about future directions for the company's cameras. Topics for discussion included the...

 

Kazuto Yamaki, Chief Executive Officer, Sigma Corp.

IR's Dave Etchells totally geeked out over Sigma's announcements at Photokina 2012, calling many of them firsts for the camera industry. And we're not only talking about their new products, but also their ground-breaking approach to quality control and lens...

 

Mark Weir, Senior Manager of Technology and Marketing at Sony Electronics Inc.

Imaging Resource Founder and Publisher Dave Etchells talked with Mark Weir, Senior Manager of Technology and Marketing for Sony Electronics Inc., at Photokina 2012. Weir discussed the attention-grabbing RX1 full-frame compact camera, as...

 

Mike Owen, Professional Image Marketing Manager at Canon Europe Ltd.

Imaging Resource Founder and Publisher Dave Etchells caught up with Mike Owen, Professional Image Marketing Manager for Canon Europe Ltd., at Photokina 2012. Owen discussed the technical tradeoffs Canon had to make in developing the 6D, the...

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the Leica M digital camera is here, and it is not your Daddy's rangefinder! After the first significant overhaul in three years, Leica's latest M-system camera sports a number of significant new features that are quite a departure from the Leicas of days gone by. The Leica M (Typ 240)...

 

 

Think quickly! How much would you pay to have a USB port and an extra switch on your Leica digital camera? Did you say US$1,500 or more? If so, then you can stop reading this preview: the German camera legend would rather you looked at our review of their M9 and M9-P instead.

If, though, you're the kind of...

 

 

For quite a few years now, Germany's Leica Camera AG and Japan's Panasonic have had a partnership in the consumer camera market. Leica supplies its know-how regarding the lenses, while Panasonic provides the brains of the camera behind the lens. The cameras appear first under Panasonic's Lumix compact camera...

 

 

Earlier this year, we previewed the Panasonic LX7, one of a number of products vying for the title of top pocket digital camera. Although we've yet to complete a full review we're rather optimistic about its prospects. Our initial testing suggested a fairly significant step forward from the earlier LX5...

 

 

Though Nikon just last week announced the much-awaited "bargain" full-frame D600, you can buy one right now and have it in your hands as early as tomorrow.

Amazon lists the new DSLR as in stock, in both  body-only  or kit version with the Nikkor AF-S 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR kit lens for a few dollars under list...

If you could ask a product manager at any camera company any question you wanted, what would it be?

We landed today in Cologne, Germany, for what's shaping up to be the biggest Photokina in recent memory. Full-frame goes mainstream, video and still imaging continue their courtship, while camera manufacturers continue to experiment with wifi and in-camera apps. Who said...

 

 

Samsung has added significant creative flexibility to its NX-series of compact interchangeable lens cameras by introducing at Photokina a new ultra-wide-angle zoom lens and a new mid-telephoto prime lens. With these two additions, the company now has 11 professional-caliber options within its NX Lens family....

 

 

Three nuggets of news came from Sigma at Photokina today, as the company announced it has redefined its lineup of interchangeable lenses into three categories, introduced three new lenses -- one for each new category -- and shared how the company is stepping up its lens testing and quality control processes.

The...

 

 

Panasonic's GH series cameras have had video recording as their main focus from day one. The GH1 saw good pickup among amateur video enthusiasts, and with the GH2, quite a few pros began using them as inexpensive alternatives to full-frame SLRs. This was aided by the GH2's excellent video quality, as well as...

 

 

Tiny and feature-rich as they were, Olympus saw fit to revamp their two smallest Pen cameras just fifteen months after their introduction. The higher-end model, the Olympus Pen E-PL5, is still about the same size, but it gains a few features from both the E-P3 and the OM-D E-M5, both of which have some cool...

 

 

Revamping their two smallest Pen cameras just fifteen months after their introduction, Olympus chose to give their least expensive model--the Olympus E-PM2--the combined look of the original E-PL1, with the fixed grip of the original E-P1. It's fun to see their designers playing with the digital Pen heritage...

 

 

Special care was taken to differentiate the Olympus Stylus XZ-2--yes, the Stylus brandname has been resurrected--from a close competitor, the Panasonic LX5/LX7. The surprising result is that the camera body grew a bit, both in size and price. As I've noticed from their other recent cameras, Olympus is still...

 

 

After last week's announcement of the affordable full-frame Nikon D600 digital SLR, it's no surprise to see the Canon EOS 6D finally emerge from behind the curtain of rumor and conjecture. The new Canon 6D is another camera designed to appeal to the photographer who wants to step up to full-frame but has...

 

 

With their latest enthusiast powerhouse camera, Canon leapfrogged the G13 and G14 names for the superstitious among us, landing instead on PowerShot G15. Luckily, this jump wasn't in name only. The Canon G15 boasts a bevy of advanced technologies, especially the 28mm wide-angle 5x zoom lens which starts out at a...

 

 

In the ever-increasing battle for the biggest, baddest megazoom on the planet, Canon has fired its latest salvo with the PowerShot SX50 HS. This digital camera's 50x optical zoom delivers the equivalent of 24-1,200mm range from a 24mm wide-angle lens, and boasts several improvements over the PowerShot SX40 HS, an...

 

 

With a look more reminiscent of the S95, the Canon PowerShot S110 deletes the grip of last year's popular predecessor, the S100, while adding very little to the rest of the camera. But there's one major new feature that proves the Canon PowerShot S110 is more than just refinement: Built-in WiFi. It makes perfect...

 

 

Fujifilm, a recent leader in classic camera designs, brings even more retro into its X-series of digital cameras with the new Fuji XF1. And we're not just talking about the attractive throwback look, complete with your choice of three classic (albeit synthetic) leather colors wrapped around its aluminum body...

 

 

Imaging Resource senior editor Shawn Barnett is finally back at IR HQ and he brought the Nikon D600 with him, so we rushed this hot DSLR into the lab right away. Luke's been working feverishly all day to bring you as many D600 lab shots as he could, and we're happy to report the fruits of his labor have now...

 

 

(UPDATED with daylight images!) Sleep's sometimes overrated, if you ask us camera nuts. While the rest of North America was in bed, Imaging Resource senior editor Shawn Barnett pounded the streets of Manhattan, just-announced full-frame Nikon D600 digital SLR in-hand.

Shawn grabbed us an extensive raft of...

 

 

Signaling the dawn of the affordable full-frame digital SLR camera, the Nikon D600 features a 24.3-megapixel FX CMOS sensor, an optical viewfinder with 100% coverage, a 3.2-inch 921K-dot LCD, and dual SD card slots for US$2,100, body-only. It's true, $2,100 isn't exactly cheap, but it's more affordable than...

 

 

If you're shooting a Nikon 1-series camera, your options for first-party prime lenses just tripled: the company has revealed a brand-new 1-mount lens option in the runup to the Photokina tradeshow.

The new 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 is the brightest option available from Nikon for its nascent mount, which...

 

 

The Sony Alpha NEX-6 is the Sony I've been waiting for. Not just the camera, but the company. They are back in fighting form, and what's more they seem to be having fun. Sony wasn't sure the NEX-7 would be quite the smash hit it clearly was, even at its higher price point, but that smash hit told them there was a...

 

 

Only a handful of cameras have made me want to utter expletives of happy astonishment. "Holy Moly, they finally did it!" I thought (paraphrased). Yes, it's real: Sony has shoehorned a full 35mm-sized sensor with a fairly fast 35mm prime lens into a nearly pocket-sized camera called the Sony Cyber-shot RX1....

 

 

Though Sony already had an impressive full-frame camera, the company completely rethought their flagship SLR with the introduction of the Sony Alpha SLT-A99. Instead of forging new classic design as the A900 did, the Sony A99 builds on the design of the speedy A77, a more modern look with sloping shoulders...

 

 

Sony couldn't introduce two new, exciting interchangeable lens cameras without introducing some serious glass to go with them. The just-announced Sony Alpha A99 seems a perfect match for a bright new super-telephoto fixed lens, while the Sony NEX-6--along with the company's other E-mount cameras--gets a...

 

 

Excited by the new cameras Pentax announced today, and trying to decide what lens to couple them with? Or perhaps you're already a Pentaxian, and you want to add some new glass to your camera bag? Either way, the company has new options for you today, no matter which Pentax mount you're shooting.

Starting...