News entries for April, 2016

 

 

At long last, 300mm zoom reach is now available for Sony FE shooters around the world in the form of the Sony FE 70-300mm G OSS f/4.5-5.6 lens. We're in the middle of our full technical review of this lens for you now, but I couldn't resist sneaking it out for a weekend excursion and posting some initial gallery...

 

 

The weekend is here once more, and Firmware Friday just squeaks in under the wire with news of new updates from Leica, Nikon and Sony. In all, seven cameras receive new features or bug fixes this week, all of them interchangeable-lens models.

Sony A7R II and A7S II

We'll start with Sony this time around,...

 

 

Some months back, I kicked off my review of the Pentax K-3 II with a daytime shoot in historic Jonesborough, Tennessee, including an in-depth look at its clever detail-boosting Pixel Shift Resolution function. At the time, I'd intended to follow up with the second part of my field test in fairly short order, but...

 

 

Debuting ahead of 2014's photokina tradeshow, the diminutive Panasonic 35-100mm f/4-5.6 is the perfect companion to the appropriately tony GM1 and GM5 mirrorless cameras and their similarly compact 12-32mm retractable kit lens. Recently making its way through our testing lab, this tiny 70-200mm-eq. telephoto zoom...

Mathieu Stern recently received an E-mount version of Meyer Optik Görlitz's new 100mm f/2.8 Trioplan lens to review. This lens was successfully backed on Kickstarter and will be available to backers in June 2016 for just under $1,600 USD (around 1,400 Euros). After the lens is released, the price will increase by just over $100 (100 Euros).

 

 

Following recording artist, producer and actor Prince's untimely death on April 21st, there was an outpouring of emotions in the media and across the internet. Not surprisingly, a lot of fans and media outlets shared images and videos, many of these perhaps without permission of the rights holders.

Marc Silber's "Advancing Your Photography" YouTube channel recently had National Geographic photographer Bob Holmes on to discuss lighting and capturing images in the National Geographic style.

"Knowing light is absolutely critical," says Holmes, "I'm always looking at light. Always." You have to be consciously thinking about light all of...

 

 

If you're keenly waiting the arrival of your preordered Pentax K-1 or Sony RX10 III -- or you're just hoping to be able to process raw files from our reviews so you can decide whether to buy one -- then there's good news for you from Adobe this week. It's just released updates to both Adobe Photoshop...

 

 

If you thought Google Glass was frightening, you may want to don your peril-sensitive sunglasses for this story: The Thought Police may soon get to take another step along the road from the pages of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" to becoming reality, should a just-published...

You've been looking forward to receiving your brand-new filter and it's finally arrived. You open up the package and start to screw it on to your lens. But then the unthinkable happens, you drop it and it cracks. Or perhaps you screw it on fine, but a few weeks later it is shattered when your camera gets an accidental knock.

Normally you...

Wake up with IR! Here's today's cup of Caffeine Prioirity...

Unsurprisingly, Nikon's new flagship D5 DSLR has a wealth of new features. One that might have flown under the radar during the announcement event in January is the new Automatic AF fine-tune feature.

Seasoned DSLR users have probably experienced issues with front or backfocus on...

 

 

Hot on the heels of our recent Field Test comes our in-depth image quality comparison and print quality analysis for the new mid-grade, enthusiast-class Canon 80D. Sporting an all-new 24-megapixel APS-C sensor and faster DIGIC 6 image processor, the 80D's imaging pipeline is a nice step up from the 20MP Canon 70D...

 

 

Just to be clear from the get-go for anyone who's not yet looked into this camera, the Sony RX10 III is not a replacement of the venerable RX10 II released last summer. According to Sony, that model is still current, and frankly the two are not quite the same animal. They're more like brothers... one a...

 

 

Look out, Adobe, DxO and Phase One: There's a new kid on the raw processing block -- or at least, there will be this fall -- and it promises to offer a very strong challenge to Lightroom, Optics Pro and Capture One indeed!

Just announced by the folks at ON1 Inc., the new ON1 Photo Raw is perhaps the most...

Most images are captured in a split second, processed for maybe a few minutes or so, if at all, and then that's the end of it. But for commercial photographer Levon Biss, his new Microsculpture series relies on a very different and much more intricate process.

By using a microscope lens, Biss captures between 8,000 and 10,000 images of a...

The Sony A6000 was a very popular camera indeed; the best-selling interchangeable lens camera over $600 and the best-selling mirrorless camera. The Sony A6300 is a very good follow-up to the A6000, besting its predecessor in basically every way.

During my field test with the Sony A6300, I found it to be a great mirrorless camera overall. It...

App developer Nevercenter has developed a new all-in-one video editing application, CameraBag Cinema, which is aimed at professionals. The app offers a variety of features, including video filtering, color correction and film emulation.

CameraBag Cinema is built upon the same core principles as Nevercenter's CameraBag photo editing...

 

 

Many travel photographs are taken on the fly, but sometimes stopping to add a little light can result in images of a place that couldn’t otherwise be captured, like the one here.

National Geographic photographer Ira Block created this image while leading a workshop in Bagan, Myanmar. Block found the small...

If you want to improve your photography skills but don't want to shell out the big bucks to do it, Shotkit has an excellent resource for you. The site has compiled a list of over 50 free books about photography covering a wide range of topics. While you will want to check out the full list for yourself to find topics of interest, the variety...