The company formerly known as RIM changed its name to Blackberry yesterday, and launched a new flagship smartphone called the Z10. While the the phone is getting decent marks among reviewers, one weakness is sticking out as a sore thumb: the camera’s low-light performance. Gizmodo writes,
The Z10 didn’t even hold the dimmest, most-pathetic light to the other cameras in our test. Look at that photo above on the left. It is an abject and miserable failure. Because this is a particularly difficult shooting setting, all of the photos have problems with noise, distortion, and detail, but we’ve haven’t seen something so crummy as the Z10 in a long time. The Z10 even has a “night” setting that was completely useless. This is some four-years-ago crap.
It’d be interesting to find out who Blackberry chose as the supplier of its camera sensor.
[...] the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 MkII is the highest scoring professional fixed-aperture mid-range kit zoom of any brand in the DxO Mark database and comfortably outperforms rivals as well as the firm’s earlier Mark I version, particularly with regard to the sharpness levels across the frame. We’re used to seeing a noticeable deterioration in performance in the outer fields at longer focal lengths even with high-quality optics from the big-name marques but the new Canon bucks that trend.
The company writes that the main issue is the lens’ price of $2,500 — quite steep when compared to rival lenses. Check out the full review for a more detailed breakdown of how the new 24-70mm performs.
My first roll processed and scanned from my new Lomography BelAir X 6-12 puts me in the position to share some notes about the camera that you won’t find elsewhere.
The Lomography BelAir X 6-12 is a new folding medium format camera. It can take pictures in three formats: 6×6, 6×9 and 6×12. Apart from the folding mechanism, the camera is made of plastic. Even the two included wide angle lenses (wide and really wide) are plastic. Each lens comes with its own viewfinder. They are 58mm and 90mm. Read more…
When we first shared the news that Metabones had announced a “speed booster” adapter that makes your lenses faster, wider and sharper, not a lot of people had gotten their hands on it yet. But now that the most exciting accessory on the block has been accepted as definitely NOT an elaborate April Fools joke, a few websites have taken turns with it, and initial reviews all seem to be positive. Read more…
One of Pentax’s big announcements for this year’s CES 2013 was the MX-1, a camera that is designed to compete against other retrotastic compact cameras that are currently generating a lot of buzz (namely the Fujifilm X-Series and the Olympus OM-D). Read more…
Want to see how fast the new AF is? We captured the short video above during a brief hands-on time we had with the camera. It doesn’t show an in-depth test or much variety in subject matter, but should offer a taste of what “world’s fastest AF” looks like in the flesh. Read more…
Canon’s attention grabber at this year’s CES 2013 is a new compact camera designed to fight against the encroachment of smartphones: the PowerShot N.
The little guy is unlike most point-and-shoots you’ll find on the market. It’s extremely small, square, and simple. The design may seem gimmicky at first, but pick it up in your hands and your opinion might change. Read more…
We had some hands-on time with the new Polaroid iM1836 just now. The company is only showing off two of the units at CES 2013. One of them doesn’t turn on. The other one can’t take any pictures. Read more…
Fujifilm held its CES 2013 press conference yesterday, revealing some facts about the state of its camera business, sharing its vision moving forward, and offering a closer look at its two new fixed-lens cameras: the X100s and the X20. Read more…
Reviews of the new entry-level full-frame Canon 6D DSLR are starting to make their ways onto the Web. While most reviewers seem to agree that the still image quality of the camera is quite good, the camera appears to suffer from a horrible moiré pattern problem. Gizmodo created the comparison test above pitting the 6D against the 5DMk3, and writes in their review:
All signs pointed toward the 6D sharing the same great video quality of the 5D MK3. The thing that the 5D3 does so well—that no other DSLR has accomplished—is reducing moire patterns (rainbow-like bands along detailed surfaces). But the 6D fails where the 5D3 prevailed. Moire is rampant. This single failure ruins the 6D as a viable alternative to the 5D3 for professional video.
If you’ve been eyeing the 6D, you might want to look elsewhere if solid video recording performance is a must-have for you.
