An autofocus 50mm f/1.8 for the Nikon Z system runs $89, and the images coming off it look nothing like the price tag suggests. A fast prime at that number changes what a beginner can afford as a first step past the kit lens.
You can shoot at f/1.4 and get almost no background blur, or shoot at f/4 and get plenty of it. That single fact upends how most people spend money on lenses, and it explains why some expensive glass never delivers the creamy backgrounds you paid for.
Japan observes a Camera Day on November 30, and the date comes from 1977, when Konishiroku Photo Industry put the Konica C35 AF on sale. It was the first mass-produced camera that focused itself, and the part doing the focusing was built by a Minneapolis company whose main businesses were thermostats, industrial controls, and defense electronics.
Sony sells a 50mm f/1.2 but has held off on an 85mm f/1.2 for its full frame mirrorless system, and now a third party has stepped in with autofocus and a price that undercuts Sony's own 85mm f/1.4 G Master II. The Sigma 85mm f/1.2 DG DN Art lands as the first autofocus 85mm f/1.2 for Sony E and the first 85mm f/1.2 ever for L-mount.
A single medium format film shot cost about 470 times what the same scene cost on a digital camera. That kind of math should end the film-versus-digital debate outright, and yet the photos taken on film still mean more to the person who shot them. This is the tension every hybrid shooter runs into once digital quality stops being the question.
Today, I wanted to take a break from discussing the cameras that capture our images and look at one of the tools used to make those images better. Let’s have a look at the Peak Design Travel Tripod.
The Fujifilm X-M5 and X-E5 look like siblings, but the price gap between them runs about $1,000 and the experience of shooting each one splits along lines you might not expect. Deciding between an $800 body and one that often sells closer to $1,800 forces a question every buyer eventually faces: how much are premium build and resolution actually worth to you?
Forced to sell every camera and lens and shoot a single focal length forever, plenty of street shooters would reach for 35mm because it handles almost anything. There's a strong case that the wider 28mm produces more interesting pictures, and the reasoning has less to do with sharpness and more to do with truth.
Apple has introduced the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, pairing a 5.4 in outer display with a 7.6 in folding inner display.
Apple has announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, introducing a new 48 MP Fusion Main camera with variable aperture, expanded manual camera controls, new image-authenticity features, and additional photo and video tools. The phones also introduce the A20 Pro chip, a redesigned thermal system, longer battery life, and iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI.
Whether you do photography as a hobby or professionally, there are a lot of tools and accessories that make what we do easier, more convenient, or even more foolproof. Sometimes even the simplest tools can be instrumental in how we achieve our shots or, on the other hand, something equally important: how we take care of our camera gear.
Sigma just released an 85mm f/1.2 DG Art for L-mount and Sony E-mount, and it lands at £1,299 in the UK or $1,599 in the US. That price sits well under Canon's and Nikon's mirrorless 85mm f/1.2 options, and the Sigma is smaller and lighter than both.
SIRUI has officially announced the launch of the Saturn V2 Full Frame Anamorphic Lens Series, representing a significant update to its popular Saturn anamorphic system.
Packing a single lens for a long trip means giving up options you might miss, and the Sigma 20-60mm f/2.8-4 makes that gamble easier to justify. The range covers wide landscapes, tight architecture, and portraits without a bag full of glass.
A 1-inch, 50-megapixel sensor, 8K open gate, and slow motion running past 900 frames per second sit on one side. A smaller sensor, a faster lens, and a $260 lower price sit on the other. That gap is the whole story, and deciding which camera wins depends less on the spec sheet than you'd expect.
OM Digital Solutions has announced the OM SYSTEM PEN, a new Micro Four Thirds interchangeable-lens camera built around a 20.4-megapixel Live MOS sensor, TruePic IX processor, 5-axis in-body image stabilization, and a compact rangefinder-style body.
Ricoh is ending production of its current Pentax K-series digital SLRs and starting work on a brand-new line built on what it calls an entirely new concept. The move retires the existing lineup while the company tries to reinvent what a DSLR can be.
Sigma is adding an interesting new option to its full frame mirrorless standard zoom lineup: a lens that combines a 20mm wide angle starting point with a compact, lightweight design. The idea was to create a versatile zoom that can stay on the camera most of the time, reducing the need to carry multiple lenses or constantly stop to change them.
Every camera mount has one lens that makes the rest of the lineup look overpriced. It is rarely the flashiest piece of glass in the catalog, and it is almost never the one the marketing pushes hardest.
Certain pieces of photographic equipment make you rethink the way you photograph, and for me, the Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens was one of those lenses. I should probably start by admitting that wildlife photography isn't really my usual territory.
A $1,600 price gap and double the resolution should settle which Sony camera wins on image quality. After a side-by-side test, the answer refuses to cooperate.
What if you could replace your heaviest ultra-wide rig with a single, highly specialized piece of glass that fits in the palm of your hand?
Put two portrait shots side by side, one taken with an $1,800 Sony lens and one taken with a $99 lens, and most people can't call which is which at a glance. That gap between price and image quality is worth understanding before you spend money on your next portrait lens.
A 360 camera bolted to a 249 g drone changes how you fly, because you stop fighting the camera and the flight path at the same time. That single shift is what makes the Antigravity A1 worth a serious look, and it explains why one creator kept reaching for it long after the video was supposed to be finished.
Sigma has announced the Sigma 20-60mm f/2.8-4 DG | Contemporary, a compact full frame zoom for L-Mount and Sony E-mount cameras. The lens covers a range from an unusually wide 20mm through 60mm while keeping its weight to 385 g in the L-Mount version.
Sigma has announced the Sigma 85mm F1.2 DG | Art, a new large-aperture portrait prime for full frame mirrorless cameras. The lens will be offered in L-Mount and Sony E-mount versions, with a planned launch on October 6, 2026, at a suggested retail price of $1,599.
For some Nikon ZR users, Christmas will come a little early this year as Nikon has laid out a clear roadmap for its upcoming firmware updates in 2026 and beyond.
A few months ago, Nikon teased that its journey into cinema products would extend beyond camera bodies into the realm of lenses. Well, today, we learned a bit more about what shape those optics will take.
Fifteen years of hauling heavy DSLRs around the world can leave you wishing for something you can carry all day without noticing the weight. A small full frame body paired with a compact prime now delivers most of what those older bricks did, and that shift changes what serious travel photography can look like.
Most Iceland landscape work you scroll past now was made from the air, with wide drone panoramas that flatten an entire river system into a single graphic. Shooting the same terrain from the ground with a very long lens flips that habit and forces a different kind of seeing.
Leica is in a tricky position when it comes to creating a new M camera. The fanbase welcomes new models, but Leica knows that if they stray too far from the essence of the M, users may reject the new model. The M5, introduced in 1972, made dramatic changes from the design of the previous M4 model and met relatively weak demand.
A bare, uncoated air-to-glass surface sends roughly 4 percent of the light striking it back the way it came, and a current professional 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom stacks about 30 of those surfaces in a row. Uncoated, less than a third of the light entering the front would reach the sensor as part of the image.
The best Canon RF lens for your kit might be one almost nobody talks about. Six of them sit in the shadows of pricier alternatives, dismissed over a single spec or forgotten entirely, even though they deliver image quality that holds up against Canon's L-series glass.
A massive price drop across its line of cinema cameras allows Blackmagic Design to, once again, offer excellent value to filmmakers on a budget.
For photographers working on location, reliable power is no longer a luxury; it's an essential part of the process. Between strobe or LED lighting, tethered laptops, battery chargers, drones, mobile devices, and client comfort equipment, power requirements can quickly become substantial, especially during long days on location.
The Pentax 17 landed in 2024 to a wall of loud opinions, and a year of actual use has a way of softening the sharpest first impressions. A camera you dismiss on a one-week deadline can look very different once you've dragged it through Colorado, the Jersey Shore, and a 4:30 a.m. boardwalk sunrise.
Fujifilm has announced the XF 400mm f/4.5 R LM OIS WR, a new super-telephoto prime lens for the X Series system. Designed primarily for wildlife, bird, sports, motorsports, and aviation photography, the lens provides a 400mm focal length, equivalent to 609mm on full frame, while weighing approximately 2.74 lb (1,245 g).
In the age of AI editing and retouching, high-resolution pen display tablets still offer an irreplaceable user experience. This one from a brand called GAOMON checks a lot of the boxes of what we look for.
Take a single trip with six different cameras and a hard question follows you home: which one actually earned its place in the bag? Peru offered a real test of that, pitting a video-friendly workhorse against a stills machine that stopped everyone cold.
A fisheye lens locks you into curved horizons and bowed lines, but the 7Artisans 10mm f/2.5 for the Nikon Z mount ships with a way out. A free lens correction profile straightens those shots into a clean wide angle look, and applying it takes a handful of clicks.
Photographers have a myth, and like most good myths it gets told with real feeling, usually in a comment section, usually in all caps somewhere near the end. Cameras used to be affordable. Real cameras, made by people who cared, sold at honest prices to working photographers who did not have to remortgage anything.
If you had a camera that only shoots in black and white, would you be satisfied with it? Let’s talk about what such a camera can actually bring to the table.
A $700 smart telescope and a $4,000 traditional rig pointed at the same patch of sky on the same night in northern New Mexico, and the gap between them was smaller than the price tags suggest. If you've been weighing whether a point-and-shoot device can stand in for a full Milky Way setup, this is the comparison that answers it.
GoPro has agreed to merge with a privately held optics company called Starman Optical in a deal worth $285 million. The company will stay listed on the Nasdaq, keep selling cameras, and push into AI data center hardware and defense.
Check the active imaging area specified for the sensor inside a Sony RX100 and you get 13.2 x 8.8 mm, with a diagonal of about 15.86 mm. That is close to 16 mm, not the 25.4 mm that an inch is supposed to be.
Most camera companion apps are an afterthought, slow, clunky, and quick to disconnect the moment signal drops. Hasselblad's Focus Mobile is the rare exception, and it finally runs on Android after living on iPhone alone.
Sony sells a 100mm portrait lens with an f/2.8 aperture that meters like an f/5.6. That is not a manufacturing defect or a marketing rounding error. Sony built a disc of gray-graded glass into the middle of the lens, on purpose, and gave away roughly two stops of light to buy what might be the smoothest out-of-focus blur any lens can produce.
Ten years of shooting weddings on Fujifilm, and the internet still insists it can't be done well without full frame. That advice is wrong, and the right set of X-series primes proves it on every wedding day.
A good monitor is hard to appreciate until you have used a bad one. While we spend decades arguing over which camera has better color rendition, we don’t pay as much attention to the screens we view these colors on. If the screen is wrong, everything is wrong.
Fifty thousand vintage cameras and lenses sit inside a Finnish warehouse, and most of them arrived broken. A collection that size raises a simple question: how do you find anything worth shooting with, and does the vault actually hold the one lens you have been chasing for years?