Reviews

I recently began contributing to Stocksy United (AKA Stocksy), the new(ish) stock photography agency that is headed up by Bruce Livingstone of iStockPhoto notoriety fame.

This is a “first look” preview of a pre-production unit of the Ricoh GR, which I have been fortunate enough to get my hands on -- for a day. My time with it is limited to the half-day of shooting I had, and I am only sharing my initial impressions of it.

The images are selected to demonstrate the fast response of the Ricoh GR, and not the noise performance because it will not be fair to make any judgment based on a pre-production unit. Most of the images are in monochrome because I prefer black-and-white in street photography. None of the images have been cropped, to demonstrate the focal length effect of the Ricoh GR.

Hasselblad's luxury Lunar mirrorless camera is set to arrive in June 2013, but hands-on reviews of the camera are slowly trickling onto the Web. Photography blogger genotypewriter managed to get his hands on a Lunar recently, and published a short article sharing his thoughts.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based camera store The Camera Store just released this review in which Chris Niccolls takes a look at the new Canon Rebel T5i (also known as the 700D and Kiss X7i). The 1-minute-long video may be the most honest review of the camera yet.

Cosina-Voigtländer’s Bessaflex TM is one of my favorite cameras. It’s an incredibly beautiful and refined camera that was discontinued (2007) as suddenly as it was put on the market (2003). There are but a handful of in-depth articles on it online, and I felt compelled to publish my thoughts on it.

Voigtländer (pronounced ‘voihkt-lehnder’) is a loaded name in photography. Founded in 1756, it is essentially the oldest name in camera history. Its tradition of innovation is rich, including being the first to introduce the photographic zoom lens as well as the first 35mm film camera with built-in flash. Like many aging titans it was overtaken by more eager young companies and eventually closed its doors, the brand name being sold and used between various companies before end up at Cosina, a Japanese camera company.

When was the last time you received a compliment for how beautiful your camera bag is? Do you dread carrying your gear to activities and events due to the fact that your bag completely clashes with your fashion sensibilities? Are you a man?

If you answered "yes" to that last question, camera bag company ONA wants to change your answer for the first two.

Photographer t-shirt company Dodge & Burn is taking its silk screening prowess and applying it to a new product: posters. In addition to apparel, it is now selling serigraphs (i.e. screen printed posters) with its "evolution of the twin-lens reflex camera" design, which is also available as a shirt.

If you're a fan of Leica's digital rangefinders and have been skeptical of DxOMark's ability to determine sensor quality through its rigorous tests, you might want to skip over the lab's newly published test results on Leica's M series sensors.

Olympus first ushered its PEN brand into the digital age back in 2009 with the E-P1. Since then, the lineup has split into three distinct tiers: the E-P line for standard PEN cameras, the E-PL line for smaller "Lite" models, and the E-PM line for even smaller "Mini" models. Goldilockean photographers can therefore choose the size and feature set most appropriate to their needs (and hands).

Our pal and fellow photo blogger David Hobby of Strobist is currently over in Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2013, and yesterday he had the privilege of purchasing the first Fujifilm X100S to be sold on planet Earth. Hobby tells us he's in love.

Buzz around the upcoming Canon 200-400mm f/4L IS 1.4x is heating up. Australian photographer Joshua Holko recently had the opportunity to play around with a pre-production version of the lens, and released this 7-minute video review that offers a look at the lens in action.

The company formerly known as RIM changed its name to Blackberry yesterday, and launched a new flagship smartphone called …

Ever since Canon’s new 24-70mm f/2.8L II arrived late last year, lens reviewers …

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.

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.

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).

When Fujifilm announced the X100s last week, it made the bold claim that the camera had the world's fastest autofocus system among cameras of the same class. Sluggish autofocus was one of the big complaints owners of the X100 had, so for this latest refresh the company focused its attention on making the camera faster.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reviews of the new entry-level full-frame Canon 6D DSLR are starting to make their ways onto the Web. While …

The Canon EOS M is quickly becoming the laughingstock of the mirrorless party due to its autofocus system, which leaves much to be desired in terms of speed. To show just how sluggish the system really is, Tomek Kulas over at M43.eu did this very simple yet informative "hands-on test" that pits the EOS M against one of its archrivals: the Olympus OM-D EM-5.

During the earlier days of 35mm film photography, many of the popular cameras had distinct design elements that defined the look of that period -- the things that come to mind when people hear the words "vintage 35mm camera": a shiny body seemingly crafted out of a single chunk of metal; a textured covering that gives the camera style and grip; all the manual controls you need, placed in well-thought-out locations at your fingertips.

Jordan Drake of Canadian camera shop The Camera Store just published this great hands-on field test of the Canon EOS M. Even if you don't have 10 minutes to watch the entire review, you've got to check out the two short stop-motion animations that start at about 21s and 7m50s. They're a hilarious (and accurate) sketches that poke fun at how "the Canon EOS M is a little bit late to the mirrorless party" and how the camera has a pretty shoddy autofocus system.

If you use a major-brand DSLR, you should be keeping a close eye on the new $899 Sigma 35mm f/1.4 (above center). It undercuts the popular (but pricey) lenses of rival camera makers by hundreds of dollars, and appears to have build- and image-qualities that are equal to (if not better than) those lenses.

Canon made its loyal customers wait quite a long time before it finally joined the mirrorless camera revolution, announcing the Canon EOS M back in June. The camera comes nearly four years after Panasonic kicked things off by “friending” Olympus -- forming the Micro Four Thirds alliance -- and introducing the Lumix DMC-G1, making Canon the last major DSLR maker to join the fray.

I’ve always been a bit fascinated by digiscoping. For those who are out of the loop, digiscoping involves taking images through a spotting scope rather than a camera lens. The advantages are obvious. A spotting scope provides magnification equivalent to a lens of 1,250 to 3,000mm. Who wouldn’t want that?

Despite its girth, weight, and price, Canon's original 24-70mm f/2.8L is a highly-regarded general-purposes lens. When the followup Mark II version was announced back in February, the higher-price tag, similar specs, and lack of IS had many photographers scratching their heads. Then the reviews started coming out.

Earlier this year, New York Times gadget columnist David Pogue wrote a glowing review of the …

I am not a reviewer. I don’t even play one on TV. There are already some in-depth reviews out on the new Canon EOS-M, and more coming daily. But I handle a lot of equipment and test a lot of equipment. When something new comes in I spend a day handling it and testing it. Hopefully this will give you a quick overview of the camera, and perhaps fill in some things that actual reviewers don’t get to tell you about. We recently got a bunch of EOS M cameras, a bunch of the 22mm lenses, a couple of 18-55 kit lenses, and a single EOS M EF adapter.

For those who don’t want to read this but do want to tell everyone what I said later, here’s the summary: it is the best of mirrorless, it is the worst of mirrorless, it is the camera of wise choices, it is the camera of foolishness, it is the epoch of accurate autofocus, and it is the epoch of slow autofocus. In other words, I’ve got mixed emotions.