Popular Gear Reviews

Many have waited for it patiently, and even more can only dream of affording it, but there is one thing you simply cannot deny: the Leica Q3 is a damn good camera. Is it worth the price? To many Leica lovers, undoubtedly. To you? Well, let’s see what it offers first.

Ever wished your laptop had a bit more workspace? The Asus Zenbook Duo has a secondary display right on the main panel that allows for increased productivity and multitasking.

For the first time in history, Nikon released a camera that carries the mark II addition in its name. It is indeed the same camera as the mark I, but with a lot of improvements. I reviewed the Nikon Z 6II to find out if it is worth the upgrade.

The popularity of adapting lenses from one system to another is undeniable. One thing you might want to do is adapt a lens designed for a larger sensor to a small-sensor camera. For example, adapting a full-frame lens to an APS-C sensor. This is where focal reducers like the Zhongyi Lens Turbo II come in.

It’s hard to pick a component of gear that’s most important for editing your color-dependent photo and video work. But it’s easy to say that a great, accurate, wide-gamut monitor is near the top of that list. NEC recently gave us a chance to review a monitor of theirs that's popular for its balance of features, size, and mid-range price for its tier: the EA275WMI-BK.

Just a few weeks ago, Skylum added GenErase to the Neo platform, a smart AI erase and fill feature. Now, they are adding the second part of their trilogy of AI tech: this one is GenSwap.

Laowa's ever-increasing wide angle lens range is getting larger with the introduction of the 12-24mm f/5.6 C-Dreamer for mirrorless cameras. With a fixed f/5.6 aperture throughout the zoom range, an all-metal construction, 15 elements in 11 groups, is this lens a dream to use?

Are you getting real tired, real quick of the ol' shoulder strap method of carrying your camera around? Me too, and I've been on a journey to rid myself from it once and for all. In this hands-on review I take a closer look at the Peak Design Capture Camera Clip v3.

We know, it's another bag review, but we all need to face the reality that camera bags are like Pokemon for photographers; gotta' catch 'em all. There's really no such thing as a perfect bag, as no one bag can really apply to every situation the working photographer can throw at it, but I think I've found the closest thing to being universally useful in the Incase DSLR Pro Pack.

Today, I begin a series of five articles going in depth into my experience shooting with the Fujifilm GFX 50S medium format mirrorless camera for an entire month.

It’s certainly well known that the Sigma Art line is beloved by many, and one of the great benefits of shooting with Sony is the ability to use most any lenses with adapters. As well as the adapters work, I could hardly contain my excitement when the Art line began to arrive in native Sony E-mount and today we’ll be going over the venerable 35mm f/1.4 Art.

When I got the opportunity to test out this lens, I jumped at the chance. An ultra-wide angle zoom at f/2.8 would be great for so many different photographic applications: landscape, architectural, interior, astrophotography, events, creative, and video, to name a few. Did I get the opportunity to test it out with all of these? No, but what I did get to try certainly produced the results.

There are two things that immediately come to mind when we talk about the new Sigma dp2 Quattro: the new new Foveon X3 sensor (the book), and the shape of the camera (its cover). Do either matter? Are either necessary? Why do/don’t I like it? And overall, should we all go out and buy this camera today? I had some time to myself with the camera for a preliminary review this week. Here are some thoughts.

It’s easy to be astounded by statistics such as 14 fps and ISO 3,000,000. But when you put everything that Nikon’s latest flagship body offers together, you get a machine that is the first of its kind, and that's really thanks to the combination of two features Nikon obviously pushed to new heights: autofocus, and — yes — ISO sensitivity (which has itself been a point of controversy for the Nikon D5).

Nikon’s mirrorless lens lineup is slowly but surely growing, but a good lens selection can’t rely on only first-party offerings. Other manufacturers matter greatly. The new Tamron 150-500mm is a welcome addition to the Z mount, with its long telephoto range, decent aperture, and compact size.

Mobile phones have become more advanced and are capable of capturing high-quality video footage, and with that mobile phone gimbals have also become increasingly popular and are a game changer for content creators, vloggers, and anyone who wants to capture professional quality footage.

WD, of the Western Digital Company, released what I thought to be an outstanding addition to their line: a thunderbolt-powered dual hard drive that promised speeds of up to 233 MB/s. No additional cables, small, user-selectable RAID and fast? The My Passport Pro looked like it could easily be the road-version of my Lacie d2. But it's more than that. It replaced my Lacie.

Laowa has made some amazing lenses, ranging from ultra-wide angle to macro lenses. These are all manual focus without any way of communication with the camera. The 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D has changed that, being the first Laowa autofocus lens. It’s also the first 10mm lens with an f/2.8 aperture.

This review is for you if you’re a Capture One Pro user and are wondering if the iPad version is worth adding to your workflow. It is also for those who don’t yet use Capture One but are looking for a budget-friendly introduction to it and already own an iPad. I will be looking at the application’s features, pros and cons, and comparing them to the desktop version.

Though they are excellent for photographers, Pelican seemed to fall into the industry rather than build specifically for it. But with options between the ubiquitous Velcro inserts and foam, there hasn't been a lot to complain about in the design and function. They do exactly what they claim to, extremely well. However after using Lowepro's first attempt at hard cases, I can now see room for improvement. I think the perfect hard case is somewhere in between the two brands' offerings, but Lowepro is closer to the mark.

With so many different products on the market, it's easy to get lost in trying to pick the perfect one for you. So many brands, so many modifiers, and so much to learn. What if there was an almost perfect kit for beginners? Well, this might just be it.

Luminar is Macphun’s latest editing platform, and it’s the company’s first try at an all-in-one solution that can go head-to-head with Adobe Lightroom and Apple’s discontinued Aperture programs. Still in beta, Luminar recently received an update that helped improve speed and fixed over 300 small bugs, making it nearly ready for its public release on November 17. So, how does it hold up to platforms such as Lightroom?

For this article, I am going to be looking at a lifetime review of the Sigma Art 35mm 1.4 lens for Canon. I purchased this lens within the first week of its release.

Luminar Neo from Skylum has added a much awaited feature: background removal in portraits. Removing a person's image from a photo is nothing new, but it's generally time-consuming if the background is not simple or solid. Luminar Neo does it usually in one click, and if you're a professional or an advanced hobbyist, it is a time-saver.

I've owned lots of image de-noisers over the years. I've used external apps, Photoshop/Lightroom plugins, and I've used the noise reductions controls built into Photoshop and Lightroom. They all work to some degree, but you wind up trading noise reduction for details, and I've never found a noise reduction aid that didn't have some rather large trade-offs. Increase the noise reduction and details suffer. Preserve the details and the noise reduction is not effective. Many of you know the drill.

The idea of disposable air canisters isn’t the most appealing for a number of reasons. But we do rely on them to clean a lot of gear. Here’s a review of a can-less, cartridge-less option that could prove itself to be a great alternative.

Do you occasionally transfer many memory cards at the same time? Do you also need a Thunderbolt dock that allows you to attach multiple peripherals to a computer with a single cable? Well, I have the perfect product for you.

Godox’s line of flashes, including the incredibly popular AD200 and V1, have become a mainstay of the on and off-camera lighting market. They’ve become so popular, in part, thanks to the surprising value and feature set offered at each price point. As a result, the AD100Pro, a new addition to the line, has quite the legacy to live up to. Has it earned a place in photographer’s bags?

Recently, Spiffy Gear had released a very unique-looking light named Spekular. What caught my attention was its ability to combine, shape, and separate one single "light" in so many different ways. From my perspective, having the variety of options for on-the-go shooting held value. I ended up taking the LED light kit for a spin. There were some aspects I liked and some that could use some improvements. Let's dive in.

Let me get to the point: Adobe Spark could be the company’s biggest release yet. For veteran Adobe users, it might not seem as exciting as a new Creative Cloud update; but the combination of its ease of use, ingenious functionality, and truly professional results give it the potential to aid far more people than Photoshop ever will — no, really. This is helped immensely by the fact that Spark’s launch is amongst the most impressive I’ve ever seen, as Adobe Spark launches today with the maturity of a decade-old product. And it’s completely free.

Recently, a gear company you may be familiar with, Tether Tools, released their new Case Relay Power System (CPS). This contraption allows you to shoot continuously without any interruption or having to keep recharging batteries. So, I decided to put it to the test and travel almost 100 miles away with just the power system and no batteries.

If you spend a lot of time under the night sky, you already understand the challenges: weather, setting up in the dark, and processing. Astro Panel 2.0 is a nifty Photoshop Plug-in that can automatically ease a lot of processing challenges and greatly improve your night sky photos.

Last week Sony unveiled their most ambitious Alpha camera to date with the a9. The 24.2-megapixel mirrorless camera takes on the general form factor of previous a7 II bodies and packs in their latest photo technology with a strong emphasis on autofocus, speed, and removing distractions such as shutter noise and screen blackout in continuous shooting. This all adds up to a product that has the potential to make a large impact on the sports photography scene. Today I'm excited to share a number of images I shot with the Sony a9 of a range of track and field events plus hockey and ice skating.

Recently, Godox launched the V1Pro, an upgrade to the popular V1 flash. But with the V1 already at the top of the pack, was there much to improve? In this review, I’ll be comparing the Godox V1 and V1Pro to determine which you should consider adding to your flash photography kit.

Peak Design has released new gear to complement its growing Travel Cube range. For traveling and adventurous photographers, they may be exactly what we need.

Let us take a moment of silence to respect the venerable 70-200mm lenses in our midst. The workhorses that they are have kept many a working professional with their rent happily paid, and many a serious amateur smiling at their results. The collection of several useful focal lengths, 85mm, 135mm, and 200mm, plus everything in between and a fast aperture of f/2.8 has made it the go-to lens for many. Up until recently, it was all but missing from the Fujifilm X System lens lineup as Fuji focused on creating spectacular primes one after another. But, Fujifilm rectified that with their announcement of the XF 50-140mm R LM OIS WR lens in September of 2014.

Not long ago, I released a review of Sigma's newest Art-series lens, the 20mm f/1.4 Art. Unfortunately, Northern California skies have had bit of a tough time clearing up despite numerous requests from astrophotographers below, patiently waiting for news of this lens' nighttime, Milky Way performance. Last night, although far from perfect, areas of the sky did clear up enough to get a small consensus on how this lens fares when pointed toward the stars.

Nikon has started making APS-C mirrorless cameras a few years back, and they are definitely worth considering. Their image quality is decent, the autofocus isn’t half bad, and they undoubtedly have their fans. But they lacked a decent selection of dedicated glass. That is finally changing.

If you've grown tired of waiting for Canon's native EF/EF-S to RF lens mount adapter to become available, this cheap adapter might be the perfect stopgap alternative. It works on both Canon's native lenses and third-party lenses. Read on to see all the lenses I tested successfully with it.

Over the years, I have discovered that having the right equipment for the job is essential. This doesn’t just mean cameras and lenses, but also ancillary equipment like tripods and straps. I decided to give both Peak Design’s excellent Slide and the Slide Lite a try to see which would suit me best.

The new Nikon Df retro styled camera is rustling the feathers of the photography world. People seem to either love it or hate. Today Chase Jarvis unboxes Nikon's newest offering and gives his first impressions. Could the Nikon Df DSLR be the ultimate travel camera or is it just another alternative to the modern DSLR?

Quite possibly the most exciting product announced within the last year comes from lighting company Profoto with the announcement of the Profoto B1 studio strobe. Promising TTL within a 500 watt/sec studio strobe is exciting all on its own, but they also announced that this device is cordless, with a built in battery pack. But does the light live up to its hype?

There are good reasons why monochrome photography is compelling. Let’s look at what makes a captivating black-and-white photograph and what doesn’t work. Also, why Nik 7 SilverEfex is possibly the best tool for converting color images.

As a landscape photographer I'm always looking for unique locations. Living in Arizona, I seek out ghost towns, abandoned mines, and old airfields, military or civilian.

I recently traded my Nikon DSLR for an unbranded mystery camera for a few days to test out an entirely new concept: camera as a service.

Do you live tied down? Weighed down by the ball and chain? Feel like you're living with a leash on? No, I'm not talking about your love life, I'm talking about that tether cord attached to your camera. In-studio or on-location tethering has become a necessity, especially if you're working with clients. The thought leader in their cable tethering technology, Tether Tools, has created their latest product, Case Air, to help make photographers live free again.

It's not every day when you come across a camera like this. We took a look to how the new Sony RX10 III fared with its impressive spec sheet, and it did not disappoint!

The Way I See It is marketed as a look behind the curtain of two of the most iconic U.S. Presidencies in the last century, courtesy of White House Photographer Pete Souza. It's quite a bit more than that. To be upfront, if you don't believe in photojournalism or the importance of a historical record, if you're a Trump supporter with thin skin, or if you have an inability to think critically, this movie likely isn't for you. To be honest, neither is this article.

Few things are more terrifying than a corrupted or accidentally formatted memory card. When that recently happened to me, I hastily hopped on the Internet to find memory card recovery software. After several hours of searching, I came across an obscure but free tool, and a few hours later, all my images and videos were safely and securely transferred to my hard drive.