After images started leaking last night, Canon today officially announced three new lenses for the EF lineup: the 24-70mm f/2.8L II, 24mm f/2.8 IS, and 28mm f/2.8 IS. Compared to the first version, the new 24-70mm weighs 100 grams less (it’s 850g), costs $1,000 more, still doesn’t offer IS, uses 82mm filters (instead of 77mm), extends at the telephoto end (instead of the wide end like the previous version), features a zoom lock, and connects with the hood at the extension. As we noted yesterday, the 24mm and 28mm are the first non-L series EF prime lenses — and the first wide angle ones — to have image stabilization built in. The IS provides four stops of stabilization.
The 24-70mm will be available starting on April 17th with a price tag of $2,300, while the 24mm and 28mm will be available in June with price tags of $850 and $800, respectively.
Say hello to the latest item in the PetaPixel Store: the Instant Photo Pendant Necklace! This beautiful pendant is designed to look exactly like a 1-inch tall Polaroid picture. Insert your favorite 0.8-inch square photos through a slot in the side, and keep it safe and snug with a clear plastic square (included). The copper and iron pendant is coated with white and comes with a silver-colored 18-inch chain. Buy one while supplies last for just $10 from our store (shipping is free for US residents).
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Unlike Nikon, which jumped headfirst into the interchangeable lens mirrorless game last year, Canon appears to be content with simply upping the sensor size in its existing compact cameras. Today the company announces the G1X, a new camera into the G-series line that offers a sensor large enough to compete with existing mirrorless camera systems.
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Nikon has announced the new SB-910, a top-of-the-line flash unit to succeed the SB-900. Instead of increased power — the guide number and zoom range haven’t changed — Nikon has chosen to focus on usability. The new flash features a new MENU button and improved LCD user interface that are designed to make operating it a breeze. It also automatically detects spiking temperatures, and slows down the recycle rate to automatically prevent overheating. The price fits the SB-910′s place in the Speedlite lineup: it’ll cost a cool $550 when it starts shipping on December 15 — more than some entry level DSLRs.
(via Nikon via Engadget)
After photos of the camera were leaked a week ago, Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix GX1. The camera should satisfy GF1 shooters who loved the camera but were unhappy about the consumer-oriented GF2 and GF3 followup cameras. The 16MP Micro Four Thirds camera features a max ISO of 12,800, a solid build, .09 second autofocus (with iPhone-esque touch to focus), a 3-inch touchscreen, RAW mode, and 1080/60i HD video. The camera ships for $700 (body-only) starting in December 2011.
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Lomography has launched the LomoKino, the world’s first consumer 35mm movie camera. It’s an old-school hand-cranked camera that uses standard rolls of 35mm film (yeah, the kind you use in film cameras). The camera captures 144 individual frames onto each roll of film, producing a video that lasts 50-60 seconds. Once you have your film developed, you can watch it using a separate LomoKinoScope: a hand-cranked movie viewer!
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500px, quickly becoming known as the “Flickr for artsy photographers”, has released a new iPad app designed to deliver a beautiful photo viewing experience. In just a few days the app has already risen into the top 5 free photo apps in the app store, and now serves half of all traffic seen by 500px. GigaOM reports that users spend an average of 35 minutes per visit, viewing 80 photographs in the process.
The website has also been experiencing incredible growth. Traffic has grown over the past year by more than 20x to 3.4 million visitors per month, and continues to grow at 30% month over month. The service — which has 12 employees — currently stores 2.5 million photographs.
500px [iTunes App Store]
The rumblings in the rumor mill are getting stronger, and it seems like there’s a good chance that we’ll be seeing new DSLRs announced by both Canon and Nikon by the end of the month. Craig Blair over at Canon Rumors says that he knows with near certainty that Canon will be announcing a new full frame DSLR on October 18th. The camera is rumored to pack between 16-18 megapixels, have ISO that goes up to 51,200, shoot at high speeds (possibly between 12-14fps), and have 61 AF points.
At the same time, Nikon Rumors is saying that Nikon usually announces new products around the same time as Canon, and that a Nikon D800 unveiling on October 26th seems very likely. The D800 is rumored to be a 36MP camera…
Image credit: Nikon D40 & Canon 350d (Digital Rebel XT) by Ian Hampton
Sony is serious about this whole “catching up to Canon and Nikon” thing — the company has announced four new large sensor cameras, and each one is a doozy. The cameras, which hit store shelves in a couple of months, include the NEX-7 and NEX-5N mirrorless cameras and the A77 and A65 SLT (AKA translucent mirror) cameras.
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Twitter, Google+, and Facebook are one step closer to becoming clones of each other (at least when it comes to photo sharing) — Twitter has rolled out photo galleries that display the 100 most recent images Tweeted by users in chronological order.
The images included in user galleries can come from Twitter, yFrog, TwitPic, Instagram and other image sharing services supported in Twitter’s details pane. [#]
To view a user’s gallery, simply visit their Twitter page and click the thumbnails on the sidebar.
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