Shocker! Sigma Announces f/1.8 Zoom!

Sigma surprised pretty much everyone by announcing a new zoom lens for APS-C digital cameras, the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM lens. This represents a new milestone in zoom lenses, as no one has ever made a constant aperture f/1.8 zoom lens for this format before now. Professional-class zoom lenses have topped out at f/2.8 for most manufacturers until this introduction, although Olympus made some high quality zoom lenses for the standard 4/3s format with an aperture of f/2. With the new Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8, the range is somewhat limited (in 35mm equivalent terms, this is a 27-52.5mm lens), but this lens will reach new heights in limited depth of field for a zoom lens and could conceivably replace several lens in a photographer's bag. This is also part of Sigma's "A" series lenses, which stands for "Art," so we can expect smooth bokeh and high resolution. The lens features 17 elements in 12 groups, a fairly complicated design, with 4 glass-molded aspherical elements and 5 Special Low Dispersion (SLD) elements. Lately, Sigma has been on a roll and this is a lens to look forward to. Kudos to Sigma! Makes you wonder what else they have up their sleeves.

Last of its Kind Print Sale at the Online Photographer!

"Ctein"

[Update: The dye transfer sale sold out after a few hours. And that, as they say, is that!]

The blog known as The Online Photographer will be hosting another print sale and this time, it will be something different and special. Photographer and writer Ctein will be selling off the last of his dye transfer prints and The Online Photographer is hosting this event. Ctein (pronounced "kuh-tine") is a prolific writer, having written more than 2000 articles on photography over the years for magazines like Darkroom Techniques and two books, Post Exposure and Digital Photo Restoration, and he is one of the last and best photographers and printmakers to work in the demanding and now mostly lost art of the dye transfer print.

A dye transfer print was made by taking a transparency or color negative and creating three negatives that separated out the colors into cyan, magenta, and yellow for printing, and then soaking each of the negatives in dye (cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes) and separately pressing each of the dye-soaked negatives onto the print in perfect register to make a full color print. Done right, a dye transfer print is one of the best looking color prints that have ever been made. I own one of Ctein's original dye transfers and it is indeed one of my favorites in my collection. However, Kodak stopped making the supplies for this process many years ago in 1993, but Ctein mortgaged his house to buy what he thought was a lifetime supply of the dyes, matirix films, and print paper. And now, he is at the end of those supplies.

So Ctein and Mike Johnston will sell off the remaining prints that Ctein can make, which is around 160 16x20-inch prints. After these are made and sold, Ctein will be out of supplies for good and will close down his wet darkroom. Of course, he will continue to work in digital and with ink jet printers. These dye transfer prints will sell for $575 each, which is about 1/3 of his regular price. You'll be able to see what images he will offer for this last printing today at The Online Photographer. The sale will last for 5 days or until the 160 prints are sold. If you can spare the cash, this is an opportunity that you will not get a second chance to buy.

New Stuff!

Fotodiox has announced the availability of an interesting alternative for photographers looking to create high resolution, 645 medium format, digital images without spending $30,000 and up. The RhinoCam is made for Sony NEX cameras and uses those cameras as a digital back that is moved into predetermined positions letting the photographer take several images that can be combined or stitched together into one 140+ MP photograph in a program like Photoshop . It uses medium format lenses from Hasselblad V, Pentax, and Mamiya, and has a sliding focusing screen for focusing and composing the image. The RhinoCam sells for $500. This could be a good option for some people. Landscape and architectural photography would work nicely with a system like this.

Also, Sigma has released the prices of a few of their new lenses. Both the new 19mm f/2.8 and 30mm f/2.8 for M4/3 and Sony E-mount will sell for $199 each, and the APS-C digital lens, the 30mm f/1.4 in Sigma, Canon, and Nikon mounts will sell for $499.

Two New Cameras Introduced

In the next few days, many new cameras will be introduced because of CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, which begins tomorrow on the 8th and ends this Friday, the 11th. A couple of cameras have already surfaced which have captured our interest. The first is the Pentax MX1, a compact digicam that seems to be following the lead of some of Fuji's latest offerings like the X10 and the soon to be announced X20. The MX1 has a 12 MP sensor with a 4X zoom, in 35mm terms from 28mm to 112mm, with a maximum aperture range from f/1.8 to f/2.5. Actual zoom range is 6 - 24mm. The controls and layout are intended to reference older film cameras and the construction also supports this. The camera features brass top and bottom plates with, I assume, a black paint finish, when the camera comes in the all black finish. It's also available in the black and chrome finish. With Pentax's solid history of making user friendly and high performance cameras, I'll be interested in checking this one out.

The other camera is kind of the polar opposite of the Pentax MX1; it is the Canon PowerShot N. This unconventional camera is intended as a supplement to your smart phone, as it can be connected via Wi-Fi to the phone, tablet, or PC of your choice. The square design and tilting touch screen enable the camera to used in any direction, configuration, and orientation, according to Canon. One of the two rings surrounding the lens is the zoom control while the other functions as the shutter release. The idea is that you can carry this highly pocketable camera (3 x 2.4 x 1.2 inches in size when closed) with you and take better quality pictures and videos than you can take on a phone and then be able to upload them to the social media platform of your choice through your phone or tablet. Interesting idea. I'm looking forward to seeing this as well.