At this point, there are so many brands of gimbals that it can be hard to know which direction to go, especially with heavy-hitting names like DJI at the forefront of most publications and media outlets. But when I saw the MT3 Pro from Hohem, there was a standout feature that made me pause.
Twenty years behind a camera can lock you into fixed ideas about what gear delivers the results you want. A long-held bias against Micro Four Thirds is exactly what gets challenged here, and the reasons have less to do with specs than with how you actually shoot.
You may have noticed that photography lenses are marked in f-numbers, f/1.4, f/2.8, f/8, while cinema lenses are marked in T-numbers, T1.5, T2.9, and wondered whether they mean the same thing. They are closely related, they sit in the same spots on the aperture ring, and a T-number looks just like an f-number with a different letter in front. But they measure two genuinely different things, and the gap between them tells you something real about how lenses work and why a cinematographer cares about it while a portrait photographer mostly does not.
The Fujifilm X100VI has a cult following for good reason: it packs an optical viewfinder, IBIS, a built-in ND filter, and a fast fixed lens into a body small enough to carry anywhere. The catch is the price, and increasingly, the availability.
I had the good fortune of spending some time with Sony's new RX10 V, and I shot the entire range of my life with it. A World Cup match here in Seattle one weekend, then a family outing to the Ballard Locks the next.
Choosing between a wider aperture and a longer zoom range is one of the most common trade-offs in APS-C lens selection, and few comparisons make that tension as concrete as the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 versus the Sigma 17-40mm f/1.8. These two lenses cost $200 apart, share the same weight, start at the same focal length, and yet produce noticeably different results depending on what you're shooting.
Almost every camera has a shutter, the mechanism that controls how long light hits the sensor, but not all shutters work the same way. Among mechanical shutters, there are two main designs, the leaf shutter and the focal plane shutter, and the difference between them is not trivia. It determines how fast you can sync a flash, how quiet your camera is, how big and expensive your lenses get, and which kind of photography each system is best suited to. If you have ever wondered why a small fixed-lens camera can do something your big mirrorless body cannot, the shutter is often the reason. There are electronic shutter modes too, which we will come to, but the mechanical pair is where the story starts.
Red lights blinking on my NAS. Drive failure. Double drive failure. I'm on RAID 6, so the data's still there, but my heart rate has increased. My day is reprioritized — time to work on this.
So I did what we all do now — I asked the internet, specifically Google's AI, how to fix it. The advice was tactically good, but it missed the real problem, and a thought stuck with me: the same AI tech I was leaning on for answers is the reason storage just got so expensive.
When storage costs this much, having good discipline with your data management practice beats blind redundancy.
Choosing between the 7Artisans 135mm f/1.8 and the Viltrox 135mm comes down to a real tradeoff: raw optical and autofocus performance versus a lighter, smaller package at a lower price. At $689, the 7Artisans sits well below the Viltrox, and that gap raises a fair question about what you're actually giving up.
Choosing the right portrait lens for an APS-C system is genuinely hard when the native options are expensive and heavy. The Viltrox 75mm f/1.8 and Viltrox AF 90mm f/2.2 are making a strong case for themselves as lightweight, affordable alternatives for Fujifilm, Sony, and Nikon APS-C shooters.
Owing to the growing popularity of Leica cameras in recent years, a bunch of new lens manufacturers have sprung up to provide much cheaper alternatives to Leica lenses. And what's particularly exciting is that, with the aid of modern technology, many rare and desirable Leica lenses from the past can now be reproduced with incredible accuracy.
The Canon EOS R6 V is Canon's first full frame V-series hybrid camera, priced at $2,500 body only. It's built for video makers who still need serious stills capability, and at that price, it competes in a range of the market where buyers are making real commitments.
The Leica 35mm Summilux-M f/1.4 ASPH has been around for 16 years, and it was never designed with a 60-megapixel sensor in mind. Whether it holds up on something like the Leica M11 is a real question, and the answer is more nuanced than you might expect.
Let's begin with the usual disclaimer:
I am not affiliated with Canon in any way. No sponsorships. No ambassador contract. No free gear raining from heaven. This is simply the perspective of a working photographer who has spent years using multiple systems professionally across documentary, editorial, portrait, and street photography.
The Sigma 17-40mm f/1.8 for Fujifilm X sits in an interesting spot. It's faster than Fujifilm's own XF 16-55mm f/2.8, covers a narrower zoom range, and costs less, and for event shooters who live in dark rooms, that aperture difference isn't trivial.
Vintage lenses have made a serious comeback, and the question of whether a 50-year-old glass can hold its own on a modern mirrorless body is one worth asking seriously. The Minolta MD 35-70mm costs around $60 used, and if it can genuinely work as a daily walk-around lens, that changes the math on what you actually need to spend on glass.
Have you ever wished for a photography accessory or tool and dreamed of making it yourself? If you're the kind of photographer who likes finding neat solutions, 3D printing might be worth checking out.
Most Fujifilm shooters either ignore the Grain Effect entirely or crank it to Strong/Large, decide it looks too noisy, and turn it off again. That pattern makes sense if you've never seen what the setting can actually do when used correctly.
For most of digital photography's history, medium format meant one thing: a five-figure investment, a deliberate studio pace, and a tool reserved for commercial shooters whose clients paid for the absolute ceiling of image quality. The format was the opposite of mainstream by definition. It was the thing you rented for the shoot, not the thing you owned and carried.
Buying a 50mm lens for under $100 sounds like a deal until you see what you're actually getting. The TTArtisan AF 50mm f/1.8 Neo hits that $89 price point on full frame, and the question isn't whether it's cheap. It's whether cheap is cheap enough to matter.
Finding a fast prime with an apochromatic design under $400 is almost unheard of, and that's exactly what the Viltrox 35mm f/1.8 Evo claims to be. Apochromatic lenses correct chromatic aberration by aligning all three color wavelengths to the same focal plane, a feature you typically only find in lenses costing several times more.
7Artisans has built its reputation on cheap manual focus glass, so releasing autofocus lenses puts the company in direct comparison with brands that have been doing this for years. The bar for autofocus in 2024 is high, and whether a budget brand can clear it is a real question.
Choosing between a $370 lens and a $1,100 lens is easy when the cheaper one wins on almost every technical measure. The Viltrox AF 55mm f/1.8 Evo is a direct challenge to the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 ZA, and Dustin Abbott's side-by-side test on the Sony a7R VI makes that case in detail.
Before anything else gets misread, I want to make one thing clear.
Years ago, Leica Camera AG hired me for an assignment worth roughly $10,000: the photos in this article are from that assignment that made the Leica X catalog in 2013. Today I have no working relationship with them, and I don't own any Leica cameras. I currently shoot Canon. I mention this only because Leica discussions tend to turn strangely ideological online, as if any nuance automatically comes from sponsorship or resentment. It doesn't. Sometimes it just comes from having been close enough to see how the myth behaves from the inside.
Choosing a camera is rarely just about specs. A camera can cost over $6,000, autofocus everything in front of it, shoot at 30 frames per second with pre-capture, and still leave you feeling completely disconnected from your own images.
Shooting street photography in the rain sounds miserable until you see what it actually produces. Hong Kong in a full thunderstorm gives you reflections, umbrellas, chaotic traffic, and strangers too focused on staying dry to notice a camera in their face.
Today I'll have a look at an exciting new lens option for filmmakers, the Zhongyi Zone T1 cinema lens.
The 135mm autofocus lens market has gotten crowded fast, with options from Samyang, Viltrox, and Sigma all competing for your attention on Sony E-mount, Nikon Z-mount, and L-mount. The 7Artisans 135mm f/1.8 enters that field with the lowest MSRP of the group at $689, but price alone isn't enough to stand out when the competition has had years to mature.
This lens is the perfect example of why one should not judge a lens by its cover. While it may seem like any other budget fast prime, it offers a real, visible difference for your images.
Ultrawide lenses used to cost a fortune. A full frame 14mm f/2.8 from Canon or Nikon ran around $1,500 just over a decade ago, which put serious glass out of reach for a lot of people. Budget manual focus alternatives have changed that equation, and the Brightin Star 14mm f/2.8 is one of the most affordable yet, coming in at around $279.
The Panasonic Lumix GX8 is a Micro 4/3 camera, and that small sensor size gives it one genuinely unusual advantage: you can mount almost any lens ever made on it, from almost any manufacturer, as long as you have the right adapter.
One of the first real decisions a new photographer faces is sensor size, and it arrives wrapped in more anxiety than it deserves. The internet will tell you that full frame is "professional" and APS-C is "entry level," as if the sensor inside the camera decides whether your photos are any good. It does not. What sensor size actually changes is your reach, your low-light headroom, the amount of background blur you can get, the size and weight of your kit, and how much you spend, both now and over the years you keep shooting. Understanding those tradeoffs honestly is what lets you pick the right tool instead of the most expensive one.
So after hearing about the Viral Cameras of 2026, there was one that stood out from a familiar, but somewhat tarnished, name in the camera business: the Kodak Charmera.
The popular rule of selling unused gear after six months describes one specific kind of author, and photographers who keep specialized equipment connected to their actual practice are not the kind it had in mind.
Fujifilm's X system has been a quiet workhorse for serious landscape work for over a decade, and the debate about whether crop sensor cameras can hold their own professionally never really goes away. Andy Mumford's answer, built on 11 years of real-world use across five continents, is worth paying attention to.
If you fly with a camera bag, 2026 is the year the gate finally caught up with you. The bag that "always made it on" for the last five years is now getting weighed, measured, and gate-checked with a consistency that did not exist before. For most travelers this is an annoyance. For photographers it is a real problem, because a camera kit is the densest, heaviest, and least checkable thing most people carry. A few bodies, a couple of fast lenses, batteries, and a charger can push past a 7-kilogram (15.4 lb) cabin limit before you have packed a single shirt, and unlike a sweater, you cannot exactly stuff a 70-200mm into the overhead and hope.
Anamorphic lenses produce a look that's immediately recognizable: stretched bokeh, horizontal lens flares, and a cinematic quality that's defined Hollywood films for decades. The question most people face is whether that distinctive look is worth the tradeoffs compared to a conventional spherical lens.
The Leica SL3-P positions itself as Leica's answer to a problem that has frustrated SL system users for a while: you had to choose between the video-focused SL3-S and the resolution-focused SL3, and if you shoot both stills and video seriously, neither option was a clean fit. The SL3-P sits between them, and Leica calls it the best camera they've ever made.
The compact camera is having a genuine revival, and it has caught the industry slightly off guard. Models that sat ignored for years are now selling out, prices are climbing, and manufacturers that abandoned the category are scrambling back into it. The reason is simple: people who grew up shooting on phones increasingly want something that feels deliberate, looks distinctive, and delivers image quality a phone cannot match. A premium compact earns its place by beating your phone at one of four things: image quality, reach, video, or the sheer pleasure of carrying and using it.
Buying an 85mm lens is one of the most common moves in portrait photography, and it's also one of the most misunderstood. The lens has a reputation for good reason, but the way most people use it wastes most of what makes it worth owning.
Choosing between the Sony a7R VI and the Sony a1 II is genuinely difficult, and the spec sheets don't make it any easier. On paper, the two cameras overlap so heavily that you could easily talk yourself into either one without ever really knowing if you made the right call.
Photography, in this social media era, has become exhausting.
At $135 a full frame autofocus 50mm lens sounds like a compromise waiting to happen. The Yongnuo 50mm f/1.8S DF is that lens, and it turns out the compromises are a lot smaller than you'd expect.
Why fix what isn't broken? Well, Viltrox seems to have a good subtle reason as to why it did with the 35mm f/1.2 LAB (N) that photographers might appreciate.
The MacBook Neo sits at the bottom of Apple's MacBook lineup, and that single fact shapes everything about it. At its price point, it goes up against laptops that routinely disappoint, which makes what Apple has pulled off here genuinely worth paying attention to.
The Leica SL3-P sits in an interesting position: a 45-megapixel hybrid that Leica designed to land between the speed-focused SL3-S and the resolution-heavy SL3, and the question of whether it actually pulls that off has real stakes if you're considering dropping serious money on any of the three.
Earlier in 2026, a 15-year-old named Jack Crockford won his category at the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2026 with a frozen instant of a Eurasian hobby snatching prey out of the air, a shot that demands timing most photographers spend years failing to develop. He did it with an aging professional DSLR and a long telephoto lens, not one of the artificial-intelligence-driven mirrorless bodies that dominate every camera advertisement this year. On its own, that is a charming footnote. The problem is that it is not on its own.
There's this idea going around that the newest cameras, with the latest sensor or faster processor, will give you the best image quality. I say to that, what absolute twaddle! (They wouldn't let me use the "B" word).
A new Leica camera always attracts attention. And while the M line is the brand's most famous line, there are many devotees of the SL system, which is a more contemporary system akin to cameras offered by Nikon, Canon, and Sony. Today, Leica announced the newest iteration, the SL3-P, a 44-megapixel camera designed for both speed and performance.
The Canon RF 20-50mm f/4L IS USM PZ is a lens built around a specific kind of shooter: someone who wants wide angle coverage, reliable stabilization, and smooth power zoom control, all in one relatively compact package. At $1,400, it sits in territory where performance has to justify the price tag.