It’s once again time for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards, where the Natural History Museum, London, presents some of the best images of the natural world across 19 categories. The competition has been going for 62 years, and, in 2026, garnered 65,000 submissions.

The winning photos depict animals in their natural – and sometimes unnatural – habitats, as well as plants, fungi and more. As usual, the museum is holding an exhibition of 100 images from the competition, starting this week and running into July 2027. If you want to see some (still very good) images that didn’t quite make the cut, you can check out our article covering 15 other entries that were highly commended.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 / Behaviour: Mammals – The Aftermath, Federico Veronesi

Federico Veronesi

Caption: Federico was tracking elephants when he came across an unusual pattern of drag marks in the sand of a dry riverbed. The source became clear when he caught up with a family group. A female emerged with the calf, its leg wedged between her tusk and trunk.

Behaviours centring on death have been observed in both Asian and African elephants, including vocalisations, guarding the dead, inspecting and handling bones, and carrying the deceased. Some researchers suggest these behaviours could indicate an elephant’s journey to understanding death, while others interpret these actions as possible displays of grief.

Location: Huab River Valley, Damaraland, Namibia

Technical details: Nikon Z8 | Nikon Nikkor Z 400mm F2.8 TC VR S | F2.8 | 1/1000 | ISO 72

Animals in their Environment – The Meeting Place, James Lewin

James Lewin

Caption: While there was no shortage of subjects and action around this waterhole, James had to deal with the harsh, unforgiving light. He chose to soften the light using a camera converted to infrared, creating this dream-like scene.

Waterholes can act as vital lifelines during severe droughts. Larger animals, such as elephants, have priority over others for access to waterholes. Herbivores spend more time at these drinking spots when elephants are present, possibly because their size deters predators, although competition for access to water may also prolong herbivores’ stay.

Location: ol Donyo Lodge, Chyulu Hills National Park, Makueni County, Kenya

Technical details: Nikon Z 7II (infrared converted) | Nikon Nikkor Z 28–75mm F2.8 lens | 45mm | F7.1 | 1/800 | ISO 800

Animal Portraits – A Watchful Eye, Aaron Sanders

Aaron Sanders

Caption: Aaron had been diving off Porthkerris Beach when he noticed the footprints of octopus suckers through a thin blade of kelp, and a single eye slowly emerging. ‘We remained perfectly still, watching one another with a seemingly shared curiosity,’ says Aaron.

In recent years in the waters off southwest England, there has been a dramatic increase in sightings of common octopuses, a species more frequently found in warmer Mediterranean waters. The influx or ‘bloom’ of these cephalopods has been linked to above-average springtime sea temperatures.

Location: Porthkerris Beach, Cornwall, England, UK

Technical details: Nikon Z8 | Nikon Nikkor Z 24–50mm F4–6.3 | 27mm | F7.1 | 1/40 sec | ISO 125 | Nauticam WWL-C wet lens | Inon Z-240 and Z-330 underwater strobes

Behaviour: Birds – Scenes from the Swamp, Isak Pretorius

Isak Pretorius

Caption: Exploring the swamp in a narrow canoe with a guide, Isak felt exceptionally lucky to see not one but two elusive shoebills. The birds pulled out vegetation, dropped it and then repeated the process several times. It’s likely this is a breeding pair gathering nesting material.

Though often called the shoebill stork, these large birds are more closely related to pelicans, herons and ibises. Fewer than 5,300 mature shoebills survive across their entire range and their numbers are decreasing.

Location: Mabamba Swamp, Wakiso District, Uganda

Technical details: Canon EOS R5 | 500mm F4 | F4 | 1/2500 sec | ISO 1250

Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles – Protective Pose, Anton Sorokin

Anton Sorokin

Caption: Anton hadn’t seen this pose before, despite documenting newt behaviour each winter. The pond was too dirty to swim, so Anton waded along the edge, carefully dipping his camera and lighting beneath the surface to record this remarkable view of parental care.

California newts interlock their back feet to protect the clutch, which are vulnerable to predation by other newts. They will stay like this until the gelatinous mass around the eggs has swollen too large to be eaten and has solidified onto the stem.

Location: Contra Costa County, California, USA

Technical details: Nikon D850 | Nikon AF-S 8–15mm fisheye F3.5-4.5E ED | F18 | 1/100 sec | ISO 400 | Nauticam housing | Seacam 60D strobes

Behaviour: Invertebrates – Shifting Sand, Sitaram Raul

Sitaram Raul

Caption: Exploring the dunes at night near the village of Sam, Sitaram saw many scorpions searching for prey. But as sunrise approached, they started burrowing to avoid the intense heat. Sitaram timed the exposure so that the excavated sand was suspended in mid-air.

Just one known species of Buthacus scorpion is from India. It uses its pincers to dig into large piles of sand. Stiff, elongated bristles or ‘sand combs’ are used like snowshoes to stop it from sinking into the dunes.

Location: Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India

Technical details: Nikon D750 | AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm F2.8G IF-ED | F14 | 1/250 sec | ISO 125 | Godox flash

Oceans: The Bigger Picture – Night-Time Catch, Alex Lindbloom

Alex Lindbloom

Caption: Alex started searching for sharks around dawn when the nets were still in the water. Initially lacking natural light for his drone’s camera, he found these sharks illuminated by the bagan’s bright lights.

Local fishing communities are using the predictable occurrence of whale sharks at bagans to attract tourists. Although contact with bagans can cause some minor injuries to whale sharks, this isn’t a major cause of mortality. The species’ significant decline in the Indo-Pacific region over the past 75 years is primarily driven by ship strikes, entanglements with fishing gear and illegal fishing.

Location: Off Cenderawasih Bay, Papua, Indonesia

Technical details: : DJI Air 3 | 24mm F1.7 lens | F1.7 | 1/60 sec | ISO 3200

Plants and Fungi – Shedding Light, Agorastos Papatsanis

Agorastos Papatsanis

Caption: On the lower slopes of Greece’s Mount Olympus, Agorastos experimented with ultraviolet (UV) illumination until it revealed the strongest fluorescent response from these mushrooms known as ‘beautiful bonnets’.

While humans cannot see UV light, we can get an inkling of its effect, thanks to the phenomenon of fluorescence. Mycologists are harnessing this phenomenon to distinguish closely related species of fungi by the colours and patterns they reveal under UV.

Location: Litochoro, Pieria, Greece

Technical details: Nikon D810 | Laowa 15mm F4 | F20 | 8.0 sec | ISO 400 | UV light | focus stack of 6 images

Natural Artistry – Escape Artistry, Michał Michalski

Michał Michalski

Caption: Michał was in a field of unharvested sunflowers that had attracted mixed flocks of birds, especially goldfinches and bramblings. As they took to the sky, startled by a sparrowhawk, Michał blurred the movement against a backdrop of leafless birches.

There is evidence that flocks containing multiple species forage more efficiently, partly because each brings different skills to the group. With more eyes on the lookout for predators, individuals can also afford to devote more time to feeding.

Location: Miłochowice, Lower Silesian Township, Poland

Technical details: Nikon D500 | Nikon AF-S Nikkor 500mm F5.6E PF ED VR | F8 | 1/30 sec | ISO 250

Under Water – Making Morays, Tony Wu

Tony Wu

Caption: Tony has been working with biologists to address a knowledge gap in the social behaviour of this eel species. Guided only by a dim red-light source to minimise disturbance, and using a customised fisheye camera lens, he has studied this male since 2024 as it visits females that dwell in crevices on the reef.

This is likely the first time Abbott’s moray eel courtship and spawning have been documented, and the observations from Tony’s work with biologists are feeding into published scientific studies.

Location: Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyūshū, Japan

Technical details: Sony a1 | Customised Nikon fisheye 13mm F2.8 | F11 | 1/320 | ISO 500 | 2x Backscatter Hybrid HF-1 strobes

Urban Wildlife – Urban Jungle, Seth Forestson

Seth Forestson

Caption: The challenge wasn’t finding these lizards, but catching them in action, as they spend most of the day basking in the sun. When Seth spotted this one, he lowered himself down onto the mud to frame this city dragon against the Bangkok skyline.

Common water monitors have successfully adapted to living within cities across South and Southeast Asia. They will take whatever food source is available, such as the plentiful supplies of catfish and koi in the lakes of Bangkok’s Lumphini Park.

Location: Lumphini Park, Bangkok, Thailand

Technical details: Google Pixel 7 Pro | Main camera | F1.9 | 1/291 | ISO 47

Wetlands: The Bigger Picture – The Great Divide, Alex Visbal

Alex Visbal

Caption: This photograph is part of Alex’s long-term project documenting the industrial footprint on bodies of water.

The distinctive pink colour on the left is caused by bright pink microbes that thrive in extremely saline water, which happens when an area is cut off from a supply of fresh water. The ecology of the lake is in sharp decline due to industrial use, upstream diversions and climate change. Since this image was taken, the State of Utah has brought the area under conservation management.

Location: Stansbury Bay, Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA

Technical details: Canon EOS R5 Mark II | Canon EF 70–200mm F2.8 IS II USM | 70mm | F3.2 | 1/640 sec | ISO 1250

Photojournalism – Warning Sign, Francisco Negroni

Francisco Negroni

Caption: Tied to the fence and presented as a hunting trophy, this display was one Francisco had ‘never witnessed or photographed before’. In 2025, Santa Cruz banned the hunting of pumas, but illegal persecution continues.

Livestock predation is one of the major causes of human–puma conflict, and it’s suggested that enclosing sheep at night and using guard dogs can significantly reduce the loss of livestock without resorting to hunting. In southern Chile, some owners have even abandoned sheep farming in favour of puma tourism.

Location: Route 40, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina

Technical details: Canon EOS R5 | Canon RF 70–200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z | 70mm | F3.2 | 1/640 | ISO 100

10 Years and Under – Flight of the Bumblebee, Amelie Davis

Amelie Davis

Caption: Amelie had been taking photographs of bees for several months. On this August afternoon the garden was ‘teeming with bees’. Without her camera, Amelie borrowed her dad’s smartphone and was able to record the delicate detail of a single wingbeat.

Bees perceive plants and flowers in many ways. Distinguishing one colour for nectar and another for pollen helps them make rapid decisions when foraging. Their vision is tuned to blue, green and ultraviolet wavelengths, so they can see markings that are invisible to us.

Location: Surrey, England, UK

Technical details: Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max | Ultrawide lens | F2.2 | 1/895 sec | ISO 40

Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 / 11-14 Years – Labour of Love, Oscar Whitfield

Oscar Whitfield

Caption: Using a fast shutter speed and high light sensitivity, Oscar lay flat on the ground to photograph the beetle at eye level, with the sunshine and heat creating dry dust all around him.

There are more than 5,000 species of dung beetle found around the world, and they play a vital role in their environments. Breaking up dung and burying it prevents the conditions required for methane production, reducing the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. Burying dung also helps it decompose faster, reducing the number of pests affecting livestock and wildlife.

Location: Zambezi National Park, Hwange District, Zimbabwe

Technical details: Canon EOS R6 Mark II | Sigma 150–600mm F5–6.3 DG OS HSM | 500mm | F6.3 | 1/1250 sec | ISO 3200

15-17 Years – Birdsong Painted in Light, Konrad Gräeter

Konrad Gräeter

Caption: Konrad had to crouch down low on the steep slope of the vineyard and point his camera through a gap in the foliage to frame the blackbird within its landscape.

Blackbirds can be heard singing at different times of day, but their songs have the most complex compositions at dawn. During the spring breeding season, the males sing from elevated vantage points to proclaim their territory and to attract a mate. Females respond with a softer sound, known as a subsong, during courtship.

Location: Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Technical details: Fujifilm X-H2S | Fujifilm XF 150–600mm F5.6–8 R LM OIS WR | 600mm | F8 | 1/800 sec | ISO 400

Photojournalist Story Award – Wily Coyotes of San Francisco, Loren Elliott

Loren Elliott

Caption: A coyote pads along a trail in Bernal Heights Park, overlooking the city and bay of San Francisco. This individual is part of a resident pack that Loren observed hunting rodents in the park, which is also popular with people and dogs.

Around 100 of these urban-adapted wild canines live alongside more than 800,000 human inhabitants, and attitudes towards them are mixed. While coyotes sometimes prey on domestic animals, they also bring benefits such as controlling disease-carrying rodents.

In this portfolio, Loren invites us to reconsider our perceptions of these wild animals and their place in urban environments, living alongside humans.

Location: San Francisco, USA

Technical details: Sony a9 II | 20mm F1.8 | F5.6 | 1/800 sec | ISO 250 | 2x Pocket Wizard Plus IIIe radio triggers

Rising Star Award – Hidden Depths, Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas

Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas

Caption: When Alexis spotted this robber fly, it had already impaled the flesh fly with its needlelike mouthparts. The bubbles forming in the victim’s eyes indicate that the robber fly has injected digestive enzymes that liquefy its internal tissues before they are sucked out.

A previous winner of the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, Alexis got his first camera aged ten. His focus shifted to macro photography during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when he was unable to venture farther than the urban habitats close to home in Berlin, Germany.

By experimenting with focus stacking techniques, which involve combining multiple images with different planes of focus to increase the depth of field, Alexis wants to bring Winner Rising Star Award attention to species that often go unnoticed.

Location: Germany and Northern Ireland, UK

Technical details: Fujifilm X-H2 | Laowa 65mm f2.8 macro | F5.6 | 1/200 | ISO 200 | Godox V860III flash + Cygnustech diffuser | focus stack of 24 images

Portfolio Award – Secret Worlds, Kutub Uddin

Kutub Uddin

Caption: Fine threads, known as capillitium, emerge on the round, yellow-green bodies, which will eventually help disperse reproductive spores. Kutub says they appear like ‘tiny clusters or unusual textures on the wood, often appearing as minute pins, spheres or dust-like groupings’.

Kutub became interested in slime moulds in 2024, and as a macro photographer now devotes much of his time to revealing this tiny hidden world. He loves exploring his local woodlands in southeast England, where fallen logs and damp forest floors provide opportunities for discovering these fascinating organisms.

Slime moulds occur throughout the world, mostly growing on dead wood or leaf litter while feeding on other micro-organisms. The structures depicted in this portfolio are just one to two millimetres high (less than 1/12 of an inch).

Location: West Sussex, England, UK

Technical details: Canon EOS R5 | Canon MP-E 65mm F2.8 1-5x Macro Photo | F3.2 | 1/4 sec | ISO 400 | diffused flash | Cognisys StackShot macro rail | Benro Bat tripod | focus stack of 124 images

GoPro has announced a free firmware update for its Mission 1 series of cameras aimed at making them nicer to use for photography, as well as adding greater support for anamorphic lenses and upgrading its external monitoring software.

One of the big new features in the release is the addition of a burst mode, which will let you hold down the shutter button to capture more than 100 12MP stills (or over 20 Raws in the camera’s 50MP mode). The company says the camera will have an on-screen indicator for when the buffer is getting full. The company doesn’t say what burst rates the camera will shoot at, or whether you’ll be able to change them, but we’ll be sure to update this article as soon as we can test it for ourselves.

The company also says it has changed the sound that plays when you take a picture, updating it to a “modernized shutter sound delivers clear, distinguishable audio confirmation for each photo as it’s captured.”

Mitchell Clark

More importantly, it’s also attempted to reduce the amount of lag between you tapping the shutter button and the camera taking a photo. While I haven’t found it to be particularly bad while testing the Mission 1 Pro ILS, it does take a considerable amount of time to process and save the photo after taking it, so it’ll be interesting to see if the update lets you quickly take one photo after another, even if you’re not in Continuous mode.

The update isn’t just for photographers, though. The company is adding beta support for anamorphic lenses to the Mission 1 Pro ILS, its model with a Micro Four Thirds mount. GoPro says this update will make its digital image stabilization work with anamorphic lenses, and will add metadata to your files that tell your editing software what squeeze ratio it was recorded in, with support for 1.33x, 1.5x, 1.6x, 1.8x and 2.0x. The update doesn’t include a way to preview desqueezed footage on the camera, but the company says that feature will be “coming soon.”

Finally, alongside the firmware upgrades, GoPro is updating its Mission Monitor app, which is designed to let you control the camera from an iPhone or iPad, and to see the preview on a larger screen with some pro-level assist tools and overlays. The app can now work wirelessly, rather than requiring a USB-C tether, and supports controlling the new photo modes.

It also gains support for four new assist tools: histogram and waveform exposure monitors, a false color overlay, which displays your image in a variety of colors according to their brightness level, and an RGB parade display to let you see scopes for all three of your color channels side-by-side.

It’s nice to see GoPro making improvements to the Mission 1 line, even if I’m still not entirely sold on the concept of using an action camera in lieu of a compact. (More to come on this later, but I’ve found the photo cage accessories from GoPro and others to be quite unsatisfying, especially when paired with touchscreen controls.) Still, it’s hard to complain about a product getting better at taking pictures; for someone carrying it around to take video, it’ll make the experience of grabbing the occasional still nicer.

The updated firmware for the Mission 1, Mission 1 Pro and Mission 1 Pro ILS is now available through GoPro’s website or the Quik app.

As a camera reviewer, my job often requires me to travel to check out new products, not only to test them, but to also cover them so I can share them with you all. That process requires a bit of supporting gear, and I thought it would be fun to do a run-through of everything I brought with me on a recent trip where I planned on producing three videos, among other tasks.

One of those videos was for this article, where I basically unpack my bag in a (reasonably) quiet section of an airport to show everything that’s in it, and to explain why I use it. Below, I’ll include a list of all the things I cover in the video, and sprinkle in any additional fun facts or info that didn’t make it in.

One last programming note: apologies for the slightly ropy photos: I’ve been between airports for most of this week, and haven’t been able to find a nice backdrop where I wouldn’t have felt exceedingly self conscious taking pictures with a camera. Filming in an empty section of an airport was already enough!

Cameras and lenses

Mitchell Clark

This trip was primarily focused on shooting a few videos, so my main camera was the Canon EOS R6 V. I’ve already shot several videos with it, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a few more under my belt as I finish up the review. That was paired with its kit lens, the RF 20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ, which, while being a surprisingly competent stills lens, really shines for the fast-paced filming I was doing this week. (The results of which you’ll see in due time!)

I typically use my PolarPro 2-5 variable ND filter, which magnetically attaches to a screw-on adapter, making it very easy to swap it between lenses. However, weather, indoor filming locations and late shoots meant it mostly stayed in the bag.

Mitchell Clark

I also brought the Panasonic S1II with a 100mm F2.8 macro lens for detail shots and product photos. It’s a setup I really like and, when I’m not testing a video camera, that kit plus Panasonics 24-60mm F2.8 is my go-to filming setup. If you keep up with our YouTube channel, you’ve seen quite a few videos shot with it.

Finally, another camera I’m reviewing in the background: the GoPro Mission 1 Pro ILS, which I’ve paired with a Laowa 6mm T2.1 and Meike 12mm F2.8 lens. Why those, in a world filled with great Micro Four Thirds lens options? Because the GoPro doesn’t work with any of them that require electrical contacts for aperture and focus control which, it turns out, is most of them.

I stored all of that in two Peak Design camera cubes. And, because I know someone will ask, no, this article isn’t sponsored in any way by PD, despite featuring a lot of it’s gear; I bought everything in this kit with my own money, not necessarily because it’s the absolute best, but because it mostly works well together and meets my needs.

The supporting cast

I won’t cover absolutely every accessory that I pack with me – those are pretty well covered in the video – but I’ll call out some of my favorites, and go into a bit more of the nerdy details that our audience may appreciate.

Mitchell Clark

For this trip, specifically, I brought a Godox iT32 flash and an Aperture MC RGBWW light for taking detail shots. I also brought my Peak Design Travel Tripod that I’ve had pretty much since it launched, which is handy to have when filming yourself (even if I found myself missing the fluid head I got to test with the company’s Pro line, which I just can’t quite justify the price of).

There are a few things that live in my pack (a Peak Design Travel Backpack 45L) full time, because I always need to be able to access them no matter what I’m working on:

• A gray card
• A selection of memory cards (I also keep a spare SD in my wallet, which has saved me countless times)
• Two extra tripod plates
• Filter ring adapters for common and uncommon sizes
• Peak Design wrist strap and extra anchors (pro tip: the anchors come in different colors now, so feel free to get the pinkish-orange ones if you like to have fun, or the all-black ones if you’re frustrated with the decidedly not-stealth red ring that’s traditionally graced them)
• Dual port USB-C charger (35W) and Nitecore NB10000 battery bank
• Crankbrothers M10 multitool for installing and removing said plates (could we please standardize on hex key or flathead?)
• Sensi bulb blower and cleaning cloth
• 2m (6.6′) 20Gbps USB4 cable; great for tethering, offloading, charging, anything really, and long enough to do it (without the crazy ThunderBolt tax)
• Pens and business cards
• A snack or two
• Hand sanitizer

Sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that I had no fewer than three different kinds of tripod plates in attached to cameras throughout the video: Peak Design’s own-brand one, the Leofoto NP-65 QD quick release plate and the SmallRig quick release plate on the EOS R6 V.

One thing I’ve been careful about is only buying Arca-style plates that will fit onto my Peak Design tripod without needing an adapter, so I almost never have to switch out tripod plates mid-shoot. If I do, that’s where the multitool comes in; despite my best efforts, I haven’t quite achieved a completely toolless tripod plate setup, though the Peak Design Field Plate has helped a bit with that, even if I’m still annoyed at how expensive it is and that it doesn’t come standard. I carry a spare in my bag, though.

Further reading

If you enjoy these kinds of gear breakdowns, I highly recommend checking out our What’s In Your Bag series, where we take a look at great photos taken by members of our community and talk to them about the gear used to produce them.

Photo and video competitions have had to deal with fakes and forgeries since their invention, a task that’s become increasingly difficult in the age of generative AI. Many competitions have had to deal with revelations that entries – sometimes even winning ones – were faked or enhanced by AI. Now, it’s happened with one sponsored by Nikon.

The company has disqualified the video that won first place in its Small World in Motion competition, stating it “did not comply with the competition rules regarding generative AI.” That rule is relatively simple: “AI generated videos are not permitted and Sponsor holds the right to request the original video for verification.”

The video in question supposedly showed “abnormal beating of airway cilia in a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic disorder affecting respiratory function,” and the original press release announcing it as the winner had several paragraphs describing the importance of the imagery and how it was captured.

Nikon’s statement says the decision came “after thoroughly re-evaluating the video and supporting materials and consulting with members of our judging panel.” It also clarifies that the decision “is based solely on the submitted video’s eligibility under the rules outlined for this competition” and “should not be interpreted as a judgment of the entrant’s professional reputation, scientific contributions, or intent.”

What the statement doesn’t say is what role generative AI played in the video’s creation; whether it was fully synthetic, or if it was used to edit something that was once a real image. You can still see it in news coverage of the competition and it looks otherworldly, but, to me, that’s the case for authentic microscopy videos, too. The BBC says the winner “acknowledged using AI,” and reports that other scientists raised the alarm about the video, with one expert in PCD saying that the cells in the video “look nothing like those from PCD patients.”

The company says the incident shows it needs to re-evaluate its rules and procedures moving forward, though as AI tools and people’s familiarity with them and willingness to use them advance, it seems likely that this will continue to happen, despite a growing market of tools designed to identify AI-generated or edited content. The reality is that many of the existing tools are, essentially, guessing, or rely on watermarks embedded by tools made by companies acting in good faith. Someone looking to enter a doctored or generated video into a competition would be able to bypass those relatively easily.

In light of the incident, Nikon has changed the rankings of the Small World In Motion competition, which awards a prize of $3000 for first place. That spot has been awarded to the former second place winner, Nguyen Nam Nhat, who submitted a video of “a tiny roundworm and a single-celled Dileptus” moving around. Second place now belongs to Benedikt Pleyer’s video of jellyfish larvae, and third place goes to Dr. Andrew Moore for their video of “synchronized cell division in neighboring cells.” You can view all the winners on the Nikon Small World website.

Google has made its free tool for identifying SynthID watermarks available to the general public, potentially making it easier to tell whether what you’re looking at was created by or edited with generative AI. While the tool is only looking for a watermark, rather than analyzing the image to see if it’s AI-generated, an increasing number of companies are starting to add SynthIDs to the images, video and audio generated by their AI tools.

The tool, called SynthID Detector, is relatively simple. You can upload an image, video file or audio clip to it, and it will scan for a SynthID. Google says that AI tools from itself, Nvidia, OpenAI and Kakao use the standard, so the tool should be able to tell whether AI was used to create the thing you’ve uploaded. Apple has also promised to start using SynthIDs to watermark its AI-powered photo manipulation tools later this year.

Mitchell Clark

Rather than try to add easily-removed metadata, SynthIDs are invisible watermarks added to AI-generated media, which should theoretically survive modification like cropping, adjusting colors or being compressed by a platform that isn’t even attempting to preserve the watermark. Also importantly, the watermark shouldn’t be detectable in the final output.

There is one somewhat annoying gotcha with the tool: it requires you to sign in with a Google, Apple or OpenAI account to actually check anything. This extra friction may be enough to dissuade someone from casually checking an image, and doesn’t really feel like it should be necessary.

It’s also worth noting that it is very limited. While many major players are represented in the list of companies on board with SynthID, there are plenty that aren’t. As the tool’s homepage warns, it doesn’t detect whether the image was made by AI, it can only tell you whether it was made with a specific subset of models. It’s also binary, only telling you if an image has a watermark or not. Unlike more robust (and, in some ways, more limited) tools like Apple’s Reference Image system or Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) Content Credentials, there’s no way to see the original image, or tell whether the AI simply tweaked a real photo or created an image wholesale.

Mitchell Clark

Still, it’s an important piece of the puzzle as SynthID is gaining popularity. After all, a watermark isn’t particularly useful if it’s invisible and you have no way of checking it. You’ve been able to ask Google Gemini if an image has a SynthID watermark in it for a while now, and Google’s Chrome browser and Search engine will flag images with them in some cases, but the detector is a much lighter-weight solution, and provides an option for those who may be checking an image because they’re morally opposed to using AI, and who likely wouldn’t view being able to ask an AI chatbot about it as an acceptable option.

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Yashica has announced a new compact camera called the Crew, which it says is “inspired by the collective energy of friend groups, production crew, and travel companions” and designed “to turn distance into connection.”

Unlike the undeniably retro Y16 the company announced last month, the Crew features a more classic compact form factor, looking much like many of the other cameras being sold under the Yashica brand name. However, while cameras like the City 100 feature a fully articulating screen, the Crew features a 3.0″ LCD (in a slightly unusual 16:9 aspect ratio) that flips up, making it ever so slightly quicker to grab a selfie of you and your friends.

That’s the idea, anyways. In practice, that may be a bit of a struggle, thanks to the camera’s retracting lens, which the company boasts features a “6x optical zoom.” According to the images on the company’s website, it has a focal range of 4.3-24.8mm, which works out to around 32-183mm equiv., given the camera’s sensor. While 32mm equiv. is still relatively wide, you may struggle to capture more than a person or two at that setting with sensible framing unless you have particularly long arms.

Yashica

That sensor seems to be the one found in many of Yashica’s other cameras: a 13MP model in the minuscule Type 1/3.06 (16.45mm²) format. For reference, that’s almost three times smaller than the Type 1/1.56 (48mm²) that the iPhone 17 uses for its main camera, and is still substantially smaller than what you’d find in the 2000’s-era compacts it’s aping. That, combined with the lens’ very slow apertures (F3.1-6.4, or F22.8-47.2 equiv.) mean the camera will struggle in all but the best light, though it does have a flash to help out a bit; it’s unclear whether it’s a xenon tube or an LED.

Some people may be able to overlook that because they’re going for a lo-fi aesthetic, or because this camera takes its compact moniker seriously. Yashica says it’s 26mm (1″) thick when powered off, and weighs just 126g (4.4oz), which means it may genuinely fit in a relatively small purse or bag, or even a pants pocket.

It can shoot 2.7K (2688×1512, a bit higher-res than FullHD) video at up to 60p, and can even upscale that to 4K, though we wouldn’t expect stellar results. Likewise, it has the option of producing up to 36MP images though, again, the sensor is only 13MP.

The Crew has a removable battery and USB-C charging. The company says it’s designed to be an “approachable introduction to photography for the next generation of image-makers” that offers “more creative flexibility than a smartphone while maintaining point-and shoot simplicity.”

While I’m not entirely sure the inclusion of seven color filters delivers on the promise of creative flexibility – the camera doesn’t seem to offer much manual control – it definitely delivers on the approachability. It costs just $168, or 1,320 Hong Kong dollars for a standalone model, though you can pay $10 more to get a version with a 32GB microSD card. It will be available in black or silver, starting later this month, around October 26.

Like many other compacts on the market, the Crew is being sold under a brand name that people may remember (or be familiar with from shopping for vintage cameras), but it’s not really the same company anymore. The Crew and Yashica’s other cameras are branded and distributed by the Hong Kong-based 100 Enterprises, though it’s not entirely clear who actually produces them.

Yashica

Yashica Crew

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Sigma has announced that it’s bringing its 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS (24-450mm equiv.) APS-C lens to Z-mount. While it may not be the most exciting addition to the lineup – Nikon APS-C shooters have already had access to a very similar option from Tamron – it’s representative of what may be an important shift: it’s the first zoom lens the company has been allowed to release for the mount.

The 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 has been around for a bit over a year for Sony E, Canon RF, Fujifilm X and even L-mount cameras, and this new version uses the same optical formula. It comprises 20 elements in 14 groups, with one FLD element, four SLD elements, one piece of high refractive index glass and four aspherical lenses.

It can focus on objects as close as 17cm (6.7″) at 24mm equiv., and 105cm (41.4″) at 450mm equiv. At 70mm, it can achieve 0.5x (1:2) magnification.

It uses linear motors for focusing, and Sigma says the optical stabilization is good for up to 6EV of correction at the wide end and 4.5EV at the long end. For Z-mount users, that’s definitely a nice-to-have, given that Nikon hasn’t made any APS-C cameras with in-body stabilization.

As you’d hope given that it’s made for a smaller sensor, the lens is relatively compact and lightweight, at around 125mm (4.9″) long and 630g (22oz). It can accept 67mm filters.

All of these specs make the lens an extremely close competitor to the Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD, which, beyond not being able to go quite as wide as the Sigma, offers essentially the same set of features in a body that’s within a few millimeters and grams. (The Tamron happens to be the first third-party autofocus zoom lens released for Nikon’s APS-C system.)

While there will certainly be those excited to have another all-in-one zoom option, perhaps more exciting is what this announcement may potentially mean. Sigma has offered Z-mount versions of a few of its APS-C prime lenses for a while now, though, notably, not the one that directly competes with one of Nikon’s offerings. However, none of its quite good zoom lenses were available for the mount. While the 16-300mm arriving for Nikon systems doesn’t come close to guaranteeing that we’ll get more exciting options like the 17-40mm F1.8 DC Art, the just-announced 50-120mm F2.8 DC Contemporary or the 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN, it does seem like a bit more of a possibility today than it did yesterday.

Like the other versions of the lens, the 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS for Z-mount will cost $769.

Tamron has announced that it will be bringing its full-frame 20-40mm F2.8 Di III VXD lens to Z-mount. The lens originally launched in 2022 for E-mount, but now it’ll be available for Nikon shooters.

Optically, the lens is unchanged, featuring a 12-element, 11-group construction with four low dispersion elements, two molded glass aspherics and one hybrid aspheric. It has a minimum focusing distance of 0.17m (6.7″), and allows for a maximum reproduction of 1:3.8 (around 0.26x) at its wide end. It has 9 aperture blades.

Tamron

One of the appeals of a zoom lens with a relatively limited focal range is its size and weight. The Z-mount version of the 20-40mm is 89mm (3.5″) long, and is 380g (13.4oz). There are very few lenses that you could consider direct competitors to this; other Z-mount ultrawide zooms will either start wider, and not go as tight, or start a bit tighter, and go further. Perhaps the closest analog is Sigma’s 20-60mm F2.8-4, which is around the same weight, but isn’t available for Z-mount and can only achieve F2.8 at its very widest setting.

Odd focal lengths have always been a staple of Tamron’s lineup though, and the company has lenses that you could use alongside it to go wider (the 12-20mm F2.8) or further (35-100mm F2.8 or 35-150mm F2-2.8) without leaving any gaps in coverage.

As the VXD in its name indicates, the lens uses linear motors for autofocus, which should make for smooth and fast focusing. That could be especially useful for video, as the lens’s focal range seems like a natural fit for vlogging. It’s threaded for 67mm filters, as are many other Tamron lenses, and the company says it’s sealed for dust and moisture resistance.

The Z-mount 20-40mm F2.8 Di III VXD costs a bit of a premium over the $699 E-mount version, retailing for $729. That is, however, still less than you’d pay to buy the version made for Sony cameras and an adapter, and may offer a more consistent experience. The lens will be available starting October 22nd.

Tamron 20-40mm F2.8 Di III VXD specifications

If you’re in the US and have been waiting for your chance to buy a Ricoh GR IV, this may be the moment. B&H Photo and Adorama currently have the three different versions in stock for their retail prices, something that hasn’t reliably been the case for the past few months, according to Gear Patrol staffer James Tirado, who has spent a while casting a jealous eye at the product page.

It’s hard to say how long they’ll stay in stock, so it’s probably worth acting fast if you’re sure you want it. And if you aren’t, perhaps check out our reviews; we have one for both the standard GR IV and its Monochrome variant, both of which are available at time of writing. The HDF version, which switches out an internal ND filter for a high diffusion one that creates a glow around highlights, is also in stock.

Of course, there is one reason you may potentially want to hold off: the company has already announced that an “x” variant, which swaps the 28mm equiv. lens for a 40mm one, is due out later this year. Of course, if the standard edition, and the former GR IIIx, are any indication, that one may also be quite hard to get a hold of, too.

Ricoh GR IV

Ricoh GR IV Monochrome

Ricoh GR IV HDF

If a standard GR IV is too pedestrian for your tastes, the company is also coming out with a limited-edition anniversary edition this month. There will only be 6000 available, so you’ll probably need to act fast to get your hands on one, too.

Last week, we had the opportunity to spend some time with DJI’s latest 360 camera, the Osmo 360 II. It features replaceable lenses, dual Type-1/1.1 (92mm²) sensors (which, when recording 360, are combined to roughly the area of a Type-1 (128mm²) sensor) and can record 360 video at up to 8K/60p, or flat video at up to 4K/120p*.

I thought it’d be a good opportunity to check in with the state of the 360 camera market, having been an early adopter of them in the mid-2010s, when it seemed like the future of content consumption may involve a cardboard headset with a phone in it.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. In the video, I go through how people are using 360 cameras these days, if not to create 360 content, and take a look at some of the pros and cons of cameras that capture the entire world around them. You’ll also get to see a lot of footage shot on a 360 camera, as we filmed it almost entirely using the Osmo 360 II (giving me a new appreciation for how DJI’s cameras can automatically sync with the wireless microphones I typically use.)

If you want a higher-level overview of the camera, you can also check out our unboxing below.

*- You can also choose to sacrifice some resolution to go even slower with the camera’s “4K” (3840×1920) 240p mode.

This month, Nikon released the Z5IIC, which is essentially a version of its Z5II mirrorless camera, but with the viewfinder removed and a lower price point. And while that top-line summary is closer to the whole story than usual, there are a few nuances that are worth looking at if you’re trying to decide between the two models.

No EVF

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

The most obvious difference between the two cameras is that the Z5II has a (particularly nice) electronic viewfinder that you can use in sunny conditions, or when you’d prefer not to look at a rear screen, and the Z5IIC does not. How much that will bother you comes down to personal preference; are you willing to give up an EVF to save some money, and do you value you the camera being a bit smaller and easier to get into and out of a camera bag?

While both the Z5IIC and the Z5II have 3.2″ fully-articulating displays, the one on the more expensive, full-size model is a bit higher-resolution at 2.1 million dots, versus the Z5IIC’s 1.04M. That’s not as big a difference as those numbers may seem – they equate to 1024 x 682px and 720 x 480px, respectively – but while we found the screen to be quite usable, it is undoubtedly not quite as nice. Neither comes all that close to a display you’d find on a smartphone, though.

Storage

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

This is another relatively simple arena: the Z5II has two UHS-II card slots, while the Z5IIC has one. This could be a slight annoyance when shooting video, where it can be nice to have your recording automatically roll over to a second card once you’ve filled one up, and can bring some peace of mind if you’re a photographer worried about the possibility of your card dying before you can offload it (something that can happen, but very rarely). That assurance is also nice if you’re capturing a once-in-a-lifetime event or trip.

Most shooters, however, will be perfectly well-served by a single card-slot camera. And in cases where you absolutely must have backups, Nikon’s app lets you automatically transfer 8MP JPEGs from your camera to your phone as you take them. (Unfortunately, there’s no option for full-size JPEGs or Raws, unless you have the camera directly connected to Wi-Fi and set to automatically upload to Nikon’s Imaging Cloud service).

Controls and handling

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

The Z5IIC and Z5II have, once again, very similar controls, with essentially the exact same mix of programmable buttons on the top, rear and front plates. (The one difference: by default, the button to the right of the mode switch on the Z5II is set to AF On, while on the Z5IIC it’s focus and exposure lock, though either can be customized to behave like the other). Likewise, both cameras have twin top-plate control dials.

The one control omitted on the Z5IIC is a joystick, leaving you to control your AF point using the touchscreen or the multi-directional controller. When we were using it, we frequently found ourselves reaching for the nonexistent joystick, since it can be more convenient than using the touchscreen, especially if you’re shooting at odd angles. But at least we never had to worry about how to control the focus point when we had the camera’s EVF up to our eye…

There is one other difference between the two: the Z5II has three user-defined settings on its mode dial, while the Z5IIC only has two, replacing the third with a “Scene” setting.

Scene modes

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

Choosing the Scene setting lets you select what you’re trying to take a picture of and have the camera automatically optimize some of its settings for it. For instance, if you set it to sports, the camera will do its best to choose a fast shutter speed. If you instead tell it you’re trying to capture a dusk or dawn scene, it’ll set the white balance to preserve the colors as your eye sees them.

This isn’t a feature Nikon has included on its full-frame cameras before, so it’s absent on the Z5II. This may make the Z5IIC seem more attractive if you’re looking for your first camera and aren’t accustomed to having full control over the wide variety of settings mirrorless cameras offer. (However, we believe you’ll be better served by learning to make those decisions yourself, rather than using a somewhat clunky mode that can restrict your creative freedom).

Size and weight

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

Despite the Z5IIC’s lack of an EVF, it isn’t substantially lighter than the Z5II. It comes in at 620g (22oz), versus 700g (25oz), a mere 11% reduction.

Likewise, it’s only marginally shorter at 81mm (3.2″) tall, rather than 101mm (4.0″). We did find the lack of an EVF hump meant it was easier to slip in and out of a camera bag, but it being the same thickness and width as the Z5II means you’ll probably need to have a dedicated bag to carry it around in. Once you have a lens mounted, it’s a bit big for all but the roomiest of purses, and would struggle to fit in even the most generous of jacket pockets.

Autofocus

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

Both cameras have very similar autofocus systems, with all the features we’d want from a modern mirrorless option, including the ability to recognize and track various subjects. And while we haven’t done our in-depth testing on the Z5IIC yet, the experience we’ve had with it gives us no reason to suspect that it won’t perform the same as the Z5II.

The one other autofocus difference: the Z5II has an AF assist lamp, which the camera can use to add a little extra illumination when it’s trying to focus in an extremely dark scene. The Z5IIC trades this for a tally light to indicate when the camera is recording video.

Pricing, now and in the future

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

Many people have been quick to point out that, at the moment of the Z5IIC’s launch, you can buy a standard Z5II for around the same money, or even less. And if that’s the still the case as you’re reading this, our advice is straightforward: you should buy the Z5II.

However, it’s worth keeping in mind that MSRP is always an opening bid. This is likely the most expensive the Z5IIC will ever be (at a price that still makes it the joint second least expensive full frame camera ever), and, based on past pricing trends, we expect it will be sold for remarkably cheap after a few months on the market. That is, after all, what it seems to be designed to do. If and when you can buy it for as much cheaper than the Z5II as the delta between the cameras’ MSRPs suggests, it’ll be a much easier recommendation if you’re trying to save some money while starting a new hobby.

Summary

The Z5IIC and Z5II are much more alike than they are different. Beyond what we’ve covered in this article, they’re essentially the same, spec-for-spec, with the same stabilized sensor, mechanical shutter, burst rates, ports, video modes and more. It’s remarkable how inexpensive Nikon has managed to make the Z5IIC without making it feel cheap, both in terms of features and build.

Deciding between the two will largely depend on your budget and how much you value an EVF and the other features the Z5II offers.

Nikon Z5II

Nikon Z5IIC

Laowa has announced the Acris 35mm F2.8 1X AF Macro APO, which it says is the “world’s first full-frame autofocus 35mm lens with 1:1 macro magnification.” It’s also only the fifth autofocus lens we’ve seen from the company, though some of the lens mounts it’s being released for will get a manual focus-only version.

Laowa says the autofocus versions of the lens will be available for Sony E, Nikon Z and Canon EF mounts. L mount and Canon’s mirrorless RF mount, meanwhile, will only be getting a manual focus version.

The lens is made up of 13 elements in 10 groups, and while Laowa doesn’t call out any special glass it’s using, the company says the apochromatic design means you’ll get “zero color fringing” due to chromatic aberration. In manual focus mode, it has a minimum focusing distance of 18cm (7.1″). This means the front of the lens has to be around 49mm (1.9″) away from your subject to achieve the 1:1 lifesize reproduction that gives the lens its name.

Leslie Jie / Laowa

Like with Laowa’s 180mm F4.5 macro lens, the autofocus capabilities are quite limited in macro mode. From the minimum focusing distance to 0.5m (19.7″), you have to manually acquire focus, but the lens can make precise adjustments for focus stacking purposes. If the subject you’re shooting is more than 0.5m away, though, Laowa says it’ll work like any other AF lens, providing “fast, responsive, and accurate subject acquisition.”

Of course, this is assuming you have the version of the lens that comes with autofocus, rather than being manual focus only. Beyond the lack of motors, there are two interesting differences between the two lenses: the AF version has 9 aperture blades and is threaded for 72mm filters, while the manual focus version has 13 and uses 67mm filters. Both, however, zoom internally.

Laowa

The dimensions of the lens will vary substantially based on which mount you get it in; for instance, the Sony E-mount version is 114mm (4.5″) long, while the EF version is 87mm (3.4″) long. The lens’s weights are much closer, though, with the E-mount one coming in at 560g (19.8oz) and the EF at 530g (18.7oz). Laowa says the lens is sealed against dust and moisture.

In terms of features, the lens is relatively spartan. It has a USB-C port for firmware updates, and a function button that Laowa says “allows seamless switching between modes.”

The Acris 35mm F2.8 1X AF Macro APO will be available starting today and will cost $449 in the US, though regional pricing may vary.

Laowa Acris 35mm F2.8 1X AF Macro APO specifications

Alongside the addition of a variable aperture and manual controls, Apple introduced an interesting feature to the iPhone 18 Pro: it’s called Reference Image, and is designed to prove that a photo wasn’t altered at any point after the photons hit the sensor.

This system, which currently only works on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max’s main camera, is a distinct mode in the camera app and is aimed primarily at journalists. It tries to overcome several technical hurdles to ensure that both the data as captured by the sensor and the processed result of that data, can be tied back to a specific device within a narrow period of time. In other words, it tries to authenticate both the Raw and the processing that turns it into a viewable image.

Dale Baskin

Apple isn’t the first company to try to solve this problem. A coalition of companies, including Adobe and several major camera manufacturers, has thrown its weight behind Content Credentials, another system designed to be able to prove that an image is what it claims to be in the age of wholesale AI image generation and assisted editing.

While we’ve written extensively about Content Credentials, Apple has characteristically taken a completely new approach with its own system. So why has it invented its own tech, rather than using the existing standard that some of its competitors have adopted, and how does it work?

What problems is Apple trying to solve?

Apple says it designed the Reference Image system to meet three requirements:

• The resulting image “must faithfully show what the sensor captured,” and you can verify both the Raw capture and the process that turned the raw data captured into a viewable photo
• A false image created via tampering with the sensor, cryptographic software or phone’s OS will fail the verification process. If it’s later discovered that the system verified an image it shouldn’t have, the certificate marking it as authentic must be able to be revoked.
• The images can’t reveal who took them, or whether the same device took any two images. Apple shouldn’t be able to tell what’s in the image when it’s signing it.

The company argues that existing systems like Content Credentials don’t meet these standards. Part of that is because they have different goals; one of the explicit appeals of Content Credentials is that it lets you bake image attribution into the file in a way that’s hard to remove. But Apple also argues that adding a credential after the image is created, as Content Credentials does, leaves space for bad actors to create false images and then sign them as authentic (something that one of our forum members was able to demonstrate with the implementation in the Nikon Z6III).

The system looks to be incredibly robust, which is unsurprising given the level of attacks Apple’s devices have to defend against. (It basically has to assume its systems will be tested by the full capabilities of a hostile government.) It’s built to protect against verifying images made by feeding fake data to the sensor itself through its electrical contacts or by removing it from the phone, and from quantum computers being used to break its encryption, something Apple says no other image provenance systems do. The company says this is to make sure the images are verifiable far into the future; traditional encryption algorithms can withstand most kind of attacks, but because quantum computers work fundamentally differently from the computers they were designed for, they can easily crack them.

What does taking a reference image look like?

The high-level overview is that the phone isn’t always taking Reference Images. You have to purposefully switch to taking them in the camera app, which will reboot the sensor into a special mode. So far, this is only available on the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max’s main camera – either in 1x or 2x mode, though not night mode since it appears to only use a single exposure – as it’s a hardware-based feature. Even then, it isn’t available in the EU or China (likely due to its reliance on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute service, which we’ll cover shortly).

Dale Baskin

After you take a reference image, you then have to choose to “develop” it before you’re able to view or share it. You can share the developed HEIC file as a normal photo, viewable by anyone, or as a special reference image that, currently, can only be viewed using an Apple device running its latest software. The person receiving it will be able to see a version with any edits you’ve made, as well as what the camera originally captured, and the interface can even highlight the differences. It will also show verified metadata, such as when the photo was captured. This does, however, rely on them using Apple software on Apple hardware: otherwise, it’ll just render like a normal HEIC.

How does a Reference Image work?

Apple’s document on the technical details of the Reference Image system is, unsurprisingly, pretty complex, so I’ll try to explain it in a way that will make sense to most people.

The process for creating a reference image starts at the factory, when the phone’s sensor and security chip are tied together in a way that Apple can check later, to confirm that the two actually worked together to create and secure the data that it’s interpreting as a photo.

Dale Baskin

When you switch to the camera’s Reference Image mode, it reboots the sensor into a secure mode that basically ignores what the operating system is doing, except for receiving a “digest” that contains a securely computed timestamp range and some identifying information for the device and its security chip. The sensor then collects light and digitizes it into data (as cameras tend to do). It then cryptographically signs it before sending it off the chip. This basically means that the raw data the camera captured can’t be changed by the sensor firmware, phone’s processor, operating system or anything else. Otherwise, the signature created by the sensor won’t match the signature produced by the data, and the system could tell something was wrong. The secure metadata, including what time the photo was taken, is also included in that package, before it’s handed back to the OS for storage

This leaves you with what Apple calls a “secure digital negative,” stored as a DNG Raw file, which you can edit and share like normal if need be. However, to make it a Reference Image, you need to then be able to trust the process that turns that “negative” into a viewable file, as the raw data from the image sensor isn’t actually an image. Even when opening a Raw file on your computer, what you’re actually seeing is that data processed in several ways, like demosaicing to interpret color, lens corrections and the application of a tone curve. You are seeing your program’s interpretation of the Raw, not the data itself (which is why it may look different from program to program).

This is where the second part of the system comes in. After you’ve taken the picture, you can choose to “develop” it into a Reference Image (something that doesn’t happen automatically, and which requires an internet connection). When you do, that “digital negative” is sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, which will then recompute the “digest” containing the timestamp and data from the phone and its security chip, ensure the certificate matches the raw data and that it was actually issued by the sensor. It checks a few other things too, making sure that the sensor and the security chip haven’t been altered since they left the factory.

Apple says it takes great pains to ensure that the timestamp attached to the image is accurate. Rather than using on the device’s clock, your phone routinely gets cryptographically-signed timestamps from Apple’s servers, which it uses to create a window of time that the image must’ve been taken in, based on the timestamp it received before it was taken, and the next one it received, after. (Apple says this happens on average every 15 minutes, though it’ll depend on network connectivity; it can also account for phones that are offline for long periods of time).

After the Private Cloud Compute service has checked over all the certificates, it creates what’s called a confidence score for the image, which decides how likely it is that it is a real photograph based on how well the data matches “physical characteristics expected of raw output from our sensors.” It then turns the Raw into a JPEG before “hashing” it, creating a signature that ensures that the rest of the development process won’t change it, and to identify any subsequent changes that occur after the image is returned to the user.

The JPEG’s unique identifier, the hash for its Raw, the confidence score and the sensor’s ID, though not the JPEG itself, are sent to a separate service, which checks a few things. Most importantly, it makes sure the image wasn’t created by a sensor that’s been added to a revocation list for having uploaded fake or suspect data. Apple keeps a running tally of the confidence scores attached to the images submitted by each sensor; if that number gets low enough, indicating that something suspicious is happening with that device’s reference images, the Private Cloud Compute service will never sign pictures from it again.

If everything checks out, though, the service signs the JPEG with Apple’s signature, letting everyone know that it passes the company’s technical checks. Importantly, this replaces the photographer in the chain of trust: the company says the system intentionally doesn’t provide a way to identify who took a reference image, to the point where you can’t even use it to tell if two photos were taken by the same phone. It only tells you that Apple can attest to it being unaltered from the point of capture. The Private Cloud Compute server then sends the JPEG, packaged as a HEIC, back to the phone, and moves the “digital negative” to the trash, for deletion after 30 days (though you can tell it not to delete it within that timespan if you want).

Whenever you go to view that image on a supported device, using supported software, it’ll check to make sure it still has the signature, and that Apple’s system hasn’t retroactively revoked it. From there, you’re able to make edits to it, though the end user will be able to see the original, provided you share the Reference Image HEIC, rather than an exported JPEG.

In Apple we trust?

Apple

As with most security standards, whether or not you believe an Apple Reference Image is a source of truth*will require putting some amount of faith in the company. The company has a relatively solid track record when it comes to security and cryptography, so it’s not implausible that it could implement a system like this, and Apple says the Private Cloud Compute software that turns those into viewable photos is publicly auditable. Of course, if you’re not a security and cryptography expert, you will have to trust researchers to actually do that work and communicate that it is, in fact, safe.

To me, the real act of faith won’t be in deciding whether the pictures Apple certifies are genuine. It’s trusting the company to never revoke a certificate of a legitimately-captured image for any reason, something that it appears to have the power to do. I also have to assume the system will occasionally get it wrong, either signing an image that shouldn’t have been signed, or not signing one that should, and the test will be how Apple reacts in such situations. Or, indeed, whether it bothers to continue operating the service indefinitely, irrespective of profitability and take-up.

The company has a history of standing up to governments – even powerful ones in the US and UK – when ordered to compromise user privacy and security, and offers some of the most comprehensive protection modes you can get on a phone. However, its track record isn’t spotless. It famously handed off control of the iCloud data for its users in China to comply with the country’s laws, a move that Reuters reports will give that government “far easier access to text messages, email and other data.”

Notably, the Reference Image feature isn’t available in China. It’s also not immediately launching in the EU – Apple is currently in a spat with the bloc over how much privilege it gives its own services on iOS – but the company has at least promised that it’ll bring the feature to the EU at some point in the future.

The chicken and the apple

Mitchell Clark

I’d like to leave you with a few parting thoughts. While there is undoubtedly use for pictures that are in some ways verifiable – especially as journalistic institutions change, and as news is increasingly captured on phones, both by professionals and everyday people – it’s also worth considering how much that can actually move the needle.

We live in a relatively low-trust environment, where large groups of people can’t agree on even relatively basic facts. (Calling topics “debated” would be giving too much credit; debate implies people are willing to change their minds based on evidence presented.) While people not being able to trust images is certainly a problem, especially at scale, there are a lot of examples of hard evidence being ignored because it’s inconvenient.

This is, frankly, not really a problem that Apple can even solve, no matter what technical expertise it brings to bear. I also shudder to think of us handing over that responsibility to a private company, more than we already have. But I also think that it’ll be hard to get back to a place where images are trustworthy again, because it’s a chicken and egg problem: you can’t rely on things like Reference Image or Content Credentials as an indicator of whether an image is fake or not until most or all of the real images you see have them attached. Sure, they can “prove” an image is authentic, but with their limited market penetration, they’re currently not very useful in spotting fakes.

Even if you could flip a switch today and have every picture taken on an iPhone be easily verifiable on any platform where they’re displayed (something that’s currently absolutely not true of the much more widely-adopted Content Credentials), it would probably still require sweeping social changes for that to actually matter. Again, though, that’s not really within Apple’s control. But as things stand, there’s at least one more tool that journalists and citizens can use to try to prove that their images are authentic… assuming the viewing public trusts the system, and that those trying to verify the image own enough new Apple products to do so.

* As much as any photograph can be. Pictures can depict what happened in a moment, but you still have to trust that the photographer or person or organization sharing the image are being honest about the context surrounding it.

This summer, Viltrox released the AF 26mm F2.8 Evo, a pancake-style full-frame lens that aims to be an excellent everyday carry option. I’ve had the chance to spend some time shooting with it in a variety of conditions, and have a surprising number of thoughts on it given how relatively simple it seems.

Optics with character

Despite my concerns about focus, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how sharp this lens is in the center given the size, weight and price. It won’t win any awards, and you’ll definitely want to stop down for best results (especially at the edges), but again, for what it is I was quite pleased with the results I got. Vignetting is also quite well-controlled, even at F2.8.

The lens shows some longitudinal chromatic aberration in relatively harsh lighting, but again, it’s a pretty decent performance for this category of lens. There’s what I’d call a low-to-medium amount of barrel distortion, too, which Viltrox corrects for with a software profile, but it’s not to the point where we’d say that the software profile is mandatory if you’d rather not, or can’t, use it.

Mitchell Clark

I appreciated the 26mm F2.8’s close-focusing abilities – it’s nice to see that manufacturers are really paying attention to those these days – and I found its bokeh to be inoffensive. It’s not the cleanest ever, but I’m also not typically using a 26mm lens to get the blurriest backgrounds.

This is all relatively standard fare for a prime these days, so what makes me say it has a lot of character? It’s the flare, because wow is there ever a lot of it. If there’s a bright light source just outside of frame, expect the image to look fairly washed-out. The included lens hood (which reduces the lens’s size advantage, though, admittedly, not by much) helps a little, but the effect is still quite strong.

Point light sources in the frame will also produce relatively large streaks of light, in a way that I haven’t seen in a lens for a while, outside of ones explicitly designed to produce that effect. I personally think it’s neat and don’t mind it on a lens that I’d mainly use for fun, but it and the flare are intense enough that I would absolutely think twice before trying to use this lens for a professional shoot, especially if it took place at night. Frankly, I’m a little confused why Viltrox used its “Evo” branding on this lens, as I typically associate it with an impressive level of image quality that this doesn’t quite deliver on.

The shooting experience

While our lens testing standards meant that I exclusively used this lens paired with a relatively hefty Nikon Z8, I still found myself being delighted with this lens’ small size. Paired with a smaller camera, like a Nikon Zf or Z5IIC or a Sony a7C-series, it would make for an impressively small full-frame kit.

Mitchell Clark

Despite its size, the lens has two rings: one for manual focus and a clicked one for aperture. I did, however, find the latter to be a bit touchy, and I ended up with a lot of shots at aperture settings that were 1/3EV off from what I was aiming for. Thankfully, it has an “A” position that hands over control to the camera, which I found useful for times when I was constantly putting it back in a bag.

If you’ve seen our unboxing video for this lens, you’ll know that I was extremely excited upon discovering that it has a magnetic lens cap, which is very easy to remove and, perhaps more importantly, to put back on. After a few months of use, my enthusiasm remains, and it’s something I’d like to see on more lenses. It’s not entirely perfect – I found it was a bit more eager to detach than a traditional pinch design when I was taking my camera out of a bag or putting it back in – but I found myself being much more willing to use it because of the lack of fiddliness in putting it on and taking it off.

The focusing experience with this lens wasn’t my favorite, even compared to other Viltrox lenses I’ve used for Z-mount. It has a unit focus that physically moves in and out as you go from close to infinity, and it’s not particularly quick. While I had a decent hit rate with it, it wasn’t particularly confidence-inspiring in the moment; even a slight move of the autofocus point often led to the lens dramatically changing focus, making the whole scene soft before slowly bringing it back into focus.

This experience isn’t uncommon among pancake lenses, but it’s worth keeping in mind, depending on what you wish to shoot with this lens.

The manual focus experience also isn’t lovely. Given its size, the ring is relatively easy to manipulate, but there was a touch of lag between when I turned it and when the focus actually changed, which led to me frequently overshooting my intended subject. There also isn’t much fine-grained control once you get near infinity, which changes happening in chunks, instead of smoothly.

Summary

I don’t want to come across as being too harsh on this lens. While its $299 price tag may be a bit more than the rock-bottom prices some buyers may be accustomed to from Viltrox, it still seems fair to me given what this lens offers, especially to fans of the 26mm focal length. Pancake lenses often come with sacrifices, and this one is no exception, but the Nikon and Sony lenses it’s competing with cost substantially more… though there are, perhaps, more reasons to choose the own-brand versions over the Viltrox than we’re used to seeing from the brand.

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. 

Thanks to Nikon for the loan of a Z8 to produce this sample gallery. All images were processed using our standard lens workflow in Capture One, with the manufacturer’s distortion correction applied but no correction of vignetting. The profile corrects a fair amount of barrel distortion, but we don’t consider it an essential part of the lens’s optical design.

It’s another week and another camera launch for the DPReview team to discuss. This week, we gathered to talk about the Nikon Z5IIC, what we think about its lack of an EVF and people’s reactions to it.

If you prefer something a bit shorter, you can also check out our first look video, which we shot mainly using the Z5IIC. And, of course, our written review is also up for those that want to go in-depth.

What else would you like to know about the Z5IIC? Let us know in the comments below.

As a reviewer covering the camera industry, I spend a lot of time in comments sections, forums and subreddits, seeing what people think of the latest releases and the rumors of what’s coming next. While I often see smart, informed discussions happening, this habit also exposes me to some… interesting takes.

As an example. This is more of a problem on other sites and on social media than on DPReview (though it’ll occasionally happen here) I’ve noticed a recent trend under many articles about new or upcoming cameras – even budget models – where there will be a few comments that are something along the lines of “No global shutter?” And then other people will chime in agreeing that the camera is DOA without one, and an example of manufacturers cheaping out or being behind the times.

And I just have to say: what are you all talking about?? Do you even know what a global shutter is, or are you just asking for one because you’ve heard it’s cool?

Thankfully, these comments aren’t common here on DPReview, and I know most of you are familiar with the concept of a global shutter. But for those that aren’t: it’s a sensor design that lets you capture and read out every pixel, simultaneously, as opposed to having to read them out line-by-line like you have to on cameras with a rolling shutter. This essentially instantaneous readout is even faster than a traditional focal plane mechanical shutter, and is much faster than standard e-shutter readout modes.

Richard Butler

It is a genuinely useful technology for certain scenarios. It lets you sync with flash at effectively any shutter speed (though it can take some trial and error), and capture even the fastest-moving subjects without any risk of the skewing that can happen with rolling shutter*. It can also reduce the risk of banding when shooting under LED lights or photographing a subject with an electronic display behind them. There is still the risk of catching a display when its dark or refreshing, depending on your exposure duration and how fast the screen is, but it gets rid of any potential mismatches between refresh and shutter rates. Global shutters are luxurious for video, too, as there’s absolutely no Jell-o effect no matter how fast your pan, or if you point your camera out of a moving car or towards an arriving train.

Mitchell Clark

I get that it can kind of feel like camera technology has stagnated in recent years, and that people are hungry for a big leap forwards in performance. But let’s take a step back and look at the reality of the situation for a second.

There has only been one full-frame hybrid mirrorless camera released with a global shutter: the Sony a9 III. It is aimed at professional sports and action shooters, and is priced accordingly, coming in $6800. The tech is a bit more common in the world of cinema cameras, but doesn’t come for cheap there, either.

The a9 III also has a notable drawback: its complex readout circuitry limits how much light it can tolerate, pushing its base ISO up to 250 and limiting the image quality you can get out of it compared to other full-frame cameras. The best image you can take with it will have up to a stop and a third more noise than the best image out of another full-frame camera with a base ISO of 100. Its peak IQ performance is much closer to that of an APS-C camera, though at the same ISO settings it’ll still out-perform a camera with a smaller sensor.

With a sample size of one, it’s hard to say if this is inherent to modern global shutter designs (some older CCD chips also had global shutters), or is simply an aspect of this particular sensor, but it’s certainly worth noting if you’re advocating that basically every new camera should have a global shutter. They are not an unalloyed upgrade in every way. Instead, current global shutter sensors make trade-offs in order to be better for some niche use-cases.

Which is why I really do not understand why people say that they should be in every camera, from the most budget options on up. Putting aside whether that’s even economically realistic, do we really think beginner photographers absolutely need perfectly parallel lines in action shots using e-shutter, and that it’s so important that it’d be worth giving up some image quality for?

I want to make it clear that I’m not advocating for consumers to just take what they’re giving and not ask for more from companies. It’s totally fine to look critically at cameras and say “I think you could do better.” (I mean, that is essentially my job.) And I understand the desire for there to be at least one or two less expensive options with global shutter for those that would use them for their purpose, but that don’t have the cash for a top-of-the-line pro camera.

But I think that if we’re going to spend energy campaigning for improvements, they should be ones that are actually sensible, and that are good matches for the target market. It’s one thing to recognize that image quality appears to be plateauing, but, to me, it’s hard to say that means every camera should include a more expensive technology that trades some IQ for a behavior that’s only really useful in very specific situations.

*- To be fair: the fastest stacked sensor cameras with rolling shutters, which have readout speeds within the 2-4ms range, have also essentially eliminated that risk.

Earlier this week, Nikon announced the Z5IIC, an entry-level full-frame camera with no EVF, but that retails for a mere $1400. We were able to spend some time with not one, but two of them before the launch, and thought it’d be a good opportunity to shoot our first look with the camera itself.

There are a few shots in it that weren’t taken using the Z5IIC, but the vast majority of the footage was, which should give you an idea of its capabilities. Of course, the camera is as focused on stills as it is on video, so we included sample photos as well.

What do you think of the Z5IIC? Do you agree with the cuts Nikon made to hit the price point the camera’s selling at? Let us know in the comments below. As usual with a major launch, we plan to publish a discussion video this weekend discussing the camera and our community’s reactions to it.

If you’ve recently upgraded your iPhone, or are getting more into photography, you may be wondering how to make the most of the increasingly sophisticated camera hardware and relatively complex software.

It can be a surprisingly in-depth topic, especially given the range of hardware available throughout different iPhone lines and generations, but we’ll try to make it as simple as we can, and call out when tips are exclusive to certain models.

Is more resolution always better?

Depending on which model iPhone you have, your phone may give you the option to shoot photos in higher resolution, though the toggle for it may be a bit buried. To access them, you’ll first have to go to Settings > Camera > Formats, then enable either “Resolution Control” if you have a non-Pro phone, or “ProRAW & Resolution Control” on Pro phones. You’ll then be able to access a “Formats” button within the camera app that lets you switch resolutions.

In our tests, we found that, in good light, the differences between the iPhone’s 48MP photos and default 24MP HEIC images were quite subtle, despite the files being roughly double the size (or larger). For that reason, it’s hard to recommend leaving it on all the time. For highly detailed, well-lit scenes, though, it can be worth turning on to make sure you capture as much as possible.

iPhone 17 Pro Max | Raws processed with Adobe Camera Raw at default settings | All exported as JPEG w/ matching settings

For best results, we don’t recommend using the higher-resolution mode in low-light scenarios. Because of how the quad-bayer sensors used in iPhones work, capturing the full resolution means giving up some noise performance. While the iPhone has noise-reduction, we found that the additional work it had to do made the difference between the higher-resolution and standard modes even less distinct.

What about Raw?

iPhone 17 Pro Max | Main Camera | ProRaw processed with ACR at default settings

If you have a Pro-series phone, you have the option of not just changing your photos’ resolution, but to shoot in Raw as well, using a proprietary Apple format called ProRaw. While we didn’t notice an appreciable amount of detail in our ProRaw shots – the main benefit comes from a bit more control over the processing – we did find that our selected resolution made much more of a difference than it did with non-Raw images.

This is in part due to the fact that, in Raw, your choice is between 12 and 48MP, rather than 24 and 48. Our 48MP Raw images had considerably more detail than the 12MP ones.

On the iPhone 18 Pro: consider your aperture and settings

The just-released iPhone 18 Pro introduces two new considerations that we haven’t seen before: a variable aperture and manual controls. The latter ends up being a greater consideration than you might think. According to The Verge, manually adjusting your shutter speed causes the phone to take a single exposure, as opposed to the multiple shots it usually takes. We found that manually adjusting your aperture, and leaving the phone to control shutter speed, resulted in images that appeared to still use the phone’s multi-shot computational mode.

In our tests, the images in the single shot mode were often still quite good. In bright daylight, you’d likely struggle to tell the difference between the single exposures and the ones multi-shot computational photos produced with computational methods that have long allowed phones to produce better images than would otherwise be possible because of their relatively small sensors. Even if you’re pixel-peeping, the difference is subtle.

iPhone 18 Pro | Main camera, 48MP | F1.48 | 1/30 sec
Photo: Dale Baskin

In low-light settings, the effects of using a single exposure rather than a multi-shot one will become much more noticeable in the form of more noise and less detail. Unless you’re going for a specific look or effect, it’s probably best to avoid manual shutter control in low light.

Our advice for achieving best results with the variable aperture won’t surprise anyone familiar with traditional photography: for sharpest results stop down. The lens’ F1.8 setting is noticeably better than its F1.48 one, and while theoretically the effects of diffraction will start to creep in around F2.8 and F4, we didn’t find that there was too much of an issue with sharpness at those settings in our tests.

Other considerations

While Apple markets its phones’ crop modes (the 2x and, on the Pros, 8x settings) as “optical quality,” they are created only using a quarter of their respective sensor’s area, and so come with a definite loss of quality. Of course, if the choice is between using them and not getting the shot at all, they’re handy to have, but it’s worth getting a little closer and using one of the actual optical settings if possible.

Speaking of the other cameras, it’s also worth noting that the main camera is by far the iPhone’s largest, with the ultrawide and telephoto ones using much smaller sensors. Again, there are some situations where they’re the best tool for the job, but if image quality is your main concern, it’s worth using the main camera, especially in lower-light situations.

The Nikon Z5IIC is an entry-level full-frame camera with a 24.5MP BSI CMOS sensor. As its name implies, the sensor, along with many of the camera’s other specs and features, are borrowed from the company’s larger, more expensive Z5II; Nikon has simply crammed it all into a smaller body, leaving off a few extras like the EVF, high-resolution screen and second card slot.

Editor’s note: at Nikon’s request, all sample photos from a pre-production camera are out-of-camera JPEGs, cropped and re-saved.

Key specifications

• 24.5MP BSI full-frame CMOS sensor
• IBIS up to 7.5EV
• Full mechanical shutter
• 3.2″ 1.04M dot fully-articulated display
• 11fps mech. bursts, 30fps JPEG-only elec.
• 4K/30 full-width, 60p w/ 1.5x crop

The Z5IIC will cost $1400, coming in below even the Z5II’s launch price and representing a $450 discount compared to its current, increased MSRP. It will be available in black or silver, and can be kitted with a variety of lenses, including Nikon’s 24-50mm F4-6.3, 24-105mm F4-7.1 and 26mm F2.8 pancake.

Index:

• What’s new
• How it compares
• Body and handling
• Autofocus
• Video
• Initial impressions
• Sample gallery
• Specifications
• Press release

What’s new

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

There isn’t much new about the Z5IIC, as it’s essentially an existing camera with some features removed, rather than added. This means that the main change is its design, which we’ll mostly cover in the Body and handling section. However, as a high-level overview, the camera has a squared-off body with a grip style similar to that of the Z5II (which ends up making it feel a bit chunky in the hand).

This design, and the EVF it omits, means it occupies a new position in Nikon’s full-frame mirrorless lineup. While the video-focused ZR may appear to fit that description, the Z5IIC’s ergonomics and user experience are much closer to that of a super-sized Z30, but even more focused on stills and hybrid use. This is the first EVF-less mirrorless camera that Nikon has made aimed as much at photographers as videographers.

Mitchell Clark

Beyond the design, Nikon has introduced one minor upgrade to the camera’s autofocus system: in addition to the 9 types of subject the Z5II was trained to recognize, the Z5IIC gains an “aquatic life” mode, mainly designed for taking pictures in aquariums. The camera also gains the highly-customizable grain effect the company introduced on the Zf, which is likely a bigger deal than it seems in the age of social media feeds dominated by simulations of film.

How it compares

With its price and feature set, the Z5IIC doesn’t really have any direct competitors. The Panasonic S9, with its stabilized full-frame sensor and very similar price point may seem like one, but its single top-plate command dial and focus on shooting video, rather than stills, makes it a fundamentally different camera to use once you actually have it in your hand. We’re also comparing the Sony a7C II, since it has a similar form-factor (though a much higher price-point). Finally, we’ve included the Z5II to illustrate what you’re giving up for the C’s smaller size.

For video-first creators, the S9 is, in most ways, the better pick, thanks to its inclusion of open-gate modes, excellent IBIS performance and Panasonic’s unmatched toolbox of features that make shooting video easier (though all of this is slightly let down by its lack of a headphone jack, and somewhat limiting thermal performance). While stills shooters will likely appreciate the openness of the L-mount ecosystem compared to the relatively restricted Z-mount, none of our testers have really enjoyed using the S9 for photography and the lack of a mechanical shutter further cements this. It’s clearly not who the camera is aimed at.

Conversely, while the a7CII has a similarly open lens mount, it goes the opposite direction; it’s a better tool for stills than video, thanks to its quite slow readout speeds. We also appreciate the inclusion of a competent viewfinder, despite the small size and, while we miss having an AF joystick, that’s something the S9 and Z5IIC omit, too. The elephant in the room is price; the a7CII is a cut down version of an enthusiast camera, while the Z5IIC is based on an entry-level model, with the focus on more beginner-friendly scene and color modes that come with that positioning.

Body and handling

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

On its own, the Z5IIC’s body looks small for a full-frame camera, but once you pick it up and attach a lens it ends up feeling relatively substantial. It’s clearly still lighter than other models, but it’s dense, and our testers found the grip filled out even their relatively large hands.

We found the (very approximately) rangefinder-style design to be quite pleasing, and it’s nice that Nikon is providing a version with a silver top plate, even if there’s only a single own-brand lens matched to the color.

Controls

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

The Z5IIC comes equipped with plenty of controls. You get two configurable top-plate dials, a mode dial with two custom settings and most of the customizable buttons you’d find on the rest of the Z-series cameras, including two front-plate ones, next to the lens. Nikon has also included a button that lets you directly access its “Picture Controls” color modes (which you can add to by connecting the camera to Wi-Fi and the company’s Imaging Cloud service).

The one thing the camera doesn’t have is a joystick, so navigating through menus and controlling your autofocus point will have to be done using either the touchscreen or the multi-directional controller. While this isn’t our favorite way of controlling autofocus, it’s less of a concern on a camera where you’ll never be using an EVF.

The menus are, again, the standard Nikon fare that you’ll find across the rest of the company’s mirrorless lineup. We also appreciate another detail that Nikon kept the same: the dedicated stills/video switch, separate from the power-on switch.

Display

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

The Z5IIC’s display is large and fully articulated, but isn’t as high-resolution as the one found on the Z5II, nor is it the super-sized and super-bright model Nikon used for the similarly EVF-less ZR. We found that, in bright sunlight, it was a little too dim to see clearly, though it worked well in most other scenarios.

There will be those that complain that it articulates instead of tilts, and that there’s no EVF (despite Nikon already making essentially the same camera but with a viewfinder). While both are valid preferences to have, there are undeniable benefits to a fully-articulating screen; it’s much easier to preview shots or video of yourself using one, and it can work at odd angles that can be difficult to get with just a tilting one. Plus, if you’re putting the camera in a bag, you can flip the screen inward towards the camera body to protect it.

Nikon says that its market research shows a strong contingent of users who are happy to use a screen-only camera. While they didn’t say it explicitly, it seems likely it’s mainly comprised of younger photographers who grew up using phones where the screen was the only option.

Ports and connectivity

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

The Z5IIC has a relatively robust selection of ports: there’s USB-C for charging and data transfer at 5 Gbps speeds, headphone and microphone jacks for audio monitoring and input and a microHDMI socket for video out. The latter isn’t our favorite connector ever, but it’s a reasonable choice on a camera at this size and price. It also has reasonable wireless connectivity, with 2.4/5Ghz Wi-Fi (the latter of which can power faster file transfers to Nikon’s app), and Bluetooth 5.0.

The camera’s single UHS-II card slot is located on the side of the grip, where it’s easy to get at even if you have your camera mounted on a tripod.

Battery

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

Like the standard Z5II, the Z5IIC uses Nikon’s standard 16Wh EN-EL15c battery, and is rated to get 350 shots out of a charge, extendable to 390 shots if you enable the power saving mode. The CIPA ratings under-represent the number of shots you’re likely to get under shooting conditions outside the lab, but work as a useful point of comparison amongst cameras. We’d expect a camera with this rating to be good for a solid day of shooting, or a light weekend, but would recommend bringing a spare or USB-C power bank for the most intensive shooting sessions. So far, Nikon hasn’t made any mention of producing a battery grip for it, nor are any of its existing models listed as compatible.

Autofocus

The Z5IIC adopts the same autofocus system that Nikon uses across its mirrorless lineup, from the Z50II all the way up to the Z9 (though we’ve found it performs a touch better in cameras with faster sensors). This means you have a range of AF modes to choose from, including a single point mode that focuses exactly where you tell it, larger points that can also take the area surrounding them into account, and zones that let you specify an area to focus on objects within. There are three fixed-size zones, and three custom-size ones, though the camera lets you remove focus point types that you don’t use from the menu so you have a shorter list to scroll through.

In addition to these modes, there’s also a wide area mode, where the camera decides what to focus on, as well as an even more automatic AF-A mode where the camera tries to determine whether the subject is moving or static and switch between single and continuous focus acquisition (though we’ve found that, in modern cameras, the latter is reliable enough that this mode isn’t particularly useful). There’s also a 3D Tracking mode, which gives you a small box that will attempt to stick to whatever you place it over, even as it or the camera moves. This is slightly distinct from what you’ll find on Sony or Canon cameras, which offer tracking across their focus point types.

The 3D Tracking, zone and wide-area AF modes, can be used in conjunction with the camera’s machine-learning derived subject recognition system, which can track 10 different kinds of subject (though they’re categorized into six categories, making the list less overwhelming list to scroll through). There’s also an auto subject recognition mode, which will look for any of the kinds of subjects that the camera can recognize in the scene, though there’s no option to narrow that mode down to just the kinds of subjects you expect to be shooting, like you can with some other brands’ systems.

By default, the camera uses Touch Shutter, which means that if you tap on the screen to select a focus point, the camera will take a photo after acquiring focus. This can be turned off via an on-screen button (which is easy to inadvertently reset into Touch Shutter mode, but can thankfully be completely removed), but means that the camera may not work exactly as most users expect the first time they turn it on.

Video

We shot our first look video almost entirely with the Z5IIC.

Apologies if you’re tired of hearing this, but the Z5IIC’s video capabilities are again the same as you’d find on the Z5II. The top-level summary means that it ends up being very competent at videography, with 10-bit recording that uses the full width of the sensor up to 4K/30p, and a 1.5x crop to achieve 4K/60p that can be used for getting an unpleasantly soap-opera-like look or for slowing as slow-motion footage.

While those specs aren’t groundbreaking, Nikon has built a pretty extensive set of workflow tools around the camera’s core recording modes. It has a waveform monitor for more accurately judging exposure – especially handy if you’re recording in N-Log – HLG recording for HDR playback, a tally light to make it obvious when you’re recording and the ability to use its autofocus subject detection modes in video. It even supports recording in N-Raw, though it’s hard to imagine most of the Z5IIC’s target audience ever having a use for it or the SD card slot really enjoying the experience.

In use

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

Given the Z5IIC’s name and appearance, I was surprised by its heft when I picked it up. At 620g it’s almost 100g heavier than the EOS R8 II that I’d been testing immediately before, and that camera has an EVF. The Canon’s minuscule battery is probably a large part of that difference, but Sony’s a7C II is similarly lighter, despite its full-size battery and viewfinder. This isn’t to say that the Z5IIC is heavy by any means, and it feels quite solidly built, but it’s worth noting if you’re interested in it as an ultra-portable everyday carry camera.

Of course, any full-frame’s claims of being light and small will be challenged when you put a lens on it. Nikon’s sub-$1000 S-series primes are quite nice to use, unlike those of some particular competitors, and it does have a fair number of relatively reasonably-sized zooms. However, the latter often have maximum aperture numbers that you’d struggle to be excited by. And if you want a lens that will let you easily fit the Z5IIC in a purse or small-to-medium sling bag, your options quickly dwindle.

Mitchell Clark

While there are benefits to Nikon’s menu system, which has a dedicated set of pages for core photo and video settings, then banks of Custom Settings covering different aspects of shooting, it can take a while to get used to or remember where particular options live. This is exacerbated by the fact that those menus range from settings 95% of users will never need to relatively vital functions; an issue that’s particularly acute in video.

Mitchell Clark

It essentially feels like Nikon has used Custom Settings as a dumping ground for every new thing it comes up with, and I worry that newcomers that pick this camera up as an inexpensive option might be overwhelmed by just how extensive the menus and submenus are (though this is broadly true for most cameras on the market these days). The upside is that, if they take the time to learn them – something made easier by the color coding and initial letters for the sections – the Z5IIC offers a lot of room to grow, with features like pre-capture (unfortunately still JPEG-only), customizable burst rates and a highly customizable “i ” menu that you can use to quickly access your most-used settings while remaining on the shooting screen.

Initial impressions

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

It’s easy to look at the Z5IIC and think that it asks you to give up quite a bit for what wind up being minor reductions in size and weight. This would, however, be missing half the point; removing things like an EVF and second card slot also help Nikon hit an aggressive price point that makes the Z5IIC one of the cheapest full-frame mirrorless cameras ever launched.

For that price, you get a lot of camera. Top-tier autofocus, very good image quality, IBIS, fast burst rates, a full mechanical shutter, competent video, I could go on. When the Z5II launched for $1700, I found it hard to believe how much it offered for the money. Now, you can get a whole lot of what made it so good for a lot less. And if you don’t like those trade-offs? Great news! Nikon still makes the Z5II.

Mitchell Clark

The one thing that dampens my excitement is lens selection. Yes, Nikon appears to have been unsuccessful in preventing unlicensed third parties from building lenses for Z-mount, and as a result there are a fair number of lenses on the market that are small and nice to use. That makes the Z5IIC more appealing than if you were stuck with the options Nikon itself has made, or that have its blessing. But because that clearly happened against the company’s will, there is always a risk that future software updates could reduce compatibility with those lenses in some way*.

Still, if you’re happy with the lineup of lenses Nikon and Tamron provide, or are willing to use unlicensed third-party options, the Z5IIC is an exciting option to have on the market. Full-frame cameras aren’t liable to ever be the best option if you’re looking for something truly small and portable, but Nikon has undoubtedly packed a lot into a camera that’s small for what it is. While I still personally believe that first-time camera buyers and anyone seriously focused on portability should give more credence to crop-sensor options, its undeniable that there are people who just want a full-frame camera that’s as cheap (and small) as possible. The Z5IIC manages to fill that role in Nikon’s lineup without giving up too much… unless you absolutely need an EVF.

*And Nikon has, lately, been quite good about providing meaningful software updates that you’ll want to be able to install. Though our advice remains that you should never buy a product on any assumption of what it might do in the future.

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. 

Note: unlike all other manufacturers, Nikon does not allow full-resolution samples from its pre-production cameras. The samples provided below are slightly cropped, though not resized, out-of-camera JPEGs to comply with this rule. Our final review will include full-size JPEGs and Raws.

Nikon Z5IIC specifications

Adobe has announced that its acquisition of AI company Topaz Labs has been completed, with it and its products have joined Adobe’s ranks.

Topaz Labs is best known for tools like Topaz Photo, Topaz Video and Topaz Gigapixel, which use a variety of proprietary AI models to do various tasks, like denoising or upscaling photos and video, sharpening pictures or applying a slow-motion effect to standard footage. Adobe announced its intentions to acquire the company earlier this summer, but said it was contingent on regulatory approval, which it has clearly received.

As part of the announcement, Adobe has clearly reiterated its intentions for Topaz’s existing products, at least in the near term: Adobe says the branding, apps and models will continue to be available as standalone products, suggesting you won’t need to also be a Creative Cloud subscriber to access them.

If you do have a Creative Cloud subscription, Adobe says it plans on “integrating Topaz Labs’s tools and models into everyday Creative Cloud workflows,” as well as optimizing the performance of its AI models. Some Topaz Labs models have already been available in tools like Photoshop, but it sounds like that could expand into the company’s video tools as well.