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Voigtlander says the new 65mm F2 E-Mount macro is one of its finest lenses ever

25 Jul

Lens manufacturer Voigtlander has just introduced a 65mm F2 macro lens for Sony E-mount that it says, “rates as one of the finest in the history of Voigtländer.” The Macro APO-Lanthar 65mm F2 Aspherical is designed to cover full frame sensors, and allegedly boasts exceptional correction of chromatic aberration.

While the lens is manual focus, it has electrical contacts so exposure information can be recorded in the camera’s EXIF data, and distance measurements can be used to assist in-camera image stabilization systems. The contacts also allow focus peaking to be activated.

Macro enthusiasts will be able to focus down to 31cm to achieve a maximum reproduction ratio of 1:2, while a ten-bladed iris should provide at least attractively rounded out-of-focus highlights. The lens weighs 625g/1.4lbs, measures 91.3mmx78mm/3.6x3in and takes a 67mm filter.

The Voigtlander Macro APO-Lanthar 65mm f/2 Aspherical will go on sale from the 1st of August and will cost £750/€1,000/$ 1,060.

For more information visit the Voigtlander website.

Press Release

MACRO APO-LANTHAR 65mm F2 Aspherical

Announcing the release of the Voigtländer MACRO APO- LANTHAR 65mm F2 Aspherical, a Sony E-mount macro lens for full frame sensors incorporating an apochromatic optical design and inscribed with the designation “APO-LANTHAR”

We announce the release of the Voigtländer MACRO APO-LANTHAR 65mm F2 Aspherical, a Sony E-mount macro lens for full frame sensors. The APO-LANTHAR designation is given to especially high performance lenses in the Voigtländer lens lineup. The legendary APO-LANTHAR lens that continues to enthrall photographers with its outstanding imaging performace and beautiful rendering was born in 1954, but its origins can be traced back around 120 years (see additional info about the APO-LANTHAR below).

A need for apochromatic optical designs that reduce the longitudinal chromatic aberrations of the three primary colors (RGB) of light to practically zero arose with the increasing popularity of color film. Now, with the current range of high- resolution digitals sensors, this need for extremely high-level control of chromatic aberrations is even more pertinent than when film changed from monochrome to color. So rather than just being for already solved old technologies, apochromatic optical designs are indeed a subject requiring serious consideration in the digital age.

The Voigtländer MACRO APO-LANTHAR 65mm F2 Aspherical, which inherits the designation “APO- LANTHAR”, is a high performance manual focus macro lens optimized for the imaging sensors of Sony mirrorless cameras. The optical performance of this lens, which provides an image circle capable of covering a full frame sensor, rates as one of the finest in the history of Voigtländer. Sharp imaging performance is obtained from maximum aperture where you can enjoy blurring the background, and by utilizing a floating mechanism this lens delivers outstanding image quality for subjects from the minimum focusing distance of 31cm (reproduction ratio of 1:2) through to infinity. This lens is a manual focus and manual aperture design, but also features electrical contacts that enable the lens settings at image capture to be included in the Exif information of the image data. Furthermore, the lens is installed with a distance encoder to enable support for 5-axis image stabilization on bodies with this feature, for example by providing distance to subject information used in X,Y shift compensation. Focus peaking while manual focusing is also supported.

Main features

Full frame Sony E-mount with electrical contacts
Apochromatic optical design that eliminates chromatic aberrations
Enhanced high performance utilizing aspherical lens surfaces
Optical design optimized for digital imaging sensors
Extremely solid and durable all-metal barrel
Manual focus for precise focusing
Maximum reproduction ratio of 1:2 at a minimum focus distance of 31 cm

Additional info about the APO-LANTHAR

The history of the APO-LANTHAR begins with the HELIAR invented by Hans Harting in 1900. Despite its simple optical configuration of five elements in three groups, the HELIAR was a lens with superb depictive performance. As an example of the HELIAR optical formula still being valid in the present day, it is used in the currently available HELIAR Vintage Line 50mm F3.5, a lens known for its superb depictive performance. Furthermore, a HELIAR is recorded as being the lens used to take imperial portraits of Emperor Showa, and it is said the HELIAR lens was extremely highly regarded for its beautiful depictive performance and even treated as a family treasure by portrait photography businesses during the Showa period.

Moving forward about half a century from the birth of the HELIAR to 1954, Albrecht Wilhelm Tronnier developed a lens using the same five-elements-three-groups configuration as the HELIAR utilizing new glass types to achieve performance that exceeded the HELIAR. That lens was the APO-LANTHAR. The APO in APO- LANTHAR indicates an apochromatic optical design. The main characteristic of such a lens is that longitudinal chromatic aberrations caused by the different wavelengths (frequencies) of the three primary colors (RGB) of light are reduced to practically zero to achieve high-level color reproduction. Color film slowly gained popularity after its release in 1935, and one reason why the APO-LANTHAR was developed was to address a growing need to capture light more faithfully than possible with monochrome film.

The first camera to be fitted with an APO-LANTHAR lens was the 6 x 9 roll film rangefinder camera representative of post-war Voigtlander, the Bessa II. There were three different lens variations of this camera: APO-LANTHAR 4.5/100, COLOR-HELIAR 3.5/105, and COLOR-SKOPAR 3.5/105. The APO-LANTHAR 4.5/100 variation has red, green, and blue (RGB) rings indicating the apochromatic optical design engraved around the front of the lens barrel to differentiate it from the other versions as a special lens. Due to the rarity and high performance of the Bessa II fitted with APO-LANTHAR lens, this camera has become a legendary camera traded on the used market at high prices and the envy of camera collectors.

As homage to the RGB colors that differentiate the APO-LANTHAR from other lenses beginning with the BESSA II, the MACRO APO-LANTHAR 65mm F2 Aspherical also features three colored dashes indicating the RGB colors at the front edge of the lens barrel.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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This is the first ever permanent photography exhibition in space

07 Jul

Duggal Visual Solutions has teamed with its client, Dubai-based photographer Dr. Hersh Chadha, to create what they say is the first-ever permanent photography exhibition in space.

The exhibition consists of five photographs of flowers that Dr. Chadha donated to three astronauts aboard the International Space Station, where the photos are currently zooming around the Earth at 4.76 miles per second.

You can see two of them below:

Col. Valery Korzun of Star City, Moscow made the arrangements to have Dr. Chadha’s photographs on-board the ISS Expedition 49-50, which took place last year. In addition to donating these photos, Dr. Chadha donated a hard drive containing 500 of his photos, as well as his ‘Visions of Nature’ book, to the Yuri A. Gagarin State Scientific Research-and-Testing Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City.

Talking about his donation, Dr. Chadha explained, “Photography is a great medium of expression, and my purpose of doing this was to let the human beings who live on the Space Station for so many months still be connected to Mother Earth.”

You can hear more from Dr. Chadha and watch the photographs’ journey into space in the video below:

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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‘The only camera that ever got me a date’ – Remembering the Canon EOS-1D Mark II

04 May

I dropped it because I was drunk. It was a brand new Canon EOS-1D Mark II, and I was drunk because I hadn’t eaten any dinner. It fell from hip-height onto the sand-covered floor of a shipping container, which had been converted into a tiki bar at an outdoor music festival. It was 2005 – tiki bars were a thing back then.

The camera survived the fall, but the attached 24-70mm F2.8 did not. The lens took most of the impact, and jammed badly and permanently at around 50mm. A sobering (literally) lesson was learned, and in the subsequent weeks I shot quite a few jobs at 50mm before I could afford to send it in for repair.

Another lesson from what I came to remember as ‘The Tiki Bar Incident of 2005¹‘ was that no matter how carelessly it was treated, the Canon EOS-1D Mark II was a very hard camera to kill. Based on the chassis of the original EOS-1D, the Mark II seemed to have been hewn from a solid lump of magnesium alloy. Like a Henry Moore sculpture, there wasn’t a straight line or hard corner anywhere. Also like a Henry Moore sculpture, it was large, expensive and heavy as hell.

Compared to the EOS 10D, the 1D Mark II was actually capable of proper flash metering – quite a novelty for me, back in 2005. That said, with the benefit of hindsight there’s no excuse at all for this slow sync zoom effect.

For me, upgrading from an EOS 10D to the 1D Mark II was like entering an entirely different world. The 10D wasn’t cheaply built by any means, but the 1D series has always been in a league of its own. I got talking to a sports photographer a few years ago who still used an original EOS-1D, and over years of hard use, he’d worn the paint off virtually every part of the camera until it looked like a lump of roofing lead. Despite appearances it still worked perfectly, regularly getting smacked by soccer balls in its retirement role as a static goalpost camera.

I owned my EOS-1D Mark II for about four years. I don’t remember any close encounters with soccer balls but it certainly absorbed its fair share of abuse.

It also absorbed a lot of beer. Shooting live music in major venues isn’t glamorous. During my (short) career I was pelted by bottles, kicked in the head, stolen from, and on one memorable occasion, almost swallowed by a collapsing floor². And almost every night, someone would throw beer³ at the stage, which would inevitably fall short and drench the photographers instead. Back then, one of the most useful items I carried in my camera bag was a towel. Come to think of it, that’s still true.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 2004-8

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At the time of its launch in 2004, the EOS-1D Mark II was unmatched. Nikon’s game-changing D3 was still three years off, and Olympus and Pentax had quietly retreated from the professional SLR market, leaving Canon at the top of the tree. The EOS-1D Mark II had the best sensor and the best autofocus system of any professional DSLR and (arguably) benefited from the best lens lineup, too. Its modest APS-H crop factor of 1.3X provided a welcome focal length boost for telephoto work, without hobbling wideangle lenses too much (the 17-40mm F4L, for example, became a still very usable 22-50mm equivalent).

Shot from a prone position, on the stage side of the very skinny security barrier at Newcastle’s Carling Academy (stage 2). Compared to the 10D, the 1.3X crop of the EOS-1D Mark II wasn’t too severe, meaning that wide lenses were still reasonably wide.

It was from a similar position on the same stage that I was accidentally kicked in the head by a crowd-surfing metal fan a few months later. He was very nice about it, and most apologetic.

Compared to my 10D, the 1D Mark II was a racehorse. Suddenly I could shoot at ISO 1600 and upwards without worrying too much about noise, and take more than a handful of Raw files in a sequence (at 8 fps, no less) without the camera locking up. One battery lasted for thousands of exposures. I could use off-center autofocus points without fear. The EOS-1D Mark II even got me a date.⁴ It was the first camera I ever really loved, is the point.

So when I found a used 1D Mark II in my local camera store last year for a couple of hundred dollars (Glazers Camera in Seattle – be sure to visit if you’re ever in town) I couldn’t resist.

Can we all just agree that this is a good-looking camera? The EOS-1D Mark II is nothing but compound curves. In keeping with a lot of late-2000s reboots, the Mark III ditched the friendly curves for sharper, more aggressively-sculpted edges. Shame.

Inevitably, after more than a decade my ardor has cooled a little. I’ve used a lot of cameras in the interim. I’m older, more jaded perhaps. More… experienced. And with experience comes perspective. The EOS-1D Mark II is still beautiful, but it’s not the forever camera I thought it was when I was just starting out.

The smile of a man who can barely afford to pay rent, but who’s having a good time anyway. This is a selfie taken on the balcony of the Newcastle Carling Academy in 2005, before ‘selfie’ was even a word. The EOS-1D Mark II is on the right.

By today’s standards, its most obvious deficiency is the small rear LCD screen, which isn’t sharp enough to judge critical focus with any degree of confidence. And then there’s the user interface. I’d forgotten how obsessed Canon used to be with preventing accidental button input in its professional cameras.

Even something as simple as scrolling through images or navigating the menu requires a cramp-inducing combination of ‘press, hold, scroll, press again’ actions that take a while to learn. I used to be able to operate the Mark II entirely by muscle memory, but shooting with it again recently I was struck by how complicated it seems compared to more modern cameras.

A youth theatre production of ‘Les Miserables’ in Durham, in 2005. The EOS-1D Mark II was my main camera for theatre and music photography for several years.

Fussy user interface aside, when the EOS-1D Mark II is placed alongside the current EOS-1D X Mark II it’s amazing how little some things have changed. Canon got a lot right with the control layout of the EOS-1 back in 1989, and the continuity of design over almost 30 years of development is impressive. If you’ve shot with just a single one of the EOS-1 series, the chances are you’ll be able to pick up and use any of the rest without too much of a learning curve.

In 2005 the EOS-1D Mark II was replaced, sort of, by the torturously-named Canon EOS-1D Mark II N. Essentially the same camera with a larger LCD screen, the ‘N’ stuck around until early 2007, when Canon unveiled a more substantial update in the form of the EOS-1D Mark III.

For low light photographers like me, the Mark III was a better camera in all respects. It brought serious improvements to image quality and low light autofocus performance, it was faster, and it introduced a more modern user interface. It also marked the switch from Canon’s older, heavy NiMH battery packs to the lithium-ion batteries we still use today. Unfortunately, its AF system was bafflingly complicated compared to the Mark II, and turned out to be plagued with unpredictable accuracy issues when tracking moving subjects in daylight.

Aside from the small LCD, the EOS-1D Mark II’s rear control layout is extremely similar to today’s EOS-1D X Mark II. The essentials of the 1D II’s design were actually laid down in the original EOS-1, way back in 1989.

For whatever reason, the Internet responded to these problems with pure fury^5, and Canon, caught on the back foot, struggled with damage limitation. A series of firmware fixes didn’t convincingly ‘fix’ the issues, and adding to the company’s woes was the fact that unlike the Mark II, the Mark III had some serious competition. A few months after the Mark III was introduced, Nikon upped its game considerably with the full-frame D3 – a colossally capable next-generation camera that eventually persuaded me (and a lot of the photographers I knew) to switch systems.

Because the EOS-1D Mark III had developed such a toxic reputation (unfairly, I would argue, but please let’s not get into all that again…) the Mark II/N enjoyed quite a long ‘life after death’, holding its value on the used market for a couple of years after it was officially discontinued. Ironically, that worked out well for me in 2008, when I sold mine to pay for a Nikon D3 – but that’s a whole other article…

Original Canon EOS-1D Mark II review samples (2004)

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¹ Overshadowed in my memory only by ‘The Royal Festival Hall Cloakroom Disaster of 2009’, which I still can’t talk about.

² I’m pretty confident that most of it wasn’t personal. Except perhaps for the floor.

³ At outdoor festivals, on the other hand, one of the first lessons you learn is that it isn’t always beer…

⁴ On the same day as the Tiki Bar Incident, actually. How’s that for karma? (It never happened again).

⁵ I got caught up the backlash myself, having published a largely positive review of the Mark III in the spring of 2007 for my previous employer, based largely on analysis of low-light shooting (like I said, it was spring in England). Since joining DPReview in 2009 I’ve been regularly subjected to violent threats by anonymous Americans over something I wrote on the Internet, but back in 2007 it was still a novelty.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Drobo announces ‘easiest and fastest ever’ 5-bay NAS storage with 5N2

23 Mar

Digital storage solutions company Drobo has updated its 5N desktop network attached device with a new version that it claims is easier to use and faster than any previous NAS it has produced. An upgraded processor makes the Drobo 5N2 twice as fast as the previous model, and it comes equipped with a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports so two units can be connected for additional capacity and safety via what Drobo calls Adaptive Link Bonding.

The 5-bay device can accept up to 64TB total capacity and allows users to add and switch drives at any time. The 5N2 is happy to accept spinning and solid state storage, and can accommodate both varieties at the same time. One of the benefits of the company’s BeyondRaid system is that disk capacities don’t have to match and users can top-up the system using empty bays and can upgrade existing individual disks to higher capacities when needed. As the unit doesn’t use trays or carriers new disks simply slot in.

Drobo says the 5N2 is aimed at home networks, media professionals and small businesses and that up to 250 user accounts can be created. The device takes only ten minutes to set up and account holders can use a range of Apps to access data remotely and via smartphones and tablets. Read and write speeds are said to average around 190-197MB/s.

The Drobo 5N2 is available now and costs $ 499/€599/£518 with a pair of Ethernet cables. For more information see the Drobo website.

Press Release

Drobo Launches Next Era of Storage Solutions with the 5N2 NAS

The Drobo 5N2 brings a revolutionary storage solution for the connected home or small office environment

Today, Drobo is launching the revolutionary 5N2, the fastest 5 Bay Drobo NAS with expanded functionality that includes the advanced technology features of Drobo’s enterprise level products. The 5N2 is built with Drobo’s patented BeyondRAID™ technology to meet the demanding data storage requirements of connected home users, media professionals and small businesses. The 5N2 has an impressive list of customer centric, industry-leading features such as:

Two, One Gigabit Ethernet ports for unparalleled performance
Upgraded processor for increased speed and throughput
DroboDR, the Simplest to use Disaster Recovery (DR) solution available
2x Performance boost over the original 5N with port-bonding enabled
Two Year Warranty
DroboApps for turn-key applications and file management support

Designed From the Ground up for Connected Homes and SMBs

The 5N2 is perfect for the connected home and Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) who want a simple, safe, and smart storage solution. The 5N2 has secure remote access and enterprise level DroboDR functionality. The 5N2 also includes access to DroboApps, which extends the functionality of Drobo NAS devices. Applications such as DroboAccess (private cloud solution) and DroboPix (mobile pictures and video management) allow users both privacy and security of their data on a Drobo they own — unlike public cloud solutions.

“The team at Drobo is working hard to deliver on the commitments we have made to customers, partners and ourselves,” said Mihir Shah, CEO of Drobo. “Our customers have been asking for our enterprise level technology in our 5 bay NAS products and the 5N2 delivers just that, at a cost effective price. We strive to be the storage company that is laser focused on our customer’s requirements.”

Superior Performance With Disaster Recovery

The 5N2 is the fastest 5 bay network attached Drobo ever. This allows for superior performance for data intensive applications that most connected homes and small businesses have. To ensure data is safe, the 5N2 also comes with the DroboDR software solution developed by Drobo. With DroboDR, users can set up a pair of 5N2s to make an

offsite copy of data. DroboDR is simple to setup and manage and replicates data to another 5N2, ensuring availability in case of disaster. Furthermore, the remote 5N2 stores all user account information, resulting in a quick and painless recovery with a single click in the Drobo Dashboard. The Drobo 5N2 also comes with an internal battery that protects against data loss during a power outage.

Customer Driven Focus

The 5N2 is the 7th new product introduced after the company underwent an acquisition and management change in 2015. Drobo is committed to introducing innovative products that preserve simplicity and customer confidence. The 5N2 includes a two-year warranty to extend peace of mind for users.

The 5N2 is the easiest to use NAS on the market today with automation usually reserved for more expensive solutions. This ease of use is what customers expect from Drobo’s award-winning focus on simplicity. This is evident in Drobo’s unique features such as:

Internal battery back-up for zero data loss during a power outage
Expandability with any size disk
Award winning ease of use setup and management dashboard
mSATA cache for speedy access to frequently used data
Ability to mix and match any size HDD’s and SSD’s

Price and Customer Loyalty Program

The Drobo 5N2 is available today at an MSRP of $ 499 USD through www.drobostore.com and select channel partners.

Drobo is offering Drobo FS and 5N customers a $ 50 USD discount when they purchase a new Drobo 5N2 through www.drobostore.com.

US customers will also receive a limited edition GelaSkin if purchased on the US Drobo Store. The limited edition GelaSkin offer and $ 50 rebate are valid until April 4th, 2017 or while supplies last.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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2016 CIPA data shows compact digital camera sales lower than ever

08 Mar

Last month, the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) released its 2016 report detailing yearly trends in camera shipments. Using that data, photographer Sven Skafisk has created a graph that makes it easy to visualize the data, namely the major growth in smartphone sales over the past few years and the apparent impact it has had on dedicated camera sales.

The chart shows smartphone sales achieving a big spike around 2010, the same time range in which dedicated camera sales reached its peak. Each following year has represented substantial growth in smartphone sales and significant decreases in dedicated camera sales, particularly in the compact digital cameras category.

Per the CIPA report, total digital camera shipments last year fell by 31.7% over the previous year. The report cites multiple factors affecting digital camera sales overall, with smartphones proving the biggest factor affecting the sales of digital cameras with built-in lenses. The Association’s 2017 outlook includes a forecast that compact digital cameras will see another 16.7-percent year-on-year sales decrease this year.

Skafisk’s graph below shows the massive divide between smartphone sales and camera sales – be prepared to do some scrolling.

Via: PetaPixel, CIPA

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Catch them all: high resolution poster shows every Pentax SLR ever produced

23 Feb

Ricoh has released two posters charting the history of Pentax cameras, both in downloadable high-resolution PDF formats. These posters join the company’s existing online Pentax History website, serving as large visual aids to complement the site’s extensive product-by-product details.

The first of the two posters is dubbed the ‘Pentax Archives,’ and it shows camera models over the years starting with the Asahiflex I from 1952. Many of the cameras are accompanied by descriptions detailing the notable aspects of the model. The other poster shows every Pentax SLR from 1952 to 2017.

You can download them here:

Pentax Archives
Every Pentax SLR from 1952 to 2017

Those interested in additional information can view the brand’s history archives sorted by year, film and digital categories here.

Via: PentaxRumors

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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How To Cover Everything Ever in Photos!

03 Feb

The Polaroid ZIP Mobile Printer makes super sticky tiny prints of all your best photos.

They’re so sticky in fact, that they can stick to almost anything.

Anything you say?

We couldn’t believe it either, so we took to covering some of our favorite things in our favorite pictures. Ya know, to prove it (not just because we wanted to cover everything in adorable, miniature snapshots).

(…)
Read the rest of How To Cover Everything Ever in Photos! (284 words)

Photojojo

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Posted in Equipment

Apple selling more Plus models than ever

31 Jan

Apple’s financial results, which will be released tomorrow, show that in Q4 2016 Apple has sold more iPhone 7 Plus units than any of the preceding Plus models in previous years. The Plus model has a larger screen, more RAM and a bigger battery than its standard counterpart but we’d suspect the iPhone 7 Plus dual-camera with its 2x optical zoom factor and portrait mode has a lot to do with consumers increasingly opting for the more expensive iPhone variant. Overall 24 million iPhone 7 Plus units have been sold which is a 55% increase compared to the 15.5 million iPhone 6s Plus in Q4 2016. This represents 40% of all iPhone 7 sales.

This is also the first time that users in China bought more Plus devices than standard iPhones. 52% of iPhone buyers opted for the dual-camera model. With the previous iPhone 6s generation only 40% decided to go with the larger version.

Despite good news for the iPhone 7 Plus, overall the iPhone has been struggling in the fourth quarter of 2016. According to analysts Cowen & Co, the Apple results show that consumers are less willing to upgrade their device than before and rumors about a 10 year anniversary iPhone model in 2017 made some users skip the 2016 model. Like all mobile manufacturers, Apple is under constant pressure to innovate. At least in terms of imaging the 7 Plus dual-cam looked like a step into the right directions. Let’s hope Apple can follow up on it 2017.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Opinion: The EOS M5 is Canon’s best ever mirrorless camera, and a big disappointment

18 Sep

Canon’s EOS M5 is a small, lightweight but powerful APS-C format mirrorless camera, which uses the same sensor and on-sensor phase-detection autofocus system as the EOS 80D.

By Barnaby Britton, Editor – DPReview.com

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Eight years have passed since Panasonic unveiled the Lumix DMC-G1, the world’s first DSLR-style mirrorless camera, and for much of the intervening time, Canon has appeared content to let its competitors lead the charge away from traditional DSLRs. In that time, mirrorless cameras have gotten faster, their sensors have gotten bigger and the introduction of 4K video has created a new class of genuine ‘hybrid’ products that have carved out a distinct technical niche compared to their DSLR forebears.

Then-Chief Executive Masaya Maeda of Canon – pictured at the Photokina tradeshow in Germany, in September 2014. Mr Maeda has since been promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer at Canon Inc.

In 2014, Canon’s then-Chief Executive Masaya Maeda promised us a serious mirrorless offering ‘in the very near future’, but until now, the closest Canon has come to delivering on this promise was the EOS M3. Canon has never seemed to know how to market the EOS M series*, and insisted at launch that the M3 would not be available in the USA even as Maeda claimed he was telling the his global divisions to “sell it!” Six months later, they finally decided that perhaps they should.

Now, a year after the EOS M3 belatedly entered the US market, we have the EOS M5 – the ‘4’ having being skipped over, possibly in deference to a rather inconsistently applied Japanese superstition. The EOS M5 is a fine product, and one that I think arguably represents Canon’s most sure-footed move in the non-professional space for years. But it is also a massive disappointment.

All Dual Pixel, all the time

Let’s start with the positives. The EOS M5 basically takes the still and video imaging pipeline from the EOS 80D, and puts all of that hardware into a smaller, lighter body with full-time live view. The 80D’s sensor is good – it’s not market leading, but it’s better in some respects than the sensors used in the 70D and 7D II – and despite the equal pixel count, better also than the 24MP sensor that found its way into the EOS M3.

I called out ‘full-time live view’ as a positive because perversely, one of the highlights of the EOS 80D’s handling experience is its behavior in live view mode, when on-sensor Dual Pixel autofocus comes into play. With the EOS M5, it’s all Dual Pixel, all the time, but without having to hold the camera out at arm’s length. All of this, plus the full-time touch-screen adds up to a really, really nice handling experience.

A schematic of Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor structure. The top layer illustrates the light-gathering micro-lenses and conventional Bayer-type color filter array. The lower layer shows how each pixel is split into two photo-diodes, left and right, which are colored blue and red respectively.

So why is the M5 such a letdown? Because this is the camera that Canon should have released at least two years ago, when Dual Pixel AF was first introduced in the EOS 7D II, and when the company still had a chance to really ring the changes in the mirrorless market.

We know that Dual Pixel autofocus is a serious differentiator, and if you’ve been paying attention to our coverage of Canon’s various high-end DSLRs for the past couple of years, you do too. And the M5’s touch interface is lovely. But unless they’ve held and used the EOS M5 (and with more chance of finding a Lapras** on the streets of your town than a dedicated brick and mortar camera store, a lot of people’s first experience of holding a new camera is taking it out of the box), DPAF isn’t the kind of function that’s necessarily going to grab the attention of a potential buyer. Like – say – 4K video might. Or a super high frame-rate mode, or slow-motion movie capture.

This is the camera that Canon should have released two years ago

The EOS M5’s spec sheet suddenly becomes a lot more impressive if you comb through your memories of the APS-C market segment for the past couple of years, and mentally delete all of the entries under ‘Sony’***

Of course as we all know, specs aren’t the whole story. Luckily for Canon, handling and performance go a long way. The M5 probably shoots fast enough and well enough for most photographers, its 1080p video probably looks basically fine,**** and it’s very nice to use. Although recent Sony cameras have been loaded with an almost unbelievable amount of technology, shooting with one, whether it be an Alpha or a Cyber-shot can sometimes feel unpleasantly like playing chess against a supermarket self-checkout machine*****. Canon at least knows how to make cameras pleasant and uncomplicated to use, while many Sonys still feel like they were designed by the same user interface team responsible for this. If you don’t remember Sony’s late-to-market iPod competitor, don’t feel bad – nobody else does either.

In fact, despite its comparatively pedestrian feature set, given the choice, I’d take an EOS M5 out with me over a Sony Alpha any day of the week. But I really believe that this shouldn’t be an either / or thing.

I don’t think that photographers should be required to choose between a sensible, well-designed but feature-limited camera or a cutting edge, highly advanced but annoyingly fiddly one. For videographers who started out on EOS DSLRs this is a particularly irksome choice.

The Samsung NX1 was ahead of its time when it was released in late 2014, and even now, its spec sheet is remarkably competitive. One of our favorite cameras of the past decade, the NX1 was quietly killed off by Samsung, along with the rest of the NX lineup, late last year.

Behind my nagging feeling of anticlimax with the M5 is a principle, which is this: Companies that take risks, and deliver new technology to as many people as possible should be given credit. And companies that do not should be held to account. Take the Samsung NX1 – an APS-C format camera so far ahead of its time that even now it has arguably yet to be bettered. In short, it was a vastly more capable camera than it probably needed to be. As such, the NX1 (which benefitted from an aggressive and effective series of firmware updates) encapsulated the best qualities of the company that made it, just as its premature discontinuation, along with the rest of the NX line, could be said to reflect the worst.

Companies that take risks, and deliver new technology to the market should be given credit

The EOS M5 is undoubtedly Canon’s best mirrorless camera yet, and at least in terms of core stills photography it should prove competitive against cameras like the Sony a6300. But as a former Canon user and a long-time Canon watcher, I can’t help feeling let down.

The Canon T90 from 1986 (left) and 1992’s EOS 5 (A2E in the USA). Both incredibly innovative, game-changing SLRs in different ways. And both released a very long time ago.

Canon, after all, is the company that first put a microprocessor into an SLR. It cemented autofocus as a professional feature, not a gimmick, and later created the first multi-point AF systems. Canon introduced optically stabilized SLR lenses, too. It was Canon that gave us the first large-format CMOS imaging sensor, the first sub-$ 1000 DSLR, and the first practical full-frame digital camera******. Hell, arguably the first practical digital camera. Canon is the company that created the still-gorgeous T90. And Eye-Control autofocus, for heavens’ sake, which – granted – didn’t always work, but still feels like science fiction******* even today.

How many of those innovations date from within the past ten years? Not one.

Before you jump to the comments section and start flaming me, I’m not saying that Canon has stopped doing cool things. That’s a common refrain of habitual Canon brand-bashers on DPReview, and one that I don’t agree with. Apart from anything else, it’s perfectly logical that in a maturing market, paradigm shifts will occur with less frequency. And let’s be fair here – Canon can, and does, innovate. If you take a look at Canon’s camera and lens lineup from PowerShot to Cinema EOS, it’s clear that the company is capable of formidable technical achievement.

For all that, many of Canon’s biggest contributions to the consumer digital imaging market in recent years have taken the form of iterative refinement, not wholesale reinvention. And in my personal opinion, this is a shame. Because reinvention used to be what Canon did better than anyone else.

* It’s a Pokemon thing. Ask your kids, assuming you can locate them.

** Early press briefings on the EOS M were memorable for the unwavering insistence on the part of Canon’s PR team that the M was being marketed primarily to women and smartphone camera upgraders.

*** I write this in the full knowledge that there are some of you who do exactly that.

**** We shot an entire video with the EOS 80D earlier this year. It’s fine.

***** Try it. The machine will persist in maintaining that you didn’t make your last move, when you definitely did, and after going back and forth a few times making you pick up your piece and put it down again it summons a teenager to assist you.

****** No, I’m not counting either the Kodak DCS-14n or Contax N Digital.

******* Eye Control AF was introduced in the EOS 5, in 1992, almost a quarter of a century ago. I like to think that if Canon had persisted with development we could be shooting with mind-controlled cameras by now.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Back in Stock, and Better than Ever

27 May

These gizmos were too popular for their own good, and they ran right out.

Whelp, they’re back, for now, so order ‘em up quick before they fly off our (internet) shelves.

Turn your phone into a light meter, create a photo print masterpiece, eat your favorite camera and more. There’s a reason these gadgets are so well-loved.

(…)
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Photojojo

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Posted in Equipment

360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Ever’

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Back in Stock, and Better than Ever

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