Almost every time a camera maker announces a new model, I spot a few comments that follow a familiar script: someone sees the price, winces, and declares the company “greedy.”

It’s not just cameras. The same charge gets thrown at smartphone makers, appliance manufacturers, and even app developers who choose to charge a subscription. I see it far more often today than I did ten years ago, and in most cases, I think it’s misguided.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand sticker shock, and I feel it too. My colleague Richard Butler has done a great job explaining why your sense of camera prices might be out of date and why launch prices always seem high. Even with that perspective, though, we still feel the sting of higher prices. But a price that makes us cringe isn’t evidence of greed.

Mitchell Clark

Few people start a business to give something away, and camera companies aren’t charities. Like most companies, their goal is to make money, ideally as much as they can. That’s not wrong – it’s business.

Consider what that means. Camera makers want the highest price they can get today. But they wanted the same thing five years ago, and ten years before that. Their appetite for profit didn’t suddenly appear when prices went up, and that appetite always has to be tempered by what people are willing or able to pay. What has changed is what it costs to design and build a camera, and what we’re comparing new prices against.

In fact, it can be in our interest for camera companies to be profitable. Profit keeps them in business and pays for R&D. And let’s be honest – making cameras isn’t exactly a gold mine. Olympus sold off its camera business, and Samsung walked away from the market entirely, just as it was emerging as a more serious player.

Additionally, we always want more. I’ve never seen a camera launch where everyone said, “That’s it. This camera is perfect. It’s all we’ll ever need.” There’s always a “but.” But if it only had this one feature… The catch is that nobody agrees on what that feature is, so manufacturers have to keep developing. That requires money.

Am I suggesting that manufacturers never overreach? Of course not. We’ve all seen a company swing for the fences on price, sometimes to the point of being laughable. As Richard pointed out, launch prices in particular are essentially an opening bid, the most a company will ever get for a product, and they’re often optimistic.

However, consumers have power too: we can choose not to buy. If a camera sits on shelves, its price will come down. It almost always does. And if it sells out at full price, that tells us something too, even if we don’t like what it says.

Richard Butler

Is the system perfect? No. A handful of brands dominate the camera market, and once you’re invested in a system, switching is neither easy nor inexpensive. Companies do have real leverage over pricing, and it tends to show up where you’re locked in: proprietary batteries, pricey accessories, or even mounts that restrict the use of third-party lenses. Those are fair targets for criticism. But it’s a much more specific complaint than “this camera costs more than I want to pay, so the manufacturer must be greedy.” And when it comes to the cameras themselves, you have alternatives.

The next time a new camera’s price makes you cringe, try asking a different question. Instead of “why are they so greedy?”, ask “is this worth it to me?” If the answer is no, don’t buy it. It’s the most effective message a camera buyer can send.

That message has its limits, though. Holding off on buying might bring an optimistic launch price down, but it can’t make a camera cheaper to manufacture. If enough people decide the answer is yes, that price may simply be the new normal. If enough decide it’s no, we’re more likely to get a cheaper camera than the same camera for less.

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When Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro in September, the headline camera story was a mechanical variable aperture on the main camera, a first for the iPhone. It also came with Apple’s new Pro controls, which include the ability to set aperture, shutter speed and white balance manually.

What Apple hasn’t highlighted is a trade-off photographers should know about: if you set shutter speed manually, the iPhone 18 Pro appears to stop combining multiple frames into each photo. That means giving up some of the computational processing the iPhone relies on for image quality, particularly in low light.

What Pro controls do, and what they stop doing

Like every smartphone, the iPhone relies on computational photography to overcome the limits of its small sensor. All else being equal, a small sensor captures less light than the larger sensors found in most dedicated cameras, and less light equates to noisier images. To compensate, the phone shoots a rapid burst of frames, then aligns and merges them into a single photo, averaging those frames to reduce noise and improve dynamic range. (This is often referred to as frame stacking or frame blending.)

Here’s where it gets interesting: when you use Pro controls to set shutter speed manually, that process appears to stop. Instead, the phone captures one frame at the shutter speed you chose. Night mode also becomes unavailable. In contrast, setting the aperture manually doesn’t have this effect; the iPhone will keep stacking frames, just as it does on full auto.

There’s a defensible logic to this approach. Multi-frame capture often blends frames of different durations, which runs counter to the idea of choosing your own shutter speed. The phone could, in principle, stack several frames at your selected shutter speed instead, but a burst takes longer to capture than a single frame, and the resulting image would be a blend of several moments in time rather than a record of a single moment.

Tests: auto vs. manual exposure

We shot static scenes on a tripod with the main camera, in conditions ranging from bright daylight to night. Each scene was shot four ways: full auto, manual aperture, manual shutter speed and both set manually.

We matched the aperture and shutter speed across each set. (In bright daylight, auto mode often chose shutter speeds you can’t select manually, such as 1/2500 sec, in which case we used the closest available.) Pro controls don’t include ISO, so the camera selected automatically, but it was typically identical or within a third of a stop across image sets. We also disabled night mode to remove it as a variable.

The comparison below illustrates the impact of using manual shutter speed in low light.

F1.48 | 1/15 sec | ISO 10000 | Night mode disabled

The next example is slightly less extreme, but there’s still a noticeable difference between images.

F1.48 | 1/30 sec | ISO 640 (auto exposure)
F1.48 | 1/30 sec | ISO 400 (manual shutter)

Not surprisingly, when there’s a surplus of light, the difference is much less noticeable, as in this photo of some aspen trees on a sunny day.

F1.8 | 1/2500 sec | ISO 64 (auto exposure)
F1.7 | 1/2000 sec | ISO 50 (manual shutter)

Manual aperture mode produces essentially the same results as full auto mode. However, any configuration with a manually selected shutter speed can result in more noise, regardless of whether the aperture was set manually; it’s most noticeable in low light or deep shadows.

Why it matters

Low light is often where photographers want deliberate control over exposure, and it’s where the trade-off is most noticeable.

Apple hasn’t advertised this behavior, and we don’t read much into that; it’s a level of detail most consumers probably don’t want from a product launch. (Though Apple has explained its image processing in detail at past launches.) However, if you plan to buy an iPhone 18 Pro because of Pro controls, it’s worth understanding what’s happening behind the scenes.

When to use manual, and when to let the iPhone take control

Save manual shutter speed for when creative choices require control over exposure time, like creating motion blur or freezing action and accept that you’re getting a single-frame image. If it’s a photo you couldn’t have achieved without manual control, then the trade-off was likely worth it. But unless you have a deliberate reason for doing so, auto shutter speed will give you a cleaner image, particularly in low light.

To be clear, we don’t think Apple got this wrong. In fact, this approach arguably gives you just what you would expect when manually setting the shutter speed on a camera. But photographers should be aware that the trade-off exists.

Finally, if you’re thinking of upgrading to the iPhone 18 Pro for an improved camera, we recommend reading our comprehensive upgrade guide, which compares the 18 Pro’s camera and photography features to every iPhone Pro going back to the iPhone 12 series.

Amazon’s fall Prime Big Deal Days sale is officially underway, running through October 7. Similar to previous Amazon sales events, there’s a lot of marketing and hype, but once you cut through all that there are some good deals hidden in the noise, including all-time low prices on some cameras. However, let’s set expectations: not every deal here is the lowest price we’ve seen, and discounts often skew toward older models. We’ve tried to include only products whose prices represent a good deal relative to historical pricing, but even then, some have been cheaper in the past.

Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days prices require a Prime membership, and prices can – and do – change mid-sale. The deals below were current as of the time of writing, but may sell out or expire before the sale ends on October 7. It’s also worth checking out competing retailers like B&H or Adorama, that often match some Prime Day prices.

Camera deals

Richard Butler

Camera discounts can be hit-or-miss during Amazon’s sales, but this is a good one if you shoot Nikon. The Z8 is at the lowest price we’ve seen, including body-only and with the 24-120mm F4 kit lens, and the Z6 II and Z5 match their all-time low prices. Those last two are previous generation models, but remain capable cameras if one appeals to you. Also worth noting: the Fujifilm X half is $100 cheaper than it was during Amazon’s Prime Day in June.

Nikon Z8 $3297 (was $4300)

Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm F4 S lens $4197 (was $5200)

Nikon Z6 II $1297 (was $1750)

Nikon Z6 II with Nikkor Z 24-70mm F4 S lens $1897 (was $2350)

Nikon Z5 $897 (was $1147)

Canon EOS R50 V with RF-S 14-30mm F4-6.3 IS STM PZ lens $749 (was $949)

Fujifilm X half $449 (was $650)

Panasonic Lumix S9 $1098 (was $1198)

Lens deals

Sony

The lens selection this time around is thin, but there are options for different budgets, particularly if you shoot Sony – its FE 50mm F1.4 GM is at the lowest price we’ve seen. Canon’s RF 800mm F11 IS STM matches its all-time low price, making it an inexpensive way to get a lot of reach on a Canon mirrorless camera.

Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM $1198 (was $1398)

Sony FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM $1498 (was $1798)

Sony E 35mm F1.8 OSS $400 (was $600)

Canon RF 800mm F11 IS STM $899 (was $1198)

Action camera and drone deals

Amazon

Similar to Prime Day last June, some of the best discounts are on action cameras, vlogging cameras and drones – though the list of models is limited.

DJI Osmo Pocket 3 Creator Combo $495 (was $629)

DJI Osmo Pocket 3 $395 at B&H (was $439)

GoPro Max2 $300 (was $500)

GoPro LIT Hero $180 (was $270)

DJI Neo $139 (was $199)

DJI Flip Fly More Combo with RC 2 $588 (was $779)

Memory card and storage deals

Amazon

The cost of memory has risen dramatically as demand by AI tools and data centers has spiked, so memory cards and storage cost much more than they have historically, even when on sale. A discount today is a discount relative to current pricing, not a return to what you would have paid a year or two ago. There are no bargains here that demand action, but if you need cards or SSDs now, these prices are lower than what we’ve seen recently.

Memory cards

Sony Tough CFexpress type A 160GB $330 (was$399)

Storage

SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD $210 (was $300)

SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD $360 (was $451)

SanDisk 4TB Extreme Portable SSD $715 (was $860)

Samsung T9 Portable SSD 2TB $350 (was $490)

WD 20TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive $550 (was $815)

Accessory deals

Rode

Rounding things out, there are some healthy discounts on gimbals, microphones and printers.

DJI RS 4 $369 (was $469)

DJI RS 4 Mini Combo $309 (was $459)

DJI RS 4 Mini $259 (was $369)

Røde Wireless ME $70 (was $106)

DJI Mic Mini (2 TX + 1 RX + Charging Case) $79 (was $99)

Shure MoveMic Two Wireless Lavalier Kit $279 (was $389)

Canon Pixma Pro-200S Professional 13″ Wireless Inkjet Photo Printer $479 (was $648)

Canon Selphy CP1500 with RP-108 ink and paper set $170 (was $200)

Canon Ivy 2 Mini Photo Printer $90 (was $120)

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Leica has announced a silver version of its Leica Lux Grip, along with Leica Lux 2.0, a major update to its iPhone camera app. The update incorporates the same gallery interface used in Leica Fotos, the company’s app for connecting its cameras to smartphones and includes a new Artist Look developed with photographer Steve McCurry.

What’s new

Leica

The silver Leica Lux Grip follows the original black model, which launched in February 2025. Other than color, it’s identical to the original: it attaches to an iPhone via MagSafe and provides a two-stage shutter release, a settings wheel and two customizable function buttons for direct access to key camera settings. Its built-in battery is rated for 1,000 shots and charges over USB-C. The grip works with the iPhone 12 and later models.

Leica is also releasing new Lux cases for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which are made of black leather. The cases feature an integrated camera button rather than an open cutout, which Leica says makes the case sturdier and the button more reliable to operate.

Leica

Lux 2.0 is the most significant update to the app since its 2024 launch. It now shares its gallery interface with Leica Fotos, giving both apps a consistent layout, and a redesigned interface featuring app icons inspired by classic Leica cameras. The gallery adds a filmstrip for selecting individual images from the detail view and multi-select in the grid view. Photos can be opened directly into Capture One or Adobe Lightroom for editing, alongside the existing Darkroom option. The app continues to offer Leica lens simulations and manual control over camera settings.

The McCurry Artist Look

Leica

The new Steve McCurry Artist Look is a color and tonal profile developed with the photographer best known for his 1985 portrait Afghan Girl. It follows an earlier Artist Looks collaboration with photographer Greg Williams. Leica says its Artist Looks aren’t meant to replicate a photographer’s work, but to give photographers a starting point to develop their own.

Price and availability

The silver Leica Lux Grip and the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max cases are available beginning today. The Lux Grip retails for $395 or €300, and includes a one-year subscription to Leica Lux Pro, which unlocks the app’s full feature set. Each case costs $95 or €95.

The Leica Lux 2.0 app will be available beginning in early October and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. The app is free; a Lux Pro subscription is required for full access, currently $70/year. The Steve McCurry Artist Look and iPhone 18 Pro support are available now.

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When Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, the headline camera feature was a variable aperture main lens with four settings – F1.48, F1.8, F2.8 and F4 – a first for iPhone. That wider F1.48 maximum is roughly half a stop faster than the F1.78 lens found on several previous Pro models, which should let the camera capture about 45% more light. For our sample gallery, we put that new, larger aperture to work across a range of subjects and lighting conditions to see how it performs..

The iPhone 18 Pro’s variable aperture provides a modest degree of depth-of-field control by letting you choose your aperture, though in practical terms, those apertures translate to roughly F5 to F14 on a full-frame camera; even at F1.48, you won’t be able to get the shallow depth of field possible with a dedicated camera and a fast lens. However, when wide open, the faster lens provides a real, if modest, background separation advantage over older iPhones, and stopping down will deepen the depth of field enough to show visible differences.

Dale Baskin

Since the iPhone 18 Pro’s cameras are otherwise broadly similar to the previous generation, we biased our gallery toward shooting at F1.48 to assess what that faster aperture can deliver – and where its limits are, including several sequences shot at all four aperture settings to show how out-of-focus regions shift as the lens closes down. We also pointed the camera directly at point sources of light to see how the lens handled flare at different apertures and whether there was a meaningful difference in creating sunstars.

If you’re deciding whether to upgrade from an older iPhone Pro, our upgrade guide compares the iPhone 18 Pro to every Pro model back to the 12. For a broader look at the new phones and what else changed beyond the camera, see our launch coverage.

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; we do so in good faith, so please don’t abuse it. 

Apple

iPhone 18 Pro

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The Sony FE 400mm F4.5 GM OSS is a 994g (2.2 lb) super-telephoto prime aimed at wildlife and sports shooters who want a lens they can carry comfortably for hours. Sony says it’s the lightest lens of its kind, and at $2,700 it costs a fraction of the company’s FE 400mm F2.8 GM OSS, which is faster by about 1.3 stops, runs around $12,000 and weighs nearly 3kg (6.4 lbs).

Shooting experience

The 400mm F4.5 is nearly identical to its sibling, the FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS, differing by just one gram and 21mm in length, so the shooting experience is effectively the same. Both balance well when used handheld, with the weight sitting close to the camera to reduce fatigue, and both offer full-time direct manual focus. Two XD linear motors drive the autofocus, which Sony says can keep up with 120 fps burst shooting on the a9 III.

For a more thorough description of how these lenses handle in the field, see my 600mm sample gallery article.

Sample gallery

Most of the images in this gallery were captured at the Oregon Zoo near Portland, Oregon, with a handful at Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge and the CSKT Bison Range in Montana, the same locations featured in the 600mm gallery. The zoo subjects offered proximity and varied light conditions; the Montana locations challenged the lens in open terrain and at longer working distances.

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 400mm F4.5 GM OSS

• $2,698 at B&H

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Earlier this week, Sony announced the FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS, a super-telephoto prime that, along with its FE 400mm F4.5 GM sibling, aims to put G Master optics into a lens you can comfortably handhold for hours. At 995g (2.2 lb) without its tripod foot, Sony claims it’s the lightest lens in its class, and at $3,700, it costs a fraction of what the company’s 600mm F4 GM does.

Shooting experience

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks with both lenses ahead of launch, taking the 600mm F6.3 to photograph wildlife in Montana at Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge and the CSKT Bison Range, where, frustratingly, I didn’t see a single bison.

The first thing I noticed is how little the lens feels like a super-telephoto. Sony’s 995g figure doesn’t include the hood, which you’ll almost certainly have attached and which adds roughly 130g, but you’re unlikely to notice much difference. More importantly, the lens’s weight is concentrated close to the camera, so it doesn’t feel front-heavy the way many telephotos do.

Dale Baskin

I shot entirely handheld on a Sony a7 V, which is really the point of this lens: it’s built for walking, not for sitting on a tripod. I wandered the refuge’s primitive dirt roads and marshy areas with nothing but the camera slung over my shoulder and a small pack. My tripod stayed in the car the entire trip.

That’s why I can (mostly) forgive the one design choice I’d change: the tripod foot isn’t Arca-Swiss compatible. It’s not the end of the world for a lens meant to be handheld, but when you do need a tripod – for video, for example – a built-in Arca-Swiss foot would be very useful.

Dale Baskin

The hood has a locking button and a rubber bumper on the front, which is a welcome touch, since a lens this long inevitably bumps into things as you carry it. It also reverses for storage. Reversed, it partially blocks the focus hold buttons, but the function and focus rings remain easy to reach, so if an opportunity appears suddenly, you can still raise the camera and shoot.

The focus ring is nice and deep, and full-time DMF lets you take over focusing without flipping a switch. When subject detection couldn’t pick out an animal partially hidden by grass or plants, a quick twist of the ring to bring it into focus was often the fastest way to get the camera to recognize the animal and begin tracking.

Dale Baskin

The trade-off for its compact size is the F6.3 maximum aperture. For sample galleries, we keep ISO as low as practical so noise doesn’t affect perceived sharpness; I generally aim for ISO 1600 or below, though it’s not a hard rule. With this lens, that target had to move. In early-morning light at Ninepipe, or in overcast or misty conditions, I often shot at ISO 2000–3200 to get shutter speeds fast enough to freeze wildlife in action.

When not shooting sample galleries, I might push to ISO 6400 or higher, and with modern full-frame sensors and AI Raw noise-reduction tools, that makes F6.3 less of a compromise than it once was. Still, if you regularly shoot in low light, you might be the target audience for Sony’s 600mm F4, which is 1.3 stops faster.

Dale Baskin

Even at F6.3, I generally had plenty of subject separation and found out-of-focus areas pleasing both in front of and behind the plane of focus. The one exception was when something busy, like tall grass, sat in an awkward middle zone – not sharp, but not blurred enough to disappear – where the bokeh could look slightly distracting, though that kind of transitional distance is a tough test for any lens.

For a closer look at the design and controls, and how both lenses fit into the market, check out our hands-on with the 400mm F4.5 and 600mm F6.3 GM.

Sample gallery

Sony

Sony FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS

• $3,698 at B&H

Each year, Apple’s iPhone launch event devotes considerable time to its newest flagship iPhone Pro model, which features the company’s most advanced cameras. For photography and video enthusiasts who want Apple’s latest imaging technology, the iPhone Pro is the clear choice.

And every year, Apple tries to convince us that its cameras are better than ever, and that this is the year to upgrade to make your photos more magical than ever before.

Apple

But is it worth it? Most people upgrade their smartphones only every few years, and it can be hard to know when an upgrade will truly make a difference to your photos. We’re here to help sort the noise from the facts. In this photography-focused comparison, we’ll examine every iPhone Pro model from the last six years – back to 2020’s iPhone 12 Pro – to help you decide if an upgrade makes sense.

Before we dive into older models, let’s review what’s new with the iPhone 18 Pro.

Or, you can jump directly to a comparison between the iPhone 18 Pro series and your current model:

• iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max
• iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max

iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max: What’s new

Apple

Like its predecessors, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have main, ultrawide and telephoto cameras. All three use 48MP sensors that Apple calls “Fusion” sensors, which are essentially a Quad Bayer design that combines binned and full-resolution pixel data. This year’s headline feature is something we’ve never seen on an iPhone before: a mechanical variable aperture on the main camera.

The aperture has four settings (F1.48, F1.8, F2.8 and F4), spanning just under three stops. That’s roughly F5 to F14 in full-frame terms, so background blur won’t change dramatically, but you do get real control over depth of field. At F1.48, the lens is also about half a stop brighter than the 17 Pro’s F1.78 lens, which accounts for most of Apple’s claimed low-light gain. The sensor is new, but it’s the same size.

For video, stopping down allows slower shutter speeds, getting you closer to a 180-degree shutter in shade or overcast light. In bright sun, though, you’ll still need about a four- to five-stop ND filter at F4 to shoot 24p at 1/50 sec.

Apple

Apple has also added Pro controls in the built-in Camera app, allowing you to manually set aperture, shutter speed and white balance, complete with a live histogram.

The rest of the camera hardware carries over from the 17 Pro, including the ultrawide, the 4x (100mm equiv.) telephoto and the 18MP Center Stage front camera. Software additions include Smart focus tracking, texture and grain controls in Photographic Styles, 4K/60p Cinematic mode, and the ability to apply cinematic effects to video after capture.

Finally, the 18 Pro introduces Apple Reference Image, an opt-in authenticity feature. In Reference mode, the sensor captures signed data that Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers turn into an unalterable reference image. It appears alongside the main photo so you can check whether the photo has been edited. It’s Apple’s own alternative to the C2PA Content Credentials that Google has adopted.

The big picture

Before diving into individual comparisons, let’s look at how the iPhone Pro’s camera system has evolved. At a high level, this is what to look for:

• Sensor size and aperture: All other factors being equal, a larger sensor captures more light, resulting in higher-quality photos, especially in low light. A variable aperture (the 18 Pro models) provides additional control over how much light hits the sensor.
• Resolution: More megapixels mean higher-resolution images and the ability to maintain resolution with ‘virtual’ zoom lenses.
• Focal lengths: While the main and ultrawide cameras have been pretty consistent, telephoto cameras have had more varied configurations.
• Video features: Know which features you need – and which ones you don’t – when deciding whether to upgrade.

In the table below, green boxes represent significant upgrades from previous models.

Editor’s note: All focal lengths in this article are full-frame equivalents.

*All focal lengths are full-frame equivalents

Before the 18 Pro added a variable aperture, the main camera’s last notable upgrades came with the 13 Pro and 14 Pro, and it was largely unchanged from the 14 Pro through the 17 Pro.

The ultrawide camera was upgraded on the 13 Pro and 14 Pro, and again on the iPhone 16 Pro, which also gained a 48MP sensor.

The telephoto camera has seen more variability, with focal lengths between 52mm (2x) and 120mm (5x), with the most significant upgrade being the iPhone 17 Pro, which gained a 48MP sensor that’s substantially larger than in previous models.

Apple has continued to add video features with each generation. All models in the table can also capture ProRAW photos.

If you have an iPhone 17 Pro or Pro Max

Apple

For iPhone 17 Pro owners, the year-over-year upgrade hinges almost entirely on whether you want variable aperture control on the main camera.

The iPhone 17 Pro has the same 48MP ultrawide and telephoto cameras and the same 18MP Center Stage front camera. The 18 Pro’s main sensor is new, but it’s the same size, and we would expect image quality to be broadly the same at similar apertures.

The variable aperture on the main camera is the key difference. F1.48 is about half a stop brighter than the 17 Pro’s F1.78 lens, which could be important if you frequently shoot in low light. At the other end, stopping down to F4 provides more depth of field for close subjects and group shots, and will let you use slower shutter speeds for video in shade or overcast light.

The 18 Pro also adds built-in Pro controls to Apple’s Camera app, Smart focus tracking, texture and grain controls in Photographic Styles, and Apple Reference Image. For video, you can now apply cinematic effects after capture. If those features or the variable aperture don’t matter to you, it’s hard to recommend the upgrade, and third-party apps can already give the 17 Pro manual shutter speed and white balance control.

If you have an iPhone 16 Pro or Pro Max

Apple

For iPhone 16 Pro or Pro Max owners, the upgrade will not only net you the variable aperture main camera, but a much-improved telephoto camera as well.

The iPhone 16 Pro has a main camera similar to the 18 Pro’s (minus the variable aperture) and the same ultrawide camera.

However, there’s a big difference in telephoto cameras. The iPhone 18 Pro has a 48MP telephoto sensor that’s over 50% larger than the one in the 16 Pro. With the same F2.8 aperture, that works out to about 2/3 stop more light. The telephoto focal length has also changed, decreasing from 120mm (5x) on the 16 Pro to 100mm (4x) on the 18 Pro.

The 4x zoom on the 18 Pro may sound like a downgrade, but a common complaint on the iPhone 16 Pro was the large gap between its main and telephoto cameras. This forced mid-range zoom shots to rely heavily on computationally-enhanced crops from the main sensor. The 18 Pro’s 4x telephoto narrows that gap, allowing the phone to switch to the dedicated telephoto lens and its full sensor area sooner.

Additionally, the iPhone 16 Pro and all older models used Apple’s previous 4:3 front-facing selfie camera. The newer Center Stage camera could be a reason to upgrade if you take many selfies or shoot video on the move.

New video features include ProRes RAW and Genlock (aimed at advanced videographers), Apple Log 2, 4K/60p Cinematic mode and the ability to apply cinematic effects after shooting. Unless you specifically need them, these features alone don’t justify an upgrade.

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max

Apple

For iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max users, the camera differences start to stack up more dramatically.

The main camera on the 15 Pro uses the same sensor size as the 18 Pro, but with a fixed F1.78 lens, so the 18 Pro gains about half a stop at F1.48, plus the flexibility of a variable aperture. Apple has also introduced faster-readout versions of this sensor since the 15 Pro, enabling “zero shutter lag” even when shooting Raw.

The telephoto cameras are more complicated. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max use different modules, with 77mm (3x) and 120mm (5x) lenses, respectively. This means upgrading to the 18 Pro’s 100mm (4x) telephoto could result in either more or less reach than you’re used to. In either case, the upgrade will get you the 18 Pro’s 48MP sensor, which is over 50% larger than the 15 Pro Max’s and almost double the size of the 15 Pro’s.

Image stabilization is another factor to consider. The iPhone 15 Pro Max’s telephoto module uses sensor-shift image stabilization. In contrast, the smaller iPhone 15 Pro’s telephoto uses Apple’s older, less effective optical image stabilization system. Sensor-shift stabilization didn’t come to the smaller iPhone Pro’s telephoto module until the iPhone 16 series, so iPhone 15 Pro users will experience improved telephoto stabilization after upgrading.

Dale Baskin

Ultrawide and macro photographers may be drawn to the iPhone 18 Pro’s 48MP ultrawide camera. Like Apple’s other 48MP sensors, it’s a Quad Bayer design, so the resolution gain isn’t as large as the numbers suggest. Still, it captures more detail and provides more latitude for cropping macro shots. The sensor size remains unchanged, however, so don’t expect low-light improvements.

The 18 Pro includes other features not on the 15 Pro, such as the Camera Control button and the latest generation of Photographic Styles, which lets you change the look after a photo is taken. Video upgrades include 4K/120p capture (up from 4K/60p) for more dramatic slow-motion, Apple Log 2, after-capture cinematic effects, and support for ProRes RAW and Genlock.

If you have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max

Apple

The camera modules in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are broadly similar to those in the 15 Pro, except for the 15 Pro Max’s 5x telephoto. As a result, much of the same upgrade logic applies.

The iPhone 14 Pro was the first model with the 48MP, Type 1/1.28 main sensor format Apple still uses, though the 18 Pro will benefit from faster readout speeds. Additionally, the 14 Pro defaults to 12MP photos binned from its 48MP sensor, compared to the 24MP default on more recent models. (Full 48MP resolution is still available via a settings change, however.)

Upgrading to the 18 Pro will get you newer 48MP sensors on the ultrawide and telephoto modules. The telephoto sensor is also nearly twice the size of the 14 Pro’s, which, with the same F2.8 aperture, works out to almost a full stop more light.

Neither iPhone 14 Pro model includes sensor-shift image stabilization on the telephoto camera, relying instead on the older, less effective optical image stabilization system. Upgrading to the 18 Pro will provide superior sensor-shift stabilization on the telephoto camera, where it’s needed most.

Newer iPhones like the 18 Pro also feature lens coatings not found on the 14 Pro, which can reduce lens flare when shooting into bright light. (Though models with updated coatings still have the green flare balls that have almost become a calling card of iPhone photos.) Newer models can also capture 3D spatial images, a feature the iPhone 14 Pro lacks.

Dale Baskin

Video capabilities may be the most compelling reason to upgrade. The iPhone 14 Pro captures ProRes video, but not the ProRes Log format desired by videographers for its color grading flexibility. Furthermore, its ProRes recording tops out at 4K/30p (1080/30p on 128GB models), restricting slow-motion options.

The 14 Pro was also the last model with a Lightning connector. Newer models use the more universal USB-C, which offers data transfer speeds up to 10Gbit per second – 20 times faster than the Lightning port’s USB 2.0 speeds.

If you primarily use the main camera, upgrading to the 18 Pro may not return huge dividends, unless the variable aperture is important to you. However, for frequent users of the ultrawide and telephoto cameras, or for videographers who want Log video, the upgrade becomes a compelling, no-brainer decision.

If you have an iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max

Apple

With iPhone models this old, the differences in technology become more stark, and for iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max owners, upgrading to the 18 Pro will improve the camera experience in nearly every way.

The iPhone 13 Pro was the last generation to use a smaller 12MP main camera sensor before Apple switched to the 48MP sensor that became its standard. The 18 Pro’s sensor is 63% larger than the one in the 13 Pro, and with roughly equivalent maximum apertures (F1.48 vs F1.5), it can capture about 3/4 stop more light, giving it a big leg up in image quality. The 13 Pro also lacks the benefits of the 48MP sensor, which uses pixel binning for extra detail and enables the ‘2x’ virtual lens option found on newer models.

The situation is similar for the ultrawide camera. Its 12MP sensor is roughly half the size of the 18 Pro’s. While its F1.8 aperture is faster than the 18 Pro’s F2.2, the 13 Pro’s ultrawide is still about a third of a stop behind in overall light-gathering and lacks the benefits of the 48MP sensor.

The telephoto camera is where you’ll see the most dramatic difference. The iPhone 18 Pro’s telephoto sensor is nearly twice as large as the 13 Pro’s, and with the same F2.8 aperture, it captures almost a full stop more light. The 18 Pro also uses more effective sensor-shift stabilization on its telephoto module, compared to the older optical stabilization on the 13 Pro models.

As with the 14 Pro, video features could be a deciding factor, especially if you want ProRes Log for color grading latitude. With all three of the 13 Pro’s cameras still at 12MP, lower light-gathering capacity, and a shorter video feature list, this is an easy upgrade to recommend.

If you have an iPhone 12 Pro or Pro Max

Apple

Six years feels like an eternity in technology, and the cameras on the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max are showing their age.

The main camera sensor on the iPhone 18 Pro is almost three times larger than the one in the iPhone 12 Pro, and its lens is also slightly faster (F1.48 vs F1.6). Combined, that gives the 18 Pro’s main camera about a 1.8-stop light-gathering advantage, or roughly 3.5 times more light. That’s a dramatic difference, and will be noticeable in photos.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max stays a little closer to the 18 Pro, thanks to its slightly larger sensor, but it still falls 1.25 stops behind, meaning the 18 Pro gathers almost 2.4 times as much light. Not as much, but still a big difference.

Similarly, the 18 Pro’s ultrawide sensor is almost twice as large as the 12 Pro’s, which also has a slower F2.4 aperture. The net result is that the 18 Pro’s ultrawide captures about 1.2 stops more light.

The telephoto comparison is more nuanced. The 12 Pro models have smaller telephoto sensors, but their faster apertures let them roughly match the 18 Pro’s telephoto in total light-gathering. However, their 2x (52mm) and 2.5x (65mm) lenses offer far less reach than the 18 Pro’s 4x (100mm) telephoto.

The 18 Pro’s main camera can also stand in for the 12 Pro’s telephoto: a 2x (48mm) crop still delivers 12MP while capturing about 1.4 stops more light. Matching the 12 Pro Max’s 65mm lens requires a tighter crop that yields only about 6.5MP, though it still gathers nearly a stop more light.

Apple

Image stabilization is another key difference. The iPhone 12 Pro Max was the first to introduce sensor-shift stabilization on its main camera, but the smaller 12 Pro used older, less effective optical stabilization. Upgrading from the smaller 12 Pro will provide a noticeable improvement, as all Pro models since the 13 series have featured sensor-shift on their main cameras.

The 12 Pro models also show their age in video. While they capture Dolby Vision HDR and 4K/60p, they lack all the other video features Apple has introduced in the last six years.

If improving photo quality is your goal, this upgrade makes absolute sense. With 12MP sensors across the board, less light-gathering capability, an older imaging pipeline and far less telephoto reach, you’ll see an across-the-board improvement in image quality.

Conclusion

Apple’s slick presentations make it easy to feel like you need the newest iPhone cameras, and I give Apple credit for being very good at that. The reality, however, is that most annual updates are incremental. Major improvements are the exception, not the rule.

Also, when considering an upgrade, keep in mind that you may not need to buy Apple’s newest iPhone Pro, depending on the features you need or want. If an older model meets your requirements, you might save a chunk of change by buying a recent used phone, or even a refurbished model from Apple that’s newer than your current one and still offers the features you want.

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Sony’s new FE 400mm F4.5 GM OSS and FE 600mm F6.3 GM OSS are built around a simple premise: bring G Master optics and autofocus to wildlife and sports shooters who don’t want to carry a massive lens all day. At $2,700 and $3,700, they also cost a fraction of Sony’s existing 400mm F2.8 and 600mm F4 primes, which run around $12,000 and $13,000.

Both weigh under a kilogram — 994g and 995g (both 2.2 lbs) respectively, excluding the tripod foot — and share the same 108mm barrel diameter. They’re so close in size and feel that it’s easy to pick up one thinking you’ve grabbed the other. Sony claims both are the lightest super-telephoto primes in their class, and the numbers bear that out.

Dale Baskin

Sony provided both lenses to us ahead of the announcement, and we’ve been using them for a couple of weeks. In this article, we’ll walk you through the key areas of their designs.

Optics

Dale Baskin

Optically, the lenses are very similar. The 400mm comprises 22 elements in 16 groups, and the 600mm uses 24 elements in 17 groups. Both share the same core glass: three Super ED elements and one ED element. According to Sony, the shared Super ED elements are what keep chromatic aberration in check across both focal lengths.

In fact, the optical designs are so similar – the 600mm adds two elements and substitutes a third – that it can almost be thought of as a 400mm lens with a built-in teleconverter. The minimum focus distance is identical at 2.5m, but the aperture isn’t quite proportional: a true 1.5x converter would make F4.5 become F6.75, whereas the 600mm manages to achieve F6.3, so it’s close to the idea without being a literal case of it.

Both lenses feature a single front lens element design, rather than a multi-element front group, which Sony credits for pushing the center of gravity back toward the camera body for better balance, and both include an 11-blade circular aperture, which it claims will help render more natural bokeh (check out our sample galleries below for real-world examples).

Dale Baskin

The two lenses also work with Sony’s SEL14TC 1.4x and SEL20TC 2.0x teleconverters. The 400mm extends to 560mm F6.3 or 800mm F9; the 600mm goes to 840mm F9 or 1200mm F13. The 600mm’s maximum magnification of 0.25x also nudges ahead of the 400mm’s 0.18x, despite both sharing a 2.5m (8.2 ft) minimum focus distance.

Autofocus

Dale Baskin

Each lens uses two XD (extreme dynamic) linear motors, one driving each focus group. Sony claims both can maintain focus tracking at up to 120 fps on the a9 III and support subject tracking during 4K 120p video recording.

We used the lenses with a Sony a7 V body, so we weren’t able to put the 120 fps tracking to the test, but the camera maintained tracking at its maximum 30 fps burst rate.

Dale Baskin

Autofocus is quick and snappy. The only moment it felt sluggish was when switching from a subject very close up to one very far away, which isn’t unusual for a super-telephoto, and exactly the scenario the focus limiter is designed for – we’ll get to that in a moment.

Sony’s subject detection worked well with both lenses. Whether tracking a bird or a large mammal, the system tracked subjects like glue, and only in rare cases would one of the lenses fall behind in maintaining focus.

On-lens controls

Dale Baskin

Both lenses include an AF/MF switch, a full-time DMF (direct manual focus) ON/OFF switch, a focus range limiter with two settings (full range and ∞–7m), an OSS ON/OFF switch and an OSS mode switch.

The lenses support three stabilization modes: Mode 1 for normal camera shake, Mode 2 for panning, and Mode 3, which Sony says minimizes framing disturbance for fast or irregularly moving subjects. I confess that I didn’t think about what OSS mode the lenses were in when shooting subjects like birds, leaving them in Mode 1, which seemed to work fine, though it’s possible a more experienced bird photographer would notice the difference.

The limiter’s ∞–7m setting keeps the AF system from hunting through closer distances; it proved particularly useful when photographing an animal through grass or foliage between me and the subject, ignoring close-in distractions so the AF system could lock on to what I actually intended.

Dale Baskin

Four focus hold buttons are distributed around the barrel on both lenses, and all are customizable. A function ring sits just behind them and can be assigned a range of camera settings.

The manual focus ring is nice and deep, giving plenty of surface to grip and turn. Both lenses support full-time DMF, so there’s no mode-switching required to take over focusing mid-shot. In fact, I ran into several shooting situations where a quick twist of the focus ring to bring a partly obscured subject into focus was the fastest way to get the camera’s subject detection system to lock onto a subject, like a bird, which it then began tracking.

Design and build

Dale Baskin

Both lenses are effectively the same size, sharing a 108mm barrel diameter and a 95mm front filter thread. Where they differ by a small amount is in length: the 400mm measures 242mm; the 600mm is 263mm — a difference of just 21mm.

Sony claims dust and moisture resistance through sealed seams, silicone rubber gaskets around buttons and switches, a sealed lens mount ring and a fluorine-coated front element. In my own use, the 400mm held up to one very wet day of shooting with steady rain for about 3 hours. The lens was visibly wet on the outside and showed no signs of water reaching the interior. It wasn’t a controlled test, but that anecdotal experience lends credence to Sony’s claims.

Dale Baskin

The tripod foot is removable on both, using a twist-lock mechanism that makes attaching or removing it quick and easy. A soft carrying case is included with each lens, and it’s one thing that felt a little bit wanting; it feels like a one-size-fits-all case designed to accommodate larger lenses, leaving a fair amount of room for the lenses to move around inside.

The one thing that really stands out when using both lenses is how little weight sits toward the front. The balance point falls well back toward the camera, which makes handholding for extended periods more comfortable than the physical size might suggest.

Lightest in class

Dale Baskin

Sony claims both lenses are the lightest super-telephoto primes in their class. The natural comparison is Nikon’s Z 400mm F4.5 VR S and Z 600mm F6.3 VR S, which tip the scales at 1160g (2.6 lbs) and 1390g (3.1 lbs), respectively, both excluding the tripod collar. That makes the Sony 400mm around 14% lighter than its Nikon counterpart and the 600mm roughly 28% lighter, which is a meaningful gap at the 600mm end.

Nikon’s lenses have been well received, so it’s easy to see why Sony would want equivalents in its own lineup. But Sony isn’t competing only on weight: Nikon’s 400mm F4.5 sells for around $3,500 while its 600mm F6.3 sells for $5,200, so Sony is undercutting Nikon on price as well. For photographers already invested in Nikon, that’s unlikely to justify a system change once bodies, accessories and the other complications of switching are accounted for, but for Sony shooters, or anyone who hasn’t fully committed to a system, the options look very different than they did a week ago.

Compared to Sony’s faster 400mm and 600mm primes

Sony already makes faster primes at both focal lengths: the FE 400mm F2.8 GM OSS and the FE 600mm F4 GM OSS, which offer roughly a 1.3-stop aperture advantage over the new models, and retail for much higher prices, around $12,000 and $13,000, respectively.

The weight savings of the new lenses — not to mention the cost — are substantial in both cases. They represent a trade-off: faster aperture vs. a lightweight, more mobile design. Those who need to capture photos in any setting with fast shutter speeds, like indoor sports (think: gymnastics), have a real reason to favor Sony’s F2.8 and F4 primes. But if you can trade one and a third stops for a lens that comes in under a kilogram and fits in your daypack, the new 400mm and 600mm GM lenses make a clear case.

Sample galleries

We expect one of the most common applications for both new lenses to be wildlife photography, so we’ve primarily built our sample galleries around this use case. Most of the photos you see in these galleries were shot at Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Bison Range in Montana, and at the Oregon Zoo.

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. 

It’s difficult to believe that 9/11 happened 25 years ago this week. It’s equally difficult to think that day helped shape the photographer I became. Both are true, and as the anniversary news coverage unfolds while I write this, I’ve found myself reflecting on those 25 years.

This article isn’t about what happened that day – there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know – but suffice it to say that it was a tough day to be an American, and an even tougher day to be a New Yorker.

When you’re in the middle of an event like that, it’s easy to feel helpless, and it doesn’t take long for that to evolve into a need to do something, to regain some control over the situation in whatever way you can. I think that’s part of why first responders drove fire trucks from across the US and Canada to help; New York needed them, but I believe it also answered a need to do something.

Copyright Dale Baskin

For me, that something was photography.

I wasn’t a working photographer then. I had never even sold a photo. I was just the guy who always carried a camera. I’d always aspired to do something meaningful with photography, but hadn’t figured out how. Sure, I could take good photos, but that was about the extent of it.

In the days that followed, we were exposed to a lot of photos. It was overwhelming. But it didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t overwhelmed by photos; I was overwhelmed by photos of destruction. I needed to find something else.

And so I set off into the streets of New York with my camera and several rolls of film in search of something hopeful, and it didn’t take long to find it. Everywhere I looked, I saw American flags. And wherever I saw a flag, I saw people expressing hope.

Copyright Dale Baskin

We Americans have a complicated relationship with our flag, but in September of 2001, it was the one thing none of us needed to argue about. It was a symbol that we were in this together, and that we’d dig our way out together.

I latched onto that, and for the next several days I made it my mission to photograph flags in New York City. In the process, I found my voice as a photographer, though I wouldn’t realize it until later.

What I took from that experience is that photography isn’t just about taking pictures, it’s about telling a story. And at times, not the obvious one. I was surrounded by people using cameras to document devastation; I wanted to document for history that there was another story to be told.

I’m not naive enough to think I was the only person in New York who figured this out. But it was a lightbulb moment for me. The kind of thing you can read in a book or hear from a more experienced photographer, but still not understand until you’ve lived it.

Copyright Dale Baskin

Fast forward a few years, after I’d relocated to the West Coast. I happened to mention this collection of photos to an acquaintance, along with the fact that no one but me had ever seen them. Intrigued, he invited me to share my story and my photos with a local civic group.

The next thing I knew, I was getting invited to speak to all kinds of groups. It was the story of an event still visceral in people’s memories – but not the story they were used to hearing. I distinctly remember one man who had been living in New York at the time telling me that while he recognized many of the places in my photos, my photos told a story he’d never seen before.

Talks became exhibits, and exhibits became a book, coauthored by someone I met at one of those talks. Flags Across America grew well beyond our original vision and includes works from many other people, but it still has a section dedicated to my flag photos from New York.

Copyright Dale Baskin

What started as a project to cope with feeling helpless eventually reached more people than I can count, and taught me to appreciate the power of storytelling through photos.

To this day, I have hundreds of photos from that project, shot on slide film, that I’ve never taken the time to scan. I don’t even remember what’s in most of them. But I know I should do something with them, because history matters.

A few years ago, I wrote an article called “What is your digital shoebox?” and asked readers what would happen to their photos when they were gone. I’ve thought about that a lot in the past couple of days, and about the fact that photos taken contemporaneously with important historical events often have real value to future historians. My collection needs to find a home. If you have suggestions, let me know.

25 years is a significant slice of a life, and this anniversary makes me feel a little older today than I did yesterday. But I’d like to think I learned something important from the experience, and that I’ve touched a few people positively along the way with my photography.

Earlier this year, we reported on a novel photography contest sponsored by Icelandair: a competition to identify the worst photographer it could find, offering a free trip to Iceland and $50,000 cash. The premise was that Iceland is so beautiful that even a terrible photographer could capture its stunning landscapes, and Icelandair wanted to prove it. 

It turns out the airline got a much bigger response than it anticipated, receiving 127,642 entries from 178 countries. That’s a lot of bad photographers, and to find the winner, the judges spent more than 2,000 hours screening what were, by all accounts, terrible photos. You can’t make this stuff up.

Fast forward to June, when we reported on the winner, 28-year-old Blanche Mortemard of Paris, France, who wowed the judges with her inept technical ability and lack of compositional skill.

Blanche Mortemard

But the story didn’t end there. Shortly thereafter, Blanche jetted off to Iceland, presumably on Icelandair, to put her – ahem – skills to the test, spending 10 days touring the island and shooting its landscapes with no filters, no retouching and no AI.

The results are in, and while Blanche isn’t likely to be named photographer of the year by any other organization on the planet, she got some nice shots – along with less-than-perfect photos. As for Iceland? It understood the assignment and came through, looking beautiful, even if obscured by body parts. 

Blanche Mortemard

Reflecting on her experience, it seems that even Blanche thinks Icelandair’s marketing department was onto something. “Iceland makes it almost impossible to take a bad photo, despite my total inability to straighten the camera or take one without my thumb in shot,” she said.

And with that, the saga of one of the most interesting photo contests to cross our desks in quite some time comes to a close. Well, almost.

Blanche Mortemard

Blanche Mortemard

Blanche Mortemard

Blanche Mortemard

If you find yourself inspired by Blanche’s photography – and we’re not making any judgments – and are near London, you can attend the Iceland by the World’s Worst Photographer exhibition in person at White Rabbit Studios in Shoreditch on September 11 (2 – 8pm) and 12 (1 – 9pm). What’s more, you can attend a moderated talk by the “artist” (and we think even Blanche would use that term loosely) on Saturday, September 12 at 5pm. Admission is, mercifully, free, but needs to be booked. And if London isn’t on your itinerary, Icelandair says it plans to take the exhibition to a handful of other cities in North America and Europe. Because why not?

And let’s admit it – we probably all wish it could have been us on that trip.

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.

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For many years, camera companies built excellent hardware while shipping smartphone apps that felt like an afterthought. That trend has changed. Today, apps for cameras do much more than transfer photos to your phone: they can serve as the camera’s dashboard, providing a variety of useful tools and features, and in most cases, they do so much more reliably than in the past.

Fujifilm’s XApp is no exception. It replaced Camera Remote – Fujifilm’s previous app that was dogged by reliability issues and low app store ratings – and the difference is substantial. In addition to manual and automated image transfer, it can control cameras remotely, provide geolocation data, backup multiple sets of camera settings, manage firmware updates and provide a record of your camera’s activity. 

We tested XApp on an iPhone 17 Pro Max and a Google Pixel 11 Pro XL with the Fujifilm X-T5. While this provides a solid baseline, keep in mind that features and performance may vary slightly depending on the specific camera model and phone you use.

Index

• Camera compatibility
• Wireless setup and image transfer
• Remote control and live view
• GPS location sync
• Backing up camera settings
• Timeline and Activity
• Firmware updates
• The verdict

Camera compatibility

Fujifilm launched XApp in 2023, but not every Fujifilm body works with XApp, and some older models still require the old Camera Remote app. 

The company maintains a list of compatible cameras and mobile operating systems on its website, including camera models dating back as far as 2018, with the GFX 50R being the oldest camera we spotted on the list. 

Wireless setup and image transfer

Pairing your camera with XApp is relatively straightforward, and the app provides instructions to guide you through the process. Initial pairing is done via Bluetooth but hands off to Wi-Fi for data-intensive tasks like image transfers and remote camera operation. Once paired, the connection generally remains stable, though the app can occasionally lose its connection and fail to recover. In almost all cases, forcing the app to quit and restarting it reestablished the connection. It’s more an annoyance than a limitation.

Dale Baskin

Image transfer options and speed 

Transferring photos from your camera to your phone is straightforward, and the gallery-like interface works well for selecting images, individually or in batches. If you have a camera with two memory cards, it’s easy to select which card to browse.

Dale Baskin

One feature we really appreciated was the image filtering options, which let you filter by star rating (if you’ve set ratings in-camera), file type, folder name, subject type, including person, animal, bird, automobile, bike or motorcycle, train, and airplane (or whatever subset of subject your camera model is trained to detect). You can set a range for capture date – helpful if there are a lot of images on a card and you want to narrow the selection down to a time window. We found the star-rating filter particularly useful; if you rate images in the field as you shoot, you can quickly find your favorites and transfer them.

On the X-T5, which captures 40MP images, it took just under three minutes to transfer five full-resolution Raw/JPEG image pairs (10 files total), or about 45 seconds for just the JPEG images. Transfer times for other cameras may differ: one would expect a Fujifilm model with a 26MP sensor to transfer images a bit more quickly, whereas a medium format model with a 100MP sensor will take longer.

Dale Baskin

Images can be transferred at full resolution, but there’s also an option to downsize images. The app doesn’t indicate what resolution images will be downsized to, but according to Fujifilm’s documentation, it’s 3MP, which could be useful for social media posts.

Automatic image transfer

XApp can manage automatic image transfers from your camera, but you set this up on the camera, not in the app. To do so, navigate to the camera’s Bluetooth/Smartphone settings and turn Auto Image Transfer (or Auto Image Transfer Order) to ‘On’. 

It’s worth noting that automatic image transfer doesn’t transfer images to your phone in real-time as you shoot; it’s effectively a send/queue mechanism. As you shoot, images are tagged for transfer, and once you switch to playback mode or turn the camera off, the transfer process begins. Your phone will receive a notification that images are queued for transfer, and you can choose to start the transfer right then or wait until later.

Dale Baskin

Remote control and live view

Live view and remote shooting work as expected. Triggering the shutter over a wireless connection isn’t as instantaneous as clicking the physical shutter button, but the lag is minimal, and you would probably only notice it if you were shooting something moving quickly enough that split-second accuracy was critical.

Dale Baskin

When using remote shooting, you can adjust the shutter speed, F-stop, ISO, film simulation, WB and flash from the app. Tap-to-focus on the image lets you set your AF point. The lag between tapping to set the AF point and the camera activating it is just enough to be slightly annoying, but it’s not a showstopper. For situations like tripod self-portraits, remote triggering for group photos, or landscape setups, it’s a useful feature; it does what it needs to do, and it does it well. If you want to adjust any of the camera’s other settings, you’ll need to do it directly from the camera.

GPS location sync

When GPS location sync is turned on in the app (labeled “smartphone location sync”), XApp pulls location data from the phone’s GPS and syncs it to the camera over Bluetooth, embedding it in the image’s metadata.

In principle, this should function seamlessly in the background, and it generally does. However, when syncing with the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we discovered that if we hadn’t used the camera or the app for a few days, photos stopped getting geotagged. Opening XApp on the phone generally restored geotagging activity. Reports online, as well as in app store reviews, suggest others have run into the same issue, so if geotagging is important to you, it’s a good idea to launch the app if it’s been dormant for a few days before heading out on your next shoot.

Dale Baskin

One other setting to be aware of is the “Location synchronization interval,” which is set in XApp’s app-wide settings rather than on a per-camera basis. You can set this interval to as short as 10 seconds to prioritize accuracy, or as long as 480 seconds to prioritize battery usage. On the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we left it set on 10 seconds and didn’t notice a big impact on battery life, but this will obviously vary based on what phone you’re using, how big its battery is, and even the age of the battery, so it’s worth testing various settings to get a sense of what works with your own setup.

Backing up camera settings

The ability to back up and restore camera settings from XApp is a useful and, thankfully, easy-to-use feature. Tapping the Backup/Restore button under your camera model will save the camera’s current settings to the app and add them to a list. You can save multiple sets of settings and even name them. Tapping any item on the list restores those settings to the camera.

Dale Baskin

Not only does this let you restore your camera’s settings if they get changed or deleted, but it also lets you save specific profile settings for different subjects or shooting situations, allowing you to quickly reconfigure your camera as needed. It also allows you to apply the same settings to multiple cameras as long as they’re the same model – useful for someone like a wedding photographer who rapidly switches between two bodies.

There are a couple of caveats to be aware of. First, network settings and custom white balance settings don’t get backed up. Second, some users have reported that mismatched firmware versions can cause restore failures, so it’s a good idea to ensure all cameras are running the same firmware version if possible.

Timeline and Activity

Timeline and Activity are features that display information based on how you use any connected Fujifilm equipment.

Activity provides a visual summary of what you’ve done in the form of infographics: how many images or how much video you’ve shot, how those captures break down across the various cameras and lenses that have connected to the app, how many photos you’ve taken with each film simulation and what types of subjects you’ve captured.

Dale Baskin

One potentially useful feature is that tapping on the infographics (except for subject type) opens a gallery displaying the corresponding photos. For example, you can tap a film simulation and see all the photos captured using that film simulation. However, as of the time of writing, this particular feature was very unstable for us – more often than not, tapping an item caused the app to crash and close (at least on iOS).

Timeline shows your photographic activities chronologically, like a diary. If you take several photos together, it identifies it as a shoot. Tapping the link takes you to the photos from that shoot and displays shoot-specific Activity infographics. When you link a new camera to the app or attach a new lens to a linked camera, that shows up in the timeline, too.

Dale Baskin

Unhelpfully, Fujifilm also inserts ads for Fujifilm events and products into the timeline, though fortunately, not very often.

It’s easy to see Timeline and Activity as eye candy, but they can be quite useful. If you’re looking for a set of photos from a specific shoot or all the photos you’ve captured with a particular camera, lens or film simulation, it’s an easy way to find them.

There’s a caveat here, too, though. Using Timeline and Activity requires you to sign in with an Apple or Google account, and the features aren’t available in all countries or regions.

Firmware updates

Finally, XApp facilitates firmware updates to your camera when they become available. If the app detects a firmware update for your camera, it downloads the update. The next time the app connects to your camera via Wi-Fi, it transfers the update to the camera’s memory card.

What XApp doesn’t do is automatically install the firmware, which is up to you. When you next power on the camera, it displays a screen letting you know an update is ready, and you can choose to update right then, be reminded later, or schedule a date and time for the camera to update. XApp doesn’t manage firmware updates for lenses.

The verdict

Fujifilm’s XApp is a well-rounded companion app for your camera, and it’s a huge improvement over the company’s old Camera Remote app. It may have taken Fujifilm a few years to ship an app that runs reliably, but for the most part, XApp delivers on its feature set. 

However, there’s one thing we still wish XApp could do: manage custom film recipes on your camera. Film Recipes have been popular in the Fujifilm user community for years, and Fujifilm has expanded support for them on recent models. Additionally, custom looks have already found their way into other companies’ apps. Fortunately, several third-party developers have stepped in to fill that gap; if you’re interested, check out this article covering some of our favorites.

Despite what many people believe today, the View-Master wasn’t a toy. It was a photographic instrument, sold for decades alongside disks of stereoscopic photo pairs that took you a world away. And that’s where my story with the View-Master – and even my interest in photography – begins.

But my part of the story comes later. The View-Master’s story starts at the mouth of a cave in southern Oregon in 1938.

According to the Oregon Historical Society, Harold Graves, the president of Sawyer’s, a photo-finishing company in Portland, was vacationing there when he met a photographer named William Gruber, who was carrying a homemade stereo photography rig.

Sawyer’s had become the nation’s largest producer of scenic postcards. Gruber had figured out how to mount tiny chips of the then-new Kodachrome film into a paper reel that could be viewed through a small handheld stereoscope. Graves, Gruber and Sawyer’s co-owner Edwin Mayer, sensing an opportunity, struck up a partnership and developed the View-Master, which made its debut at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

It’s worth thinking about what Sawyer’s thought it was selling. The View-Master was pitched as an alternative to the scenic postcard, targeting the same channels postcards did: gift shops at scenic locations, stationery stores and even photography shops. Notably, not toy stores.

Dale Baskin

Even the US military took notice; it ordered 100,000 of the viewers to use for training during World War II.

The View-Master wasn’t the first device for viewing stereo images, a technology that predated practical photography; Charles Wheatstone, a member of the Royal Society, described his stereoscope, which used drawings, in 1838, a year before the daguerreotype was announced to the world. But photography made stereo viewing far more compelling than drawings ever could, and “stereographs” became a popular form of visual entertainment in the latter half of the 19th and earlier 20th centuries.

What the View-Master managed to do was productize stereo photo viewing in a dummy-proof device that was easy to use, in beautiful Kodachrome color. The earliest reels featured the same things as postcards, including National Parks, famous landmarks, and scenic travel destinations.

The View-Master-as-toy came later. In 1951, Sawyer’s bought Tru-Vue, its main competitor, which had a license with Walt Disney Studios, and Disney reels and other entertainment brands like Looney Tunes and The Muppets followed. So, the View-Master was eventually sold as a toy. It just didn’t start as one.

Dale Baskin

As a child, I loved the View-Master. Whenever we got a new set of picture disks, it gave me a new world to explore. During our family’s summer road trips, I could spend hours in the back of our banana-yellow station wagon, looking at photos through my View-Master.

That’s pretty remarkable when you think about the fact that each disk contained just seven pairs of images. In an age where the phones in our pockets put limitless media at our disposal, that seems like a staggeringly small set of photos, but somehow I just kept looking at them. Over and over again. I probably looked at some of those photos thousands of times, and I never got tired of it.

Back then, View-Master disks could be found at tourist locations. Every National Park gift shop had them. Sure, you could buy a postcard, but the View-Master disk of the park was way better. (Unless, of course, you actually wanted to send someone a postcard.) You could relive the experience of that National Park for hours during the drive to the next National Park, where you could acquire a new set of View-Master reels. In contrast, you had to wait until you got home to see the photos your parents took.

In 1952, in a further nod to photographers, Sawyer’s launched the View-Master Personal Stereo Camera, which allowed you to capture 69 pairs of photos on a 36-exposure roll of film. The company offered a mail-order mounting service, or users could mount their own photos on View-Master reels. You still had to wait until you got home to process your images, but you could have View-Master reels of your trip. It’s amazing to think you could buy an entire camera system built around this.

John Alan Elson

While visiting my parents recently, I found a box with my childhood View-Master inside. Nostalgia is a strong thing, so I immediately took it off the shelf, inserted one of the reels and found myself staring at Yosemite National Park, displayed in rich colors and deep shadows. It had the unmistakable look of Kodachrome and reminded me of the slides my father shot on family vacations.

My father was always taking pictures. No vacation was complete without a camera coming along. Back home, we’d gather in the living room for slideshow nights, kind of like movie nights today, where he would load one box of 36 slides at a time into the stack loader on our Kodak projector, allowing us to relive whatever slice of our lives had passed during that roll of film. Those slides were usually Kodachrome, too.

The images on those old View-Master disks had that same look, but with a couple of important differences. First, they were stereo pairs, and the depth made them less like pictures and more like places.

The second one mattered more. Most were of incredible landscapes I had never seen, or people from different cultures and faraway lands. It was like browsing through the photos in a National Geographic magazine (something else I did a lot as a kid; I wasn’t as good about reading the articles back then), except better. My father’s slides showed me where we had been. The View-Master showed me where I hadn’t been yet, and I wanted to go to those places and take pictures of them.

Dale Baskin

In retrospect, I think the View-Master was a proxy for the camera I didn’t own yet. Today, I realize that it wasn’t just looking at the pictures that I enjoyed, but the act of holding the device up to my eyes, of looking through the viewfinder up close, and having the all-immersive experience of seeing that and nothing else.

We live in a time when taking photos often involves holding a screen in front of our faces. I still don’t get the same satisfaction from that experience as bringing the viewfinder to my eye, focusing on the image and letting the rest of the world fade away. And I suspect that’s one thing that draws a lot of new photographers to a dedicated camera. Once you know that feeling, it’s addictive.

As a kid, I wanted to take photos like my Dad. I wanted to take photos like the ones in National Geographic. And I wanted to take photos like the ones I saw in the View-Master.

And when I finally bought my first roll of film with my own money, it was Kodachrome.

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The National Audubon Society has announced the winners of the 2026 Audubon Photography Awards, with Jacqueline Burke of the US winning the US and Canada Grand Prize for a photo of a Roseate Spoonbill and Francisco Castro Escobar of Chile winning the Chile and Colombia Grand Prize for a photo of a Lesser Horned Owl.

The specific geographic designations reflect the Audubon Society’s hemispheric conservation model. Birds aren’t bound by international borders, and hundreds of species migrate thousands of kilometers each year along flyways that stretch between North, Central and South America. Colombia hosts nearly 20 percent of the world’s avian species, and Chile’s 6,435km (3,999mi) of coastline and wetlands are vital stopovers and wintering grounds for many shorebirds coming from as far away as the Arctic.

The National Audubon Society, founded in 1905, sponsors the contest each year to celebrate bird and bird habitat photography and to further its conservation mission. This is the second year the competition has included prizes to Chile and Colombia residents. Winners and honorable mentions will be published online in Audubon magazine, and winners will be featured in the Fall 2026 print issue. The top 100 photos will be announced on September 23. If you’re interested in entering next year’s competition, which opens for entries on January 13, 2027, you can find the full contest rules and category details on the Audubon website.

If you really enjoy bird photography, you can also check out our coverage of Audubon’s previous award winners from 2025, 2023 and 2022.

U.S. and Canada winners

Jacqueline Burke

Photographer: Jacqueline Burke (USA)
Award: Grand Prize
Species: Roseate Spoonbill
Photo location: St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park, St. Augustine, Florida, USA

Liron Gertsman

Photographer: Liron Gertsman (Canada)
Award: Birds in Landscapes – Winner
Species: White-tailed Tropicbird
Photo location: Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Volcano, Hawai’i, USA

Nick Parayko

Photographer: Nick Parayko (Canada)
Award: Birds Without Borders – Winner
Species: Tennessee Warbler
Photo location: St. Albert, Alberta, Canada (in his backyard)

Josh Galicki

Photographer: Josh Galicki (USA)
Award: Conservation – winner
Species: Northern Gannets
Photo location: Isle of Noss, Shetland Islands, United Kingdom

Mike Henry

Photographer: Mike Henry (USA)
Award: Plants for Birds – winner
Species: Gila Woodpecker and saguaro cactus
Photo location: Tucson, Arizona, USA

Ian Shultz

Photographer: Ian Shultz (USA)
Award: Youth – Winner
Species: Rock Pigeon
Photo location: Golden Gardens Park, Seattle, Washington, USA

Gail Bisson

Photographer: Gail Bisson (Canada)
Award: Female Bird – Winner
Species: Common Merganser
Photo location: East Bay Sandbar, Nova Scotia, Canada

Photographer: Piper VanOrd (USA)
Award: Video – Winner
Species: Great Blue Heron
Photo location: Allegheny Islands Wilderness, National Wild & Scenic Allegheny River, Warren, Pennsylvania

Chile and Colombia winners

Francisco Castro Escobar

Photographer: Francisco Castro Escobar (Chile)
Award: Grand
Species: Lesser Horned Owl
Photo location: Antofagasta, Chile

Rodrigo González Pairoa

Photographer: Rodrigo González Pairoa (Chile)
Award: Birds Without Borders – Winner
Species: Black-browed Albatross
Photo location: Almirantazgo Fjord, Chile

Photographer: Nicolás Muñoz García (Chile)
Award: Video – Winner
Species: Black-browed Albatross
Photo location: Isla Chañaral Marine Reserve, Huasco Province, Chile. The nearest town is Caleta Chañaral de Aceituno

Santiago Giraldo

Photographer: Santiago Giraldo (Colombia)
Award: Plants for Birds Colombia – Winner
Species: Yellow-eared Parrot and Quindio wax palm
Photo location: Anaime, Cajamarca, Tolima

Juan David Camacho Márquez

Photographer: Juan David Camacho Márquez (Colombia)
Award: Youth – Winner
Species: Canada Warbler
Photo location: Doña Dora Birding, El Queremal, Valle del Cauca, Colombia

Santiago Pérez Rincón

Photographer: Santiago Pérez Rincón (Colombia)
Award: Conservation – Winner
Species: Yellow-eared Parrot
Photo location: Anaime River Canyon, Rural District of the Municipality of Cajamarca, Department of Tolima, Colombia.

Faber Mosquera Alvarez

Photographer: Faber Mosquera Alvarez (Colombia)
Award: Birds in Landscapes, Colombia – Winner
Species: Oilbird
Photo location: Pijao, Quindío, Colombia. In the Cañón de los Guácharos

Gonzalo Bertolotto Quintana

Photographer: Gonzalo Bertolotto Quintana (Chile)
Award: Coastal Birds of Chile – Winner
Species: Gentoo Penguin
Photo location: Fildes Bay, Antarctica, in the vicinity of the Chilean bases

Timothy Dhalleine

Photographer: Timothy Dhalleine (Chile)
Award: Birds in Landscapes, Chile – Winner
Species: Crested Caracara
Photo location: Torres del Paine National Park, Magallanes and Chilean Antarctic region, Chile

Adobe recently released the newest version of its Raw processing software, Adobe Camera Raw 18.6. Its headline feature is a native Glow effect tool that gives users three analog-inspired looks – diffusion, bloom and halation – directly within ACR. Other features include a new Metadata Info Panel that shows image data directly in the editing workspace, and photographers and designers who work with composites gain a new Trim tool that makes everything outside a crop transparent, rather than leaving it as hidden pixels. The update also adds support for additional camera and lens profiles.

What Glow does

The new Glow tool lives in Camera Raw’s Effects panel alongside the existing Vignette and Grain sliders. Adobe’s documentation describes three selectable styles. Diffusion applies a hazy, film-like softening effect that spreads across the frame, similar to what a Black Mist or Pro Mist filter attached to your lens would achieve. Bloom produces a softer, more even glow confined to the highlights, which could be useful for misty scenes and waterfalls. Halation adds a colored halo effect around bright edges and light sources, similar to the warm, or red-orange fringing that appears on film when light reflects off the film base back through the emulsion.

Glow works inside Camera Raw’s masking system, so the effect can be dialed up or down on a subject, a luminance range or a selected area, though the Style, Range, Spread and Warmth sub-settings are shared globally – masks control how much something glows, not the kind of glow.

Greg Benz, a digital photo educator (and a member of the DPReview community), posted a helpful video on his YouTube channel illustrating the capabilities of ACR’s new Glow tool, including examples of using masks to achieve localized results. If you’re interested in learning more about it, we highly recommend giving it a watch.

One thing worth calling out: Glow is currently an ACR-only feature and isn’t available in Lightroom. Though given the close relationship between the two applications, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up in Lightroom at some point.

Other new features

ACR’s new Metadata Info Panel provides an easy way to see read-only metadata for any photo you’re viewing in Camera Raw. Clicking the small “i” on the right-hand pane of ACR will display the camera model, lens, image dimensions, file size, capture date, copyright information, file name and caption (if present). It will also display any content credentials information embedded in the photo.

Mitchell Clark

The new Trim tool is located in the Crop & Expand panel. It can be used to trim an image to the exact area you’ve selected, making everything outside the crop transparent rather than retaining it as hidden pixels. This is different than a normal crop in ACR, which is non-destructive, keeping the pixels outside the cropped area but not displaying them. This removes a step for photographers or designers creating composites or those who need transparent backgrounds. 

Trim can also be used in conjunction with Generative Expand: trim to the area you want, then expand the canvas using generative content from Adobe Firefly.

According to Adobe, ACR 18.6 also supports additional cameras and lenses, including the Tamron 12-20mm F2.8 and Reeflex anamorphic and fisheye lenses for iPhone. As of this writing, Adobe hasn’t updated its list of supported camera models since earlier in August; you can check the company’s camera support page for the latest information.

ACR 18.6 is available now through the Creative Cloud desktop app. You can find the full release notes on Adobe’s website with additional details in a post to the Adobe Community site.

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We live in the USB era. Almost everything that connects to our computer these days goes through an interface so ubiquitous that the word “universal” appears in its name – the Universal Serial Bus. USB has been a godsend in many ways, replacing all manner of connectors encountered in earlier technologies.

Simple, right? Well, not so much.

The problem with USB-C

Standards are great. Except when they’re not. USB-C, introduced in 2014, is the closest thing we have to “one plug to rule them all.” The problem is that despite supporting a wide range of standards, all USB-C cables look pretty much the same. A cable that supports the latest and greatest technology can look identical to a dumb charging cable. 

And, as if things weren’t complicated enough, ThunderBolt has used the same-shaped connector since ThunderBolt 3, despite being vastly more capable than standard USB.

Which is why I recently found myself staring into the abyss – in this case, a drawer in my office – trying to figure out which of the dozen or so USB-C cables in front of me was the right one to use with an SSD. I doubt I’m alone in this, and I suspect most photographers or content creators have a similar drawer or box full of cables. That’s the exact problem a Mac app called WhatCable is built to solve.

Mitchell Clark

Hoping for the best, I grabbed a cable that looked new, plugged it in, and got on with finding the photos I needed. It seemed to work, so I didn’t stop to check whether I was actually getting the fastest speed the SSD could support. 

Sound familiar?

WhatCable to the rescue

I tried WhatCable on my MacBook Pro and was immediately hooked. While it’s not specifically designed for photographers or content creators, it solves a very real problem for anyone who manages lots of SSDs and card readers: ensuring the cables you use deliver maximum performance. Because if they don’t, you’re going to spend a lot more time waiting around while files transfer.

When you plug a USB device into your Mac, WhatCable will tell you everything you need to know about the cable: the generation of USB the cable supports, the speed the connected device is running at, its power delivery capabilities, and, if available, details like the manufacturer and whether it has an e-marker chip (more on that in a bit).

To my surprise, the cable I’d grabbed for my SSD not only supported its native USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speed, but was actually a USB4 cable capable of up to 40 Gbps. I’d ordered some of these faster cables, thinking they’d be future-proof for a while, but since there’s no visual way to tell them apart from my older ones, I’d had no idea which was which.

Analyzing the cable connecting my MacBook Pro to my Dell display is even more revealing, and gives a sense of how much detail WhatCable can report, including specifics about the built-in USB hub. You can see the details in the screenshot below.

Elsewhere, the results ran the other way. When I plugged in a Samsung T7 SSD with yet another USB-C cable – short, and similar to the ones that ship in the box with many portable drives – WhatCable informed me that it could only manage USB 2.0 speeds. My guess is that it’s actually a charging cable that came with some other device.

WhatCable also includes widgets for the macOS desktop, letting you see at a glance what speed all your connected devices are running at; clicking one takes you straight to that device’s report in the app. You can also park WhatCable in the menu bar for one-click access to all your USB info.

Suspicious cables

USB cables include an e-marker, a microchip embedded in the connector that acts as a kind of ID card and safety controller. It reports information such as how much power the cable can deliver, its data transfer rates, and its video capabilities, which helps your computer negotiate speed and power at levels that are safe for the connected device.

WhatCable checks whether a cable’s e-marker claims are consistent with USB-IF certification data and flags cables whose reported specs look implausible. The company’s product page describes this trust-checking feature in detail, noting that it can help surface mislabeled or counterfeit cables – a real concern when buying inexpensive cables online.

System requirements and download

WhatCable requires a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) and running MacOS Sonoma or later. The free version is open source under the MIT license, promises no ads or tracking, and doesn’t report any analytics or telemetry back to the developer. It’s also available in 19 languages, making it broadly accessible. It can be downloaded directly from the developer.

For real nerds, there’s WhatCable Pro, which adds features like the ability to name individual cables and track their performance history, live power metering, display diagnostics, Thunderbolt link analysis, and more. It’s a one-time purchase of £9.99 (about $14) and covers up to two Macs.

So next time you find yourself staring into that abyss, not knowing which cable to grab, you know what to do. One warning: WhatCable is addictive. I found myself testing every USB-C cable in the house, and most of the DPReview staff succumbed to the same temptation after I shared it in our Slack channel. You’ve been warned.

WhatCable Pro — USB-C cable diagnostic app by Bitmoor

• $14 at WhatCable

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Samsung has announced the P9 and P7 portable SSDs at Gamescom 2026. While the company made gamers the focus of the announcement, both SSDs feature specs that will undoubtedly interest photographers and video creators, particularly since Samsung is a familiar brand among content creators. Both models are available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB configurations. 

The P9 is the higher-performance model and is aimed at workflows where sustained throughput is a priority, such as recording video directly from cameras or rapidly offloading data from multiple memory cards. Samsung claims it can hit 4,000MB/s read and 3,800MB/s write over USB4, which is roughly twice the throughput of the the T9 model, and says it’s the world’s first 8TB USB4 portable SSD

The P7 also runs over USB4, but Samsung says it’s designed to prioritize broad compatibility, with plug-and-play support for computers, gaming consoles, smartphones and cameras. It also claims the P7 has a drop resistance of 2m (6.6′), making it a rugged option for those who need it.

Both drives promise to deliver significantly higher throughput than previous-generation USB 3.x SSDs, and Samsung positions the P-series as a generational step up from the T9, which used USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, and maxed out at a theoretical 2,000MB/s; USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives top out at around 1,000MB/s.

Samsung

Do photographers and videographers need USB4 speeds?

Based on our own testing, whether you’ll actually benefit from the increased speed depends on your workflow, the volume of data, and whether you have a card reader – and a computer – that supports USB4.

In an earlier article, we directly compared the performance of a different USB4 SSD to Samsung’s popular T7 Shield, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD that theoretically maxes out at around 1,000MB/s, and the headline finding was that while the speed gap is real, it’s context-dependent. In that prior comparison, the USB 3.2 drive wasn’t meaningfully slower when copying hundreds of Raw/JPEG pairs from a CFexpress or SD card, and it scrolled through 3,600 photos in Lightroom Classic without a hiccup, but it did take longer to import and build previews for that Lightroom library. 

On the video side, that earlier testing found the T7 Shield could occasionally struggle when editing footage directly off the drive, and that very complex sequences could slow to a crawl – tests the USB4 drive breezed through. But the application also mattered; Final Cut fared better than Adobe Premiere.

Price and availability

The P9 and P7 will be available beginning on August 31. The P9 will retail for $340 for 1TB, $650 for 2TB, $1,350 for 4TB and $2,700 for 8TB. The P7 will retail for $290 for 1TB, $550 for 2TB, $1,150 for 4TB and $2,290 for 8TB. Additional information and full product specs can be found on Samsung’s P9 and P7 product pages.

Samsung

Samsung P7 Portable SSD

• Starts at $290

Every photographer knows the drill. You return from a trip, start copying photos from your memory cards, pour a coffee, and begin culling your images. Or some variation of that. And somewhere in that process, something strange begins to happen.

The photos you actually traveled to take – the ones that required you to arrive early to get a spot for your tripod – get a quick look, maybe even an edit, and then a shrug before you move on.

Meanwhile, a spontaneous shot of your friends pretending to do a fashion shoot in France gets exported and shared.

I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize the pattern, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

Dale Baskin

The pull of iconic places

There’s a gravitational force to photograph famous places. You’re standing above Machu Picchu at sunrise, or below the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, and it feels almost negligent not to take a great photo of it. That’s the draw. It’s why you’re there. And it’s why there are often several hundred other people with cameras right next to you, trying to do the same thing.

I’m not suggesting you skip these photos, but before you spend half a day of your valuable travel time on one of them, it’s worth asking a simple question: Why am I doing this?

Dale Baskin

Dale Baskin

Sometimes, the answer is genuinely good. Maybe you’ve been thinking about how to photograph the place for years and have a real vision for it – a unique angle or treatment that’s different from what everyone else has done. There are always new ways to photograph something that’s already been photographed a million times, and if you’re the person with that vision, that’s a gift. Go for it.

More often than not, however, the answer is that it’s an exercise. Photography is a craft and a skill, and one that requires repetition. Some of the most useful photos I’ve ever taken were mediocre pictures of famous things, because the mistakes I made taking them taught me something I later used.

And occasionally, you really do just get lucky. You’re standing somewhere right when the weather or the light does something extraordinary, and if you’re ready, you capture something rare. Luck, as the saying goes, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Taking a lot of unremarkable photos of iconic places is the kind of preparation that leaves you ready to act when that chance alignment of magic factors finally happens.

Dale Baskin

But sometimes, the honest answer is just that “you’re there,” and you feel like you should photograph whatever the thing is. That’s the one worth examining, because if the result is going to be identical to several million photos already on the internet, you’ve spent something valuable – your time on a trip you might never repeat – to produce a duplicate.

Then, there’s a middle path, and one I find myself embracing more often: if you’re going to shoot the icon, do something to personalize it and make it yours. Put someone you’re traveling with in the frame, or find something in the foreground that creates a humorous juxtaposition. It won’t be fine art, and it probably won’t win any awards. But then again, was your technically perfect shot going to win any in the first place?

The photos that matter

There’s a truism about travel stories: Nobody ever goes to a dinner party and tells stories about what went right on a trip.

Dale Baskin

The stories that land, and the ones people actually listen to rather than finding an excuse to return to the buffet for another piece of shrimp cocktail, are the ones where things went sideways. The trip where you went to one country, but your luggage went to another. The “hotel with a view” whose view turned out to be an alley full of dumpsters. Or the food poisoning that arrived courtesy of a Michelin-starred restaurant.

Photography works the same way. The frames that survive for years and decades are almost never the postcard-perfect shots. They’re the small vignettes, like a spontaneous photo with friends in a French village or the street vendor in Buenos Aires where you had the best food of your entire adventure.

Dale Baskin

When I was younger, I came home from a lot of trips with a lot of photos of famous things. Some were pretty good. A lot more were pretty mediocre. But what I learned pretty quickly was that, regardless of how good they were, other people were rarely that interested in looking at those photos.

What they did respond to were the candid, unstructured, and often just plain weird photos that captured the essence of the trip. Years later, those were the ones I cared about too.

So, shoot the icon if you want to shoot the icon. Just don’t let it take over your trip. Keep your camera ready during the in-between moments, the ones that don’t feel important when they’re happening. Odds are good that one of them is the photograph you’ll still be looking at in twenty years.

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