As we enter the second half of this year, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for all your fantastic contributions in the forums and elsewhere, and to consider where we go next together on a community level.

One of the great things about our community is that every day I see photographers talking about their exciting new G.A.S. purchases (my own “needs” list keeps expanding, too), sharing unique photos like the above and reminding each other that we truly have a special place that supports both gear and photography interests.

So far this year, you’ve started so many fantastic discussions, several of which are still ongoing as of several weeks ago.

One of the community’s great strengths is when you engage with each other and constructively answer questions from both new and old members. Thank you for inviting those new members into our community.

Ab S

Showcasing your content

One of the most exciting initiatives you’ve continued to proudly coordinate for years now are the weekly photo threads. I love these because every day brings a new opportunity to give you a reason to share your photography on a fresh topic.

For those who are not aware, various community members (often from camera-specific forums) coordinate weekly photo showcase threads that encourage everyone to post a photo on the week’s topic. Topics range from nature to indoor decorations to photos taken with a specific camera brand, and sometimes it’s completely open-ended. They are usually more informal and less rules-based than structured photo challenges, which you may have also heard about. Everyone is welcome to participate. Feel free to include a short story along with the photo.

If you are a new member and need a way to “break the ice” on getting involved, sharing your photography wherever you can is a great start.

If you are new to photography itself, don’t feel like you’re “not professional enough” because there is no such thing. Our community is not some elites-only club, even if it feels intimidating at first upon seeing a technical-heavy discussion in forums like Studio and Lighting Technique.

cezirkle

What’s next for our community

I’ve seen some great ideas about how to make the forums an even more valuable and enjoyable place to share your gear choices and photography. I’m committed to giving all the content you create the support it deserves, even if it takes a little while to develop support programs for it. Please keep those great ideas coming.

Here are a few of the projects I’m looking forward to collaborating on with you all over the rest of the year and into the next:

• Create more activities across the forums, including within the photo and album system itself, to maximize opportunities to share your photography. This includes expanding on the per-forum section photo albums we created just a couple of months ago.
• Explore better ways to showcase your gear and photography how-to guides and community reviews – a place that would keep them more in the spotlight than an endless ongoing forum of posts that would otherwise eventually bury the guide.
• Ensure the rest of our community outside the forums has more opportunities to become aware of and contribute to your discussions and activities. This includes us reaching out more on places like reddit to bring them to the forums. Do you know about a photography group that we could invite to our community? Please let us know! 

wouterv

Whether you’ve been part of the community for more than 25 years, or this is the first DPReview article you’ve read, I hope you will stop by the forums and say hello. While you’re there, feel free to share your photography. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Special thanks to community members, nick10, cezirkle, Ab S and wouterv for their photos being spotlighted in this article. You can find these photos and more in the weekly photo threads.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

This is the story of Max Lowe, a filmmaker, photographer and storyteller based in Bozeman, Montana. Recipient of a National Geographic Young Explorer’s grant early in his career, Max’s work ranges from wildlife filmmaking to deeply personal, human-centered stories. In our conversation, he spoke about learning photography through trial and error, discovering magical places around the world and finding serendipity and inspiration in his own backyard.

Our ‘What’s in your bag?’ community spotlight series features readers sharing their favorite gear and photography, including from past DPReview collaborators such as Max.

Meet Max Lowe

Max Lowe

Photography became a way for Max to engage more deeply at home in Bozeman, Montana, eventually leading to a career spanning National Geographic Expeditions, documentary filmmaking and editorial photography. While he has photographed hundreds of places around the world, he says one of his biggest creative challenges remains capturing the essence of his hometown.

“I’ve never been able to truly capture the essence of the way I love Montana. It’s a place where people put their own interpretations. It’s a place I want to keep finding new ways to illustrate to the world, because it holds that depth and importance to me as my home.”

Max’s parents were a major influence in starting his photography career. “I grew up with a mountaineer for a father, and my mom was an artist. At some point, my mom gave me one of her old cameras. Both my mom and dad made it in the world in different artistic ways. Because of that, I felt I needed to find an artistic path for myself, and photography became that for me. Photography has this magical way of making you feel like you belong somewhere you otherwise might not.”

Career and projects

Max Lowe

One of the most significant turning points in Max’s career came in 2012, when he received a National Geographic’s Young Explorers Grant. That opportunity led to trips with National Geographic Expeditions that continue to this day, and the grant community introduced Max to many of the photographers, filmmakers and storytellers who helped shape the work you see in this article.

“In the earlier years of my work as a full-time photographer and filmmaker, I had more personal ambition to just go places for the sake of going, in the selfish sense. At this point, I’m more compelled to travel because I can get a unique lens on the world – pun intended. There are really cool photography-focused trips that many companies put on, but National Geographic Expeditions goes to some rather remarkable places. I’ve been lucky to make many friends within the National Geographic scene, fellow photographers I look up to and reach out to for collaboration. That camaraderie is what really makes it special.”

Max’s documentary work

Jack Fox

One of Max’s current projects is The Kind Ones, a documentary he’s producing with his wife, Lia. They spent eight weeks at a rural hospital on the North Carolina coast, where Lia worked as a travel nurse while Max documented patients, nurses and moments of care. He described the careful balance between telling meaningful stories and respecting the people involved.

“During the pandemic, everyone rallied around healthcare workers, but in the years since, these tremendous workers just fell back to where they’d been before. After the pandemic, Lia was at a low point in her career. She wanted to talk about the fact that the humans within the healthcare system are often disregarded as a major component of how we function as a healthy society.”

Max Lowe

“We were filming with her every day, capturing beautiful and often difficult moments with patients. Her portrayal of the value nurses bring, not only in the medical care they render, but in the human care and appreciation for life in its most complicated moments. The project is a challenge: working together in a nuanced way to think about what to photograph, and especially what not to.”

Kind Ones is scheduled for release in late 2026. If you’re interested in Max’s other film works, including the acclaimed feature doc detailing his own family story, “Torn” (2021), the Oscar Shortlisted “Camp Courage” (2023) and more.

What’s in Max’s bag

Max Lowe

Max’s approach to equipment depends heavily on the project, though when it’s a personal endeavor, he has some go-to favorites.

Max’s go-to gear:

• Nikon Z8
• Nikon Z6II
• Nikon ZR
• Nikon FG
• Rolleiflex

Lenses:

• Nikkor Z 26mm F2.8
• Nikkor Z 24-70mm F2.8 S
• Nikkor Z 70-200mm F2.8 S
• Nikkor Z 14-24mm F2.8 S
• Nikkor Z 180-600mm F5.6-6.3
• Nikkor 50mm F1.8 Series E
• 2X teleconverter

Favorite camera: When traveling on his own, Max prefers simplicity. One of his favorites is a Rolleiflex 4×4 medium-format film camera, which he uses regularly for personal projects. “I still shoot quite a bit of film, mostly for my own interests. The Rolleiflex is a bit complicated to use. I’ve failed to properly expose images plenty of times. Unlike modern digital cameras, it offers little immediate feedback. Sometimes you shoot a frame you think will be great, only to blow the exposure or end up with a blurry image.”

Max Lowe

Max has found hidden benefits in the challenges of shooting film. “There’s something cool about photography being this format in which we can learn to fail and do better in small, incremental ways. You’re really forced to learn about ISO, shutter speed, aperture and all the other functions of a camera.”

Still, the camera Max uses most often is the one already in his pocket, an iPhone 16 Pro Max. “Probably the camera I use most is my phone, honestly.” Rather than focusing on gear for its own sake, he emphasized carrying equipment that lets him remain present with people and stories while staying ready when meaningful moments arise.

Photography ethics

Max Lowe

Throughout our conversation, Max returned to the idea that storytelling requires trust, context and respect. He believes photographers should continually ask themselves why they’re taking an image and who ultimately benefits from it.

“Trust is paramount in our work, especially when we’re working with other people. If it’s someone sitting alone on a subway platform crying, I probably wouldn’t shoot a photo of that, because it would feel exploitative. But if you go up to the person, ask them what’s wrong, hear their story and get a little more insight into what they’re experiencing, and then ask if you can shoot a photo of them in that moment. You’re going to get a more compelling image that way.”

Max Lowe

Max also stressed the importance of building relationships and understanding stories before documenting them. “If I’m going to, say, Egypt as a storyteller, I want to find an in – someone who knows the place in a unique way, and within that, a unique story that defines the place and my experience there. When you’re invited by someone who calls a place home, the experience is much richer. Finding someone like that is a tremendous gift that deepens a photographer’s interpretation and understanding of the world.”

Some of Max’s film projects have required him to revisit a scene, and he found that the assumptions he made on a first pass often missed its real context, whether because he was distracted or because his own priorities got in the way.

“Understanding the context of the scene is a major necessity for an artist. Ask yourself: why are you taking that photo? Is it for the benefit of those people? If you’re a photojournalist capturing the story of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine so that the world can understand that pain, does your work have the power to change things for the better?”

Curiosity and flexibility

Max Lowe

Max’s work is also heavily tied together by curiosity and a willingness to adapt to whatever story unfolds before him. Opportunities will come up to take that perfect shot, and one mustn’t hesitate for long to take it. One such image that surprised him in its success came from an ordinary moment in Italy. “It was just a photo of a cat sleeping on the tire of a Land Cruiser. I snapped it in passing – it was something I saw and was like, ‘Oh, that’s cute.'”

The image was made with a simple point-and-shoot 35mm film camera, and the reaction wildly exceeded his expectations. “It got this massive response on social media and ended up winning an honorable mention in a photo contest called ‘Flow.'”

Max Lowe

Max’s wildlife filmmaking has presented very different challenges. While working on a Frozen Planet II segment about snowy owls near Utqiagvik, Alaska, he ran into an unexpected obstacle. “It gets surprisingly hot because the sun is up around the clock in summer, and that heat rising off the tundra creates these distortions,” Max told us. “Atmospheric distortion made long-lens footage unusable. We ended up having to switch our whole approach on the spot, because the conditions meant the gear we’d brought just didn’t work. Camera traps certainly would have helped, but we didn’t think we’d need them when we planned the trip.”

The experience reinforced one of his recurring lessons: adaptation and flexible expectations matter more than rigid planning.

Max’s advice for photographers

Max Lowe

As I was listening to Max’s stories and adventures, there were countless gems of advice sprinkled throughout. To close out this story about Max, I wanted to list a couple of final pieces of advice that didn’t fit in the stories he told above. I hope they help you improve your photography as much as they got me thinking about mine.

The moment dictates the shot

“Many visual artists approach their work by thinking about a specific shot they want, such as a bear emerging from its den, or whatever it might be. But I approach all my work in a more freeform, creative way, whether that’s photography or filmmaking. You want to allow leeway for the experience to give you the story, instead of putting pressure on yourself to seek something out and setting yourself up for failure.”

“It can be scary to step out of your comfort zone and into someone else’s world, but it leads to much richer experiences for both you and your audience. It’s not that you should never go anywhere without a plan, just make sure you stay open to that depth when it presents itself.”

Max Lowe

Don’t ignore what’s in front of you

“It’s a mistake a lot of artists make – not seeing the value in what exists right in front of them. I’m constantly looking at the world around me, at how unique little moments occur without anyone conjuring them up. One day, I was in my office when a Western Tanager landed on a branch outside the window. Tanagers are these beautiful yellow-red birds that migrate through Montana every spring. It was such a cool moment, and I wanted to hold it forever. Find those moments and hold them forever through your photography.”

You can check out Max’s other work at maxlowemedia.com.

Editor’s note: This article continues a series, ‘What’s in your bag?’, highlighting DPReview community members, their photography and the gear they depend on. Would you like your photography to be featured? Tell us about it by filling out this form . If you’re selected for a feature, we’ll be in touch with next steps.

Buying a new camera is an exciting feeling, but so is seeing the great photos you take with it. For last week’s community question, we asked readers to share a favorite photo or story from their new gear. From majestic animals to intense bokeh scenes, and from antique cameras to modern mobile phones, the responses covered a wide range of interesting categories.

As always, there was also a mix of useful tips you’ll want to read about.

Here are some of the photos and stories they shared. Click their names to see more within the forum conversation.

“Two experiences. The first was the first dance concert I shot with the Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 PRO. I was more than happy to do this with ‘smaller’ (relatively speaking) gear than full-frame gear. Second was the first time I did portrait shots for posters, of dancers, in full costume, with two flash units, umbrella reflectors, etc. Those first-time experiences are always sweet, no matter how many times I do it afterward.” – Satyaa

“Last Christmas, I managed a photo which I had waited literally years to take. It’s usually impossible to take a photo of the center of the Octagon at Ely Cathedral from below because there’s normally a modern oak altar in the way. I had gone to the cathedral to try out my new Hasselblad X2D II with a 20-35mm lens. Lo and behold, a team of workmen was preparing the central area for some school carol concerts. The altar had been removed. One nod of approval later and I was in!” – ClaireJRedHat

PhillipKukelhan

“Since moving to Cleveland 5 years ago, I’ve spent a lot of time riding my bicycle along the old Ohio & Erie Canal, where I see a lot of wildlife, mostly deer, snakes, bird life, and turtles.” – PhillipKukelhan

“Two years ago, I decided to upgrade a Canon 40D 12mp with the used X-T4. After having the camera a couple of months, I had a vacation to Japan scheduled. My intention was to buy an array of lenses while I was there. I put one of them to use the very night I purchased it. Because of the low-light conditions and fast-moving moments, I realized from those photos what a great purchase my X-T4 and Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 were. Personally, there isn’t a better feeling than successfully capturing these moments.” – ronphoto

“As a second-generation photographer, I grew up using Canon, and most of my gear was handed down from my father. Around 2014/2015, I was tired of using cast-offs and older generation equipment, so I set out to purchase my own gear and explore other systems. I had already picked up an A6000 (or A6300) as a secondary camera to my 1D Mark II, but when Sony released the A7RII, I decided to rent it for a big annual job.” – reflux83

Minolta TC-1

“I decided to get the XF 56mm F1.2 WR because the image quality is so good that it compensates for the fact that it’s just really rather big on my X-E5. Well, when I started using it at the next concert, this is the kind of thing that really convinced me it was money well spent. It was even a bit emotional – taking me back 20+ years to when I finally bit the bullet, bought that Zuiko 90mm F2 and got my first photos back. Just one example says enough.” – Minolta TC-1

“Having introduced Eye Control AF (ECAF) with the second camera in the RF series, Canon made it an upgrade I couldn’t pass up. I always believed ECAF had the potential to significantly improve my photography, and I wasn’t wrong. The feature is particularly valuable with lenses such as the Canon RF 28–70mm F2 L USM, whose large and heavy glass elements require more time to focus. By allowing you to direct the AF system immediately to the intended subject, Eye Control AF reduces unnecessary focus hunting and helps the lens lock focus more efficiently, without wasted tries.” – PhotoKhan

“It wasn’t one image so much as hundreds that assured me my stabilized AF telephoto macro lens was a great investment for the online store.” – Jefenator

Invisible Man Potography

“I realized I made a great decision in upgrading from a Canon R6 Mark II to a Canon R5 Mark II when I reviewed my files from the June 26, 2026, 20th Anniversary of fashion designer Diego Cerón’s ‘Couture a Table’ in Mérida, México. Standing outside the room, I photographed Pablo Mercader Duch – performing as ElHada Frozen and embodying Marie Antoinette – through the crowd. In that moment, I made the artistic decision to allow the people to form a natural frame around Pablo.” – Invisible Man Photography

So many other stories we couldn’t fit in this article are shared in the forums. Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit a favorite photo from their first new camera purchase.

Feel free to participate in the series at any time. New questions are posted here on the homepage and in the forums every other week We can’t wait to read your stories and see your photography!

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Jimmy Chin is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, National Geographic photographer, author and elite mountain athlete. Known for telling epic adventure stories from remote corners of the world, Chin is also a Canon Explorer of Light. He recently sat down for a Q&A session on Canon’s YouTube channel, sharing his insight on his gear considerations and general approach to photography.

One thing I found particularly interesting was that he’s reduced the amount of gear he brings on shoots. Instead of hauling a huge kit, he’ll only take a couple of lenses, or sometimes just a single lens. “I’ve found that when you are working within certain constraints, it actually pushes you creatively,” he says. “It makes you find creative solutions to the different problems and challenges that you face on a shoot.” Of course, for the type of photography and videography he does, having less gear is also helpful logistically and physically, but I appreciate his mindset of using less to grow creatively.

Adaptability is also a key trait according to Chin, both in terms of gear and overall mindset. “Adaptability is a huge part of being a great photographer and being able to roll with the punches on shoots,” he says. “Sometimes you get really focused on the single shot that you really want, and you’re missing all kinds of other shots. So you have to keep your eyes open and your mind open.”

Chin also recommends looking at a lot of photography and, specifically, paying attention to many genres, even beyond what you’re personally interested in. “Look at all the greats. Understand kind of the approach that all these different artists have come to their craft,” he says. “I think that understanding and the thought processes of creating images is a really good place to make photography fun for you, because all of a sudden you are looking at the world in these different ways and then you kind of find your own language and your own ideas for how you think about photograph, and that’s what makes your photography special.”

The video has plenty of other great advice, too. It’s well worth a watch, especially for newer photographers trying to figure out how to move forward.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

A new video from Kodak and movie studio A24 follows actress Olivia Wilde as she tours Kodak’s Film Lab in New York City. The tour is technically a promotional stop for “The Invite,” a recently released dark comedy Wilde both directed and stars in, though it doesn’t come across that way. Instead, the four-minute video offers a short glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes when movies are shot on film.

In the video, Wilde walks through various parts of the lab with technicians who briefly explain what they do, from loading the film in the darkroom to running it through the development steps and splicing it all together. What struck me is how very low-budget the space looks. Aside from the required specialized equipment (I especially love the fancy machine used to dry the negatives), it looks like any gritty big-city studio/lab space. Piles of miscellaneous items are piled everywhere, there are old radiators with paint rubbed off, and the people working there don’t seem fussed by any of the attention. It’s far from a glamorous space.

The video is a short watch, so it absolutely doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty details of the process. But it’s a nice overview of how the lab turns exposed negatives into usable images, and it’s always neat to see behind-the-scenes looks like this.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

With the updated DPReview website, new things are all the rage today. We’ve previously asked you about your first and favorite new cameras, about your first and favorite photos, and now we’d like to combine the two for this week’s community question.

What image made you realize your new gear was worth it?

We’d love to hear the story behind the piece of gear – whether it’s a lens, camera, flash or something else – and see the images that sparked that appreciation. It could be a piece of equipment that was only new to you, as was the case for the camera used to take the image at the top of the article, or something fresh out of a box.

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

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Alongside the EOS R6 V, Canon introduced the 20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ. Like most power-zoom lenses, it’s clearly mainly focused at video users who have access to a zoom toggle at their fingertips. But Canon made the unusual decision to take a hybrid approach; with the flick of a switch, you can control the zoom in the traditional manner by rotating a ring on the lens barrel between two fixed points.

We’re in the process of testing the EOS R6 V, but thought it’d be worth taking the lens out to shoot a few photos, too, to see if it also makes a decent photo lens on a camera without that zoom lever.

To answer the most obvious question first: no, the manual zoom mode isn’t mechanical. The lens’s focal length is still controlled by the power zoom motors, and there is an ever-so-slight delay between you turning the ring and the lens arriving at its destination. The lens is pretty quick, so it’s not too noticeable if you’re just zooming in slightly, but you can definitely see (and maybe hear) it if you’re going from 20mm to 50mm.

This somewhat breaks the illusion of direct control that the manual zoom portion of the lens is designed to add. It also doesn’t help that the ring is just a bit too easy to turn. That both makes it easy to accidentally change your zoom level when you didn’t mean to, and acts as another signal to your brain that you’re actually remote-controlling something, rather than physically moving parts of the lens yourself.

The good news is that, unless you bump the zoom ring, the lens will retain its focal length setting when you turn the camera body off; unlike with a compact camera, you don’t have to wait for it to move back through its range to 50mm when you turn your camera back on. However, if you move the zoom ring while the camera’s off (accidentally or otherwise), you’ll have to wait an extra moment or two for the lens’s motors to change its focal length when you turn the camera back on, during which time you won’t have any live view preview.

While I imagine some photographers may be disappointed reading the above, I’ll also say this: after about an hour or two of shooting with the lens, I mostly stopped noticing the quirks. That’s not something I can say about any of the other power zooms I’ve shot photos with, which were always that bit more annoying to use. Sure, the experience of using the 20-50mm isn’t the same as using a mechanically zooming lens. But it’s also much nicer for photography than a traditional power zoom that can only be controlled with a rocker or finicky on-lens control.

For those who care about video, the story is more straightforward: this lens is really nice to use, especially if the camera it’s on has a zoom toggle. Even if it doesn’t, the power zoom control on the lens works well. With a bit of finesse, you can use it for slow, purposeful pushes or pulls, or for crash zooms, depending on how far you push it to the W or T side.

There are also times when it’s nice to use it in the manual zoom mode, where how easy the ring is to turn becomes a feature, rather than a bug. I’ve always found it quite difficult to get smooth zoom pushes or pulls using a lens’s traditional mechanical zoom ring, but with this lens, it’s a breeze, while still offering a bit finer-grained control than the traditional power zoom control.

Canon RF 20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ specifications:

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Rishi Sanyal

This weekend, people and cities across the US will be celebrating the Fourth of July with the traditional large firework displays. If you’re trying to capture those, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind if you want to get pictures that truly sparkle.

We’ve outlined the most important ones in a video, which you can watch below:

If you’re looking for a more in-depth look at how to shoot fireworks, including tips from someone who’s done it professionally, we have a few articles you can dive into, too. Stay safe, have fun, and get some great shots!

PS: not American? These tips will work just as well on November 5th, December 31st or any other day with big fireworks displays. It’s never too early to start planning!

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Kathie Thomas

Community member, Kathie Thomas , loves birds. She greatly enjoys getting that shot that shows off a bird’s unique color palette and physique, and fortunately lives in an area with hundreds of beautiful bird species.

“Birds are my #1 genre – I just love them. I’m always trying to get that better shot, and when I get a really good one, it’s not long before I’m trying to do even better. I am blessed to live in a region with many bird species year-round. Some live here, some are seasonal and some are just passing through. I keep a daily eBird record of the birds I’ve seen and heard, and of course, a photo with it.”

This story is part of our What’s in your bag? community spotlight series . The series showcases the diverse gear and photography of our community, and shares their stories of how that gear helped them to capture the perfect shot.

Kathie Thomas

Meet Kathie Thomas

Home base: Dandenong Ranges, Victoria, Australia

“My uncle was a wedding and portrait photographer and often shared with me what he’d been doing when I was in my early teens. My parents bought me my first camera for my 14th birthday. It’s been a journey ever since! My uncle is long gone now, but my aunt tells me that he always wanted to do the type of photography I do, which is nature photography – he never got around to it, sadly.”

What’s in Kathie’s bag

Kathie Thomas

Favorite camera: “Nikon is the brand I’ve been using for over 20 years now. In fact, my husband gave me my first digital camera in the early 2000s, a Nikon, of course. I later upgraded to a D90, which I wore out after about 6 years, having taken almost 100,000 images with it. I’ve been a Nikon girl a long time now! I currently have a Nikon D7000 , D7100 , Coolpix P950 and a variety of lenses. The P950 is my favorite – it’s lightweight, and I get excellent bird shots with it.”

• Support gear: Kathie typically carries spare batteries for her P950, as its battery life can be limited during long birding sessions, along with a water bottle and a few snacks for time spent out in the bush or along the coast.

• Camera bags: “I use a simple, colorful backpack with a zippered compartment against my back, so no one can open it while I’m wearing it. It’s big enough to carry my camera, although that’s usually hanging at my hip on a shoulder strap.”

Kathie Thomas

How has your photography changed since you started?

“It’s improved heaps – I understand so much more about it now. I chose to do a Diploma of Photography Course back in 2014, just for the sake of doing it, so I could learn more. But it’s the regular usage and learning from other photographers that have really helped me improve. I also belong to a local photography club.”

“I learned from a professional nature photographer some years ago, that when tracking a bird, don’t look it in the eye, look around elsewhere, move slowly towards it, take a shot now and then, and keep moving slowly without eye contact. It often has helped to get the shots I’ve wanted – especially before I got my P950.”

What trip memories come to mind where you discovered a new bird?

“Many! Before we retired, we used to take overseas trips by plane and by cruise ship, visiting many places. But since retiring, my husband and I have invested in a campervan (motorhome) and have begun traveling around our own country, Australia, and exploring a bit more consistently. My goal is to record as many different species of birds as I can.”

Kathie Thomas

“Don’t underestimate your abilities and work at surprising yourself. Move out of your comfort zone and try different things. A friend thought she wasn’t very good, but she recently got a Highly Commended in our photography club exhibition. I could tell she was really choked up about it and thrilled. I told her I always thought she did well.”

Kathie really enjoyed participating in this spotlight article and would be grateful if you could join her in the forums .

Kathie’s work

You can check out her other work on Instagram . Thanks, Kathie, for being featured!

If you’d like to share your photography, tell us about your main camera, lens choices, key settings and strategies. Your photos and story could be featured in the next article!

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

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Richard Butler

When we wrote our review of the Panasonic L10, we tried to make sure we put the studio comparison into context . For mirrorless cameras and DSLRs we use good prime lenses, stopped-down to the point that their performance is reliably excellent: zoom lenses and, in particular, the downsized, retractable zoom lenses in compact cameras, can’t match up to this standard. As a result, compacts don’t look quite as impressive.

Our test scene lets you compare images in incredibly fine detail, revealing differences that you wouldn’t see in most real-world situations: they exist but that doesn’t mean they matter. That’s exactly why we also post a gallery of real-world sample images so that you can relate the things you see in the studio scene to their photographic impact.

We’d gone through our usual processes for compact cameras: carefully align, shoot a series of images, compare to cameras we’d expect to perform similarly, then do it again at a different focal length, to make sure we were representing the camera fairly.

However, we still saw some concerns expressed that we were testing a “faulty” or sub-standard copy. Just to be certain, we requested another L10, to see whether we’d get a significantly different result.

Test and retest

It didn’t. With the first copy, we found that the 75mm setting looked better than the 50mm we’d used on the LX100 cameras. The difference was much smaller on the second copy. Both copies could be a touch sharper at the center at 75mm whereas 50mm equiv was less sharp at the center, more consistent out to the corners , which is presumably why we chose it for the LX100s.

Multiple focus attempts, using both manual focus and autofocus, appear to suggest that a lot of the softness in the corners is a result of curvature of field: a non-flat focus field, meaning it’s not possible to get the whole of the chart in focus at the same time. The images with the sharpest center focus had worse looking corners than the images with slightly miss-focused center .

Ultimately we were able to shoot some images that are sharper at the center than the ones displayed in our image comparison tool, but they have visibly less sharp corners . The second copy of the camera also appears less consistent, with what appears to be slight decentering sometimes affecting the top left corner.

The images between the two cameras are similar enough (decentering aside) that we don’t think we can get consistently better images from the second copy than the ones already in the scene. Those images already exhibit aliasing – a sign that the lens is resolving detail beyond the level the sensor’s resolution can accurately capture – suggesting the lens is doing a good job. You just need to consider the context of how finely you’re scrutinizing them and how impossibly the high the standards set by good, prime lenses are.

Was it worth the effort?

We re-tested the L10 because we want to make sure our image comparison tool shows all the cameras in it in as fair a light as possible. And if that means re-doing some of the work and re-checking our assumptions to ensure our standards are maintained, then it’s worth doing.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Blufftonian

A ton of great content and related photography is created by the DPReview community in our forums: lively discussions, sharing of gear and photography in spotlight articles, collaborative photo events and more. In this “What you missed” roundup for June, we highlight community forum activity from the past month, including some of the photography that didn’t make it into articles.

Scroll down to the section of interest as previewed in this list:

• Article of the month: Joining a local photography group
• ‘What’s in your bag?’ community member spotlights
• Question of the week
• Join our collaborative photo chain
• Discussion of the month: Why is it so difficult to buy a first camera today?

Article of the month: Joining a local photography group

DPReview’s Features Editor, Abby Ferguson, wrote a great piece about the benefits of joining local photography groups . As a community manager, I naturally found this article fascinating and the kind of advice I feel all of you would find a great insight into photographers outside our forums. After reading her article, I even took it upon myself to look up some photography groups in my local corner of Texas, United States.

“Despite my reluctance, I knew meeting other photographers would only be a good thing. Plus, as this is a place my husband and I will be for the long term, I wanted to set down some roots and finally make some connections here. And so, last fall, I finally put aside my reservations and attended a meetup.” – Abby

What’s in your bag? A community member spotlight

Every week, we spotlight a community member’s unique photographs and gear in our ‘What’s in your bag?’ series . The series highlights a reader’s favorite camera gear and how they use it. You’ll also get tips and tricks on capturing your own photography.

Mark Lamb shared his portrait photography in celebration of our week of portrait-themed community content. Below is an interesting excerpt from Mark’s story about his fondness for portrait photography in Britain. The photo above is a new one he provided us that we couldn’t fit into the article.

“In recent years, my work has become centered on a long-term project called One Thousand Contemporary Portraits , an attempt to create a broad and inclusive portrait archive of contemporary Britain. The project has taken me from fishing communities and military veterans to Goths, performers, campaigners, artists and ordinary people whose stories might otherwise go unrecorded.”

Check out this month’s other reader spotlights:

• Brian Ach: From Prince to NYC streets: A photographer’s life in two worlds
• Giacomo Farabegoli: This DPReview reader backpacks with a Sony a7R IV in the mountains
• Alberto Tanikawa: Knives, whiskey, and RGB light: Inside one photographer’s obsessive still-life work

Question of the week: we ask, you tell

Every other week, we ask the community a question about their photography, usually on a specific topic, with the results spotlighted on DPReview’s front page and in the forums the following week. There are often many great photos submitted that we don’t get a chance to spotlight them all in a single article.

Here is a newly revealed reader’s photo and excerpt of their story from the latest question.

What camera is your most memorable?

thorstenwulff

Featured quote : “My first love was the F3. In the summer of 1987, she went to New York with me and a box of T-Max 400. Paired with a 24mm F2.8 lens, it was my perfect combo for street photography, even if you had to get a bit closer. The other lens was the 105mm F2.5. In early May this year, I took them back to Manhattan, but was put off a bit by the flood of gimbal-toting influencers everywhere Instagram deems worthy of a shot. This couple is one of my favorite pictures from 39 years ago. I love the tenderness between them.” – thorstenwulff

Participate in community-led photo initiatives

Dale Baskin

Every week, new community-created photo discussions and mini-challenges pop up across the forums. Usually, these start as a discussion about a particular camera brand or type of photography . For the month of June, we wanted to highlight Alan WF’s invitation to take fresh photos with your adapted lens cameras .

Visit our Community photo threads index for the latest opportunities to share a photo from your collection. We would also love for you to participate in DPReview’s own initiatives: Weekly photo exhibitions and the new Collaborative photo chain .

Discussion of the month: Why is it so difficult to buy a first camera today?

FrancoD

Community member, BernardoSC , asked a great question in the forums that has gained quite a bit of traction. He asked everyone, “Why is it so difficult to buy a first camera today?” This is an excellent question, BernardoSC! I have asked this question of myself recently about various purchase interests, from cameras to computer equipment.

Here is a peek at what others had to say:

JT26 : It’s hard as there are so many options now. New cameras and new versions of the above are using new tech and are not sold in millions like they used to be, so they are naturally more expensive.

ahaslett : The optical viewfinder is what limits your choice. Apart from retro designs, cameras these days are nearly all mirrorless. There isn’t much between a phone and a camera for £1,000, given how fast phones have improved.

Plankowner110 : In the 1960s, you simply adjusted aperture, shutter speed, and focus ring, and it didn’t matter if you were using an inexpensive Sears Tower (camera) or a rugged pro-body Nikon F. The major variable was selecting which film to use. Cameras all operated basically the same way, and one could easily pick up any brand of camera and begin shooting. We didn’t have to peruse a myriad of menu settings or press tiny re-programmable buttons all over the camera body.

What community content did you enjoy reading, and what more would you like to see in these regular updates? Let us know in the comments below.

For even more content directly from our readers, join the discussion forums and share your camera gear and photography curiosities!

Editor’s note: Future editions of this article may include camera use and photo-taking tips and tricks, additional quotes from community members in various discussions and more. If you are interested in seeing community content presented this way, please let me know.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Hasselblad Masters 2026 winners

Hasselblad has announced the winners of the Hasselblad Masters 2026 photography competition. The contest awarded 7 photographers from 70 finalists, chosen from more than 108,000 submissions across 160 countries.

Winners were selected across seven categories: Landscape, Architecture, Portrait, Art, Street, Wildlife, and Project//21. The winning photographers were selected by the Hasselblad Masters Grand Jury, which included representatives from National Geographic, Magnum Photos, Aperture Magazine, Getty Images, Foam, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. Images were chosen based on their conceptual strength, originality, creativity and technical excellence.

The competition drew some attention earlier this year when Hasselblad confirmed it had disqualified one shortlisted photographer for including AI-generated elements in violation of competition rules, replacing them with a new finalist. It’s worth noting that the finalists were selected through an internal selection process at Hasselblad, not by the acclaimed photographers on the Grand Jury. A representative has confirmed that all of the winning images were “thoroughly vetted, and EXIF data was confirmed,” and that they are all authentic photographs.

Each winner receives the title of Hasselblad Master, a Hasselblad medium format camera, two XCD lenses, and a €5,000 creative fund. Their work will also be featured in the commemorative Hasselblad Masters book.

We’re showing one image per winner below, but you can view all three selected images for each photographer on the Hasselblad Masters website . Traditional captions and EXIF data were not available, and the descriptions and jury quotes accompanying each image are taken directly from Hasselblad’s competition materials.

Art winner: Yudha Kusuma Putera

Yudha Kusuma Putera | Waste Colonialism (Sapi-Sapi Piyungan) | Indonesia

Rooted in everyday life and inspired by its complexity, Yudha Kusuma Putera turns a keen eye toward the social issues that hide in plain sight, exploring the tensions between humans, nature, and the systems we build around us.

The winning images are part of a project examining how developed nations export their waste to developing countries, where labor and costs are lower. This logic repeats on a smaller scale too: within cities, landfills are built on the outskirts, kept out of sight and out of mind. At Yogyakarta’s Piyungan landfill, a city’s waste is sorted by scavengers and consumed by cows, quietly piling up into a second hill.

He photographed the backs of these cows stacked together, with their forms mirroring the landscape of trash around them. The work does not seek to assign blame, but to invite collective reflection on the waste we produce, and the futures we are building from it.

“On the surface, the images appear direct and unambiguous, and yet they consistently resist easy reading, generating a sense of visual uncertainty that keeps the viewer engaged and questioning. The images do not announce themselves loudly, but reward sustained attention with a slow-building sense of strangeness that is both intellectually stimulating and visually striking,” says Kalle Sanner, Executive Director at the Hasselblad Foundation.

Architecture winner: Kevin Boyle

Kevin Boyle | DaySleeper | Movieland | Canada

Kevin Boyle was shaped by the open skies and close-knit communities of the Canadian prairies. After the loss of his father, he returned home, only to find the places he once knew hollowed out and silent, their gathering spaces boarded up and left to disappear. For over ten years, his photographic journey has been a profound tribute to the abandoned architecture of North America’s local communities.

The winning series is comprised of photographic montages, with each part of the building lit with flashlights and blended in post-production to create an ethereal ‘portrait’ of once important gathering places. Through his lens, these forgotten spaces become vibrant, glowing symbols of community heritage and shared human connection.

“The composition, and the fact that the images are empty of people, triggers our imaginations, taking us back to a time when these buildings would have thrived with the community meeting for evening entertainment. By making this series, the photographer invites us to consider the myriad of small venues that make up the social fabric of small communities,” says Sonia Jeunet, Photography Consultant and Education at Magnum Photos.

Portrait winner: Svetlana Jovanovic

Svetlana Jovanovic | Otherness | The Netherlands

With a psychology background, Svetlana Jovanovic’s portraiture is driven by a deep curiosity about identity – how we experience the world, construct our sense of self, and see ourselves through the eyes of others. Her style brings together fine art portraiture and a commitment to visual beauty, believing that the conceptual and the aesthetic are inseparable: each gives the other meaning.

The winning images are part of Otherness, an ongoing long-term project exploring identical twins and the tension between shared identity and individual presence. While twins share so much, it is the small differences that emerge over time, the subtle ways each person’s character becomes visible within the shared image, that lie at the heart of the work. Each portrait is a collaboration, shaped as much by the relationship between the twins as by the photographer’s own vision, inviting viewers to reflect on how we define ourselves both apart from, and through, one another.

“Through precise use of light and composition, this portrait series explores the themes of mirroring and duality. Whether capturing two sides of the same face or the closeness of two kindred souls, the images reveal subtle layers of emotion with quiet precision,” says RongRong, Co-founder and Artistic Director at The Three Shadows Photography Art Center.

Landscape winner: Rohan Reilly

Rohan Reilly | Ephemeral Visions | Ireland

Rooted in the discipline of a composer, Rohan Reilly’s images strip away complexity to reveal the essentials, which are texture, tone, and stillness. His signature long-exposure technique transforms moving water and shifting skies into silk-like surfaces, while vast negative space and low saturation give his work a poetic, meditative quality that transcends documentation. The process is one of patience and preparation: studying weather patterns, returning season after season, and waiting for the precise conditions that cannot be engineered but only earned.

This winning series captures a row of poplar trees planted along the banks of the River Po in Italy, which are natural guardians against flooding, now standing immersed in perfectly still water beneath soft, diffused light. What was once a purely functional landscape transforms into something surreal and dreamlike. In this quietly breathtaking scene, the photographer’s vision can find its fullest expression: nature distilled to its core, and time momentarily held still.

“A forest of birch trees could be a monotonous subject. But these photographs are hypnotic objects of meditation, creating something expansive through repetition and ostensible sameness,” says Zack Hatfield, Managing Editor at Aperture Magazine.

Project//21 winner: Panitbhand Paribatra Na Ayudhya

Panitbhand Paribatra Na Ayudhya | Dwellers of the Night | Thailand

Panitbhand Paribatra Na Ayudhya is a young underwater photographer and scuba diver from Thailand. His work is rooted in a quiet dedication to the ocean, documenting its life, its fragility, and the ecosystems that sustain it, in the hope that what is seen through his lens will not be forgotten.

His winning series was captured in the waters of Anilao, Philippines, where pelagic and larval marine life migrate from the depths each night to feed under the cover of darkness. Using slow shutter speeds to capture the elegant motion of his subjects, and carefully chosen coloured lighting to reveal their form and beauty, he illuminates a world rarely seen. For the ribbon eel, a diffused warm light conjures a subtle sunset behind the subject – crowning it as a master of the night. Some of these creatures spend their entire lives in the open ocean, making the pelagic ecosystem as fragile as it is extraordinary.

“I’m drawn to the quiet whimsy of these sea creatures. Set against black, the creatures feel almost otherworldly- strange, delicate, and entirely captivating. There’s a simplicity to the presentation that allows their inherent oddness to shine, reminding us how unfamiliar and compelling the natural world can be when seen without distraction,” says Alex Pollack, Director of Photography at National Geographic.’

Street winner: Gosse Bouma

Gosse Bouma | Morning Ritual | The Netherlands

Gosse Bouma is a photographer whose work is driven by a quiet pursuit: to offer moments of tranquility in a world that rarely slows down. His distinct style lies at the intersection of urban geometry and natural elements, pairing the hard lines of architecture with the soft, unpredictable textures of weather. Each photograph is infused with the intention of invoking serenity amidst the chaos of everyday life, creating visual experiences that invite stillness and reflection, even if only for a fleeting moment.

His winning series, taken across the Netherlands, turns to the street market as its subject, a space where people of all ages and backgrounds meet, exchange a few words, share warmth, and move on. In capturing these small, unhurried encounters, Bouma preserves something increasingly rare in contemporary life: a genuine sense of togetherness.

“The photographer understands atmosphere, scale and timing. The small lit kiosks within the vast blue urban emptiness create images that feel both intimate and monumental. Here, genuine photographic tension emerges. The series uses color structurally, not decoratively. Mist, artificial light and architecture form one coherent world,” says Aya Musa, Senior Curator at Foam.

Wildlife winner: Alfred Minnaar

Alfred Minnaar | The Forest I Roam | South Africa

Alfred Minnaar’s creative process often begins with observation and patience. Rather than simply documenting his subjects, he seeks to understand their behavior, environment, and relationship with the surrounding ecosystem. Over a decade of global exploration, his fine-art philosophy has evolved from a traveler’s passion into a powerful voice for conservation, capturing fleeting deep-sea and wildlife narratives to inspire the preservation of our planet.

The winning images of a tiny goby living amongst coral were created to challenge our perception of scale and encourage viewers to look closer. Rather than focusing solely on the fish, the photographer wanted to use it as a point of reference within a much larger world. By placing the goby within its environment, the reef itself becomes the subject, inviting viewers to imagine its vastness from the perspective of one of its smallest inhabitants.

“The vibrancy of the palette immediately draws you in, and the way the small fish are framed against their environments creates a sense of scale that almost reads as landscape. There’s a nice balance here between detail and composition, with the micro subjects holding their own within a larger, almost abstracted environment,” says Alex Pollack, Director of Photography at National Geographic.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Leonp

Happy World Camera Day! In honor of the day, we are sharing your responses to last week’s Question of the week . We asked you which camera was (or is) your most memorable, and to share a photo of the camera and an interesting story about it. This is a spin-off of another question asked a couple of months ago about which camera brand was your favorite, but this time, it may not have been your favorite camera brand that took the spotlight.

Several of you, as expected, mentioned more prominent brands like Canon, Nikon and Sony, but others made unique selections dating back to brands that no longer exist. While the technology of those cameras is now dated, dusty and rusty, the photographs and the memories they conjure up are forever, as they say. With our community over 25 years old and its members’ collective experience spanning well beyond that, there were plenty of memories shared.

Keep reading to see which cameras our readers chose as their most memorable.

Your most memorable camera

Leonp : “In the late 1970s, my nephew bought a Pentax camera. My father was jealous, so he bought one for himself, too. My father wasn’t really into high-tech stuff and never made it through the manual, so I must have sneaked into his bedroom to take the above photo in the mirror using a diving lamp as a light source, which, if you look closely, is also a selfie of me. It took years for it to become my camera, and it changed the way I looked at the world forever.”

Daithi : “The Nikon D850. It was a troubling time for the birth of mirrorless cameras. They were all basically the ugly litter of the well-established DSLR world. For me, this camera kept on truckin’ for many years. The D850 had peerless resolution/image quality, and still does to a large degree.”

GruberSrb : “Minolta Dynax 9xi (with booster). It was hated in photography circles, but its tech and fabulous design remind me of a ballerina in ‘Swan Lake’. It still works flawlessly with a carbon shutter 1/12000sec like new, despite very heavy usage over the last 30 years in some of the worst conditions on Earth, from Patagonia to Kamchatka.”

Thorstenwulff : “My first love was the F3. In the summer of 1987 she went to New York with me, and a box of T-Max 400. Paired with the 24/2,8 it was my perfect combo for street photography, even if you had to get a bit closer. The other Lens was the 105/2,5.”

lonewolf1983

lonewolf1983 : “I present you the Sony A850. I had been shooting with the Sony APS-C SLT cameras (A57/A77/A77ii) and picked up the A850 to complement them and check out what the full-frame thing was all about. I took it soon after on a trip to New Zealand, and captured some amazing images with its 24mp sensor, rock solid build quality, amazing OVF and IBIS, clicking that shutter and hearing the mirror/shutter was just glorious.”

LJ – Eljot : “Canon G3: My first digital camera. Introduced in 2003, a 4MP digital compact. This one was aimed at enthusiasts and featured RAW images. Unusual at that time. Base ISO is 50, and it is basically unusable at the max ISO of 400. It takes about a full second to take a picture after pressing the shutter button. A terrible camera, but I learned to love the tilt-screen. And at ISO 50, the images look quite good, actually. Good macro capability as well. And a hot shoe with full flash compatibility.”

fatplanediaries : “The Sony a6300. It overheated like crazy and had rolling shutter only comparable to the most wobbly of jelly, but it was the camera where I honed my photography and learned videography. I shot my film school application film with it on a homemade gimbal.”

GeoffRG : “The Olympus OM1: I bought it in 1979, and it traveled with me to Seattle, Tanzania, Trinidad, and Australia. I sold it in 1990, along with my OM2n, a pair of OM4s, and a pile of lenses and accessories. I still don’t understand why Olympus discontinued the motor drive system.”

wood_gnome : “The Certo SL 110, because it was my very first camera. I bought it secretly and conspiratorially from pocket money when I was 9 (!) in March 1980.”

Gato Amarillo

Gato Amarillo : “Always my favorite, my Deardorff. The above is a 5×7 model, but I used it with a 4×5 back. The lens is a Schneider Symmar 180mm, a longish normal for 4×5. Contrary to what most might expect, I used it mostly as a portrait camera. The camera was a basket case when I got it. My partner said it looked like something that had fallen off a truck on the freeway. You may notice a couple of odd knobs – I was never able to get together a full matching set.”

Don Sata : “I loved my X-Pro1 to the point that I sold a Sony full frame prize camera from the Sony World Photography awards to get this gem with three primes (18, 27 and 60 mm). In this picture, the camera is posing with a set of Zeiss lenses lent to me for a month. I shot the camera, banged it on rocks, got it splashed, scratched and dented until the shutter died.”

Otto Union : “Without a doubt, my long-gone Leitz Minolta CL with 40/2 Rokkor and 90/4 Elmar lenses. I bought these with tax refund money in April 1978. It was my first real camera and a real gem. It was extremely pocketable and accompanied me to many concerts in the late 70s / early 80s. It was stolen from my residence in 1983, and I’m still gutted about it.”

cbf_si : “I was introduced to photography at 17 during the era of the first AF film cameras in the second half of the 1980s. My classmates were enthusiastic about cameras like the Canon EOS 650 and the Minolta Dynax 7000, but the Minolta X-700 caught my eye. I only got a used one when I got a job in 1998. Like many others, I initially equipped myself with the classic three focal lengths, 28 mm, 50 mm, and 135 mm. Today, I have lenses with focal lengths from 7.5 mm to 250 mm.”

RLHN

RLHN : My most memorable (and first serious) film camera was the Petri 7S, a rangefinder film camera with a selenium cell meter that required no batteries and used “match needle” metering, which made it trivial to tweak exposure. I bought it “used” at a local camera store with my high school graduation gift funds, after someone traded it in because it was “too complicated”. It was barely used, if at all. I took many great photos with it for years, until the photo cell sadly died.

BobKo : I’ve had many cameras, but the camera I remember most fondly is a Panasonic Lumix GH5. I primarily shoot video, and the GH5 was just a video beast. It made shooting really high-quality video a pleasure, and it really upped the quality of my YouTube uploads. Suddenly, my videos looked as good as the big boys. I got my GH5 in 2018, and it still works fine today — I use it for a back-up camera and to shoot time lapses. What a great camera!

Gramar : The one stand out camera from the many I’ve owned over the past 50 + years has to be the original Sony RX100. I bought mine new in 2016 four years after they were launched. I found it ticked every box and was always my go to camera until I sold it in 2024 for almost what I paid for it new. It went everywhere with me despite owning a number of other camera during those times.

So many other stories we couldn’t fit in this article are shared in the forums. Thanks to everyone who took the time to explain what your most memorable cameras are and why.

Keep watch for the next Question of the week every other Wednesday to participate in this series. New questions are posted here on the homepage and in the forums . We can’t wait to read and share your stories!

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Since it was released two months ago, Olivia Rodrigo’s music video for the song “drop dead” has already garnered 42 million views. There are probably a lot of reasons it’s been so popular: it’s the lead single for a very popular artist’s new album, was shot on location in Versailles and clips from it have been popular on social media sites like Instagram. But the aesthetic of the video probably helps too; it has a dreamy, old-school look to it that taps directly into 90s VHS nostalgia.

While that’s well-trodden ground for modern music videos, the effect is very convincing… because it’s real. A recent video from the YouTube channel Frame Set goes deep on how the video, directed by Petra Collins, was shot, in a wide-ranging interview with its cinematographer, Todd Banhazl.

The video obviously covers the mix of cameras used, going into why the crew chose to use BetaCam, VHS and MiniDV, and the different situations where they needed to go with one over the other. There are plenty of interesting details in it for camera nerds, but it also doesn’t slack on discussing craft; a lot of the video is focused on the interesting lighting setups needed to film in a historic building with limited control while using cameras with very low sensitivity.

It also touches on other technical aspects, like the difficulties of editing interlaced footage that will eventually be shown using a platform designed for progressive video, and deeper topics like the rise of the lo-fi aesthetic in the age of AI-generated imagery. Even if you’re not into music videos or Olivia Rodrigo’s brand of pop-rock singer-songwriting, the interview is well worth a watch just to see a clearly talented creative talk about their process.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Mitchell Clark

Earlier this year, Nikon introduced a new version of one of its professional full-frame workhorse lenses: the Nikkor Z 70-200 F2.8 VR S II. We’ve now had the chance to spend some time with it, shooting portraits, firefighting aircraft and more. You can jump straight to the gallery to see the results for yourself, or read on to see what we thought about how it feels to use and the images it produces.

In Use

its smallest and lightest configuration (998g / 35oz). Middle: the lens with the cosmetic bayonet cover (1028g / 36.3oz). Right: the lens with its foot and hood (1248g / 44oz).

The big (or rather, not so big) selling point of this lens is its size and weight. Without the tripod foot and cosmetic sleeve installed, it’s only 998g (35.2oz); the lightest full-frame 70-200mm F2.8 for a mirrorless system. With that said, I typically preferred to use it with the tripod foot; it’s Arca-Swiss compatible, making it very easy to mount to a tripod, and the lens isn’t quite light enough that I feel terribly comfortable toting it around without a solid handle to remind me that I’m carrying a camera attached to a lens, not the other way around.

Even with the foot, the lens’s weight is competitive with that of its lightest competitors, and is a substantial improvement over the original. The lens’s center of gravity is also remarkably consistent as you move through its zoom range, so you don’t have to shift your grip as you change focal lengths.

In terms of features and controls, this lens has most everything you could want, with the exception of the top-display from the previous generation that some – though not I – may miss. And as someone who has long disliked clickless control rings, it’s good to see Nikon providing the option to click or declick the one on this lens, even if I’d still personally prefer a dedicated aperture ring.

I also appreciate the ample number of function buttons, which are available no matter what orientation you’re holding the lens in. The manual focus and zoom rings are also satisfying to turn, and the latter is a relatively short throw, letting you move through the range quickly if need be. While the pattern on them provides plenty of grip, I do wish they were just a bit softer, but not enough that I’d be willing to accept any trade-off in durability.

Nikon says the lens has an upgraded autofocus system, and I found it always kept up with the camera, snapping into focus very quickly. It never felt like the lens’s autofocusing motors were bottlenecking the body, or like I would have gotten a shot if only it had moved a bit faster.

When working in concert with a stabilized sensor, this lens’s optical stabilization is among the most impressive that I’ve used in a full-frame zoom. It’s so effective, in fact, that it can occasionally be a bit difficult to precisely recompose your image with it on, though I only really noticed that in a few situations.

Optics

With the lens wide open at F2.8, there’s noticeable vignetting at the corners throughout its focal range (though it’s most noticeable at the long end ). It mostly clears up by F4, though you’ll see further improvements going to F5.6. While this can easily be corrected using the lens’s profile, this will come at the cost of having fractionally more noise visible in the corners of the image.

You can gain a small sharpness advantage in the corners by stopping down, too, but in our experience, this lens is very sharp corner-to-corner no matter what focal length or aperture you’re shooting at.

F2.8 F4 F5.6 F8.0 F2.8 F4 F5.6 F8.0

I find the lens’s bokeh to be very pleasing, rendering even busy backgrounds relatively smoothly. The specular highlights are also quite clean, without distracting aberrations, which is exactly what we’d want to see in a professional lens destined to shoot a lot of weddings with trendy lighting.

Nikon’s latest coatings are also quite impressive. There was one time when I was shooting pretty much directly into the afternoon sun, which produced a somewhat washed-out image, but things improved as soon as I was shooting even a little off-axis.

1 2 3

The lens makes use of minor software corrections for geometric distortion – there’s a very mild amount of pincushion distortion at the long end and barrel distortion on the short end – but we wouldn’t consider using them mandatory. And, indeed, neither does Nikon; with the 70-200mm F2.8 VR S II attached, the camera allows you to turn off Auto Distortion Control, which isn’t the case with every Z mount lens, such as the Nikon 24-120 F4 S.

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.

Thank you to Nikon for the loan of a Nikon Z8 to capture this 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.

Nikon Z 70-200mm F2.8 VR S II specifications:

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.