Releasing two flagship cameras in short succession, Fujifilm has left some prospective customers confused, never mind the fact that the X-Pro2 is also still hovering about somewhere in the line-up. So here I’ll look at the X-H1 and X-T3 and who they might be suited for.
Several sources, including some from Photokina, are reporting that Olympus is planning to release a flagship camera possibly in early 2019. They will also be celebrating their 100th anniversary later in the year with something special.
A different rumour suggests that Olympus were invited to join the L mount alliance, but declined. Figures quoted in this context point out that Olympus, Panasonic, Ricoh and Fujifilm summed together have about 15% market share, which could lead one to wonder whether Ricoh or Fujifilm might have been approached.
Russian photography industry legend, Zenit, has teamed with Leica to release a Russian-designed version of the Leica M (Typ 240), and they pair this with a new lens, a 35mm with f/1 aperture, which is quite some chunk to behold.
Hugh Brownstone of Three Blind Men and An Elephant Productions has given a fairly comprehensive 30 minute appraisal of the EOS R, linked below. For those who can read faster than they can watch a YouTube video, I’ve also provided a summary/write-up after the break hopefully catching all the main points made.
Apparently, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have skin smoothing built in when using the portrait mode – in addition to the fake background blur. For the way it looks, I’d say it’s probably done by means of frequency separation as used by many professional retouchers. Customers are now complaining since there’s no know off switch for this – if you want the fake bokeh, you get fake skin thrown into the deal, so the only choice is to not use portrait mode and forego both.
After the D700, D7100, D5200 and D600, the Z7 is the latest Nikon camera to be reported to have banding issues – in spite of having an apparently identical sensor to the D850. It’s apparently due to the holes in the image produced by phase detection pixels – a problem I’ve mentioned several times before. The problem is that phase detection pixels do not precisely measure the quantity of light like regular sensels, so the electronics have to fake the data for those pixels.
Since an increasing number of manufacturers now offer in-body stabilisation, I thought it would be interesting to look at the cost associated with buying into such a system. I’ll assume we’re looking for an APS-C system, with prices presented for the body only, for a large aperture zoom (typically 16-50mm/2.8) bundle and for a travel zoom bundle.
