The Sony a7R II was the company’s fourth full-frame Alpha-series camera, coming less than two years after it unveiled the first full-frame mirrorless cameras, the original a7 and a7R.

2015’s Mark Two brought a host of improvements, not least the addition of in-body image stabilization and on-sensor phase detection, both of which had been absent from the original. It was also among the first ILCs to shoot 4K video, though this was over a year after Panasonic’s GH4, which got there first.

But it’s another of its features than made us want to feature it in Throwback Thursday: it was among the first large sensor cameras to use a BSI CMOS sensor. Not the first: that credit belongs to the short-lived Samsung NX1, but the first full-frame example and one from which, unlike the Samsung, other cameras followed.

Back-side illuminated sensors weren’t a new concept: Sony’s Semiconductor division had announced its first “Exmor R”-branded sensors some seven years earlier and they’d started to appear in compacts in 2009. So why, with all the promise of sensors with improved image quality, nearly twofold increases in sensitivity and lower noise, did this technology not arrive in large sensors sooner?

The simple answer was that there was less need. Even as Exmor R was being announced, Sony told us that its advantages would mainly be a benefit in small sensors with small pixels in which the circuitry makes up a large proportion of each pixel. In larger sensors, the circuitry interferes less and microlenses could direct light to the photosensitive region very effectively. This technology wouldn’t have such a big impact in larger sensors, we were told.

Sure enough, if we look back at the performance of the a7R II’s sensor, vs that of the original a7R, we don’t see much of a difference, until you get to very high ISO settings. And, as it turns out, much of that difference isn’t so much from the adoption of BSI technology as the move to a dual conversion gain design.

The main advantage of a BSI sensor in the a7R II wasn’t so much about the proportion of the pixel that was light sensitive (as played such a big role in the compact camera sensors) but in the fact that the light-sensitive region was right at the front of the silicon.

Putting the light-sensitive part of the pixel nearer the surface improves the acceptance angle of the pixel: how extreme an angle the pixel can receive light from. This helped to mitigate the problem that Leica had tried to address with offset microlenses towards the corners of the sensor: making sure that the far corners of the sensor could capture light arriving at awkward approach angles.

This is less critical in APS-C cameras, as the lens is typically mounted a similar distance from the sensor but its corners aren’t so distant from its center. This is likely to be why, other than the Samsung, it would be another three years before BSI technology appeared in an APS-C camera, and even then with what was primarily a speed, rather than low-light benefit.

Sony’s a7R II was a big step forward for Sony’s full-frame lineup, but perhaps its most significant improvement wasn’t necessarily well appreciated at the time.

Leica has announced a Formula One-branded special edition of the Q3 43. The special edition marks the start of a licensing partnership between the two brands. One that they say embodies their “shared values: precision, teamwork and
craftsmanship.”

The $9950 Q3 43 F1 edition will come with a carbon fiber version of the Q3-series wireless charging accessory grip, along with a soft release with carbon weave and a carbon fibre thumb rest, clipped into the hotshoe. The body features a “Microvelour” coating, to evoke the steering wheel of a Formula 1 car. The camera’s top plate and lens cap feature the current F1 logo.

Leica

The soft-touch shutter button and some of the camera’s shutter buttons have red accents to mimic the buttons on a modern F1 car’s steering wheel. The camera also comes with a rope-style camera strap with F1 branding.

In most other regards, the camera will behave like a standard Q3 43 (to which we gave our Gold award, when we reviewed it), but with the addition of an exclusive “Formula One” color mode. Leica says the F1 Look provides: “a rendering that complements the world of motorsport. Higher contrast and richer saturation capture the atmosphere of the racetrack and paddock in the final image.”

Leica

There are some cynics who might say that Formula One isn’t what it once was. And that, for all its shows of impressive engineering, has become an exclusive pursuit, entirely disconnected from the rest of automotive, and from its origins in which the skill of talented individuals overcame everything, delivering memorable moments seen the world over. But, if nothing else, it knows the power of branding.

Leica’s press release doesn’t reveal how many Q3 43 F1 Edition models will be made but, as ever with special editions, we look forward to seeing them come up for auction, above their original list prices, in a few years’ time.

Launched in February 2009, the Fujifilm F200 EXR was an update to Fujifilm’s popular “F” series of large(r than typical) sensor compacts. It had a 28-140mm equivalent zoom lens in front of a Type 1/1.6 (8x6mm) that was around 65% larger than most compacts of the day.

But it’s the specifics of that sensor that make it interesting. The F200 EXR was the first instance of what proved to be the final iteration of Fujifilm’s Super CCD concept.

Richard Butler

Richard Butler

Previous versions of the Super CCD concept had essentially rotated the standard Bayer filter pattern by 45 degrees: exploiting the fact that the standard Bayer layout has better resolution capture along diagonal axes than along its vertical or horizontals. Later versions partially masked some pixels to mean that they captured less light during a given exposure and hence didn’t clip when the larger pixels did, allowing better highlight capture.

SuperCCD EXR expanded on both of these concepts. It continued to use the rotated Bayer pattern idea but this time re-arranged to put pairs of same-colored filters next to one another. This means you have pairs of adjacent pixels whose information can be easily combined. This, in turn, let Fujifilm offer three distinct modes:

• High Resolution (HR) mode – This would render a 12MP image using all the pixels
• High Sensitivity (SN) mode – This combined the output of pairs adjacent pixels in low light, to give 6MP images with improved signal-to-noise ratio
• Dynamic Range (DR) mode – This stopped the exposure early for alternate lines of pixels, meaning they were less prone to clipping. Adjacent pairs of bright and darker exposures were combined to give a 6MP image with better highlight retention.

Sound familiar? Because those three modes are essentially the three ways in which Quad Bayer and TetraCell sensors are used in modern smartphones. These have an oversized Bayer pattern (the same R,G,B,G pattern but expanded so that each color covers four photosites), rather than a rotated version. But they end up with sets of adjacent pixels that sample the same color. This means they’re able to pixel-bin for improved performance in low light or expose alternate lines of their sensors for different periods of time, then combine the result.

So, even though the SuperCCD concept was eventually abandoned, some of the ideas in introduced are at the heart of many of the images from today’s most popular smartphones. Even if the user isn’t necessarily aware of that.

Getty Images has said it plans to go through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process as a step to being taken private by members of the Getty family and Koch Inc’s investment arm, who will together invest up to $533M in the business.

“Under the Plan, vendors will be unaffected and paid in full in the ordinary course of business,” the company said: “There is no anticipated impact on content contributors, partners, customers, or employees across the Company’s worldwide network.”

The stock image library had given up on its attempts to buy rival ShutterStock after the UK competition body forced revisions to the deal. The heavily indebted company has now been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and its two largest shareholders say they’ve developed a plan to take the company private.

Although the company said it expects a reduction in revenue from its iStock division, “due to reduced eCommerce
demand,” it said it still expects to see growth in its editorial business that provides images to news outlets.

This plan, if approved by the remaining creditors, will be implemented via a “prepackaged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy: a mechanism by which a company can be significantly reorganized, overseen by a bankruptcy court but under the control of the existing owners, in order to remain as a going concern. Some existing lenders have agreed to write-down and restructure some of the company’s debts as part of the process, and the company confirmed “the requisite majority of creditors have committed to vote in favor of the plan.”

It says the restructuring process should be complete by the end of the year.

News agency (and competitor) Reuters reports that competition from AI-generated imagery and heavy debt have played a role in the move. It highlighted that the company’s total debt was around $2.1B at the end of June, whereas its market valuation had slipped to just under $21M when markets closed last Friday. The company’s revenue estimate for 2026 is $920M.

In an accompanying financial update, Getty Images said it had spent around $105M on the failed ShutterStock acquisition, along with $17M in ongoing costs relating to its copyright infringement cases against Stability AI, which it accuses of using its images to train an image generation model.

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Tamron has announced the 16-50mm F2.8, a fast standard zoom for all the most popular APS-C mirrorless mounts.

The compact, unstabilized lens arrives in the lineup alongside the existing 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD and will be available for Canon RF, Fujifilm X, Sony E and Nikon Z mounts. This makes it one of the few instances of a lens Nikon has lisenced that competes directly with one of its own lenses.

Richard Butler

Elsewhere, the 16-50mm offers a wider alternative to Sigma’s 18-50mm F2.8 and, while it’s physically longer, it takes the same 55mm diameter filter.

The lens delivers a 24-75mm equivalent range on Sony, Fujifilm and Nikon bodes, or a 26-80mm range on Canon RF bodies, making it a useful fast everyday lens as a kit zoom replacement.

At 80mm (3.2″) long and with a diameter of a little over 64mm (2.5″) maximum diameter, it is around half the volume of the stabilized 17-70mm F2.8 VC. And with a weight of 305g (10.8oz), it’s 42% lighter. It’s only 4% longer than the Sigma 18-50mm in their retracted states and around 5% heavier, despite covering an appreciably wider range.

Richard Butler

The new lens features 14 elements in 10 groups, these include one LD low-dispersion element, two molded glass aspherics and two hybrid aspherical lenses. It can focus as close as 15cm (6″) at wide angle, giving 0.22x magnification. Its 7 aperture blade design is the main area you can see costs being cut, vs the 9 blades on the more expensive 17-70mm.

Sadly, we’ve not had a chance to shoot with the 16-50mm yet, but we hope to in the coming weeks.

Richard Butler

The Tamron 16-50mm F2.8 A benefits from the company’s simplified naming system, with “A” indicating that it’s for APS-C and a code number (B091) to distinguish it from any future lenses with similar specs. The Canon, Sony and Nikon versions include a USB-C port, to allow firmware updates. We’re told this is not present on the X-mount version.

The 16-50mm F2.8 will arrive for Sony E-mount and Canon RF users in late October, with Fujifilm X following a month later and Nikon Z hitting the shelves just before the end of the year. It will sell with a list price of $529 for the Sony E and Fujifilm X versions and $549 for Canon and Nikon users. These are at least $170 less expensive than the larger, stabilized 17-70mm F2.8 VC will set you back.

It’s also significantly less than the camera makers’ own-brand 16-50-something F2.8s, which range from $900 for the Nikon 16-50mm F2.8 VR to $1700 for Sony’s 16-55mm F2.8 G.

Easy smartphone connection is one of the most asked-for features we hear when talk to people about cameras, so we thought we’d investigate the current state of all the brands’ apps. Beyond a few frustrations, we found Canon’s Camera Connect to be one of the better options, at least with the recent cameras we had available to test.

Getting started

Before you can even use Canon’s Camera Connect app, you need to create a “Canon ID” using an e-mail address and password and log-in, which can be frustrating: it’s not entirely clear what benefit there is to the user of this. The app will also regularly ask you if you wish to register your camera with your Canon ID and will then remind you that you can do so, even if you say No. There’s no ‘do not show this message again’ option.

Richard Butler

To first connect the camera, you need to select your camera model from the app’s list of available models. This helps, in that it means the app should be able to guide you through the appropriate workflow for your camera model. 

Connecting the relatively recent PowerShot V1 to an Android phone was a case of using the displayed QR to download the app then starting the pairing process from the camera. With the app open and the camera trying to establish a connection, a pop-up box with the camera’s ID appeared on the app, letting me confirm Bluetooth pairing. I then had to confirm on the camera, too, then was good to go.

Richard Butler

Richard Butler

Once the two devices were paired, it was just a case of opening the app and waiting for a bluetooth connection to be established. As soon as the bluetooth icon lights up in the app, you get the choice of importing images from the camera or to engage live view remote shooting. 

Wi-Fi connectivity

Selecting either of these options tells the camera to turn its Wi-Fi on, and after a few moments the phone asks permission to connect to the Wi-Fi network the camera has established. Click ‘Connect’ and it establishes a connection fairly quickly.

Richard Butler

Richard Butler

On iOS you have to approve the network connection each time you re-establish a camera-to-phone Wi-Fi connection, whereas Android is happy to trust it, once you’ve given it permission the first time.

Richard Butler

The “Imaged on camera” option, once the Wi-Fi connection has been established, shows all the images currently on the camera’s card. On Android, you can only import JPEGs, and the camera will generate a JPEG if you try to import a Raw file. On iOS, the app is happy to transfer JPEG, HEIFs or Raws, probably because all three file types are supported by Apple’s operating system, so it knows what to do with the files. If you try to import an HDR HEIFs using the Android app it’ll tell you you have to manually convert the HEIF to a JPEG (and drop down to SDR) on the camera, first.

Remote live view shooting

Engaging remote live view shooting is a similar process: pressing the button in the app initiates a Wi-Fi connection that you’ll need to approve each time on the iOS version. You’re then given a live feed from the camera with an interface that lets you control a lot of the camera’s settings.

Richard Butler

You can adjust exposure settings, drive mode, AF mode, white balance and so forth. You can’t change exposure mode, though or, at least, not on a camera whether that’s set using a physical dial. You don’t get fine-grained control like WB fine tune and some functions can be greyed-out for reasons that aren’t obvious.

Richard Butler

Although not enabled by default, you can set the app to let you double-tap to zoom in the live view display to the area around the AF point. With this done, the manual focus function that lets you drive the focus forward or backward with three degrees of subtlety becomes much more useful, though the zoom only punches in to the 5x level of zoom, not the really fine 10x option you can get on the camera’s rear screen.

Richard Butler

Taking photos in live view shooting mode does not transfer them to the camera: you’ll need to leave the live view shooting option and switch back to the “Images on camera” function. You can review your images and even give them a rating, but that’s it.

Further functions

Away from the App’s Home tab is another called “Functions,” which will show the other modes and functions available with whichever camera you currently have connected.

Richard Butler

So, for example, most cameras have an Auto Transfer option, that lets you automatically send images from your camera to your phone, as you take them. With this function you have the choice of whether to downsize the files (to 1MB 1620 x 1080px files) before transfer and the option to remove location data from the transferred images.

This mode only continues to function while a Wi-Fi connection is maintained and the Auto Transfer function is still active in the app. Auto Transfer can’t be used in conjuction with the live view shooting mode, frustratingly. Auto Transfer can’t send Raws and won’t send HDR PQ HEIFs, either.

Also in the Functions tab are a ‘Bluetooth remote control’ function, an option to share the smartphone’s location data with the camera, to add it to images as you shoot them, and the ability to send your phone’s date and time to the camera, with the option to update these settings every time you reconnect the app. This last feature sounds especially useful when traveling across time zones.

Richard Butler

Richard Butler

There’s also the option to set your camera up to connect to local Wi-Fi networks, which then lets you engage its Cloud upload and Live Streaming features. You can also do this from the camera itself, but it’s likely to be easier to find and connect to Wi-Fi networks from the app in your phone, rather than having to navigate an on-screen keyboard in the camera’s menus.

Newer cameras may include the option to download Custom Picture color profiles for video from Canon’s LUT library. This downloads standard .cube LUTs to your phone, from where you can push them to your camera. Via a rather convoluted process, you can then save these LUTs into one of the Custom Picture slots in your camera and save them to the SD card to simplify the process in future.

The final option in a link to the camera’s online instruction manual. The precise behavior may depend on how your local Canon subsidiary uploads its manuals, but in the US, at least, you get the choice of the user manual as html pages or in pdf form.

USB connection

What really sets Camera Connect apart from many other manufacturer apps is the ability to connect the two devices directly with a USB cable. Canon’s recent cameras have a “Choose USB connection app” menu option at the end of their network settings menu. Android users can leave it in the default “Photo Import/Remote Control” setting, whereas Apply users will need to select “Canon app(s) for iPhone.”

Richard Butler

Once this is set, connecting a cable between the devices lets you jump straight into features such as image import, live view control or auto upload, that usually require a Wi-Fi connection. The Android version even asked whether you want Camera Connect to be automatically opened, when you connect your camera.

Richard Butler

This USB route is much faster than Wi-Fi and doesn’t require any pairing in advance. The camera doesn’t need to recognize the phone and you won’t need to select which phone to connect to, if you have more than one pairing registered: you just plug in and go. Even with a USB connection, the Android app won’t let you transfer Raws.

Other Apps

Finally, beyond the Functions tab, the Camera Connect app has an ‘Apps’ tab that lets you download Canon’s other smartphone apps, including its Selphy printing app and the EOS Webcam Utility Pro app.

Richard Butler

Richard Butler

Each time you open the app, it connects to Canon’s servers and checks for firmware updates for the currently active camera model. If an update is available, the app can show you the change log and let you download the firmware to your phone. It’ll then establish a Wi-Fi connection to the camera to transfer the firmware update file. 

Only once that file has transferred completely to the camera are you asked if you want to update the firmware, so you don’t have to worry about connection status during the update.

I’m going to argue that Sigma’s 50-120mm F2.8 is one of the most interesting lenses this year. And not just because I’ve been asking for something like it, for years.

Different formats have different strengths and weaknesses, generally offering a different balance of size, price and image quality. But they can only live up to their full potential if they have lenses that let them deliver the size or price benefits they should be capable of.

For various reasons that have very little to do with the merits, or otherwise, of APS-C, most of the biggest camera makers have heavily focused their lens development on full-frame. This has left us in the odd situation where Canon, Nikon and Sony all make some quite nice APS-C bodies, but with lenses for them being distinctly few and far between.

But, as was the case in the DSLR era, third-party makers such as Sigma and Tamron have helped fill the gap. And, refreshingly, for the most part, the big camera makers have let them.

Finally, with the arrival of Sigma’s new 75-180mm equiv zoom, APS-C users across multiple systems can put together some pretty flexible kits that take full advantage of the size, price, image quality balance that the format should be able to provide.

Richard Butler

Incrementally, the choice of compact primes for APS-C has expanded, with autofocus options from the likes of Sigma, Tokina and Viltrox spanning a wide range of focal lengths. In terms of zooms there are a choice of wide-angles, and both Tamron and Sigma offer some interesting fast standard zooms

Even the camera makers themselves seem to recognize this need, with Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm all offering 16-50-ish F2.8 options. And, collectively, these options will cover a wide range of photography situations.

The addition of a modern approximation of a 70-200mm equiv for APS-C rounds out this lineup. It means you can keep your kit small and relatively affordable across an even wider range of photography. And it’s hard to convey just how small the Sigma 50-120mm is, until you see it in person.

Obviously, a 50-120mm F2.8 is not fully equivalent to an F2.8 75-180mm lens on full-frame (120/2.8 ≠ 180/2.8), but it lets you do the things that make a 70-200mm lens on full-frame so popular, while maintaining the size and price benefits you get in return for the image quality trade-off.

I loved the original APO Sigma 50-150mm F2.8 EX II HSM in the DSLR era because it was two-thirds the size of a 70-200 and two-thirds the price. It was a much easier to handle and less potentially intimidating lens than a 70-200, helping give me the confidence to shoot some of my first public portraits. And it was much easier to carry than the second-hand 70-200mm F2.8 I’d previously bought and that sat at home unless I was absolutely sure I’d need it.

Richard Butler

The new Sigma not only repeats that trick but improves on it. It’s so much smaller and lighter than an actual 70-200mm lens (even compared with Canon’s RF 70-200mm F4 with which it’s approximately equivalent) that it means I can keep it with me, even if I’m not anticipating needing it.

So, APS-C users, you have a choice: you can believe the bottom-line-benefitting talk of ‘upgrade paths,’ and saddle yourself with a heavy, expensive 105-300mm equiv lens (which can have their uses, but that aren’t necessarily the same as those of a 70-200mm), or you opt for the Sigma, and gain approximately 70-200 utility in a lens you can fit in a coat pocket. As an APS-C shooter, I know which makes sense to me.

Sometimes the future creeps up on you quicker than you expected. We’ve been thinking about re-starting our Throwback Thursday series for a while, but Sigma’s announcement of a 75-180mm equivalent lens for APS-C rather forced our hand.

This year marks 20 years since Sigma launched the original APO 50-150mm F2.8 EX HSM DC, a fast 75-225mm equivalent zoom for APS-C. A lens that gave APS-C DSLR users the range and utility of a classic 70-200mm but without the cost or weight of one.

DPReview marked the date with a single-paragraph news story along with Sigma’s press release, which was our standard level of lens coverage, back when the site had only a single full-time member of staff. We described it as “very interesting sounding.” Even for Phil’s level of British understatement, this is to significantly under-sell the lens. At a time when full-frame was out of reach for all but the most committed enthusiasts, this gave APS-C users a lens they hadn’t had before: a dedicated, fast 70-200mm equiv.

Richard Butler

A slightly revised Mark II with very similar specs was released in 2008 and a copy made its way to the DPReview offices. It must have been a Nikon version as there are samples in the review gallery of the Nikon D5000 and D300S reviews the next year. There’s one shot by Phil, but the rest seem to be by me. Because I loved that lens.

Sigma

I’d arrived at DPReview as the owner of both an APS-C DSLR and a 70-200mm F2.8 that I barely ever used because it was just too big and heavy to casually carry around. Even having bought it second-hand, it ended up being one of my least cost-effective photographic purchases ever.

The 50-150mm was a revelation: it was less than two-thirds the size of most 70-200mm F2.8s, less than two-thirds of the weight and something like two-thirds the price. Unsurprisingly, it was much more directly comparable with the dimensions of Canon’s popular 70-200mm F4, but offering a range I found more useful and with an extra stop of light capture on the APS-C cameras we tended to be testing.

Richard Butler

Richard Butler

It had the range to let me shoot things like bike racing and also made a pretty handy portrait lens, as it was much easier to handle and much less intimidating than a full-sized, tripod-footed 70-200 F2.8. And its compact size meant I did actually carry it around with me. And got more photos, as a result. The 50-150mm taught me an important lesson about how different formats can shine, if they’re properly supported.

I used it regularly over the time we had it and was disappointed when its stabilized replacement used the same housing as the 70-200mm F2.8 launched alongside it: giving up the size and weight benefits that appealed so much in the first place. It’s what perhaps made me a little over-excited when, years later, Fujifilm and Samsung produced similar lenses, even though they weren’t as small or light as I’d hoped.

I think I’ve requested or asked after a 50-150mm successor almost every time I’ve met Sigma’s CEO, Kazuto Yamaki. I thought I was reading too much into his response when he seemed more positive about the idea, last time we met.

But the only thing that excited me more than hearing that Sigma was about to lauch a spiritual successor to the 50-150mm F2.8, was unboxing it for the first time and finding out that the new lens is even smaller and even lighter than its DSLR forbear. And, looking at the images: sharper and better able to focus, too. I wonder if this new lens will inspire the same decades-long appreciation.

Sigma has announced the 50-120mm F2.8 OS DC | Contemporary, a fast telezoom for APS-C mirrorless cameras. The lens delivers a 75-180mm equivalent range for Fujifilm X or Sony E mount cameras and an 80-192mm equiv range for Canon RF users.

The lens is a spiritual successor to the excellent APO 50-150mm F2.8 EX DC HSM from 2006, but manages to add stabilization and downsize considerably.

At just 67mm wide and 99mm long (3.90 x 2.63″) for the E-mount version, the lens is smaller than a standard can of Coke (both the 330ml and 12oz versions). Its length extends by 25% when zoomed to its full extreme but is still only a fraction longer (5mm/0.2″) than Canon’s RF 70-200mm F4 in its retracted form. It weighs 390g (13.8oz), which again is remarkably similar to the weight of a full can of Coke.

Richard Butler

The 50-120mm completes a trio of F2.8 zooms for APS-C mirrorless, alongside the existing 10-18mm F2.8 and 18-50mm F2.8 lenses. Despite its longer range and similarly bright aperture, it shares a 55mm filter thread with the 18-50mm. It’s the only member of the F2.8 DC set to have a dedicated aperture ring and image stabilizaton.

That stabilization is rated at 6.5 stops of correction at 50mm and 4.5 stops at the 120mm long end, per tests conducted to CIPA’s standard methodology.

Richard Butler

The new lens uses a “high response linear actuator” for autofocus and has seemed swift and reliable from our usage so far, though we’ve not been trying sports shooting with it just yet.

The optical design utilizes 18 elements in 13 groups, including one fluorite-like FLD element, three super-low dispersion elements and four aspherics. The company says it’s been designed to exhibit minimal focus breathing, to extend its usefulness to video. It features 11 rounded aperture blades to keep bokeh circular.

Richard Butler

The lens barrel features a zoom ring, focus ring and a dedicated aperture ring (on the Sony and Fujifilm versions, at least) with an ‘A’ position. The Canon RF version will have a smooth-rotating control ring instead of an aperture ring.

As part of the Contemporary series it’s been designed to be dust and splash resistant. Its presence in Sigma’s more affordable line also means it’s priced at a remarkably reasonable $799.

Shooting experience

I’ve been shooting with a Fujifilm mount version of the lens for a week or so and I’m still caught off-guard occasionally that I’m using a 70-180mm equivalent, rather than a standard zoom.

Richard Butler

The aperture ring, the first on one of Sigma’s DC zooms for mirrorless, works nicely with the X-T4 and X-H2 bodies I used it on, though I did wish the lens could be locked in or out of the A position, rather than it simply being spaced a little further beyond F22.

For the size and the price, I was willing to forgive some pretty major image quality issues but didn’t encounter too many.

Close focus isn’t this lens’s strength, with the corners getting extremely soft and swirly if you shoot a flat subject a 50mm. Things are a lot more predictable near minimum focus distance at the long end of the zoom.

The swirliness makes a reappearance in the bokeh at times, but not in a way I found objectionable. In general, I found the bokeh to be soft and attractive, without any fussiness, which isn’t always a given for a fast tele zoom.

Richard Butler

In general, sharpness seems impressive, despite the use of X-Trans sensors, which our standard lens processing doesn’t always show to its best effect. There appears to be a small degree of pincussion distortion being corrected at both ends of the zoom, but nothing dramatic (it doesn’t appear to account for the close-focus strangeness at short focal lengths).

Richard Butler

It’s hard for me to be completely dispassionate about a lens that I’ve been hoping someone would make, for years, but I’m genuinely stunned by how small and easy-to-carry Sigma has managed to make the 50-120mm F2.8 OS. I look forward to shooting it for longer, once RF-mount versions are available, to see how it behaves on the EOS R7, since that’s currently the highest-res Bayer APS-C sensor.

As always, we’ve included Raws for download in our gallery, including some close-focus examples and a couple of aperture comparisons, so you can make your own assessment.

Full-frame has been the center of attention for the past few years, which can result in it overshadowing other formats. But, with the right support, different formats have their place, and we all lose out if those options are neglected.

Full-frame gets its name – and much of its level of manufacturer backing – from the fact that it allowed photographers to use their film-era lenses as originally designed. The economics of sensor manufacture pushed the likes of Canon, Nikon and Konica Minolta into the use of smaller sensors at the start of the digital era, but the large user-bases, including professional users with existing lens commitments, along with significant R&D investment having been spent on building up lens lineups, created powerful incentives to move to sensors that captured the “full frame” that those film-era lenses were designed to project.

That same push from users wanting to keep using their existing lenses, along with an audience now familiar with the image quality of digital full-frame, ensured that similar pressures came to bear as the industry moved across to mirrorless, such that the dimensions of “35mm” film still dominate the pro and enthusiast-focused products from Canon, Nikon and Sony.

And this concentration of development efforts means “full-frame” is the most extensively supported format on the market. Canon, Nikon and Sony all make APS-C cameras, but the bulk of their lens investment has been focused on full-frame, just reinforcing that format’s primacy in their lineups.

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

But that doesn’t mean it’s the best format or even some kind of carefully considered optimum. Like all formats, it’s an arbitrary choice; in this instance, it dimensions came about because a German engineer decided to use silent-era cinema film the wrong way round, more than a century ago.

Every sensor format represents a trade-off between size, price and image quality. Larger sensors (or film formats) have an inherent image quality advantage because they have more light-capturing surface, but the lenses needed to provide any given field-of-view have longer focal lengths, making them bigger, heavier and more expensive. You can hunt around for exceptions: a particularly large or small body, or one especially small prime lens, but for the system as a whole, the overall trade-off remains true.

Full-frame digital can offer spectacular image quality, but even with the move to mirrorless, its cameras and lenses are larger than their film-era counterparts were. If the 35mm film format was a Goldilocks balance of quality vs portability and cost, then digital full-frame isn’t, because it offers a completely different balance. Better image quality, but with both a size and financial cost (and these differences are worth considering before you decide to point out that 35mm film could be called ‘small format’).

If you’re after something closer to the balance of size, price and image quality that 35mm film offered, you might find it in APS-C instead. Its smaller sensor means it doesn’t match the depth-of-field that 35mm film offered, but in terms of IQ, camera and lens size, it’s much closer to being a match. Just compare the size of the Nikon FE, Fujifilm’s X-T5 and Nikon’s Zf, paired with appropriate lenses, to confirm this for yourself.

Richard Butler

Likewise, for travel and wildlife in particular, the smaller Four Thirds format lets you further downsize the whole setup, giving lenses with longer reach or compact prime-lens combinations that let you travel light. Yes, you pay an image quality cost for moving to a smaller format, but you might end up with a shot that you simply wouldn’t get if your kit becomes too unwieldy to carry with you. 

The same is true in the other direction: 44 x 33mm Medium Format offers around a two-thirds-of-a-stop advantage over full-frame, at the same exposure, if you want better image quality. But those same downsides of larger, more expensive lenses are inescapable.

All formats are arbitrary size/price/image quality trade-offs. They may be popular or well-supported, but none is inherently best, because each has an innate compromise at its heart. And what makes sense for you, isn’t necessarily ideal for everyone.

Those other options, and that ability to choose a format that suits your kind of shooting, will only exist if those formats continue to be supported by manufacturers and by photographers. We lose that choice if we decide that some formats are lesser, or just stepping stones to another, rather than treating each as an entity in its own right.

This is the concluding article looking at why our perspective on cameras’ prices can seem out-of-step with other people’s initial reactions, on the day of launch. And it covers that fact the MSRPs always seem expensive, at first.

I don’t think we’ve reported on many launches without at least some people commenting, “it’s too expensive, what are they thinking?” or some variation thereof. And then comparing the price to the cost of an outgoing model, the price they paid for something in a sale, years earlier, or a second-hand deal on a completely unrelated camera type.

All of which is to miss the point. MSRPs aren’t the same thing as street prices and, although they’re quoted in the same units, they’re not particularly comparable.

MSRPs are the manufacturer’s opening gambit: they generally represent the highest price they’ll ever get for a product. An ‘early-adopter tax’, in many instances.

On the day of launch, all cameras look over-priced because their peers have been on the market for a while, their prices have softened somewhat, or they’ve explicitly been put on sale. And those MSRPs look even more overpriced if you compare them to the outgoing model, or a previous one because the manufacturer and retailers are trying to get rid of them, before they become impossible to sell.

Richard Butler / Mitchell Clark

But, just in case it needs saying: no manufacturer can introduce a new product at the narrow-to-no margin price that the outgoing model is being flogged-off at. Nor can they sensibly consider the second-hand prices of decade-old higher-end models, when setting prices.

This all varies somewhat between markets. In the US, list prices are more aggressively maintained than in Europe and the UK, where retailers have more freedom to offer some sort of discount fairly soon after the camera hits the shelves. This, along with Euro and Sterling prices usually being quoted including tax, is a big part of why US prices typically appear cheaper at first: because the US list price is set at a level that more people will have to actually pay.

None of which is an attempt to say you should just pay the MSRP on Day 1: quite the opposite. If an older, higher-end model is still floating around when the new model is launched and it suits your requirements, you should probably buy that. Our attempts to put pricing in a longer-term context aren’t an attempt to encourage you to buy something at full price.

But if history has repeatedly shown that those old models disappear from the market and the price of the new camera drops to a level comparable to others launched at the same MSRP, then it would be perverse and unhelpful to pretend we don’t know this. We want our reviews to still make sense a month or so after publication, which they won’t if we declare all new cameras “overpriced” despite what we know will happen next.

MSRPs let us see how things are positioned, relative to one another. They help us understand the price point, rather than the literal consumer price, of a camera.

Inflation muddies the waters still further, and prices are going up, but it’s worth remembering that launch prices have always looked too high. Even for that camera you’re now holding up as an example of what this new model should cost.

LK Samyang has started to tease the arrival of a 28-135mm F2.8 autofocus zoom for Sony E-mount, more than four months ahead of a February 2027 launch.

The company has only released close-up photos of the lens, so far, but has also published full specifications.

So we know it’ll be an extending zoom that expands from 151mm to 190mm long, as you zoom in (6.0-7.5″). We also know that it’ll weigh 854g (1.9lbs).

This makes it almost 30% longer than the Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 G2 and around 60% heavier, so you definitely pay a price for the additional flexibility the Samyang should offer. It’s around 27% longer and 50% heavier than Tamron’s 35-100mm F2.8, that doesn’t offer either the wide-angle or telephoto capabilities that this will.

It will also take an 82mm filter, rather than the 67mm filter used by the two Tamrons.

As with other recent LK Samyang lenses, its autofocus will be driven by a voice coil motor, which should be quiet and fast.

And, although no mention of them is made, the preview images show control ring grips that match the company’s lenses co-developed with Schneider-Kreuznach.

Camera prices, like most other prices, are going up. Part of this has been manufacturers focusing on high-end users, because they tend to buy the higher-margin products. But even attempts at making more accessible cameras can seem wildly expensive, compared to the prices we remember paying.

And that’s not a question of manufacturers being foolish or greedy. Whether we like it or not, we are living through a period of higher inflation than we’re used to.

This is the first of a two-part series looking at why the perspective on cameras’ prices in our reviews can seem out-of-step with other people’s initial reactions, on the day of launch.

Many of us lived through a more than twenty-year period of relatively low inflation. Prices of most things rose by around 2% per year, the cost of electronics fell, partly with the outsourcing of manufacture and through increased efficiencies and economies of scale. Wages typically kept pace with inflation, so things didn’t feel more expensive. Large sensor digital cameras got cheaper at first, then settled into a pattern of improving while maintaining their existing price.

Richard Butler

Sadly, that’s no longer the world we live in. It’s impossible to enumerate all the factors that got us to here without spiraling off into discussions of politics, but there have been a host of inflationary pressures over the past few years. Whether it’s supply-chain shocks, tariffs, wars putting pressure on oil and gas prices or out-of-control demand for processors and RAM, there’s more pushing prices up than encouraging them to drop.

Manufacturer’s materials and energy costs have gone up. Their component prices have become erratic. Their wages have gone up. Their logistics costs have increased. They cannot make cameras for the prices we used to pay. And, because of the way inflation works, the $1000 you had planned for your next purchase simply isn’t worth as much as that figure have been, five or six years ago.

I suspect it’s not just me who finds myself marveling at articles or footage from the 70’s showing a pint of beer priced in pennies or a gallon of ‘gas’ in cents. To a more modern ear, that just seems unimaginable, and it’s hard to see how we got from there to where we are. For most of my adult life, the changes have been incremental enough that I didn’t notice the jump. But thinking back to when I was at college, a pint in my favorite pub was £1.36. I visited the same pub this summer, and it was £5.30. Those little changes have ramped up into big ones in the past few years, and now the prices of my own yesteryears are beginning to seem impossibly distant. 

The same thing is happening with cameras, and just about all manufactured products: the value of money is dropping faster than any reduction in the cost of electronics (and a lot of key components are being bought for AI, before it can get anywhere near consumer products). Also, there’s every chance that it’s been some time since you last bought a new camera, and that precisely remembered reference point is no longer realistic.

None of which is to say that we have to like it. I’m not trying to defend it, or suggesting you should (or even can) just decide it doesn’t matter. But getting frustrated about it or insisting that the latest camera should cost what your last one did, pre-pandemic, isn’t going to change things. None of us enjoys it, but pretending inflation doesn’t exist or that rising prices are down to manufacturer misjudgment or greed doesn’t get you anywhere useful.

With the release of Adobe Camera Raw 18.7, we now have Raw support for the OM System PEN, bringing us one step closer to being able to complete our review.

As you might expect, the PEN’s performance is a match for that of the OM-5 Mark II, with which it shares a sensor and processor. This may seem obvious but we have to check, to be certain that our assumptions about shared components are correct and that there are no unreported changes to the processing. It also ensures that you can select the OM System PEN in our test scene, if you want to make any comparisons in future.

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

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

The updated site may still be in beta, but we’re pleased to be able to announce the return of one of its most requested features: full-spec camera comparisons.

As well as big changes like this, we’ve been making continued improvements and fixes behind the scenes, but we’re now in a position to address one of the most common requests: a camera comparison feature that makes proper use of our specs database.

We appreciate how important it is to the community that the tool works well, and recognize that it wasn’t up to your expectations at the site’s launch. Having worked hard to build and maintain our database for more than 26 years, this was always something we planned to do, so we’re pleased to be able to add it back to the site.

The camera comparison feature works slightly differently than before but should also present the data in a way that’s both easier to read and to compare, especially on mobile. We’ll be making some adjustments in the coming days and weeks, and as always, we welcome your feedback about how it can be further improved.

This isn’t the end, by any means, though. A light theme version of the site is already being tested, to make sure it works reliably across the site, so please bear with us as we continue to improve the website.

The Canon EOS R8 II adds two of the features that many people felt the original model could have benefited from: an autofocus joystick and in-body image stabilization.

However, as well as making it a better camera, these additions, along with inflation, have made it a more expensive camera, putting it in direct competition with Nikon’s Z5II, which is our current pick of sub-$2000 full-frame cameras.

The Nikon has been on the market longer, so its price has softened a bit, but its list price is within $50 of that of the Canon, so it’s likely they’ll end up costing a similar amount. While the original R8 and, in some places, the original Z5 persist at reduced prices, these are some of the least expensive current models for anyone looking to join a full-frame system and are designed to act as the entry point to this part of the market.

Having used both cameras extensively, we thought we’d look at how they compare and which we think is better.

Headline specs

On paper the core specs of the two cameras are very similar: they have the same-sized sensors with comparable pixel counts, both have image stabilization and both include an AF joystick.

Beyond the core specs, it all becomes a little less clear-cut, with the Canon offering some benefits over the Nikon with regards weight, maximum burst speed and the ability to capture Raw at its fastest burst speeds and in its pre-capture mode. But there are probably more ways in which the Z5II is a stronger camera.

By taking a look at the main differences and when they play a role, it might help you decide which would be the better camera for you.

EVF/LCD

Mitchell Clark

The Nikon has a larger, higher resolution viewfinder than the Canon. The EOS R8 II is built around a smaller viewfinder panel, which is why its resolution is limited to 2.36M dots, which is 1024 x 768px. The Nikon has a larger panel, meaning it can offer higher magnification (a larger view) and 3.69M dot resolution, which equates to 1280 x 960px. This is a 25% increase in linear resolution, which is enough to make the view seem less pixelated, even with the greater magnification. The Nikon’s finder also goes brighter, giving a more realistic preview of highlights.

The Nikon’s rear screen is also a touch larger 3.2″ display with 1024 x 680px resolution, vs the Canon’s 3.0″, 900 x 600px display. The size is likely to make more difference than the roughly 14% difference in linear resolution. Both cameras have fully-articulated displays that hinge to the side.

Mechanical shutters

Another difference is that the Nikon has a full mechanical shutter, whereas the Canon has an electronic first curtain (/mechanical second curtain) shutter. This doesn’t make a huge difference for most real-world shooting, but one difference is that the Nikon can shoot at up to 1/8000 sec shutter speeds, whereas the Canon tops-out a stop earlier than that.

The Canon’s fully electronic shutter mode can go higher than this, but with a readout speed of around 1/70 sec, this can’t be used with flash and risks showing rolling shutter distortion with fast movement and banding with flickering lights.

Twin card slots

Richard Butler

The Nikon has twin SD card slots, while the Canon has just one. This isn’t likely to make a huge difference to any but the most risk-averse photographers. Dual card slots can offer a level of dependability that is essential for professional work, but is more a question of your risk comfort level ranged against your willingness to pay for multiple cards, for most day-to-day photography.

Video

Mitchell Clark

Things are less clear-cut when it comes to video. The Z5II can capture Raw video which might, if you’re from a photo background, sound like an immediate win for the Nikon. But, in practice, this generates a lot of data, requires a rather more involved workflow and doesn’t offer the same magnitude of benefit over 10-bit log footage as Raw does over JPEG, in stills.

By contrast, the Canon can record 4K/60, derived from 6K, full-width capture, whereas the Nikon has to crop in to an APS-C region, if you want to shoot footage for slow-mo moments. This makes it harder to maintain a wide angle-of-view and lowers quality on the Nikon. Both cameras shoot 10-bit log, with Canon’s C-Log3 being preferred by many editors.

Battery life

However, battery life is a much more decisive difference between the cameras. The Z5II uses the same 16Wh battery as the Z6 series modes, powering it to a rating of 350 shots per charge if you shoot using the rear screen or 330 if you use the viewfinder. The Canon uses a much smaller 7.5Wh battery, from which it delivers a rated lifespan of 270 and 150 shots per charge, for using the rear screen and viewfinder, respectively.

And, while the numbers that the standard testing offers up aren’t necessarily exactly those you’ll see in the real world, we’d generally expect a camera that measures as 330 shots per charge to last around twice as long as one rated at 150. The video ratings are also a little over twice as high for the Nikon. For anyone looking to use the camera for more than occasional snaps, this difference is likely to be very noticeable.

It’s one of the factors that makes the Nikon appreciably heavier, though, weighing in at 700g (24.7oz), making it 154g (5.4oz) heavier than the Canon.

Lens choice

Mitchell Clark

The final consideration is lens choice. Given all modern ILCs sit somewhere between ‘really quite good’ and ‘excellent,’ the availability of appropriate lenses is just as important as your choice of camera brand.

Both Canon and Nikon have built out fairly extensive lens lineups with a selection of low, mid and high-level lenses, in a good array of sizes and focal lengths. However, both have also tried to restrict access to their mounts to their own lenses plus a handful of lenses they’ve licensed third-parties to make: the majority of which are for APS-C models, but with some of Tamron’s full-frame options available for Nikon. The biggest difference, in this regard, is that unlicensed third party makers are offering increasing numbers of lenses for the Nikon Z-mount, whereas Canon has more effectively controlled the RF ecosystem.

In both instances, we’d recommend checking whether the lenses you think you might want exist at a price you’re willing to pay. And to check reports and reviews, if those lenses are made by third parties, as the autofocus performance in particular can vary significantly even within the same brand.

Summary

There are the hints the Canon has tried to make the EOS R8 II easier to use, with its Advanced Assist mode that is willing to automatically use multi-shot modes, where necessary, and the option of a simplified, results-focused Raw processing interface. However, the Z5II does have a button for directly accessing its Picture Control color modes, whereas the Canon has two distinct color systems, one of which can’t be accessed when shooting Raws, so in some ways the Nikon can be easier to use. The Canon’s menu is perhaps a tiny bit more logically grouped, but both are a little overwhelmed with options and will take a little time to learn.

Overall, the EOS R8 II and Z5II both offer a level of image quality and performance that you couldn’t previously get at this price and will be more than enough camera for a lot of photographers, even if inflation means they’re not quite the obvious bargains that their predecessors were.

The Canon EOS R8 II is the latest camera to keep size down by adopting an electronic first curtain shutter design. This isn’t the same thing as full electronic shutter and it has very few downsides, so here’s how it works and what those downsides are.

Perhaps an easier way to understand EFCS is to think of it as Mechanical Second Curtain Shutter. The exposure is started electronically but a normal mechanical shutter then comes down to end the exposure, meaning that, unlike full electronic shutter, you can end your exposure very quickly, rather than being limited by readout speed of your sensor.

This means EFCS doesn’t have the significant rolling shutter artifacts (banding under flickering light and distorted moving subjects) that all but the fastest sensors can exhibit. The fast end to the exposure also means it can usually sync with flashes up to the same speed as a fully mechanical focal plane shutter.

In fact, it can have a benefit over full mechanical shutters, in one regard: because there’s no physical shutter snapping open at the start of the exposure, it eliminates a key source of vibration that can cause shutter shock. Some cameras with full mechanical shutters switch across to their EFCS mode within certain shutter ranges for exactly this reason.

This is the reason we’ve seen an increasing number of cameras, particularly the ones where the manufacturer has focused on downsizing and on cost reduction. In most instances, EFCS lets you use a smaller, mechanically simpler mechanism, with very little disadvantage.

The downside

It’s not entirely without downsides, though. At very high shutter speeds, where the period during which the shutter is closing makes up a significant proportion of the exposure, you can experience bokeh truncation: part of the bokeh pattern getting chopped off.

DPReview

This happens because the physical shutter used to end the exposure sits some distance in front of the sensor, so light can creep around the edge of the shutter blades as it closes. But the electronic first curtain (progressively turning the rows of the sensor on to start the exposure) doesn’t have that gap, so the start of the exposure didn’t have that light bleeding around the edge of the ‘shutter,’ giving one side of the bokeh a hard cut-off. This results in out-of-focus regions that aren’t as blurred and may not have such attractive bokeh.

However, this only becomes visible at very high shutter speeds when using lenses with fast enough apertures to significantly blur the background.

The ‘hard-edged’ nature of the electronic initiation of the exposure also means that any banding effect (from the fast flicker of LED advertising displays or high-speed sync flash) can end up being better defined and more distracting than with a fully mechanical shutter, again because light creeping around the gap between physical shutter blades and the sensor surface can soften it somewhat.

For the vast majority of situations though, including flash sync, electronic first curtain (/mechanical second curtain) shutter, is every bit as good as full mechanical shutter.

The EOS R8 Mark II is a refreshed and up-specced entry-level full-frame mirrorless camera, adding in-body image stabilization and an AF joystick as part of a complete re-styling.

These changes and a 2026 price tag position it essentially head-to-head with Nikon’s Z5II, our current pick in this part of the market.

We’ve had a chance to shoot the EOS R8 II for an extended period and with an array of lenses, so we’ve used it for the everyday photo taking its designed for. We’ve also got some friends to stand around in a flowerbed, to make sure we got to see how it performed for portraits and people pictures.

Overall we found it to be a very likeable camera: relatively small, usefully light and with a pretty straightforward interface. It’s not overflowing with clever features, but it has a lot of what a lot of photographers might need at a price that’s a fair step below that of the more sophisticated EOS R6 III.

We go into more detail about what we liked and disliked in our review, but this gallery should give a sense for what the R8 II can do. All the shots are unprocessed, out-of-camera images, but all of them taken in the camera’s conventional Picture Style color modes because you can’t capture Raws if you switch across to the more effect-like Color filter modes.

As always, you can download the Raws or JPEGs to inspect or run through your preferred processing workflow, to see how they look.

Sample gallery

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

It’s increasingly likely that you’ll have heard the term LOFIC, and some of the excitement around the capability it brings. We spoke to Professor Eric Fossum, inventor of the modern CMOS image sensor, who turns out to have some involvement in the early development of the concept, to explain how it works and what it could mean for cameras in future.

LOFIC stands for Lateral OverFlow Integration Capacitor and is a different way of designing pixel circuitry that allows them to capture more light. Conceptually, it stems from a similar idea to the dual conversion gain sensors we’ve seen over the past 12 years, but the benefits it promises appear even greater.

A drip-fed explanation

Fossum, now a Professor at Dartmouth College, uses the metaphor that capturing light is like collecting rainwater in a series of containers or buckets.

We’re going to slightly complicate the metaphor to encompass the concept of “conversion gain,” which is the relationship between the number of photoelectrons coming from the light-sensitive photodiode in each pixel and the size of the electrical voltage signal that’s then read out (measured in Volts per electron). 

In CMOS sensors, photoelectrons captured in a small bucket (smaller capacitance) give a proportionally bigger signal when read out than the same number would, if captured in a larger bucket (larger capacitance).

Abby Ferguson

So a small bucket is well suited to low light (fewer photoelectrons) but you need a much larger one for capturing a lot of light, so that you don’t overfill the bucket.

In a LOFIC sensor, instead of one, we have both a small and a large bucket. The charge from the photodiode starts to collect in the small bucket, but if it exceeds its capacity, it overflows into the second, larger bucket. (Fossum called this “cascaded integration” in an early patent)

When it comes to readout, we measure the small bucket first. Because the charge was captured in a small bucket (with high conversion gain) we get a large signal that overwhelms any other noise that might get added later in the process. This gives us nice clean shadows and low-light images.

In a LOFIC sensor, we can then connect the two buckets together, combining their capacity (so, lower conversion gain) and adding in any overflowed charge. We then read out this combined signal. If we didn’t capture very much light, we can just use the first readout result. But if the small bucket was full, we can then use the second, combined readout, instead, giving us much more capacity for highlights.

Unlike the dual conversion gain system, Fossum points to the key benefit: “you don’t have to choose in advance.” And, as he points out, there’s no reason this system has to be limited to two buckets.

Why it matters

In practice, this means sensors that can tolerate a lot more light. And its implementation in relatively small, high-resolution sensors, suggests that space constraints aren’t a problem, at least not once you can use stacked sensor fabrication.

In the Osmo 4P we’ve seen DJI claim 17 stops of DR, which is an extraordinary number for a Type 1 sensor. This puts its DR on a par with much larger sensors (though doesn’t mean its image quality will match them). In its implementation, you can see how the additional dynamic range can be used.

The 4P’s camera that uses LOFIC technology is the only one that needs to use the new D-Log2 profile: a profile designed to accommodate more dynamic range. Interestingly, the base ISO of D-Log2 (the setting at which it captures maximum DR) appears to be 1600, suggesting that it’s being exposed to capture two additional stops of highlights compared with the ISO 400 base sensitivity of D-Log profile used for the conventional sensors.

However, the D-Log2 mode also lets you expose this same sensor state all the way down to ISO 100: clipping those additional highlights but using more exposure to capture the remaining tones, and thus boosting tonal quality. 

This gives us an idea of what LOFIC could bring to dedicated cameras: a choice of greater highlight capture or higher quality captures with the same highlight cutoff point as existing sensors.

After nearly a decade of sensors getting faster but not really offering improved image quality, LOFIC technology might be the step forward we’ve been waiting for.

Interestingly, Fossum – who is responsible for inventing the active pixel CMOS image sensor that virtually all modern cameras are based on – invented an early version of this concept, but the successors to the company he’d worked for instead concentrated their efforts on the simpler dual conversion gain system. A team at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, independently developed LOFIC as we’re now seeing it, citing Fossum’s Micron patent in their LOFIC patent, but proposing a more modern implementation.

I’m not sure how it took us so long to get back to this point, but in my head, the launch of the OM System PEN marks the return of a time when keen photographers have some really good choices for travel. 

Not travel photography as in ‘spend thousands of dollars to go to Iceland or Namibia, and drag your medium format setup to painstakingly capture one perfect desktop background,’ but a camera I can carry with me to document my trip.

Between the Fujifilm X100 VI, the Panasonic L10 and the OM System PEN, photographers once again have a choice of conveniently-sized cameras with a good level of control, whether they prefer a prime lens camera, a fixed zoom compact or the lens choices of mirrorless. They’re all pretty small, they’re all fairly pretty, and they’re all usefully totable.

Richard Butler

When I first started at DPReview, the options available were a DSLR, if you wanted decent image quality, or a (literally) compact camera, which you could carry around, but whose images you would probably be disappointed by. In between were the supposed “bridge” cameras, which inexplicably adopted some of the size of a DSLR with the image quality of a compact, rather than offering any sort of useful middle ground between the two.

This is why I’ve always loved larger-sensor enthusiast compacts with bright lenses (LX3, XZ-2, G7X), and why I can remember running to the Olympus stand as Photokina 2008 first opened, so I could share some of the first photos of the original Pen mockup.

Richard Butler

I love a camera that’s easy to always carry with me but also one that delivers sufficient image quality to make that worthwhile. And for a while there, we got close: the Fujifilm X100, the Panasonic GF1 and GX1, amongst others. Then the options started to disappear.

The past few years have seen a lot of camera makers focus on full-frame cameras, but even the best attempts at downsizing those aren’t great. Putting aside that Panasonic S9 and original Sony a7C are among my least favorite cameras of the last few years, my concerns aren’t so much the bodies as the body/lens combinations. Yes it’s easy to cherry-pick one particular lens when trying to make “it’s almost as small” arguments. But, even on the rare occasions where that pancake is a focal length I want to use, and the word “almost” isn’t being tested to breaking point, there’s still little hope of building a usefully small kit.

Richard Butler

I’ve just got back from a short vacation with the PEN and found it to be a very amiable companion. I took the 12mm F2.0, 17mm F1.8 and 14-42mm, which gave me a remarkable degree of flexibility in combinations I could take everywhere with me. Add in a 45mm F1.8 and it would cover an awful lot of my favored photography, in the space of a small shoulder bag.

The PEN makes a very welcome addition to the existing options of a Fujifilm X100 VI, which is built around my preferred single focal length, and the Panasonic L10, whose lens covers a very useful range with a combination of brightness and size that even the PEN would struggle to match. Add to these the Ricoh GR IVs, with a 40mm-equiv. “x” version in the works, and you have some really interesting options.

All of these cameras is imperfect in one way or another: the L10’s lens isn’t everything you might hope for, the PEN’s AF is distinctly quirky and after six iterations, Fujifilm has managed to make the X100 VI that bit more fiddly than it needs to be. But, for all those gripes, it’s lovely to have choices that don’t take over my entire carry-on.

Vamanos! Allonz-y! However you say it; let’s just GO!