We've said it before, but it bears mentioning again: smartphones might be bludgeoning the compact camera market, but that doesn't mean camera companies aren't putting up a fight. Fuji's new superzoom lineup is kind of a case in point, but a better example are the three new point-and-shoots just released by Canon.
We've known since late 2012 that the Instagram logo lookalike Socialmatic camera would go from concept to reality, and since early 2013 that it would arrive with Polaroid branding, but now Polaroid is giving us specs and announcing that the Socialmatic will arrive in stores this Fall.
The black version of the X100s wasn't the only camera Fuji decided to announce ahead of CES. Four other cameras are making their official appearance today: three superzooms, one of which is the world's first weather sealed bridge camera, and a new rugged compact.
Despite many a rumor of a new X-Series camera coming at CES, Fuji didn't have a brand new shooter up its sleeve -- at least not that we know of. Instead, the company is debuting the much-requested all-black version of the X100s, and a super fast "portrait perfect" XF 56mm f/1.2R premium lens.
As a website, we're trying to move away from sharing rumors and the like, or at the very least be much more selective. This is happening for a few reasons, but one of them is that, unless you are very selective, you're bound to share something blatantly wrong. And worse yet, in your rush to be one of the first to report on it, you might do serious damage to your credibility.
Which brings us to a recent 'photo leak' that supposedly showed a full view of the rumored Fuji X-W1 sitting on a park bench.
A Little Background...
I am a 23-year-old photographer who moved to Chicago from Nigeria 6 years ago. I started photography about 3 years ago. After playing around with a DSLR in Target, I was hooked. I shoot mostly fashion photography, and female models. I have shot full frame since late 2011 with the 5D Mk2, then the D800 since November 2012.
Build-it-yourself cameras can be both fun and educational. For photography types, a camera like the Konstructor or the Last camera makes for a fun weekend project that you can then take out on occasion when your inner hipster is calling, or give as a gift to a budding photo enthusiast.
Similarly, there's a large community of people who love pinhole cameras, which they've made using everything from LEGOs to dumpsters. So what happens when those two worlds collide? You get the Original Pin.
Photography companies love catchword marketing. They like catchwords because photographers make assumptions about what those words mean, even though the words really don’t mean anything. So basically, they say nothing, but it makes you believe something.
Certain indie filmmakers may be all in love with shaky-cam production values, but for the rest of us, nausea still isn't terribly valued as a special effect. So huzzah to the ShadowCam S-5, an upcoming stabilizer for DSLRs and pro series cinema cameras (Red Epic, Canon C models, etc.) that promises to dampen motion like no other stabilizer.
Wrapping up the announcements from Samsung today were two new pieces of glass, at least one of which might just get your Gear Acquisition Syndrome acting up. The new lenses are a 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 Power Zoom and Samsung's first ever Premium 'S' lens: a 16-50mm f/2-2.8.
The second and final major camera announcement out of Samsung today was the successor to the Android-powered Galaxy Camera, aptly named the Galaxy Camera 2. Although it boasts many of the same specs as the first Galaxy Camera, the new shooter is a more powerful and lighter version that's sure to score points with lovers of the first model.
You can expect a bunch of camera and gear announcements to go live ahead of CES, and breaking the ice for all of the other companies is Samsung, who today officially released the much rumored and speculated about NX30 Compact System Camera.
The folks over at Nikon Rumors have been hard at work keeping everybody up on what you can expect from Nikon, but if you're like us, you just don't have the time to follow rumors day in and day out. So here's a roundup of what the most exciting and plausible rumors that should give Nikon lovers some idea of what to expect in the next couple of months.
You, of course, are an analog purist who will forever be devoted to film. Other folks, however, may be wondering what they're going to do with a bunch of darkroom equipment that's getting lonelier by the year.
A few days back, the folks over at Egami spotted a new Canon PowerShot patent that, unlike most, piqued many photographers' interest. That's because this patent seems to show plans for a 100x (or rather almost 100x) superzoom camera.
It's difficult to fathom, but there is massive segment of the population who remember nothing of film photography. The idea of not having your images instantly available for review and deletion, or having to go to a shop to have a roll of film developed, is as foreign as the floppy disk and the VHS.
BuzzFeed is trying to remedy this somewhat in the video above, which they have dubbed "Film Photography Explained to Modern Kids."
The holidays are a great time for gift giving, which also normally means they're a time for cleaning out closets and camera bags. Every year, I find myself needing to get rid of old stuff that has been replaced; or dealing with the thoughtful but odd and/or useless gifts given to me by well-meaning family and friends.
But what to do with that redundant lens or knitted camera cozy? The simplest answer is to return or re-sell it, but sometimes there's no gift receipt to be found or the gizmo in question is too beaten up to be sold for any real value. Fortunately, there's plenty of ways to find a use for your used gear.
The much-anticipated 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens from Tamron, which replaces its current 200-500mm, has officially gotten a US …
The popularity of Instagram as a place where you can buy or sell goods (both legal and otherwise) is well-established, but we were still surprised to find out that Leica Brazil has begun selling one of its cameras straight through the photo sharing site.
Fresh rumors fueled by a contest currently underway on Nikon's Middle East & Africa Facebook page have many speculating that Nikon might be preparing to release a D4 followup, or even the long-awaited D400.
Everybody is coming out with their editor's choices and best of's and holiday gift guides, but The Camera Store added another facet to their "best of 2013"... the "worst of 2013." From lenses, to still cameras to video cameras, take a gander at what was really good and, inevitably more entertaining, what was really bad.
A while back I wrote a post I humbly called Roger’s Law of New Product Introduction, complete with the graph shown below. The release of the Sony A7R has demonstrated the accuracy of that post as few other releases have.
Here's a cool holiday chart that only us photo types will appreciate. It was put together by Sigma Jack and Sigma's in-house 'design wiz' Emi Erata, and shows the entire Sigma lens lineup arranged by size and placed next to some to-scale objects so you can visualize just how large some of these behemoths are.
Forget gold plating and celebrity altruism -- the rarest Leica camera of them all may be made entirely out of plastic.
Well, your last chance to order something online and get it in time for Christmas pretty much came and went already, and yet us lazy PetaPixel editors (okay, not us, just me) have yet to put together a holiday gift guide. Well, I offer my hardiest apologies, and what we'll call our 'Holiday Exchange Guide.'
Sigma is on a tear when it comes to releasing amazing glass. From the groundbreaking 18-35mm f/1.8 for APS-C cameras to the 24-105mm f/4 that had people pretty excited, Sigma glass is quickly becoming synonymous with phenomenal quality and affordability.
And now, the newest murmurings to come down the rumor pipeline have another exciting Sigma lens in the works, this one a 16-20mm f/2.
Fans of Sony's QX10 and QX100 lens cameras -- you know, the ones that use your smartphone as a controller/LCD but pack all of the important bits in an external unit -- have reason to rejoice today, because it looks like there's a major update coming to both versions.
It's common knowledge that the Giottos Rocket Blowers and the TSA don't get along. In the past we've told you to just leave it at home unless you want it confiscated with no more reason than "it looks like a bomb." But the reason photographer and Canon Rumors forum user Surapon got was a whole lot more entertaining than that.
One of the common complaints people hesitant to switch to mirrorless systems have is that there just isn't enough glass for this that or the other mount. Micro Four Thirds cameras don't really suffer from this problem, but proprietary mounts like Sony's E-Mount (especially full-frame) and Fuji's X-Mount certainly don't offer the kind of selection you get from Canon or Nikon.
The good news is, they're catching up. And a great case in point is the Fuji X-Mount 10-24mm f/4 lens announced today.
About 88,000 people in the U.S. are missing all or part of an arm, and among the things that are difficult or impossible for them to do is use an full-size camera. Smaller point-and-shoots and phones allow simultaneous holding and operation, but anything bigger is out of the question without a tripod.
Admittedly, it's not last-minute Christmas shopping until 10 minutes after the stores close on Christmas Eve, but if you plan to order your photography gifts online, you might want to get on that so you're sure they arrive in time for the big day.
Then again, there are benefits to having waited this long. Namely: we just got an email from B&H Photo about some awesome discounts that may have you tempted even if you've already finished gift shopping.
Throwable camera balls and their ilk might be all shiny and cool, but what if you want to grab high-quality 360-degree images with the camera you already have in your bag?
Enter Eye Mirror, a startup launched by U.K. inventors Dan Burton and Thomas Seidl, whose namesake product attaches to just about any camera and allows it to shoot 360-degree panoramas and videos.
Nikon already makes a 35mm f/1.8G DX lens but the equivalent isn't available for its full-frame cameras, at least not yet. At this point, if you want a 35mm FX lens for your Nikon, you're stuck spending $1,600+ on the f/1.4, but that might all change in a couple of weeks at CES.
I have to admit I didn’t get too worked up when the Sony A7 and A7R were released. The last time I wrote about Sony it was how there were so few lenses for the NEX system years after introduction. So now we’re going to a system requiring a whole new lens mount. Sure the camera’s specs were interesting. But the idea of yet another camera body good mostly for shooting lenses on adapters wasn’t very exciting. So I planned to ignore it.
Speed freaks (at least where lenses are concerned) who love their mirrorless camera get ready to celebrate, because there's a new super-fast lens on the market that is claiming the title of "fastest lens in the world for mirrorless systems" -- the Ibelux 40mm f/0.85.
Update: Looks like the discount is gone folks! This puppy is back up to $12,000.
Those looking to drop several grand on a 35mm film camera for your favorite purist this Holiday season need look no more. Introducing the Nikon FA Gold limited edition camera: a 24k gold-plated camera with lizard skin accents that is currently going on eBay for the relatively low price of $4,800.
To clarify, when we say "relatively low," we mean relative to what you would have spent on the same camera yesterday when it was listed for a whopping $12,000.
What's that? The ZEISS 55mm f/1.4 Otus haunts your dreams when it's not keeping you up wondering how you're going to sell a kidney on the black market to afford it? Well then, you might want to ignore this post, because there's another Otus confirmed for 2014!
Those with delicate constitutions where the destruction of photography gear is concerned should look away or skip over this one. Whatever you do, don't press play on the video above... or if you do press play, don't watch past about the 3:50 mark, because that's when things get ugly.
A late-breaking holiday shopping tip: If someone offers you a screamingly good deal on a Leica Summilux-C movie lens, be very suspicious. That's because there's currently $500,000 worth of stolen gear floating around the black market -- including a $200K set of Summilux-C lenses -- that was taken off the set of a Los Angeles film shoot..
It's been a little while since we've seen fit to report on a rumor. Most of what has passed through the rumor mill of late has either not been significant enough, or only worth linking out to. This news, however, caught our eye: it seems Sony is working on a 'non-Bayer' sensor that might appear in cameras as early as late 2015.
GoPro cameras may be ready to migrate from helmets to film schools thanks to the Ribcage, an in-development assembly that allows the tiny action cams to be outfitted with interchangeable lenses.
It seems the Nikon engineers had some tricks up their sleeves when they put the D4 sensor inside the new Nikon Df, because while the sensor earned identical scores to the D4 in almost every category when DxOMark put it through its paces, the Df actually BEAT the D4 in the "low-light ISO" category.
But more than that, it beat EVERYBODY in that category, narrowly edging out the previous champion D3s to claim the number one low-light spot among DxOMark's rankings.
A lot of film people have deep connections to Super 8 cameras, once the medium of choice for everyone from film school students to porn directors. But it's getting harder and harder to actually use the things, as stocks of film cartridges dwindle.
To the rescue comes Nolab, a project to build a digital adapter that will allow any Super 8 camera to shoot 720p HD video.
Nikon recently released a firmware update for its D3100, D3200, D5100, D5200, and P7700 cameras that maximized battery performance and allowed the camera to more accurately tell you how much charge you have left. But it seems there was an unintended (or maybe not so unintended) side-effect: third party batteries no longer work.
Although it can't compare to a quality camera, it's hard to deny that the iPhone is capable -- after all, we've seen NY Times cover photos, fashion shoots and even a professional portrait taken using an iPhone as the camera of choice.
The Polaroid iM1836 has had a rough go of it since it first burst onto the scene at last year's CES. Nobody seemed to think the camera was anything to write home about, and its similarity to Nikon's 1-Series cameras was undeniable.
So undeniable, in fact, that earlier this year, Nikon filed a lawsuit to try to get the iM1836 pulled from the shelves. Yesterday, they succeeded.
Photojournalist Christopher Morris has documented some of the world's hottest war zones, reclusive North Korea and the 2012 Republican National Convention. But it took modern Detroit to totally punk him, with thieves there stealing $15,000 in camera equipment and another crook cheating him out of $200 in reward money later that same day.
Rest easy, future astronauts. If occasional filmmaker and full-time tinkerer Mark Rober and his pals are any indication, NASA engineers can MacGyver their way into or out of any situation.
Metabones, maker of the impressive Speedbooster adapters is back at it again. When the Speedbooster first came out, I wrote about it being like magic, increasing the aperture and field-of-view of Nikon and Canon full-frame lenses mounted to NEX and micro 4/3 cameras, while maintaining or even improving image quality. Now they’ve brought the Metabones magic to the Blackmagic cinema and pocket cinema cameras.
Canon owners certainly boast the most advanced custom firmware with Magic Lantern, but Nikon Hacker is making some progress. Case in point: with the release of a new hack, Nikon D5100 owners can now use manual controls while shooting in LiveView.