The OM System PEN brings a lot of camera (interchangeable lenses, twin command dials, an EVF, in-body stabilization and a rated degree of weather sealing) to not a lot of camera (it’s usefully small).

Here’s our hands-on overview of a camera that brings together familiar components in a form that we haven’t seen (at least in North America) for some time.

It’s more an E-P7 with a viewfinder than a direct PEN-F successor, but that delivers an interesting, relatively affordable option for everyday and travel photography.

If you want to read about the PEN in more depth and see more sample images, check out our written review.

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Laowa has announced that it is bringing its 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO lens to Fujifilm X-mount and Nikon F-mount. The lens was originally released almost exactly one year ago for Sony E, Nikon Z, Canon EF, Canon RF, and L-mounts, and the new additions mean that most photographers, no matter their system, have access to an affordable macro lens, though not every mount offers autofocus. 

Laowa

The Fujifilm X-mount version, like the E, Z, and EF-mount iterations, is an autofocus lens and marks the first autofocus Laowa lens for X-mount cameras. The Canon RF, L-mount and Nikon F versions, though, are manual focus only. Complicating matters further, the autofocus versions of the lenses only have their full abilities from 1.5m (4.9′) to infinity. For subjects between 1.5m and the lens’ minimum focusing distance, 30cm (11.8″), you only get “limited autofocus assistance for focus stacking.”

On Fujifilm X-mount cameras, the lens offers a 270mm equivalent field of view. Optically, all mounts are the same, with an apochromatic design and 12 elements in 9 groups, which Laowa says results in excellent sharpness and reduced chromatic aberration. It features a nine-blade aperture diaphragm. 

Laowa

The exact weight depends on the mount, but the Fujifilm X version is the heaviest of the bunch, weighing 526.2g (1.2 lbs). All iterations are compatible with 62mm filters. 

Laowa’s 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO for X and F-mounts is available for purchase today for $499. 

Laowa 180mm F4.5 1.5X Ultra Macro APO

• $499 at B&H Photo
• $499 at Laowa

It looks like Viltrox is gearing up to release a lot of lenses, including bringing several of its existing full-frame designs to L-mount. The news comes from the company’s press release about its attendance of the International Broadcasting Convention, or IBC, this week. While the show is typically focused on video, the company says it’ll be showing off several photographic tools there, too.

First are its L-mount lenses. Viltrox is bringing its autofocusing 14mm F4, 20mm F2.8, 40mm F2.5 and 50mm F2 lenses to the mount, which are all part of its “Air” series of relatively lightweight options that were originally launched for Sony E and Nikon Z mounts. Given that the company has only released two autofocusing lenses for the mount since it joined the L-mount Alliance in 2025, this looks like a relatively dramatic expansion of its offerings. What stands out more, though, is that these lenses aren’t all standard fare; sure a 50mm F2 isn’t that exotic, but there aren’t exactly a ton of affordable ultrawide autofocus lenses already on the market for those with L-mount cameras.

The company also says it’ll be introducing two new APS-C lenses, the 18mm (27mm equiv.) F1.2 Pro and 40mm (60mm equiv.) F1.2 Pro. These are also exciting options, as I wasn’t able to find any other lenses like them currently available for sale (assuming they’ll have autofocus). Of course, they’ll probably be quite large and heavy, but for those who want fast glass to pair with an APS-C camera, these could be options to watch out for. 

The company also promises to expand its flash lineup – which has, until now, consisted mainly of small, on-camera models – with a “new high-power” option. Whether that means a particularly bright version of what it’s made before, or a speedlight or standalone strobe to compete with companies like Godox, we’ll have to wait and see.

While Viltrox will be showing these lenses off at IBC, this doesn’t quite seem to be an official announcement yet. We don’t have release dates for the L-mount lenses, nor do we know if they’ll be the same price as the Sony and Nikon versions. Nor do we have much info on the APS-C lenses. But it’s clear that we should keep a close eye on Viltrox in the coming weeks.

Meet James Fawcette

Home base: Los Altos Hills, CA USA

For this spotlight series, we sometimes get a variety of photos from an individual to share with you, and then there are also specialist photographers like James Fawcette, known as JimLosAltos in the forums. James has spent decades since junior high school covering sports games. He started with the NBA (basketball) using a Kodak Tri-X, and is now aiming a Nikon Z9 at professional tennis events.

“When camera companies use the term ‘prosumer’, I suppose that’s what I am. I’m an amateur photographer who extends my enjoyment of tennis by capturing photos of pro tennis players. And I’ve been able to sell enough of these to more than pay for generations of my camera equipment.”

Our ‘What’s in your bag?’ community spotlight series features readers sharing their favorite gear and photography, including from past DPReview collaborators. See below for what James has to share.

What got you into photographing sports?

James Fawcette

“Since the 1960s, as a junior high school student, I sold my first photos of the Boston Celtics and Killington, Vermont ski resort to the local newspaper, the Rutland Daily Herald. I first worked in the Herald’s darkroom, where I learned to develop negatives “by observation.” I had to learn how to “push” the Tri-X from 400 to – who knows. There were no numbers to guide us, so we had to do it by eye. We had pushed the boundaries of that era’s film to its limits.

I managed to get more time behind the camera after the Herald published an on-court shot I took of Wilt Chamberlain. Then I got assignments, first to shoot Killington when it was sub-zero and the NYC tourists were getting frostbite, when my lens literally froze. I couldn’t turn the focus ring. Then I turned an assignment on a new shopping mall into something publishable by getting a private plane ride. I asked the pilot to help me “shoot straight down”. So, he did a wingover, and I was looking literally straight down. Nearly threw up right then and there.”

What’s in James’s bag

James Fawcette

Favorite cameras(s): Nikon Z9 & Nikon Z7

Favorite lens(s):

• Nikkor Z 14-24mm F2.8 S
• Nikkor 24-140mm F4 S
• Nikkor 105mm F1.4 F1.4E ED
• Nikkor Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S II
• Nikkor Z 400mm F4.5 VR S
• Viltrox AF 85mm F2.0 Evo

“When I first started, I used what I’m pretty sure were Herald’s Honeywell Pentax reflex cameras that had a long lens of 100m or 135mm, I think. When I had more time for photography years later, I started using lower-end Nikon film equipment, then progressed from the D810 to the D850, and finally to the Z7 and Z9.

Most of my pro tennis shots have been taken by rentals from the likes of old Borrow Lenses to Lensrental, because I do events sporadically, and the physical location varies so widely. My go-to lens for many of my most successful shots after moving to the Z-mount was still an F-mount lens: the 500mm PF on an FTZ converter with a Nikon Z7, then my Z9. It’s remarkably sharp, compact enough to fit in a transparent NFL bag and quick focusing.”

What’s your favorite bag and accessories?

Must-have accessories: “Tile trackers (for theft prevention and tracking) and rubber lens hoods from Kurvd. And of course, the more expected items like backup storage, batteries and a MagSafe Tripod for the phone.”

Favorite bag(s): “I’m totally not satisfied here. This is an endless quest. Frankly, I have a Peak bag I ‘bought’ from that company’s first Kickstarter program. Loved it at first, then the knife-edge shoulder strap, combined with having to spend so much time reconfiguring it every time I changed lenses, turned me off.

Being plenty frustrated with specific camera bags, I now use a regular Tumi or Oakley, which is just a bag with no dividers. I place foam dividers around whatever combination of equipment I put in there.

What’s probably my most unique setup? That’s tough to decide, but freezing on a Killington chairlift in sub-zero temperatures or on my nose looking down from an airplane, I think, qualifies.”

What do you like to shoot?

James Fawcette

“My main focus is professional tennis. I’ve captured images of players from Roger Federer to Jannik Sinner and from Serena Williams to Coco Gauff, which have appeared in all sorts of media. Since I like tennis, my focus is more on playing tennis than on reaction shots, which bore me (sorry). I attempt to capture the energy, the technique, the athleticism of these great players. That passion evolved into photo-illustration.

Sometimes I have media credentials and shoot from the edge of the court. Other times, I shoot as a ticket-buying fan (something that is becoming near impossible, as another subject of your spotlight series stated in his article. I find that very sad and short-sighted.)”

How do you photograph constantly moving objects, such as sports players?

James Fawcette

“It’s kind of impossible to keep up with the quick movements of professional athletes, so knowing the sport well enough to anticipate action helps. Also, I’ve learned a few tennis-specific tricks, but I imagine they have parallels in other sports.

One such example is trying to time the ball’s impact with the racket’s strings. Pros are so precise, and their skills make them so consistent, you can often watch for the ball to get in the right position with confidence that’s where they’ll make contact. I suppose another example would be that of a high cross in soccer (a pass kicked through the air from one side of the field to the other), which will lead to a header (when a player uses their head to play the ball).”

What would you say to other photographers about building a lasting career?

James Fawcette

“As photography gets commoditized, being able to add value to the photo has helped me. The photo-illustrations differentiate my work. In some cases, I’ve created cover images for a set of photos using typography on the names or headlines that graphically overlap the image. But if I’m trying to get an image published, rather than simply for fun, the illustration or abstraction has to serve a purpose.

For example, a photo-illustration I called “Sinner Hydra” was inspired by a tennis analyst, the excellent Brad Gilbert, saying “He gives you nowhere to go. Everywhere you look, Sinner has a weapon”. So, I created an image of Sinner with four arms holding a racket. Point made.

Another tactic that has worked for me is to understand the publication’s or site’s mission and create packages that fit that. A more pragmatic example is a set of images where I overlaid pop-up windows showing close-ups of how tennis players grip their rackets for a website that caters to teaching tennis pros. That’s added value. Differentiating your product is key.”

James really enjoyed participating in this spotlight article and would love to hear what you think of his photography and to answer any of your questions in the comments below.

You can check out James’s other work at jfawcette.myportfolio.com/work.

Editor’s note: This article continues a series, ‘What’s in your bag?’, highlighting DPReview community members, their photography and the gear they depend on. Would you like your photography to be featured in a future installment? Tell us a bit about yourself by filling out this form.

Insta360 has announced the global launch of the Luna Pro, a compact, single-lens gimbal camera designed for vlogging and social-first video. The camera is Insta360’s second entry in the category after the dual-lens Luna Ultra, sharing the more expensive model’s Type 1 sensor, Leica-branded 20mm-equivalent F1.8 lens and 8K Dolby Vision video while omitting its dedicated telephoto camera. You can learn more about the camera in our full coverage.

A spec sheet is one thing, but we wanted to see how the Luna Pro holds up in the real world. To that end, we brought it into a dim listening bar, attached it for first-person rock-climbing footage and took it aboard a working lobster boat. The videos above and below look at stabilization on moving water, the effectiveness of the camera’s zoom, and its close-up shooting abilities with animals and other natural subjects.

The resulting footage offers a more practical look at how Insta360’s lower-priced Luna model handles unpredictable, active settings, and where the single-lens design may be enough for creators who do not need the Luna Ultra’s dedicated telephoto camera.

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Insta360 is continuing its challenge to DJI’s popular Osmo lineup with its second gimbal camera in just three months. The Luna Pro is a single-lens device designed to take on the DJI Osmo Pocket 4, targeting creators who want a more portable option for stabilized, social-ready video without the higher price tag of the dual-lens Insta360 Luna Ultra.

The Luna Pro shares the Luna Ultra’s headline Type 1 sensor and Leica-branded 20mm-equivalent F1.8 lens specifications, but lacks that model’s dedicated telephoto camera. The Luna Pro can record HDR video in Dolby Vision at 8K/30, as well as 4K/120 footage for slow motion. It features a dedicated low-light mode called PureVideo that uses AI to reduce noise and enhance brightness and detail, which works up to 4K60. The camera can also record 4K/30 vertical video using 6K oversampling for social-first sharing and can take up to 37MP still photos.

Insta360

Insta360 says the Luna Pro offers a 2x zoom mode that crops in on the center region of the sensor, which still provides a 4K window, plus 4x ‘HighRes Zoom,’ which Insta360 says uses AI to maintain detail and quality. It supports 10-bit I-Log, preserving more color, highlight and shadow detail for grading and supports ACES workflows. It also features in-camera Leica color profiles and other filters for those who are after more polished looks straight out of the camera.

As a gimbal camera, it offers 3-axis stabilization, promising smooth footage even when moving. It also offers multiple subject tracking modes, including single person, multi-person and pets. 

Insta360

Like its sibling, the Luna Pro features a detachable two-inch touchscreen that can be used as a remote control. Insta360 promises up to 4 hours of use, and it also supports fast charging. It includes 47GB of built-in storage, though it also accepts microSD cards up to 2TB for those who need more storage space. It weighs 215g for the black version, though the white comes in 3g heavier. The camera is also compatible with a range of accessories, including Insta360’s mics and its head tracker, which you can see in action in our hands-on footage.

The Luna Pro will be available globally beginning September 10 for $600, or $170 less than the dual-lens Luna Ultra. For U.S. customers, the Luna series has a clear advantage over DJI’s current Osmo Pocket models, which are not officially available in the country because DJI is affected by the FCC’s Covered List restrictions on newly introduced foreign-made camera equipment. For those in the U.S. who like the idea of a gimbal camera but find the Luna series a bit steep, the Osmo Pocket 3 remains available for $439 because it was released before DJI was added to the FCC’s Covered List.

Insta360

Insta360 Luna Pro

• $600 at Insta360

September 9th is Sigma’s 65th anniversary of being in business and its CEO, Kazuto Yamaki, has published a letter marking the occasion. While it doesn’t contain any news, it’s well worth a read, as it’s illustrative of what makes the company different.

While Sigma is best known for its lenses, it’s also a company that hasn’t been afraid of trying something a little out there, be that chasing the long-standing dream of a full-frame Foveon camera, creating a radically simplified user interface for its BF camera or even growing rice. And indeed, it’s hard to imagine many other companies taking time in a letter celebrating an anniversary to call attention to the “stern feedback” they received after the times their products or services fell short.

Yamaki states in the letter that the company hopes to “contribute to the development of photographic and visual culture, social peace, and human happiness” in the future. You can read the full letter here, or take a trip down memory lane and read the letter Yamaki wrote for Sigma’s 60th anniversary in 2021, before checking out the company’s history page.

Today, Apple announced the new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo, its first foldable, making it seem as if the standard line of iPhones, along with the ultra-thin iPhone Air were untouched. And while those phones haven’t been updated yet, something about them has changed: their prices.

When the iPhone 17 launched in September of last year, it started at $799 for a model with 256GB of storage. Now, that same model is $899. If you want to upgrade your storage to 512GB, it’ll bring the price up to $1099. Apple is no longer selling the 17 Pro that launched alongside it, as is tradition for when it updates a Pro model.

The iPhone Air, launched at the same time as the 17, has also received a $100 price bump, now starting at $1099 instead of $999. 

What’s more painful is what’s happened to the cheaper end of Apple’s lineup. The iPhone 17e, the company’s budget model which originally launched in March, has gone from $599, the same price as its predecessor, to $699. And the now two-year old iPhone 16 now sells for $799, which is the same price that it launched at in 2024.

This move isn’t necessarily a surprise from Apple. The company recently raised prices on many of its other devices like Macs, Apple TVs and more, likely due in part to rising storage and memory costs. However, it had seemed like the iPhone may have been spared, with the price increases coming with the next generation. And indeed, the iPhone 18 Pros announced today start at $100 more than their predecessor. However, it seems like that price increase isn’t just limited to the latest and greatest.

Earlier this week, we published a news article about a new Sony lens, along with a sample gallery we shot with it. That gallery came with the following editor’s note:

“Due to a memory card failure, this sample gallery contains fewer images than usual; most of the photos captured for it were lost before they could be transferred.”

Reader Horshack pointed out that the camera I used to shoot that gallery, the Sony a7 V, has two card slots, and proceeded to cut through my editor-speak in five words.

“The dog ate my homework.“

He meant it in good humor. He was also completely right. In every conceivable way, this was an unforced, preventable error.

It’s worth explaining why a reader spotted this so quickly. Camera enthusiasts love to talk about dual card slots. So much so that it’s become a bit of a running joke. When we write about an inexpensive novelty camera, we can reliably expect at least one reader to jokingly ask, “Does it have two card slots?” That meme even extends beyond digital; I can recall articles about film cameras where someone posted, “But does it have two film slots?”

Mitchell Clark

The joke works because the fixation seems excessive. I spent a night with data recovery software reconsidering that.

I had become complacent, which is usually when disaster strikes.

At DPReview, we’ve been shooting digital cameras for over two decades, and we’ve rarely had a memory card fail on us. I could count the number of failures I’ve personally experienced on one hand and have several fingers left over. I’ve used cards from every major manufacturer, and they’ve been consistently reliable. Intellectually, I know card failures can happen, but in my experience, they’ve happened so rarely that it was easy to ignore the risk.

In a nutshell, my choice to use a single card was proportionate to the perceived risk.

I blocked out a full day to shoot with the lens before it had to go back to Sony and had even traveled to find subjects that would be interesting to photograph with a fisheye: a ghost town in the Rocky Mountains and a new airport terminal with interesting architecture.

Dale Baskin

The total time between capturing the final image and inserting the card into my computer was only about three hours, during which the card never left the camera. But I got a sinking feeling the moment a “card not readable” error popped up on my screen. When I put it back into the camera, the a7 V told me the card needed to be formatted. Not good.

Hours later, in the middle of the night, with multiple data recovery tools in the rearview mirror, I gave up.

Fortunately, I have a habit of offloading photos and backing them up at the end of each day of shooting, so I had a few photos taken with the lens from the previous week. That’s what ran in the gallery.

Do I use two cards when working for a client or shooting a wedding? Every. Single. Time. After all, the job and your professional reputation are on the line. But it’s easy to think of shooting sample galleries for DPReview as part of daily life. We’re constantly toting around cameras and lenses, shooting whenever the opportunity arises. It’s often continuous rather than scheduled, and it’s easy to stop treating it as a job.

Richard Butler

At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to shoot with two cards. Are we flirting with disaster when we use one card? In most cases, I don’t think so. It’s still rare that one fails, and unless you’re doing something mission-critical, it’s probably safer to say that you’re flirting with disappointment, frustration, and possibly sorrow. For most of us, most of the time, a single card is an acceptable risk.

The question worth asking when evaluating risk isn’t whether you’re shooting professionally. It’s whether the day is one you could shoot again. A walk around the neighborhood can be repeated. A day you blocked out, traveled for, and can’t redo because the lens has to go back tomorrow is not.

Dual card slots exist for a reason, and my recent experience is a good reminder of that. During a discussion with the team, Richard Butler pointed out that this isn’t a free option. Extra cards aren’t cheap, and managing two per body for a small amount of extra insurance isn’t a trivial cost. That’s a fair objection. But this experience has tested my personal risk tolerance, and going forward, my best practice will be to have two cards in the camera when shooting a sample gallery, if that option is available.

Have you lost photos from a memory card? If so, tell me about it in the comments.

Apple has announced its long-awaited take on the folding smartphone form-factor, and it’s called the iPhone Duo*. It features a “passport” style design, which is relatively short and wide, giving the interior screen an aspect ratio that’s better for watching video, viewing photos, and running apps side-by-side.

Like the iPhone Air, Apple says it’s managed to fit everything it needs to into the phone by putting “critical components” in the camera plateau. Of course, the protrusion also houses the Duo’s camera system, which, appropriately, features two cameras. The main camera features a 26mm equiv. lens and an F1.6 aperture – no adjustable aperture here – as well as a 48MP stabilized sensor. While the company doesn’t typically share sensor size info, the specs are an exact match for the iPhone Air’s Type 1/1.56 (48mm²) main camera, which would make it a substantial step down from the larger sensor used in the Pro phones.

Apple also says it’s using the same 48MP ultra-wide camera as the iPhone 18 Pro, which is almost certainly the same model found in the iPhone 17 Pro, featuring a Type 1/2.55 (23.5mm²) sensor.

Apple

Like Google before it, Apple is using the folding form factor to enhance the camera experience. It has a mode that lets you halfway fold the phone, so it will sit up on a surface with the cameras pointing outwards. The phone will then analyze the scene, taking pictures when it recognizes that everyone’s posing. The company says this makes it easier to take group shots and selfies without having to worry about a timer. There’s also a mode that will play cartoons on the front screen, aimed to make kids smile as you’re taking pictures of them.

Apple says durability was a big focus for the phone, and that the inner folding display is “designed to withstand the wear of everyday use.” Its frame is made from titanium, with the back glass getting Apple’s Ceramic Shield coating that makes it relatively resistant to shattering from drops. The glass covering the outer 5.4″ display uses the scratch-resistant Ceramic Shield 2 coating. The phone has an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, a rarity among folding phones (though Google’s Pixel Fold series has had it since last year).

According to Apple, the Duo has the “largest display for an iPhone” ever, with its interior screen measuring 7.6″ It features a “nano-texture” surface, similar to what Apple’s been providing on its iPads and Macs, that Apple says will minimize the risk of scratches (a common concern with foldables, which typically have a plastic screen protector that can be marked with a fingernail), and the visibility of the crease. Both of the phones’ screens have a 1:1.4 aspect ratio, and are capable of reaching 3000 nits peak brightness outdoors, and 1600 nits when viewing HDR content. Support for using them with the USB-C version of the Apple Pencil stylus will be coming in a later firmware update.

Apple

The phone does away with the FaceID authentication system that’s been ubiquitous on Apple’s phones for the past few years. The phone instead features a fingerprint reader integrated into the power button. The phone also foregoes the customizable “Action” button, but keeps the touch-sensitive “Camera Control” button, which lets you launch the camera and control various settings, like zoom. However, the camera app doesn’t feature the manual control mode debuted on the iPhone 18 Pro, nor does it have the Reference Image content authenticity mode, ProRes Raw recording, Apple Log 2, and a host of other video features that Apple reserves for its pro phones.

The iPhone Duo uses the same A20 Pro system on a chip as the iPhone 18 Pro, which Apple says will provide an up to 35% performance uplift compared to the standard iPhone 17 Pro. It also features Apple’s new, in-house “C2” chip for cellular and wireless connectivity. To that matter, the phone is e-SIM only, world wide; that’s been the case for the company’s US models for a while, but international models have typically come with a slot. However, Apple says it needed as much room for the battery as possible.

Apple

Thankfully, the phone retains Apple’s MagSafe wireless charging system, which it can use to charge at up to 25W. It also has a 10Gbps USB-C port on the bottom. (Though Apple says you can use the phone in any orientation, so who’s to say it’s not the top or the side?) The compnay claims the phone has “all day battery,” though per usual doesn’t provide specific capacity figures. It does, however, say it can do 31 hours of video playback with the inner screen, and 44 hours with the outer screen, putting it a touch behind the 18 Pro Max, which can do 45 hours.

Apple says the iPhone Duo is its thinnest phone ever when unfolded, coming in at just 5.2mm thick. Of course, it takes up a bit more room when folded, at 11.3mm. It’s also relatively hefty at 254g (~9oz).

As is often the case, Apple’s first crack at the form factor is launching into a relatively mature market. Samsung is up to its eighth generation of foldables, which first debuted in 2019. Earlier this year, the company announced the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, which features a triple-camera setup, alongside the dual-camera Galaxy Z Fold 8, which features a “passport” form factor that’s a bit wider and substantially shorter. Likewise, Google recently announced its fourth foldable, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which features three cameras. Companies like Xiaomi and Oppo also have several options, and have experimented with exotic form factors, such as tri-folds.

Apple

The phone will be available in black and silver. It starts at $1999 for a model with 256GB of storage, and the company says pre-orders start on October 16th, with the phone becoming available on the 23rd.

* – Nerdy fact: Microsoft already used this name for a foldable in 2020.

Apple has announced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max at its annual fall keynote. Although the company started the event with AI features, the standout change in the new models’ camera system is the adjustable aperture.

Apple is pitching the new aperture system as a way to get more “creative control” while taking images and videos. Contrary to the rumors, the adjustable aperture is available on both sizes of the iPhone Pro. The company says it comprises six laser-cut blades, each thinner than a human hair.

Like the 17 Pro models, the 18 Pro and Pro Max feature a 48MP main camera with a 24mm equiv. lens. The ultrawide and telephoto cameras are also unchanged from their predecessors, both of which use 48MP Type 1/2.55 (23.5mm²) sensors.

Apple

The main camera is the only one that features the new adjustable aperture system, which can go from F1.48 to F4 (the 17 Pro’s main camera had a fixed F1.78 aperture), allowing for four adjustments. Apple is also finally adding “Pro Controls,” which allows users to manually control aperture, white balance and shutter speed, something people have been asking Apple to add for years. Additionally, its Photography Styles option now supports control over grain.

For video features, the camera supports 4K time-lapses, and you can now use cinematic mode (which adds fake background blur) at up to 4K/60.

Apple also touched on image authenticity, a hot-button topic in the age of AI. We’ve seen other phone manufacturers, like Google, implement C2PA content credentials in their cameras, letting you verify that a photograph hasn’t been altered since it was taken. Now, Apple is following suit, characteristically introducing its own system called Apple Reference Image.

Apple

The company says it’s made possible by a new sensor in the main camera that “can sign every pixel it sees.” Photos taken in the “Reference mode” will capture “signed sensor data that Private Cloud Compute develops into an unalterable reference image.” Oddly, the Apple Reference Image authenticity feature is not available in China, and won’t be available in the EU to start.

The company also says it’s adding support for the SynthID standard, which adds an invisible watermark to images created or edited using AI.

The iPhone 18 Pro features an A20 Pro system on a chip, which has a 6-core CPU with 2 “super” cores and 4 efficiency cores. It also features a 7-core GPU that Apple says is 40% faster than the previous generation. It should offer double the AI processing capacity as a result of double the neural cores. Apple also says it’s doubled the battery life, despite the battery being smaller. It supports faster wired charging, letting you charge it to 50% in 15 minutes.

Apple

Apple is offering the Pro in four color options this year, where it’s traditionally been three. It will be available in black, silver, “Glacier” blue, and “Burgundy.” Last year, some people were upset that there wasn’t a black option, so this will likely be a welcome addition to the lineup.

The iPhone 18 Pro will cost $1199 for the 256GB version, while the Pro Max comes in at $1299. Both the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are $100 more than their predecessors.

Last month, we asked who your biggest photography inspirations were. From family and friends to distant colleagues, you expressed a wide array of people you follow to build the courage and excitement for taking that next great photo. Related, our Features Editor, Abby Ferguson, wrote about her strategies for overcoming a creative drought through innovative photo projects.

When I’m in an inspiration void, as cliché as it may sound, the first thing I grab is an extra-sized cup of coffee. If that doesn’t do it and the opportunity presents itself, I’ll take a good long walk outside during a thunderstorm or blizzard (it’s like a cold shower that snaps you out of your morning stupor – just more adventurous and unpredictable).

I think one of the problems we run into when we look for inspiration is that it can feel forced. We want it to go so well that we end up overplanning and causing a creative drought where there may not have been one at all. The importance of planning the next shot to make it great has even been called into question by several community members in our What’s in your bag? spotlight series.

So, with that said…

What do you do when your photography inspiration runs dry?

Drop a reply in the comments section below, and if you’ve got a photo to include from your mentioned forum sections, it may be selected for next week’s showcase article on this topic!

In a somewhat cryptic statement, Ricoh has said it is ending production of all current Pentax K-series DSLRs. However, it also says it will “continue to pursue the shooting style that is unique to SLR cameras.”

Ricoh says: “we will leverage the K-mount legacy that was built over more than half a century, to develop a new series of digital SLR cameras based on an entirely new concept,” but warns “it will take time for these products to come to life.”

It says it will provide updates as development continues.

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Alongside the new PEN camera, OM System has announced an upgrade to its 14-42mm (28-84mm equiv.) F3.5-5.6 standard zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds. Beyond being one of the kit options for the PEN, The M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 III is more protected from the elements than its predecessor, and can focus closer.

Like the II, the III is made up of eight elements in seven groups, with three aspherical lenses. However, that doesn’t mean it’ll perform exactly the same. OM System says it can now focus as close as 0.13m (5.1″) at the wide end, down from the 0.25m (9.8″) on its predecessor. This helps you get a little tighter, reproducing objects at up to 0.26x, where the previous lens maxed out at 0.19x. However, this minimum focusing distance does extend a bit as you zoom in, going up to 0.3m (11.8″) when you get to 42mm for 0.19x reproduction.

OM System

OM System also says it’s improved the weather resistance of the lens, with it now being IPX1 rated when paired with a dust and splash proof camera. While that’s the lowest tier of IP rating, only requiring a device to survive dripping water for 10 minutes, it’ll still provide a bit of peace of mind for anyone hoping to use it as a travel lens (though if you expect to encounter rain, it might be worth picking up the sold-separately lens hood to keep the front element clear).

The company also says that it’ll focus faster, and support the computational in-body focus stacking features found on many OM System cameras.

These changes have resulted in a lens that’s a touch heavier than its 112g (4oz) predecessor, as it now weighs 125g (4.4oz). It’s also slightly larger, with a 60mm diameter and being 51mm long. This also equates to it taking larger filters; 46mm rather than 37mm. However, it’s still quite a small lens for what it is, made smaller by its retracting design.

The OM System 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 III will be available in late October and retail for $350 standalone. However, we suspect it’ll be more popular as a kit lens for the new PEN, where you can get it for a $100 premium over the body-only price.

You can see several shots taken with the lens in our sample gallery for the OM System PEN.

OM System

OM System M. Zuiko Digital 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 III

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The OM System PEN is a compact, Micro Four Thirds camera built around a 20MP sensor and aimed at travel and everyday use. It riffs on the concept of the much-loved PEN series but delivers something a little distinct from its predecessors.

It’s not a like-for-like replacement for 2016’s PEN F, but it brings some of the ideas from that model to the more affordable end of the market.

Key specifications

• 20.4MP Four Thirds (226mm²) CMOS sensor
• In-body image stabilization rated to 5.5EV
• On-sensor phase detection focus with human and dog/cat recognition
• 2.36M dot EVF
• Up to 30fps shooting (with AF and AE locked), 8fps mech
• Multi-shot modes, including high resolution, Live ND, Live Bulb, Live Time, Live Composite
• 410 shot/charge battery life rating

The PEN is available now for around $1000, body-only. This is significantly lower than the $1200 launch price of the PEN-F back in 2016, especially once you consider that inflation makes that equivalent to around $1700 today.

Index

• What’s new
• How it compares
• Body and handling
• Autofocus
• Image quality
• Video
• In use
• Conclusion
• Sample gallery
• Specifications
• Press release

What’s new

The PEN is the first top-tier entry into the line in five years, and the first time in a decade that the series will be sold in North America. It’s essentially a blend of the two models that preceded it: primarily the mid-priced E-P7 but also the enthusiast PEN-F.

From the E-P7 it gets the lighter, lower-cost plastic construction, rather than the metal body that had marked out the ‘big’ PENs before it. It also inherits the two-position color mode switch on the front plate, and the simpler dial layout. But, crucially, from the PEN-F it gets an electronic viewfinder, built into the top corner of the body: making it only the second PEN model to feature one.

It also foregoes the stacked sensor features in the OM-1 and OM-3 models, presumably also in the name of cost reduction, meaning it has more in common with the OM-5 II.

The PEN’s color mode switch gives you access to eight color and mono modes that can be modified in interesting ways

These changes start to make sense when OM System talks about its target audience for the camera: a mixture of enthusiasts who want a small mirrorless camera and users looking to buy their first camera for travel and everyday photography.

The lower-cost construction and significant overlap with the OM-5 II’s componentry are reflected in its significantly lower launch price (there’s enough of a difference that it’s less expensive in money terms, despite a decade of inflation).

The ninth-generation TruePic processor means it gains more up-to-date autofocus than the PEN-F or E-P7 (now with Dogs & Cats recognition mode, rather than just human detection) but the camera is still limited to 8-bit video at up to 4K/30 and its multi-shot modes are less extensive and significantly slower than on more expensive stacked-sensor models such as the OM-3.

How it compares

There’s no direct competitor to the OM System PEN, if you’re looking for a small, rangefinder-style mirrorless camera. You can either opt for a similarly-priced APS-C model, such as the Fujifilm X-T30 III or Nikon Z50 II, but those are both SLR-styled models with no image stabilization. The alternative is the more expensive, metal-bodied X-E5, which is much more in keeping with the PEN’s styling but closer to the PEN-F market positioning, in terms of price.

Finally, if you just want a small, stylish camera and can live without the ability to change lenses, the Panasonic L10 comes into play.

Despite its more modest pricing, the PEN stacks up pretty reasonably against its peers, on paper. It’s interesting to note that you get the same viewfinder panel, regardless of how much you spend, because it’s the only one made in this smaller size. The PEN is the only camera in this cohort to offer a standardized rating of environmental protection, even if it is the relatively modest IPX1 level.

However, while the PEN’s multi-shot modes are more sophisticated than its (quasi) peers, its video is distinctly outdated. And, though it doesn’t necessarily show through in the specs, so are some aspects of its autofocus performance.

Body and handling

Richard Butler

The PEN feels pretty solid, despite its construction primarily being engineering plastics, rather than metal casing used from the E-P1 up to the PEN-F. The body gives the sense of being made of quite thick material, meaning it feels suitably weighty in the hand, without being overly heavy.

The small front grip and thumb rest make the camera easy to keep hold of, and we found the two (customizable) command dials to be well-placed, whether you’re holding the camera to your eye or not.

The back of the camera is somewhat cluttered, though, with a CP button (accessing your choice of Computational Photography modes) next to the thumb rest being just one of six buttons crammed into the right-hand control array, in addition to a small four-way controller that is also used to access key features. In the absence of an AF joystick, this four-way controller, along with the camera’s touchscreen, becomes the main method for positioning the AF point.

Richard Butler

The PEN still has a single SD card slot, somehow still only supporting UHS-I cards. Its USB connector has been modernized to a Type C socket, but the underlying interface is still a distinctly dated 480Mbps USB-2.0 type. There’s also a micro HDMI port and a mic input, but there’s no headphone socket for audio monitoring, which should give a pretty clear signal about the PEN’s focus.

As with the OM-5 II, the PEN does not support the excellent little FL-LM3 rotatable, bouncable flash, which is no longer made. However, there are alternatives such as Godox’s iT30 and iT32/X5 combinations that provide small, flexible options.

Viewfinder

Richard Butler

The PEN becomes only the second model in the series to feature a built-in viewfinder. It’s the same 2.36M dot (1024 x 768px) finder as in the PEN-F, ten years ago. It’s worth noting, though, that this is the highest resolution finder made in the smaller 0.39″ format, which is why we continue to see it appear in cameras where size is the key focus of the design.

Screen

The rear screen is the same, fully-articulated 1.04M dot touchscreen that featured on the PEN-F. This is likely to divide audiences, with some people interpreting flip-out screens as being a sop to video shooters. However, we’ve been told by multiple manufacturers that, in surveys, about 50% of photographers prefer this screen arrangement. So, while street and candid shooters are likely to miss the tilting screen that allows more discreet camera operation, the wider target audience, looking to use the PEN for travel, are likely to appreciate the ability to fold the screen inwards, to keep it protected.

Battery

Richard Butler

The PEN uses a new battery pack, the rather compact BLS-7, it’s a 7.74V, 1285mAh unit, which means it has a capacity of 10Wh, rather than the 8.7Wh of the older, physically larger BLS-50 or the 9.0Wh of the PEN F’s BLN-1.

OM System says this delivers a battery rating of 400 shots per charge, when tested using the standard CIPA method, presumably based on the use of the more power-efficient rear screen. As usual, these ratings tend to significantly underestimate the real-world endurance of a battery, and getting twice the rated number is pretty common, depending on how you shoot.

In use

The PEN’s operation will be immediately familiar to OM System (and Olympus) users, though potentially somewhat overwhelming to most newcomers. For instance, the barrage of icons and settings displayed when you turn the camera on includes L8 in large letters at the top right of the screen, indicating that if you press the REC button on the top of the camera, you’ll get 8-bit video in a Long Group-of-Frames codec. Which doesn’t feel like essential information in stills mode, on a fairly stills-focused camera that can only capture 8-bit video.

Still, once you’ve learned your way around the screen, you’ll probably come to appreciate the Super Control Panel: a settings display showing most of the camera’s key settings in an interactive array. Tap on the setting you want to change, spin one of the command dials and you’ll find you have semi-quick access to just about all the settings you might want to change. Which makes me wonder if the camera needs quite as many buttons as it has. But still…

Six of the camera’s buttons are customizable, plus the button on any lens that has one. Alternatively, you can give up two of your custom buttons (and the ISO button) and dedicate the four-way controller to give direct AF point control, rather than having to press ‘left’ first. Buttons can be customized to have a different function in video or Slow & Quick modes, too.

This degree of customization extends to the dials, whose function can be dictated per exposure mode, and again, separately for stills and video. Likewise, once you’ve worked out which of the camera’s computational photography modes you actually use, you can narrow the function of the CP button to only invoke those.

Richard Butler

The menus are relatively easy to navigate, with a decent degree of signposting, meaning you’ll quickly get a feel for where different types of setting are likely to live. However the number of options and the level of customization is extensive, bordering on the excessive, so things can seem a little intimidating, initially.

Like the more recent OM cameras, the PEN’s ‘film’ color modes, selected with the switch on the front of the body, can have the saturation levels of different hues adjusted, to tailor their response. You can also tweak the highlights, shadows and mid-tone response, giving you a lot of flexibility. This comes especially handy in conjunction with the in-camera Raw conversion feature, as it means you can make very specific adjustments to your images while still using the camera’s choice of attractive JPEG modes.

In keeping with the camera’s attempt to attract first-time camera users, the PEN has a series of Scene modes on its dial. These cover a decent range of common shooting scenarios and are able to invoke the multi-shot modes, if needs be. But we’re still not sure how many people will buy a dedicated camera, only to use restrictive preset modes that are less clever and flexible than the ones on their phones.

In-camera Raw conversion

Most brands offer in-camera Raw conversion at this point, but OM Systems’ remains one of the most comprehensive and powerful. This is especially useful on a camera designed with travel in mind, where you may want to be able to share the things you’ve seen without wanting to boot up your laptop.

OM System’s JPEG color, particularly its Neutral and Film modes can deliver really attractive results, so it’s nice to be able to tweak and exploit these, rather than trying to match them in a 3rd-party Raw converter.

The camera gives you a choice of simply applying your current settings to an Raw file, or defining two presets, so that your preferences are saved or can be applied to multiple images from a batch. There are a few awkward inconsistencies, though: the camera’s standard color modes let you adjust hightlights, shadows and midtones from within the conversion interface, the Film modes don’t, and instead take their highlights, shadows and midtones settings, along with any hue-specific saturation adjustments you’ve made to them, from the camera’s current settings, even if you’re trying to use a preset.

This means that you can, for instance, make WB fine-tune modifications or adjustments of the film modes that aren’t in the Raw conversion interface by changing the camera’s current settings, but it means applying the result, backing out of the converter, adjusting the camera’s settings, then trying again: meaning making iterative adjustments can be quite frustrating.

This doesn’t give the near infinite level of flexibility that, say, Panasonic’s LUT-based image processing does, but means you don’t have to mess around with exploring and downloading profiles: you can just tweak the already pleasant in-camera options.

Autofocus

The PEN uses the standard OM System AF interface, which gives you a choice of 6 AF point sizes, from small to covering the entire area over which the camera can focus. The smallest size isn’t especially small and can be moved to one of 121 positions, which puts a limit on the maximum level of precision you can achieve.

Human or Pet recognition can be engaged on top of this system. However, unlike most cameras, recognized subjects are prioritized over your AF point. So if the camera thinks it recognizes a subject, it’ll focus on that, irrespective of where you’ve asked it to focus. If there’s more than one subject in the frame, your chosen focus point will dictate which subject it should focus on. There’s a menu setting to specify whether the camera prioritizes recognized subjects or your AF point (and you can assign the AF-On and shutter button behaviors differently), but if you choose to prioritize your chosen AF point, subject recognition is completely ignored: it won’t focus on an eye or face where you’re asking it to focus.

Richard Butler

In practice, we found both recognition modes quite prone to false positives and that they’d try to focus on irrelevant subjects. Which is a particular problem, given that recognized subjects override your chosen focus point. Between these two factors, it becomes essential to position your AF point precisely (made a little more frustrating on a camera without an AF joystick), and to have a means of disengaging or over-riding the subject recognition system. It’s eminently usable, once you’ve got a feel for how it works, but it’s nothing like as effortless as the best modern cameras that simply focus where you ask them and then utilize subject recognition when appropriate.

The PEN’s general AF tracking system (for subjects the camera hasn’t been trained to recognize) feels pretty dated and significantly less sticky or dependable than its peers. We’ve become used to leaving cameras in tracking mode, selecting a target and recomposing at will, which isn’t something we’d recommend doing with the PEN. Other than a few shots where flare and bright highlights seemed to have confused the AF system, we were able to get a solid hit rate with the PEN, but don’t expect it to be action-ready and do be prepared to have to make more interventions to get the result you want.

Image quality

As you might expect, and as already seemed to be the case from the day-to-day shooting we conduct as part of every review, the PEN’s performance is a match for that of the OM-5 Mark II, with which it shares a sensor and processor. Our studio scene confirms this to a very fine degree.

Our test scene is designed to simulate a variety of textures, colors, and detail types you’ll encounter in the real world. It also has two illumination modes, full even light and low directional light, to see the effect of different lighting conditions.

Its 20MP sensor captures a good level of detail (our test scene gives a slight benefit to 4:3 aspect ratio cameras, reducing the already minor difference between the PEN and the 24MP of the Canon EOS R10). In terms of noise the PEN’s performance is a little behind the larger sensor of the Nikon Z50II, but it’s not significantly noisier than the Canon, whose 1.6x crop sensor seems to slightly underperform expectations.

The PEN’s performance is entirely in keeping with what we’d expect to see from a modern sensor, backing up the results we got when shooting its sample gallery. We’ve already seen that the JPEG engine can produce a range of attractive results and these confirm that the technical underpinnings are sound.

As with all formats, there’s a fairly direct size / image quality trade-off being struck, meaning you lose something in terms of peak image quality in order for the camera to be able to maintain its travel-friendliness, even when you take lenses into account.

For many people, that’ll be a trade-off worth making: the use of a Four Thirds sensor defines both the upper limit of its image quality, but also how small the camera/lens combinations can be. So while some manufacturers are focused on trying to make smaller cameras built around larger sensors, there’s a physical limit to how small the appropriate lenses can be, meaning you’re likely to carefully pick and choose to keep the package small, and you’ll need to revert to larger setups to attain their full IQ potential.

Richard Butler

The hand-held high resolution mode, that shots a series of shots in e-shutter mode, then combines them, in-camera, means it’s possible to boost the PEN’s image quality a little for select shots of relatively static subjects, and the tripod-based high-res mode, which is able to precisely position the sensor for optimal alignment, does an even better job. Both take a long time to process, but are nice to have in your back pocket, when the situation suits.

Video

Video is perhaps the most glaringly outdated aspect of the PEN, with the camera limited to 8-bit capture and topping out at 4K/30. There’s also no headphone socket, so no way of monitoring audio, when you’re recording, which risks you getting back to your computer and finding that distracting noises or incorrect recording levels have rendered your footage unusable.

The PEN can capture video using the OM Log400 curve, which offers some additional flexibility, in terms of tonal adjustment and color grading, but it’s limited, to say the least, in an era where 10-bit Log is pretty much standard. On the plus side, you can apply almost all of the camera’s color modes and even Art filters to your video, if you want distinctive-looking footage, straight out of camera.

There’s an S&Q (Slow and Quick) position on the power/mode switch but the available options are limited by the camera’s relatively modest video speeds. You can capture 1080 footage at up to 120 frames per second, for 1/5th-speed slow-mo.

Between the modest spec and less-than-dependable autofocus performance in video, the PEN wouldn’t be on our list if we were recommending a camera for someone looking to shoot a lot of video. Its strengths lie much more on the photography side of the spec sheet, so we would have preferred that the video mode wasn’t given such a prominent position on the power switch.

Conclusion

The OM System PEN is a delightful combination of size, capability and price. It’s not especially cutting-edge nor quite as easy to use as it wants to be, but it still succeeds in being engaging to operate, easy to carry with you and able to deliver attractive results at a price that seems eminently reasonable. It’s a combination that the rest of the industry seems to have forgotten how to deliver.

Richard Butler

Its autofocus isn’t as sophisticated as that of its peers. It can’t track subjects moving around the scene as well as its contemporaries, nor can it react to fast movement as reliably, and between the way it operates and how dependable it is, its subject recognition modes require more user input than on other cameras. And yet, for the kinds of everyday and travel photography we expect the PEN to be used for, this isn’t a fundamental concern.

Richard Butler

No, the PEN isn’t as seemingly effortlessly capable as some other mirrorless cameras can feel, and its comfort zone is somewhat narrower than theirs. But set the four-way controller to position the AF point and have a button to toggle subject recognition on and off and it’ll do most of what you ask of it, because no one is expecting the PEN to ‘turn its hand to a bit of sports and action shooting.’

Richard Butler

The PEN’s sensor size means it’s at its best during the daytime, but balanced on the other side of the fulcrum is the ability to offer small lens/body combinations for a range of activities. With the 12mm F2, 17mm F1.8, Panasonic 20mm F1.7 or 45mm F1.8, you can maintain a compact form factor with a high degree of portability that arguably only Fujfilm’s rather more expensive X-E5 comes near to. And the multi-shot modes will let you boost the camera’s image quality for relatively static scenes.

Experienced OM System users will welcome the ability to customize much of the camera’s operation, while newcomers may feel intimidated at first. Most of it can be safely ignored at first, and learned when you want to optimize the camera’s behavior (though we’d recommend engaging 0 sec Anti-Shock, straight out of the box).

The PEN can be the kind of travel companion that you will, on occasion, find somewhat irritating. The kind that sometimes won’t always do exactly what you want to do. But also the kind that you’re so glad you took with you. And with whom you’ll create memories you wouldn’t otherwise get to keep.

Scoring

Scoring is relative only to the other cameras in the same category. Click here to learn about what these numbers mean.

8.5 out of 10

8.6 out of 10

9.2 out of 10

7.8 out of 10

8.5 out of 10

8.2 out of 10

7.7 out of 10

8.0 out of 10

8.3 out of 10

7.2 out of 10

7.8 out of 10

9.2 out of 10

Show all scores

Overall score

84%

Scores reflect competition at the time of release; cross-year comparisons may be misleading

Expert summary

The OM System PEN is both charming and quirky. Some of its technology and performance is a little dated but this is reflected in its price. Overall it offers a level of image quality, usability and portability that no one else seems to have thought to offer.

Good for:

Travel, Everyday photography

Not so good for:

Sports, Action, Video

Reviewed on October 6, 2026

Read in-depth review

Sample gallery

Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter/magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page ). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing (in conjunction with this review); we do so in good faith, so please don’t abuse it.

OM System PEN specifications

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With Sony offering over 70 E-mount lenses, it’s unusual for the company to release something that’s a first in its lineup. And yet today it’s doing so: the new FE 8-14mm F3.5 Fisheye G is the company’s first standalone fisheye lens for E-mount, one that it says is the most compact of its kind.

At 8mm, the lens creates a circular fisheye image, the kind popularized in ’90s skateboarding videos. At 14mm, the image fills the frame. Both capture a 180° field of view, but the zoom lets you choose which way you want it presented. You can also turn distortion compensation off to switch from equisolid rendering, where the center of the image is larger, with the edges being compressed, to equidistant rendering where the center looks smaller and the image looks more “even” overall. This is mostly a JPEG setting, as, if you shoot Raw, you can change whether you’re using distortion correction in post.

Sony

The lens is made up of 16 elements in 13 groups, with three aspheric elements, four extra-low dispersion (ED) elements and one aspheric ED lens, with the company promising minimal chromatic aberration across the frame. It has a 7-blade aperture, and can focus as close as 0.15m (5.9″) throughout its focal range. Focusing is handled by a pair of linear motors, which, when paired with a high-end camera, can track subjects at 120fps.

Physically, the lens is surprisingly small for a full-frame option. It weighs 314g (11.1oz), which is substantially less than the 476g RF 7-14mm F2.8-3.5 L Fisheye STM that Canon recently released (though that is a touch faster and wider at its wide end). The Sony has a diameter of 63mm, and is 83mm (3.3″) long. It also zooms internally, meaning it’ll stay that length. Its lens hood is removable, though, depending on your focal length, you’ll have to take it off to avoid it appearing in the frame. It’s also sealed for dust and moisture resistance, and has a flourine coating on its front element to repel dirt and oil.

Despite its small size, Sony hasn’t skimped on features. The lens has an aperture ring, which can be clicked or declicked, a customizable button, zoom lock switch (which can hold the lens in circular fisheye and diagonal fisheye for both APS-C and full-frame) and a rear filter holder. It also has an AF/MF/FH switch, the latter of which locks your focus after you set it manually, which Sony says will be handy if you’re shooting astro or VR content.

Sony

Sony clearly sees this lens not just as a photography tool, but one for video and VR as well. The company says it has minimal focus breathing and that you can use a pair of them for VR capture, or a trio for recording 360° footage. When shooting flat (aka standard) video, though, there is one small downside: in 16:9, you won’t get the full circle, though you can avoid that if you have one of the few cameras Sony makes capable of shooting 3:2 open gate.

The Sony FE 8-14mm F3.5 Fisheye G will launch in October, and will retail for $1599.

Sample gallery

Editor’s note: Due to a memory card failure, this sample gallery contains fewer images than usual; most of the photos captured for it were lost before they could be transferred. We attempted data recovery without success and are working with Sony to arrange additional time with the lens to capture more samples.

Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter/magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing; we do so in good faith, so please don’t abuse it. 

Sony

Sony FE 8-14mm F3.5 Fisheye G

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Sony FE 8-14mm F3.5 Fisheye G specifications

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Sigma has announced the 20-60mm F2.8-4 DG Contemporary, a full-frame zoom lens that goes from quite wide to approaching telephoto. For full-frame shooters who wish their kit lens was just a bit more capable, or for anyone looking for a compact but relatively versatile option, it could be a great pick… as long as the company that makes your camera has decided to allow Sigma to use its mount.

One of the big appeals of the lens is its size. It weighs 385g (13.6oz), and is 88mm (3.5″) long at its shortest (though it will extend as you zoom in). It also takes 67mm filters, helping you keep your photography kit relatively small. Sigma says it’s dust and splash resistant, too, and that the front element has a water and oil-repellent coating. It is, however, relatively sparse on controls; you get the zoom ring and a manual focus ring: that’s pretty much it.

Sigma

The lens is made up of 15 elements in 13 groups, with three aspheric lenses and three SLD elements. It can focus on objects as close as 15.8cm at 28mm, providing a maximum reproduction of 0.43x, though at the long end that goes down to a still-respectable 0.34x.

Autofocusing is handled by a linear motor, making for a responsive shooting experience even at higher framerates*.

Sigma

Arguably, the biggest downside of this lens has nothing to do with Sigma. The 20-60mm F2.8-4 DG Contemporary will be available for L-mount and Sony E-mount, but, as we’ve come to expect, not for Nikon Z or Canon RF, despite the fact that it’d make a great pairing for budget cameras like the EOS R8 and Nikon Z5II. Of course, anyone outside of those systems now have an excellent step-up option from their relatively slow kit-lenses, one that doesn’t ask them to sacrifice size or versatility for light-gathering ability. 

First impressions:

This first thing you notice about the 20-60mm is how compact it is, to the point that I had to look for the letters ‘DG’ to confirm to myself that it was designed to cover full-frame.

Despite going significantly wider than a conventional 24-70mm, and without losing much at the long end, it’s a usefully small and light option.

As such, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise to find that the lens drops away from its F2.8 maximum aperture almost immediately. Mounted on a Panasonic body, that reports aperture value with an unusual level of precision, the lens drops to F2.9 before you’ve zoomed as far as 21mm, so it’s worth thinking of this lens as closer to being an F4 than an F2.8 zoom.

The other factor contributing to the lens’s small size is its use of digital distortion corrections as part of its design. On L-mount bodies these are typically applied automatically, but third-party lens makers can’t force E-mount bodies to Auto apply them, so it’s essential that you engage them if you’re shooting on Sony.

Aperture progression

This is a pretty standard approach for lenses in Sigma’s more cost-sensitive ‘Contemporary’ series, and it’s worth recognizing that this lens wouldn’t be possible at this size, weight or price if geometric distortion was handled using glass elements.

In use, we’ve been pretty impressed with the results and extremely impressed with the flexibility of an ultra-wide to standard zoom. I’d be inclinded look at this lens as a replacement for the basic kit lens on any system that Sigma’s been allowed to make it for (E and L-mount, so far).

The ultrawide 20mm setting also makes the lens a handy option for video, as does its gimbal-friendly size and weight. It extends a fair amount on zooming but it’s light enough that this shift in its center of gravity shouldn’t be too much for a good gimbal to handle.

Both E and L-mounts have 20-something zooms available already, but this is smaller and more ambitious than the Panasonic 20-60mm F3.5-5.6 and much smaller and lighter than the Sony 20-70mm F4. Its extra range over the Tamron 20-40mm F2.8 is likely to be more valuable as an everyday lens than the extra stop of brightness that the Tamron offers for much of its range.

The lens will retail for $849, and will be available starting October 6.

* – Though Sony limits continuous autofocus on third party lenses to 15fps, so the motor’s responsiveness won’t help beyond that. That’s not an issue on L-mount, though.

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Sigma is finally releasing its 85mm F1.2 DG Art for E and L-mount, after announcing that the lens was in development early this year. This is the company’s third F1.2 prime, following 35mm and 50mm options, and provides a classic focal length for portraiture.

The lens has 17 elements in 12 groups, with two SLD elements and three aspheric lenses. It has 13 aperture blades, which is a few more than we’d typically expect. It can focus as close as 84cm (33″), for a maximum reproduction of 0.11x.

Sigma

Sigma says the lens is the “smallest and lightest in its class.” It weighs 905g (31.9oz), which is around 24% lighter than Canon’s 85mm F1.2 for RF, and 22% less than Nikon’s Z 85mm F1.2 S. (Of course, this lens doesn’t directly compete with those options, as it’s not available on those mounts.) The E-mount version is around 122mm long – the L-mount version is 2mm shorter – and both have an 87mm diameter. It can accept 82mm filters, and is “dust- and splash-resistant.”

Despite its focus on being relatively light, the lens still feels premium, and has all the features we’d expect of a high-end prime. It has an aperture ring, which can be clicked or declicked, a switch that locks it into or out of ‘A’ mode for aperture (which hands over control to the camera body) and a customizable button, duplicated in the portrait and landscape shooting orientations.

Sigma

Its autofocus is handled by dual linear motors, and the company says it’s designed to have minimal focus breathing for video shooters. 

As my colleague Richard Butler pointed out when this lens was first announced, its release means that all four major full-frame mirrorless systems now have an autofocusing 85mm F1.2 option; the lenses previously available for E and L-mount only went down to F1.4 (though relative newcomer SongRaw has announced its own 85mm F1.2 for Sony and Nikon systems, but it doesn’t seem to be widely available yet).

While Nikon and Canon’s 85mm F1.2s retail for $2999 and $3099, respectively, Sigma’s comes in at substantially less. It costs $1599, and will be available starting October 6.

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Nikon will be releasing a new firmware update for its video-focused ZR, which seems to correct some of the complaints videographers have had with the camera, including the more mature Log3G10 curve only being available when shooting in Raw, the relatively heavy-handed noise reduction and focus peaking not always being available. The company is also promising a big update for next year that will unlock open-gate recording, a first for its mirrorless cameras.

Nikon says firmware version 2.00 will make Log3G10 available when recording in H.265. Previously, you could use Log3G10 – a Red-developed Log curve that we found to be more sophisticated – in the R3D NE Raw format, which takes up substantially more space and requires more post-processing. You could shoot Log in H.265, but only using Nikon’s NLog. 

The company says it’s also adding an option that lets you select the level of High ISO noise reduction when recording H.265 in Log, “enabling image rendering tailored to the creator’s intent and the tone of the work.” When we reviewed the camera, we found that the ZR was clearly applying more noise reduction in the shadows than the Z6III with which it shares a sensor. This problem was also famously highlighted by YouTuber and cinematographer Philip Bloom, who cited it as a major issue with the camera. It’s good to see that Nikon’s taking that feedback and giving users more control over the effect.

Finally, the firmware will let you use focus peaking when recording in R3D NE, a feature that was bizarrely missing from the camera since its launch last year. The ZR supported focus peaking in its other Raw recording modes, just not the one that was introduced with the camera.

The company also says its goal is to add additional requested features to the ZR next year via a firmware update, including adding an open gate mode and a desqueeze assist mode for shooting with anamorphic lenses.

Many of the changes coming in V2.00 were already being promised by company representatives earlier this year, though there are still a few things they brought up that aren’t included in the upcoming updates Nikon’s announcing today. There’s no mention of a further compressed mode of R3D NE, like the one that exists for N-Raw, which uses half the bitrate. Arguably, this has become even more important since this summer, as the cost of SSDs and storage media has continued to rise thanks to AI. (It’s also a bit of an odd exclusion, given that R3D NE appears to be heavily based on N-Raw.) 

I’m also not quite sure Nikon is delivering on its promise of general improvements to H.265 recording, based on what’s in its press release. Control over noise reduction is a great first step, but there are still a few odd issues to have on such a video-focused camera, including the bitrate being substantially lower in the first few seconds of footage, and the camera not providing an accurate report of how much record time it has left.

Still, it’s great to see that Nikon is solving some of the community’s biggest issues with the ZR, and promising to make it even more powerful in the next few years. The update may be a bit overdue, but if it’s done right it’ll have been worth the wait. Nikon also says it’s updating the Red Control and Red Control Pro apps to support remotely controlling the ZR, and says it will “continue to enhance its products through firmware updates that address user needs, while also contributing to the development of imaging culture in the field of cinema.”

The firmware update is due out at some point this year.

Nikon is announcing a series of nine T1.9 cinema lenses, following up on a teaser from this time last year and another (slightly more detailed) one in April. The company is still keeping plenty of aspects about the line under wraps, though. There’s no word on pricing, when they’ll be available or what focal lengths will be included, with one exception.

Here’s what Nikon has said: the lenses will be branded as the “Nikkor Z Cinema T1.9 VV ” series, and one the nine lenses will be a 50mm. (While there’s no word on what the other options will be, the relatively fast T1.9 figure suggests they’ll all be primes.) The company also says it’ll be the “first Nikkor lens series to feature an image circle large enough to cover the V-Raptor [X] VV sensor,” which has a 46.3mm diagonal, versus standard full-frame’s 43mm.

The company also says the lenses will feature “a highly precise autofocus mechanism,” though that was hinted at in the teaser by the presence of an AF/MF switch. It also seems safe to assume they’ll be fitted with the Z-mount, given both the name and the fact that many more standard cinema mounts like PL don’t support autofocus. 

It’s hard to guess when we’ll get the next drop of information about these lenses. This is one of several cinema and video related announcements this month, which are likely tied to the International Broadcasting Convention happening in Amsterdam this week. And while there’s a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show happening in New York in October, the main event is scheduled for next April.