By BUZZ LIGHTBUSTER Call me a gullible human being. I mean no harm to anyone, am single and have not much else to do in my spare time than going out with my camera. It’s what I love to do and and want to do. Hey I have no kids to pay for, no wife, […]
What a beautifully diversifying industry digital photograph has become. As much as digital cameras seem to be “advancing,” they’re also diversifying. Photographers have access to more options than ever before. We all can enjoy photography with fewer compromises. Whatever your shooting style is, it’s highly unlikely you won’t find a camera that suits your style […]
Size and weight are the big selling points of Micro Four Thirds. But with the full-frame mirrorless Sony A7/A7R system cameras becoming reality, will there anyone still seriously insist that Micro Four Thirds is compelling on a size/weight basis? No denying: the larger the sensor = the better the pixel quality. Period. And today, with […]
Sony does it again. Newcomer Sony’s again the camera brand that innovates and thinks ahead. As rumors and industry sources suggested since last year and as Andrea of SonyAlphaRumors promised us over the course of the past few weeks, Sony is about to create a whole new playing field for high-end cameras. This week Sony […]
It took Sony some time to come up with a successor to its full-frame flagship, the trusty, chunky A900. Sony eagerly wanted to get it right. Now the Japanese introduce the long-awaited, all weather-sealed and ruggedized Sony Alpha SLT A99, promising a new performance standard for professional DSLRs by combining all of the benefits of […]
At least they give their cameras different names. But in principle they’re releasing very similar products at very similar times. Copycats. Just take the recent release of the Canon 5D Mark III and the Nikon D800. They were announced within not even a month. Now the next battle of similar market targets is looming. We […]
Sony has what may be the new king of premium pocket cameras: the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100, an enthusiast point-and-shoot fixed lens camera with lots of power under the hood and an ultra bright F1.8 Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T*. It’s a camera that looks like others, but the big difference is it’s large sensor. As […]
I have the feeling it’s been years that we have been talking about the paradigm change in serious photography, with the change from the good old pentaprism and its reflex mirror to fully electronic mirrorless systems. World’s two biggest camera makers (apart from Apple of course), Canon and Nikon, for years tried to avoid the […]
There’s always a better time to buy a digital camera. Something better, faster, technically more advanced is always around the corner. Not so this time. Chapeau Olympus to the Olympus PEN F. What an iconic piece of beautifully crafted and designed precision engineering. A tribute to the original PEN F produced between 1963 to 1966, […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Pixel peepers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your mind! Quite literally. All those infected by the bokeh bug ought to know that the verb form of this Japanese term, bokeh suru, means that you are losing it. The bokeh mania will be with us for some […]
By BENGT NYMAN High resolution or long lens? This might seem like an odd question. However, it’s really not. For many purposes an 8MP image is enough resolution to convey the image. For magazine prints, 16MP can often do the job. For most applications 24MP are enough. Consequently, many photographers still label high resolution like […]
Who doesn’t want to own a Leica. Their optics are unmatched, yet the technology, well, you can’t shoot ISO 25,800 with a Leica, can you. They just don’t have the sensors for that. Now here’s an anecdote I got from a reliable source; an anecdote that makes complete sense without knowing whether it’s true or […]
The Wall Street Journal blames Nikon’s poor overall performance on missing the mirrorless boat. “Nikon needs to start breaking some mirrors,” the paper says. “That isn’t usually seen as a way to good fortune, but mirrors — specifically, the ones that add bulk to its high-end SLR cameras — are one of Nikon’s biggest problems […]
Photokina 2014, world’s biggest photography show, is around the corner. Taking place mid-September in Cologne, Germany, all major players use the stage to show off their latest and greatest gear. What’s in store for this year’s biennial Photokina? More DSLRs by Canon and Nikon? New curved and organic sensors? Compelling reasons to upgrade? Let’s have […]
Sony’s new high ISO king A7S — and the Nikon D4s for that — bring us the most revolutionary innovation in photography for some time: ISO sensitivity in the hundreds of thousands. An expandable, mind-boggling ISO 409,600 to be exact, meaning up to ISO 25,600 these cameras will churn out absolutely noise-free, clean images. Plain […]
By BENGT NYMAN What is taking so long? The DSLR is big, heavy and slow but takes superb pictures, unfortunately accompanied by a loud, clacking sound. The mirrorless camera is small, light, fast and in some cases totally quiet and vibration-free. However it has difficulties matching the viewing clarity and image quality of the DSLR. […]
Don’t get me wrong, am an admirer and fervent user of these compact new system cameras that are technological proof of Moore’s law, the law that says the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years in a computer. And with cameras becoming, in fact, more and more computerized, one of the […]
By BENGT NYMAN It’s easy for the casual camera user to have deeply felt ideas about what a camera should look and perform like. However, the technology behind a well functioning camera is hidden to most and produces a marketable product only when properly combined and perfected. To support my claim I will make examples […]
This is of course all speculation. The Sony A7s do take off and at one point Canon and Nikon will have to throw their hats in the game. Newcomers, gear nerds, enthusiasts and professional photographers, they’re all showing genuine interest for full-frame mirrorless. But neither Canon nor Nikon Rumors has said anything so far about […]
With the exception of Canon, about every major camera maker has jumped on the bandwagon of retro-styled gear. Add the many nostalgia filters and looks available. “Classic” — a trend started by Olympus and Fujifilm with the OM-D and X series — continues to be popular with photographers and camera makers alike. The Nikon Df […]
Haven’t seen so much heated debate about a camera in years. You get a D4, Leica M and film camera in one, for the price of not even a D800, and the end of the world seems near. People panic. Nikon D4 performance at half the price with hints of an M feel. I’m sold […]
Non-mirrorless and pentaprism are not yet dead after all. Nikon makes a bold statement with the Nikon Df — photography’s heritage isn’t dead at all. You might not want the latest, bestest sensor — albeit three years old, its sensor rocks. Maybe what’s here is already perfect enough. Right, you bet this camera is an […]
Not much to add. Competitively priced, say around $2k, Nikon created a new classic. Everything’s solid about this camera. Enjoy the Nikon Df’s Pure Photography pre-announcement teaser #5 with a confident Nikon showing off a beauty of a full-frame camera days before the November 5 launch. This teaser’s byline: “Good things take time. They’re worth […]
Another most telling afull-frame dug out by Nikon Rumors, and forgive me if the recent full-frame focus on THEME is beginning to bore you. But a press release by Nikon Germany suggests the world’s number two camera maker is to focus on the full-frame FX format. Nikon says its “current” full-frame portfolio consists of the […]
Glorious title, isn’t it. Had been swirling around my head for the past few days. The other morning I looked up DP Review for my ritual daily kick of gear news and gossip, and well, the latest news item was titled What Just Happened? Whatever. I feel morally eligible to use the title as well. […]
The new Fujifilm mirrorless is the camera the X-Pro1 should have been? Faster, smaller, lighter and with improved battery performance, launched only eight months after the debut of the classy X-Pro1, Fujifilm announced its second retro-styled mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. The Fujifilm X-E1 (specs) uses the same 16.3MP APS-C sensor as the more expensive X-Pro1 […]
Not too long ago it was difficult to not make fun of Hasselblad. Lunar, Stellar, you know. Now there is hope the venerable camera maker, under new leadership, might rise like a phoenix from the ashes — BTW, did you know there are 12 Hasselblad cameras left on the surface of the moon? The lunar […]
Still too early to write off the DSLR world, isn’t it, especially the DSLR full-frame or FX world or whatever you want to call the digital equivalent to film’s 35mm standard. Who would have thought a few years ago, when smaller mirrorless Micro Four Thirds and APS-C formats were making serious inroads, who would have […]
You can turn and twist it as much as you want. In the end physics can’t be cheated and size still matters. The smaller a sensor = the more compromises you burden yourself with (except if you’re a diehard macro photographer because you’ll love the smaller sensors’ greater depth of field). These past years I’ve […]
Current sales figures for serious cameras are troubling, to say the least. They nosedive. While we photography enthusiasts are a niche who cares about nice ISO values, good glass, proper processing speeds, form factor and accurate image rendition, most people don’t. Significant inventories of the established camera brands remain unsold, not least because a bloated […]
