The X-E3’s rangefinder styling and traditional external controls are welcome departure from regular camera design. It’s compact and responsive, and its image quality is first rate.
The X-E3’s rangefinder styling and traditional external controls are welcome departure from regular camera design. It’s compact and responsive, and its image quality is first rate.
Olympus has packed a lot of technology into a very small and affordable camera body, and some clever and genuinely useful long exposure and focus bracketing options too. Don't be fooled by this camera's size.
The Olympus PEN E-P7 is a fantastic return to form for the PEN series, and a triumph for OM Digital Solutions' first product. So stylish that you can take it anywhere, so simple that beginners can use it, and so capable that experts can get sensational results from it.
The Sigma fp L is a quirky and likeable camera that can shoot ultra-high res stills but is also a full-on cinema camera – and it does this without technically compromising either function. But there are some handling and performance issues.
There is a lot to like about the Oppo Find X3 Pro 5G - but what we really struggle with is its price. Whatever its charms, and even if you love the slightly unusual design, it is hard to justify paying quite this much.
It’s compact and lightweight, well-built with the inclusion of weather-seals, boasts highly impressive image quality and is very affordable, making it a great buy at the price.
The Fujifilm X-E4 has the same sensor as the mighty Fujifilm X-T4 and produces images of the same quality – but in reality it's a very different sort of camera.
Like its predecessor, the GFX 100S isn’t perfect – its autofocus performance may not suit every shooting scenario and its image stabilization doesn’t quite match what it says on the tin, but all that gets trumped by the image quality you’re going to get from this camera.
The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is a standout phone, and is one of the best camera phones of 2021. It’s Xiaomi’s first attempt at an across-the-board spec-leader, complete with a periscope camera, class-leading image sensor, and power.
The DJI Air 2S drone is an amazing achievement, bringing a great camera into a compact airframe and combining it with AI systems which are useful and surprisingly accessible.
Even so, handling is sublime and autofocus is super-fast and reliably accurate. Image quality is completely fabulous, combining incredible sharpness with beautiful bokeh.
Previously, cameras might offer speed, resolution or video capability, but the A1 offers all three, and even beats dedicated sports and video cameras at their own game.
The FE 50mm f/2.5 isn’t just the classic ‘standard’ focal length, it also offers superb image quality and unexpectedly high-end features for both stills photography and video.
The optical performance didn’t quite live up to the promise, however. It’s good, but not great, and the reliance on digital distortion correction is both unexpected and disappointing.
For anyone fed up of the front-heavy feel of Sony’s big, heavy zooms, its perfect, completely changing the balance and feel of the camera.
We don’t know whether it’s down to Hasselblad, OnePlus or both, but the OnePlus 9 Pro is the OnePlus we’ve been waiting for. It still undercuts flagships from the big brands, but its camera steps up to the plate and hits a home run.
A star performer, this lens delivers fabulous image quality with superb sharpness and contrast, negligible color fringing and beautiful bokeh. It’s a dream for portraiture and still life, not only due to the quality of the results, but because handling is so refined.
There’s something about the Xiaomi Mi 11 that makes us love it, and we think it’s that screen.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 5G isn’t the best value flagship specced Galaxy around; that would be the indomitable S20 FE — still one of the easiest phones to recommend months after launch. It is, however, a great looking phone with a killer screen, fresh specs, and a decent camera.
For a phone at this price, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra needed to be excellent. Thankfully for Samsung, it is.
This Sigma Contemporary lens is nicely designed, impeccably built and beautifully finished.
On balance, it’s a good lens that’s well worth the asking price, but it’s less impressive than other recent Tamron E-mount optics.
Two things really stand out, though. The first is it’s size – it’s not small, but it’s nothing like some of the f/1.4 monsters we’ve seen recently, including Sony’s existing Distagon T* FE 35mm f/1.4 ZA.
The Fujinon XF 16-80mmF4 R OIS WR is not the fastest X-mount lens in the Fujinon line-up – that's the XF 16-55mm f2.8 R LM WR – but it's smaller, lighter, cheaper, has a 5x zoom range and optical stabilisation, so losing one f-stop in maximum aperture seems a small price to pay.
