New Stuff From Sony and Sigma!

The rumors have been flying around the Web that Sony was going to introduce a mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera system, similar to their NEX cameras, and that's what they've done. Sony has just announced the A7 and the A7r. The A7 will have a 24 MP sensor and the A7r will sport a 36 MP sensor with no anti-aliasing filter for maximum sharpness. Both models will have a built-in OLED EVF finder. The cameras will feature a tiltable LED screen, focus peaking, and weather-sealing. The cameras will accept current NEX APS-C lenses, though some vignetting will occur, and Sony will also offer an adapter so you can use full frame lenses from their regular full-frame cameras. The A7 body will sell for $1698 and the A7r body will sell for $2198.

Sony will also introduce a handful of new lenses for the cameras: a Zeiss FE 24-70mm f/4 OSS, a Sony G 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS, a Zeiss FE 35mm f/2.8, a Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8, and a Zeiss FE 70-200mm f/4 OSS. This promises to be an exciting new system for pro photographers. Full frame images with smaller cameras and lenses. What's not to love?

And finally, Sigma is introducing a new lens, the 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art lens. The Sigma Art lenses emphasize image quality and sharpness, so this will probably be a lens to check out. It will have a fairly large filter size of 82mm, which means that they will have more room to play with in refining the optics for maximum effect. The physically smaller the lens, the less room you have to correct for optical problems. This lens will compete directly with the Canon 24-105mm f/4 IS L lens and it will be interesting to see how they compare. No word yet on its price.

News From Around the Web

Sigma announced the price of the upcoming APS-C zoom, the 18-35mm f/1.8 HSM Art lens, and it's a bit of a surprise. It will sell for $799, which is something of a steal. I know that $800 is still $800, but considering that Canon's new 35mm f/2 IS USM lens goes for $850, the price of the Sigma zoom looks pretty good. Not much has been seen of this lens, but lens tests are starting to show up and reports are very positive. Sigma is becoming a lens company to watch, that is for sure.

Fuji will announce a new camera in its X-series, called the X-M1. It's a smaller, less expensive model, more of an entry level one, to fit in with their X-E1 and X-Pro1 cameras. This picture shows it with their new lens, a 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS. It won't have a built-in viewfinder, instead, viewing is done through the LCD screen on the back, like other P&S's.

Finally, Samsung is really upsetting the old apple cart these days! Get it? Apple cart? Phones? Oh, well. Anyway, Samsung is announcing a couple of new products that illustrate the merging of medias and technologies. First, the have the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which combines a real 10x zoom lens 16 MP OIS camera with a smartphone. So instead of a smartphone with a built-in camera, you have a camera with a built-in smartphone. We can only hope it works well as a phone when you want to make a call. Still, it would be nice to always have a decent camera with you. I'll be checking this one out.

And then Samsung takes it further, in announcing the Galaxy NX, an interchangeable lens 20.3 MP sensor mirrorless camera with a 4.8-inch touch screen that uses the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS and has 3G and 4G WiFi connectivity. While it isn't a smartphone, you will use it like one. Post your pictures to Instagram. And you'll be able to stream and watch movies on your camera. And surf the Web. Wow.

Sigma Lens gets Price and Availability

Sigma announced this lens a while back, the 60mm f/2.8 DN Art Lens, but now we have more info on it. It will carry a very reasonable price tag of $239 and will be available to buy starting in mid-May, which is just around the corner. The new Art series of lenses from Sigma stress sharpness and overall image quality, so that is why they are introducing so many fixed focal length lenses. The recent announcement of the 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM Art lens was an exception. The 60mm f/2.8 DN is made for mirrorless camera formats like Micro 4/3s and Sony E-mount. like the already available 19mm f/2.8 DN and 30mm f/2.8 DN lenses. For M4/3s, it will be equivalent to a 120mm lens and for the E-mount system, it will function as a 90mm lens. It's compact, sure to have exceptional image quality, and is inexpensive as well. What's not to like?

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.

Lenses, Lenses, Lenses!

Sigma announced a few lenses, which include two updated lenses and one brand new lens for Micro Four/Thirds and Sony E-mount, and one updated lens for APS-C digitals.

The two updated MFT/E lenses are the 19mm f/2.8 and the 30mm f/2.8. The first renditions of these two lenses were somewhat under the radar for most photogs, but the people who bought seemed to love them. They had some seriously good image quality. The new lens in this group is the 60mm f/2.8,which is the equivalent to an 120mm lens for MFT and 90mm for the E-mount. With its minimum focusing distance of just under 20 inches, this will make a very nice portrait lens, and like the other two, will be small and portable.

The other lens for Sigma is a new version of their 30mm f/1.4 lens for APS-C digitals, which makes it more or less a normal lens for that format. The previous model was known for its high quality images, especially in its smooth out of focus foregrounds and backgrounds, or bokeh. I'm sure this version will continue this same quality.

Also of interest from Sigma is something called a USB Dock, which attaches to your computer and when you attach the right Sigma lens to it, you can update its firmware and adjust its focusing, in both accuracy and speed. Not all Sigma lenses will work with the USB Dock, but the new 30mm f/1.4 will, once it is available.

And finally from Tokina is a new lens for APS-C cameras, the AT-X 12-28mm f/4 PRO DX lens. It replaces the 12-24mm f/4, which is a lens I owned and used and loved. It was a very fine lens and I'm sure the new version is just as good.

New Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 OS Lens

Sigma has announced the availability of a new lens for APS-C  DSLRs, the Sigma APO 50-150mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM. In regular full-frame 35mm terms, this lens is approximately the equivalent of a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for the APS-C cameras. Since the camera manufacturers don't make a zoom lens in this focal length range with a constant f/2.8 aperture, Sigma provides only option out there. If you aren't doing long range sports like football or soccer or wildlife photography, a lens like this is probably all the telephoto you'll likely to need.

Sigma has included optical stabilization (OS) in this lens, which means you can handhold it at lower than normal shutter speeds. How low depends on the individual user, but you could expect to get decent results down to 1/60 of a second; that is, if your subject isn't moving around too much. It also has close focus down to 31.5 inches, which could make this a very nice portrait lens. Sigma has made some good lenses over the years, especially their macro lenses, so this one should be one to consider. The Sigma APO 50-150mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM will be available in Canon EF mount next week and in Nikon and Sigma mounts by the end of April. Street price for the lens will be around $1099, according to Sigma.

Odds and Ends

It's been a while since I made a post here, but a lot has been happening. Some good, some so-so, some interesting. I'll try to hit the highlights and see what is what.

"Golden Boy" by Albert Watson

First off, I just turned in my article/profile of Albert Watson to PhotoMedia Magazine and that should be published in around a month or so. Albert Watson is a high-level photographer based in New York City. As far as I can tell, his main career peers were Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, and his talents are even broader than those two masters. Watson is known most widely for his celebrity portraits, his portrait of Steve Jobs was the one that everyone ran when Jobs died a while back, but Watson is equally adept at fashion, still life, architecture, and landscape photography. Watson is a rare photographer in the commercial realm; he insists on keeping his hand in every aspect of the imagemaking that goes on under his studio name. That means that he personally makes all the physical prints and final digital images for every job his studio takes on. There's not many other photographers that ever did that. Watson was a blast to talk to and he was full of surprises. I'll let you know when the article is published and/or when it goes online.

Canon 5D Mark III

Canon finally released the specs on the upcoming 5d Mark III and most people are underwhelmed. Most of the changes are refinements of the 5D Mark II and are not revolutionary. The sensor is roughly the same size, 22 MP, but it does have a new processor (the Digic 5+), better weather and dust sealing, 6 frames per second, and the ISO will go up to 102,400. And the price will be $3500 for the body alone. That's about a thousand more than the 5D Mark II originally sold for. It's hard to get too excited about all this. But perhaps the image quality will be light years ahead of the previous model, since it has a new processor, though I doubt anyone will see much of an improvement in the lower ISO ranges from 100 to 800 over the Mark II. Who knows? Maybe. Also, the price of the 5D Mark II is now on close-out from Canon and is now priced at around $2100. That's a good deal.

Adobe Lightroom 4

Adobe has released Lightroom 4 and they've lowered the price for the full program to $149.95 in the US. Lightroom is a great program and many photographers are using it instead of Photoshop, though they are very different tools. I use both, myself. Lightroom to bring in, catalog, and rough edit the RAW images and Photoshop to finish the images and prep them for printing. Image management is probably one of the biggest challenges for digital photography and Lightroom was created to deal with that task. Hasselblad just announced that all their professional cameras will now ship with Lightroom as the preferred RAW image processor. If you've been thinking about trying out Lightroom, now is the time.

Sigma SD1

Sigma has announced a rebate program of sorts for the people who bought their DSLR, the SD1, when it first came out. When it came out, Sigma priced it at close to $7000. Keep in mind that the SD1 is a APS-C camera with approximately a 15 MP sensor, though Sigma rates it at 46 MP, since it uses three layers of pixels to capture images, or something like that. The latest version of the camera, the SD1 Merrill, is now priced at around $2000. People who bought the camera at the original price can apply to Sigma for the difference between the old and new prices in credit towards Sigma products, not for the cash difference, unfortunately. To check the specifics of the offer go to Sigma's website or contact the Sigma USA Director of Marketing, Christine Moossmann (Cmoossmann@sigmaphoto.com) directly. And good luck with that.

Update: It's been said that the Nokia phone, the 808 PureView, which was mentioned in the previous post won't actually be coming to the US! That's too bad, but the 41 MP chip will make it here in some form or another, I'm sure. Or, as sure as I can be. When I hear something, I'll let you know.