Cameras and Photography Explained

At the end of the year I'm considering transitioning all of my News/Views into a single format. This is anticipated to be available only by subscription via a weekly email as well as a private site (see end of this digest for more). Don't worry, the rest of the information on my current sites would remain free.

To give you an idea of what that a weekly digest might look like, I've again taken the past week's news and built it into what this week's email would have looked like under this new plan. Enjoy.  (p.s. If you're interested in potentially subscribing, be sure to click here to receive further updates as this idea gets developed.)

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LEDE ON

I've been talking with a few stores and camera execs recently. The period leading up to Black Friday has so far been sluggish in sales here in the US (not sure about other countries). Not terrible, but year-over-year down. Some of that, of course, was that the camera makers finally shifted to post-tariff pricing, which effectively is a price increase. Price increases at some point reduce demand, and we seem to be tottering on demand for cameras at the moment. 

The goal, of course, is that the holiday sales (see "Sales" item below) will pick things back up and save the fiscal quarter in the US. Unfortunately, the discounts on holiday sales basically take us back down to pre-tariff pricing, so it's unclear just how much of a boost we'll see. It's possible that the sluggish October was due to people waiting for Black Friday, when they knew the prices would be better.

One question that I haven't seen anyone asking yet (but I've been asking of stores and execs) is what do they think January and February will be like? Curiously, my guess and their guesses are quite different. To a person, others all expect a lower level of sales volume that is going to make Q1 2026 numbers in the US tough to make. I don't. 

My suspicion is that the tariffs will come completely off, allowing the camera makers to keep their current new pricing but announce (apparently) massive discounts, and that this will be used to make up that Q1 2026 volume. (Lest anyone read into this that they should postpone purchases until 2026, don't. There's no telling how the current administration will react to a key policy being overturned and what they might do next to muck things up for everyone. 

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COMPACT

Leica announces the Q3 Monochrom

At the high end of the compact camera market, people often forget that Leica has and continues to thrive there. The luxury-popular 61mp Q3 this week got a new sibling, the Q3 Monochrom. Nothing really changes in terms of the camera design, as the Monochrom uses the same built-in 28mm f/1.7 ASPH Summilux lens, features the same 61/36/18mp crop-to-simulate-longer-lens capability, and is viewed via the same high quality 5.76m dot EVF. If you're into video, remember that the Q3's also are capable of 8K video. At US$7790, the Q3 Monochrom sits pretty much at the top of the compact camera market. 

One thing I appreciate is that Leica remains committed to making monochrome cameras. Twenty years ago I started asking for monochrome-only digital cameras (disclaimer: the digital camera I helped design in 1994 was monochrome), noting that there were clear advantages to doing so. The aliasing impacts of Bayer filtration take away proper edge definition, but that Bayer filtration also stops some light from getting to the image sensor, meaning that you get more dynamic range on a monochrome camera. If you look at the older Q2 versus Q2 Monochrom for instance, at ISO 100, the Monochrom gets about 1.5 stops more usable dynamic range than the Bayer version (the same thing is true of the Leica M11 versus M11 Monochrom). I expect to see the same for the Q3 versus Q3 Monochrom. 

Those still channeling their inner Ansel see such gains (acuity, DR) as highly useful. That's particularly true for black and white output, where converting a Bayer file sometimes makes it difficult to work with bright highlight or deep shadow detail as well as using sharpening to remove the aliasing changes edges. Sharpening methods change both sides of an edge, making the edge improper to reality. 

I'd almost certainly own a Leica Monochrom of some kind if I were doing events, weddings, or maybe even landscape work still. Unfortunately, for sports and wildlife, the restrictive lens nature of the M and Q models means I could only use a Monochrom for some of any given session, meaning that I'd end up with a mix of black and white and color, which I don't like to do. Yes, I know that's just a personal proclivity and I could convert the color images to black and white (with limitations stated above), as others see no problems mixing the two. But I was trained in the Hollywood feature film mentality, so once I pick a style for a set of related work, I want to grade everything to that. I mentioned personal projects last week, so maybe I need to take on a personal project where I figure out how black and white and color images work together to say something beyond what each can do individually. 

This is sort of a long-winded way of saying this: I wish Leica would do things: (1) make an SL3 Monochrom; and (2) improve their focus system so that it works better on long telephoto action work. I'd love to take that into the depths of Botswana's wilds. 

So why aren't the other camera makers making monochrome cameras? True, Ricoh has announced a monochrome GR model, so there is some movement. Back in 2005 I did a survey of my site visitors that suggested that at the higher end of the market my sites cater to, somewhere between 10-15% would likely purchase a monochrome version of their favorite camera (or even sample another brand). I don't know what that number is today as I haven't surveyed that particular question lately. 

From a technical standpoint, making a monochrome image sensor is almost solely about not adding a Bayer layer. However, most makers are doing the Bayer/Microlens/Phase Detect create all as a single step these days, so they might have to dedicate a new machine to add what I call the "toppings" if they wanted to make a monochrome camera, and that would certainly cause the camera maker to send the number crunchers into full crunch mode. Changes to the production are a cost, so what is the additional volume a monochrome version would add that presents a growth opportunity rather than just spinning the financial wheels? This is exactly why Leica can do it, by the way: they are a low volume, high price vendor to start with. Even modest volume gains at minimal extra cost would look good for their bottom line (which lately, has been a very good looking bottom line). For Nikon? Nope. Their real need right now is to increase volume fast while keeping costs lower. Nikon needs to sell more of what they're producing, not produce more variants.

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SALES
It's that time of year. Your InBox is full of "buy me" invites, the rumor sites are cranking affiliate links at obsessive levels, and of course the camera makers have their usual instant rebates in full operation. I generally don't do "here's a sale" posts, nor are any of the following affiliate links (disclaimer: B&H is this site's exclusive advertiser). But I think it helps to have one place where you can consider most of the seasonal offerings, so here's this year's version.

Software
Note that some of the app store deals are tightly controlled as to day and date (typically Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday), so clicking on them early won't help you. Some others require you enter a code you enter as a coupon when you check out. A few are longer seasonal discounts, already available and may extend past Cyber Monday. If you're interested in my macOS software suggestions, you can find them here on this site.

• Adobe Creative Cloud: full Creative Cloud Pro for US$35/month instead of US$70/month on a yearly plan (students and teachers: US$20/month).
• Avalanche: for Lightroom/Capture One/Luminar each are US$59. 
• Cascable Studio: tethering software (discount not yet posted)
• Compresto: Compress 4K losslessly (40% off code BFCM25) 
• Corel: up to 60% off (CorelDraw, Painter, PaintShop Pro, VideoStudio, AfterShot Pro)
• Darkroom: 50% off first year subscription 
• DxO: up to 50% off PhotoLab, NIK Collection, PureRaw, ViewPoint, FilmPack 
• Fission: audio editor 
• HoudahGeo7: geotagging ~30% off 
• Imagen: AI editing/culling/styling 50% off 
• Kompressor: HEIC to PNG/JPEG converter 
• Luminar: Neo photo editor up to 77% off 
• Nitro Photo: Pro photo editor/manager 
• On1 Photo RAW 2026: photo editor 15-30% off 
• Peakto: media management 20% (BF4CREATORS code)
• Play: save YouTube/Vimeo videos for direct play 
• Raw Power: JPEG/RAW editor and manager 
• Topaz Labs: 43% off Studio (all apps), 15% off single apps

Hardware
Some links here—such as those for the camera makers—are to a B&H search page, as this is the easiest way for me provide the full(ish) list. Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, and Sony highly regulate what dealers can charge, so there's virtually no pricing differential between them.

• Canon discounts 
• Fujifilm discounts
• Nikon discounts
• Sony discounts

In addition, a number of vendors have their own discounts active during the holiday:

• Kolari: US$75 off IR conversions, 15% to 67% off filters
• Meike: up to US$118 off lenses 
• Nextorage: various discounts (available at dealers that carry them, such as B&H)
• Smallrig: up to 30% off 
• Viltrox: 20% off 

Miscellany
Finally, here's a few items that don't fit into the above categories:

• Aura: Frames for photos 20% off 
• Canvas prints: up to 95% off canvas prints 
• Digitzed media: 55% off 
• Glass prints: 25% off (MERRY25 code) 
• Labels: 25% Field Made labels (BFCM25 code) 
• Shutterfly: up to 50% off 

As I learn about other holiday season discounts, I'll update this item.

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TIP#1

While going through every article on this site and slowly trying to bring them up to date I found myself struggling with a couple of small things. One that’s important has to do with card corruption.

Early on in the digital era, it was a fact that not all cameras correctly dealt with file deletion. It was not only possible to corrupt a card by performing a file deletion in the camera, it was highly likely on some models. Moreover, despite DCF and other standards, it seems that early on none of the camera companies had actually locked into how the old CP/M (and later MSDOS) FAT/directory was defined and used correctly. I actually put some of my old Silicon Valley tools to work and found terrible errors in some of the earliest cameras in the way they set up a card partition.

As time progressed, things settled down some, but not completely. After the worst of those errors were addressed by the camera makers, there were still persistent reports of deletion issues. Almost invariably, these came in full or near full card conditions. A user would discover they had no (or little) room left on a card, so would then begin deleting images from the card to make space. This exposed a number of different bugs in the file handling of cameras.

What happened in these situations is that FAT/directory itself didn’t get directly corrupted, but because the file deletions spread across multiple not-necessarily sequential sectors on the card, coupled with the fact that files are always variable in size (due to differences in detail captured), the write mechanisms would struggle to keep up with your photography and eventually trigger an error, and that error triggered random things happening, which could corrupt the card.

Both the above problems were recoverable. Well, at least most of the images on the card could be recovered. But it took structure-aware and file-aware software to piece things back together correctly. 

SD and CFe cards—the two currently favored card types—handle data differently. 

In the case of the SD card, the camera is the primary memory manager and fully responsible for what happens on the card. Most camera companies seem to have fixed their FAT/directory and file deletion errors, and thus generally avoid the problems I note above. 

For CFe cards, things are a little different, as these cards have a built-in memory controller that’s managing where individual bits of files go. They’re trying to load balance the limited life of the NAND chips involved. We also have 2D and 3D structures within the NAND itself, as well as sub-organization of the cells themselves.

If you start with a completely erased (or new) card, things work a little differently with SD and CFe. On SD cards your image file is usually written sequentially onto the card; your image essentially lives together (adjacent cells). On a CFe card your image file is split into small bits that are scattered as to where they're stored in the NAND structure. Technically, this is more risky, as an error in the memory management could lose track of a piece of a file, but we’ve been using NANDs long enough now (SSD drives use NANDs in a similar way) so that keeping track of what’s going on tends to be standardized and reliable. One key difference, though, is that (most) images on an SD card can be recovered after write/deletion/cell errors. For CFe cards, we don't have the same ability to post recover once card structures are breeched.

What I was contemplating on one page edit of this site was an instruction to avoid deleting files in the camera. Current state-of-the-art in card read/write is pretty reliable, both in camera and off. The bugs you’d be likely to trigger deleting a file on camera have been (almost entirely?) eradicated. Still, I think it wise to avoid file deletion on camera whenever possible—that’s file deletion, not card format—as it adds another function that can trigger a bug. However I no longer avoid doing so on my cameras, and haven’t found my cards to be any less reliable, nor am I hearing regular reports from others of issues. 

Best card practices today are:

1. Format your card in your camera before each use. This insures that the structure on the card matches what the camera thinks it should be.
2. Don’t share cards between cameras. The DCF specification will trigger a sub-folder for each camera, and numbers get incremented as they do. While everyone seems to agree on structure now, I can’t guarantee that. It’s also not recommended that you share cards between traditional FAT cameras (e.g. Nikon) and AVCHD cameras (typically Sony). This generates folder proliferation, and makes it more difficult to find the file you’re looking for.
3. Delete on your camera if you have to, but keep deletion activity to a minimum if you can. Deletion is a different function than storing. Any bug between what the two functions think should be happening can be a problem. However these days I think it unlikely you’d trigger a problem. Again, the primary time when that might occur is when the card is nearly full. It is still possible to delete one image from a card, take another image, and that new image be larger than the space left on the card because it contains more detail.
4. Retire cards regularly. Cards do not have infinite life spans. The memory storage cells on cards have limited life spans for writes (near infinite life spans for reads). SD cards are more vulnerable to cell write death than the actively managed CFe cards, because the CFe's memory manager will map a dead NAND out of its storage use. But both types of cards will eventually start losing some error free capacity if you constantly use them. My current recommendation is this: buy new cards when you buy a new camera, and retire your old cards at that point.

In the end, I left some language intact when I edited those articles, and downplayed other “don’t do that” language. Better to be safe than sorry.

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TIP#2
Old iMac as a Second monitor. This one came up in an email question from someone who was upgrading from an old Intel-based 27" 5K Retina iMac to one of the new Apple Silicon Macs. They miss that beautiful big display but don't want to spring for the new 5K Studio Display. 

It used to be that iMacs (until 2014) had a special feature called Target Display Mode that you could enable to connect them as a monitor via Mini DisplayPort (2009-2010 27" iMacs) or Thunderbolt (2011-2014 iMacs). It was (normally) as simple as connecting the correct cable and pressing Command+F2 on your iMac. 

Apple eventually removed that feature, so most folk with more recent 27" 5K iMacs think you can no longer use them as a second monitor for another Mac. That's not true. There are two reliable third party options:

• Astropad's Luna Display, a US$90 USB dongle that can make your iMac into a second monitor for your new Apple Silicon Mac, as long as the iMac is running macOS High Sierra or later (almost a given).
• Duetdisplay's Duet Air, a US$48/year subscription that uses software at each of two Macs (cabled or Wi-Fi enabled) to let the iMac work in what they call Duet Target Display Mode. 

So don't go throwing that iMac away yet (or trading it for next to nothing). It's a perfectly fine 5K display still.

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Wrapping Up

And in other news

▶︎ The LUTs are coming. Still and video are slowly merging in terms of visual look. Nikon introduced RED LUTs for their mirrorless cameras, and Panasonic seems to be going all in with LUTs forming their whole visual modification system. This week Fujifilm announced that most of their Film Simulations will be available as LUTs. (What's a LUT? A Look Up Table. At its simplest form: if a captured digital number is X, the output should be Y.) 

So what's changing? Nothing and everything. For most of digital camera history, color and contrast decisions (for JPEG files) were a "secret sauce" at each camera company. Canon Picture Style, Fujifilm Film Simulations, Nikon Picture Controls, and Sony Creative Look were all secret sauces. Rarely did we ever get a look inside the black box to see what one of those choices did versus another. Despite Fujifilm's naming, I don't find their choices to perfectly simulation any film stock, it's more of a broad paint brush they're using. 

Meanwhile, the video world was using grading of data in very calculated, specific manipulations. Because camera angles for every scene had to match each other and the Director/Cinematographer were placing styling decisions on top of that, you needed a very technical way of matching color and contrast, which eventually led to LUTs. Because the mirrorless cameras are all hybrid still/video devices, there's long been a cry for making the two match visually. If I like the still secret sauce, why can't that be the way the video looks, too? (And vice versa.) 

Thing is, once something is encoded into a LUT, we can all reverse engineer it and see what the camera makers actually did. I'm a believer in open and useful information, so I'm all for seeing every style encoded as a LUT. That doesn't mean I'd copy them (I'm looking at you Vivid), but understanding what an image or video style is doing and what is being manipulated becomes useful in developing my own styles (LUTs). I'm curious to see how far this goes, but Fujifilm publishing Film Simulations as LUTs is an interesting move, as their secret sauce won't be so secret any more. 

▶︎ YACI (Yet Another Chinese Import) is almost a daily occurrence. Here are some of the more interesting ones this week:

• Viltrox 85mm f/1.4 Pro. This US$600 lens has been available for the Sony FE mount for awhile, but this week Viltrox announced the Z-mount version. It's a nice option for those building an f/1.4 kit (e.g. Nikon 35mm f/1.4 and 50mm f/1.4). 
• DJI Osmo Action 6. I use an Osmo Action 5 as my GoPro-type video camera (sometimes referred to as an "action" camera or a "point of view" [POV] camera). I've got a mount that allows me to lock my Action 5 pretty much anywhere on the Land Cruiser I use in Botswana, and I tend to alternate between Timelapse and regular video being recorded as we're driving in the National Parks. So of course I was interested in what the new version offered. It boils down to a variable aperture lens (f/2 to f/4; the Action 6 is f/2.8); a square image sensor that allows 4:3 4K/120P that can be re-cropped later; and some other minor things. The big news, if there's any with the 6 versus the 5 is that you can now easily post-create vertical 9:16 from your footage (e.g. TikTok-ready video). If you're looking for this type of camera, you now have the choice of GoPro Hero 13, Insta360 Ace Pro 2, and DJI Osmo Action 6 at the top of their model lines. I'd gravitate to one of the latter two for three reasons: the magnetic mounting systems, the seamless wireless mic capabilities, and the better mobile app support. At the moment, though, I'm not looking to replace my Action 5, as the primary new thing it delivers that I might use is f/2 instead of f/2.8, generally not something I've found I've needed. I've now passed my GoPro and Insta360 cameras on to other users after making my decision.
• Zeniko ZA12 Flash. With the camera makers mostly ignoring flash, the Chinese have jumped to the rescue. The problem? Often the result is a flash that's basically 1970 in a box. This small, retro-looking unit is a dirt simple as you can get in terms of setability. Figure out what aperture the camera is using and move one dial on the flash to match that, then use the other dial to either (a) perform manual flash at 1/64 to full power, or (b) move the second dial so that the ISO value on it matches what you're using on the camera, which produces a form of Automatic flash (not TTL flash). Critically missing in all the marketing, sales, and promotion materials for this new US$50 flash? The Guide Number. I did find a "refer to manual" mention at some point sleuthing their materials, but their Web site doesn't actually contain the manual to download, so I remain in the dark about what their use of the word "Bright" actually means (see what I did there?). Zeniko makes a ZT-08 flash that's even smaller that performs TTL, by the way. It apparently is also "Bright". Why is it important to know the Guide Number (GN)? Because Guide Number / Aperture = Distance. A flash that is GN20 (feet) used at f/2 produces light to 10 feet. A flash with a GN40 (feet) produces light to 20 feet. (Most of the world uses the metric system, so the GN is stated in meters for most flash units, but the formula remains the same; the distance is just expressed in meters.)

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You'll probably note the heading name change this week. One of the reasons I'm making these changes out in the open is so that I can adjust and tune what I'm doing based upon feedback.

I received one comment from someone that they "didn't need another repeat of news stories." Those of you with long memories know that I've never really just written news stories in this space. My special sauce is that I try to provide context and commentary on product and other announcements. I'll admit that I've gone back and forth on how I use the terms Views or Commentary quite a bit over time. As I adjust the way I do things, I'm finding I need to start nailing that down so that it's clearer.

I believe that one reason many of you read bythom (or the News/Views on my other sites) is for context and explanation. It's one thing to say Leica announced a new camera and give the specs (see first story, above), it's another thing to explain why you might want to consider it (i.e. acuity and dynamic range). As camera features and performance becomes less dramatically different, but more nuanced, it's more important than ever to sort out what a change or update means in practical terms. One of the things I'm seeking to do with the upcoming changes to my sites and byThom Max is do an even better job of that than I've done in the past.

Congratulations on making it this far. As you can see, this weekly "newsletter" style for News/Views can be quite elaborate and lengthy, particularly once I add in video instruction and other planned items. The fact that it will be sent (mostly) weekly would be part of its benefit: you wouldn't have to scroll all my sites daily to find what I might have written, because you've subscribed for everything to come directly to your email InBox as it gets published each week. By putting everything in one spot, in a single format, it also saves me time. 

My current intention is to remove News/Views from all but the zsystemuser.com site (where you'll still get shorter, one or two paragraph news items about the latest Z offerings), to remove all ads and affiliate links from my sites, and generate on-going revenue through modest subscription fees that include the weekly News/Commentary newsletter, ongoing video instruction/presentations, monthly hangouts, and more. I call this new thing byThom Max, because I'll be on maximum while doing it, including going to and reporting from as many of the trade shows I can, as well as other events, covering them for the newsletter.

I'll have more about byThom Max when (and if) I kick it off in early 2026. In the meantime, if you're interested in subscribing, click here to receive updates.

At the end of the year I'll likely be transitioning all of my News/Views into a single format. This is currently planned to be available only by subscription, and via a weekly email as well as a private site (see end of this digest for more on that). Don't worry, the rest of the information on my current sites will remain free.

To give you an idea of what that a weekly digest will look like, I've taken the past week's news and built it into what this week's email would have looked like under this new plan. Enjoy.  (p.s. If you're interested in potentially subscribing, be sure to click here to receive further updates as this gets developed.)

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Tariffs Smeriffs. The taxes on new gear may or may not continue, and may or may not be what you think they are. 

First, we now have reliable data for exactly how much the US collected in new tariff money in the April to September time frame: ~8%. Wait, aren't all the Trump-stated rates higher? Well, it turns out that (a) those don't always apply because of all the back door exceptions (many of which don't get reported), and (b) where they have been applied, companies at both ends have so far been absorbing some of the impact. 

Now we're starting to see the Holiday season promotions. It seems Nikon's pretty much works out to "what our prices were before the tariffs." The US$999 Z5 is back, for example. Sure, there will likely be some "better than pre-tariff" pricing this season, but much of that seems to be earlier generation product or products likely to be updated soon. So, the orange grinch did try to steal Christmas, but apparently didn't bring a bag big enough to carry much.

Better still, it now seems that the Supreme Court actually might agree with me on the tariff matter: tariffs are taxes and only Congress has taxing power (it's part of that taxation without representation thing that produced the Constitution). In this week's public hearing, pretty much every justice seemed skeptical of the administration's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which doesn't mention tariffs, and which was actually written to try to constrain a President's power, not enhance it. A Supreme Court decision in favor of the plaintiffs in the case would, however, have the result of creating yet another period of pricing uncertainty for companies. Would they get what they already paid back? Would the administration put in yet more challenges (or more likely, make policy adjustments that try a different tact to do the same thing) that might leave the whole tariff levels still up in the air?

Stay tuned, as this daytime serial has been renewed for another season.

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FIRMWARE

Nikon continues to try to catch up to themselves

Nikon this week updated firmware for the Z5II and Z50II cameras. Before you get too excited, these weren't feature updates. The primary change in both updates was to conform the Nikon Imaging Cloud wording and messages that appear on the camera, as well as support the better automatic way Flexible Picture Controls, uh Recipes, are delivered to the cameras. The original Nikon Imaging Cloud implementation was really kludgy, but now the engineers in Tokyo have refined it down to just kludgy. 

While my tongue was in my cheek last paragraph, I will say that once you fully understand and start using Nikon Imaging Cloud, it can be a real help, first in getting your images up to your favorite cloud, and second in getting Nikon things down into the camera (that's Recipes and firmware updates, which can now happen automatically (SETUP > Firmware version > Auto update > On; see the tip later in this digest). The Z9 generation cameras now all seem caught up with Nikon's latest kludging, uh, developments. Those who bought a Z5II while the free one-year Lightroom deal was active should absolutely explore using Nikon Imaging Cloud, as it connects seamlessly to the Adobe cloud. 

The Z50II also gets four bug fixes, most of which you probably never encountered. I haven't.

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ASIAN LENS PARADE

Viltrox 85mm f/2 EVO

The most active of the Chinese lens companies at the moment is Viltrox, who this week brought their 85mm f/2 EVO autofocus lens to the Z-mount (it was previously available for the Sony FE mount).

This US$275 lens is a lightweight (12.7 ounces, 360g), low-priced alternative to all the other 85mm f/1.8 lenses that are now available. But I'm glad they refer to it as a portrait lens, as while the MTF out to about the DX frame looks decent, there's a pretty clear fall off past that.

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ZR GOES XLR

Tascam CA-XLR2d-N adapter can be ordered

The very first option available for Nikon's new digital hot shoe on the ZR was Nikon's own ME-D10 shotgun microphone. Not far behind was Tuscan's XLR microphone adapter. Note that the Tascam option isn't a microphone, but rather a two-line pre-amp that can support and power XLR microphones (and has a built-in holder for one). 

Canon and Sony versions of this digital hot shoe adapter have been on the market for some time, as well as an analog one that plugs into your camera's mic/line input mini jack. Word is mum at the moment about whether this new Nikon version supports 32-bit float or not, but if you're rigging up a ZR you'll want to know that, I think. Because this week's news was really only that the unit is now available to pre-order, we have to go back to Tascam's press release, which is vague on the subject. B&H is listing this new device at US$599 (the Canon and Sony versions list at US$499 and are currently on for US$399 or less).

Personally, I'm waiting for a wireless solution, which would be a wireless receiver for the hot shoe slot, plus one or two wireless transmitters that can talk to it. After all, the ZR is compact. Why are we trying to load it up into a RED-sized (and weighted) rig?

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Ready Set Mark III

Canon updates their popular midrange mirrorless camera

The big camera news of the week was Canon's Thursday announcement of the R6 Mark III. The good news is there's a lot that's been improved. The bad news is that it now has a list price of US$2799, or US$500 over the Mark II. 

So what are those improvements? First up is that Canon has moved to a 33mp image sensor, which tops out at 7K/60P open gate for video. Faster readout speeds compared to the older model mean less rolling shutter impacts. The stabilization behind the sensor has been improved by half a stop, to a max of 8.5 stops (CIPA). 

Other big changes are the switch to CFexpress+SD slots (instead of dual SD slots), the HDMI connector now goes full size, pre-release capture now works in regular Release modes, the shutter longevity metric is now doubled to 500k actuations, plus autofocus is now across the entire sensor area and more matched to the EOS R1 algorithms and features (including Register People). On the downside, the battery life is down from the Mark II. Unchanged are the Rear LCD and EVF stats, as well as the 12 fps mechanical, 40 fps electronic shutter speeds. In something only Canon engineers can explain, the body is the same, only a bunch of bits are just ever so slightly different. 

In sort of the opposite of Nikon's handling of the ZR's marketing, Canon is promoting the Canon R6 Mark III—which is really a still photography camera with video (e.g. hybrid)—heavily for the new video features (e.g. 7K open gate recording, oversampled 4K, 4K/120P, Canon Log2, false color display, etc.), despite having introduced the same internals recently in the C50 (a dedicated Cinema camera). Of course, the C50 is US$3900, so maybe Canon's just trying to undercut themselves ;~). 

Canon (R6) and Sony (A7) are on similar release schedules and features at the moment. The Sony A7 V is expected early next month, and is also at the 33mp point. Nikon and Panasonic have already fired their salvos, and both with the same 24mp partially stacked image sensor. So for awhile at least, it will be half the players coming to the camera fight with 24 caliber and half with 33. 

The question, of course, is whether that sensor count really matters. For still photography, that's a 15% linear resolution increase, which is at the minimum threshold what can be distinguished. Put another way, it's the difference between a 20.2" print and a 23.4" one. In video, the difference turns out to be oversampled 6K 16:9 on the Nikon and fully sampled 7K open gate on the Canon. Again, in practice, not enough difference to really matter except for a very few.

So it really comes back down to what it has always come down to: Canon UX, Nikon UX, or Sony UX (with a quick glance at Panasonic). The new R6 is recognizably an R6. It even quacks like one, to abuse the metaphor. And I've really liked the R6 models to date. They are an excellent choice for most people, if you want the Canon style and interface. The R6 is arguably one of the best mid-range cameras out there, and the new model has just gotten some pick-me-ups. 

But realistically, even though the current Sony A7 IV is long in the tooth, the Nikon Z6III (or ZR) doesn't go to 11, and the Canon R6 Mark III is now the youngest of the bunch, these are all extremely good cameras that you'd have to go a long way to find a serious fault with, and I'm not sure that you can manage to do that. Thus, you buy on (1) lens mount; (2) brand and UX loyalty; plus (3) price, in that order. Given that the Nikon is the only one on which you can use the others' lenses on, Nikon wins #1. Given that Canon sells half the cameras in the market, they win #2 on sheer numbers alone. Which leaves Sony with #3 at the moment, as the current holiday price of the A7 IV is US$1999, or US$100 less than Nikon. 

Sure, you can find a YouTuber who'll pronounce one better than the other. At least until they need more ad revenue and have to pronounce something else the new winner. Sure, I can find a feature, function, or performance aspect on any of the three that the other two don't (quite) match. But these are all mid-pack cameras, so they're clustered pretty closely. I'm going to stick by my think of lenses first, honor your brand loyalty second, and hold out for really good pricing if you're going to ignore the first two. 

So take your pick on how you want to bias your camera purchase decision. I'd say we're right back to where we were at the height of the DSLR wars, only with Nikon and Sony having swapped market share positions. 

Bonus coverage: But what about within a brand? For instance, R8, R6 Mark III, R5 Mark II, or R1? The R8 is the stripper, the low end doesn't have everything and is an all around basic transportation model. You buy it solely on price for basic functionality. The R1 is also easy to figure out: it's the top end of what Canon is capable of doing, and built to withstand abuse. You're not buying that model unless you have income from your photographic endeavors and don't mind carrying a heavy brick around with you all the time. Which leaves the R5 Mark II. 

At US$1100 more even after holiday discounts, I guess you'd have to tell me how 45mp versus 33mp and 8K/60 versus 7K/60 really benefits you. Sure, there's a higher resolution EVF, blackout free view, and eye control focus, but are those worth the extra bucks?

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Budget f/1.2

Canon launches the 45mm f/1.2 RF lens

Well, this is one way of keeping the Chinese from taking over the prime lens territory: introduce an autofocus 45mm f/1.2 lens for US$470. Of course, the other way is blocking them from releasing autofocus lenses in the RF mount via patent threats. 

This new Canon lens is certainly making headlines (e.g. "surprisingly fast, shockingly inexpensive" and "Fast apertures don't always break the bank"). The reviews will eventually trickle in and likely start changing the narrative. That's because the published MTF chart for the lens looks like this:

So we're starting from a lower-than-usual contrast at the center, and at about the APS-C corners things decline rapidly to really poor ability by the corners. Of course, at f/5.6, there might be a completely different story, but we don't have that data. Canon is leaning heavily on the f/1.2 number, so f/1.2 is where we have to start our contrast, sharpness, and astigmatism assessment. Astigmatism (solid versus dotted lines) seems likely fine, but the other two, not so much. The large difference between the 10 lppm (black) and 30 (blue) is also indicative of an issue, too. Don't expect to be clearly resolving fine detail wide open. It's unclear what, if anything, we'd be resolving in the full frame corners.

That said, we've seen MTF charts like the one above before. In the 1990's mostly. So maybe this is just an "old school" lens for "old schoolers" who happen to have a "new school" camera.

By way of contrast, here's the MTF chart for the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 S:

Now that the Nikon chart represents some really good pixel grappling, which I've verified in my review of the lens. (Note: both Canon and Nikon show theoretical MTF values, not measured ones.)

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Unthreading

dpreview introduces their new fora

I'm mostly convinced that either dpreview staff don't know what makes dpreview into dpreview, or that their new overlords at Gear Patrol are pushing the wrong decisions upon them.

This week dpreview completed their transition from the forum software that the original team had built to an off-the-shelf version from ZenForo. The result makes it problematic for someone like me to continue to post there. I'll get to the why on that in a bit, but first I need to write about what made dpreview so successful initially and for a very long time after (at least up through the Amazon acquisition).  

You all know that I'm all about optimal data capture when it comes to photography (and optimal processing, as well). It's a "quality thing." My long career in media has shown me time and time again that top quality information (and commentary) presented well wins the game. We've now seen at least three distinct Internet waves where some have gone for quantity and hype over quality—the current one is AI-generated content—and that approach has simply never won. The Googlization of the Internet has also been what novelist and tech commentator Cory Doctorow calls enshitification. Platforms decay as they pursue profitability and growth the old fashioned way (by serving themselves before their customers). 

To some degree that's what has happened at dpreview. Go look up some of their earlier reviews of cameras and compare them against the current short forms they're using. The level, breadth, and depth of detail is no longer there. Likewise, the older forum postings were fortified with constant Vitamin Knowledge by a large group of like-minded folk willing to share their knowledge, including one of the inventors of CMOS image sensors (he still posts in one forum, but much more rarely; a point that will become relevant in a moment).

People new to anything digital photo—of which there were many—found a Fountain of Knowledge when they came to dpreview, and the wizards that built that were still around to help you sort through it. Eventually the brand wars and their troll armies started watering down things, and a bunch of us wizards left, at least temporarily. Coupled with never quite getting a handle on "news", the decline in the quality of the reviews, the need to find more spaces for ads and affiliate links, and the decline in forum post quality all made the dpreview of 2020 not so good as the one earlier in the century. 

So let's talk about the change in forum software. It does several things that make it so I can no longer spend the time sorting through forum posts and offering help. First, there's the density of information change. On a full page on my 5K display, I now only see the titles for 12 forum posts in a full height window (and that's with an ad blocker running). It can be less if people write really long post titles. I can see about that many more with a full scroll, then I have to start hitting the Next Page buttons (currently 1410 Next Pages in the forum I usually respond in). So here's a key problem that losing the threaded view the old forum software had: the density of information is now terrible. The likelihood that just a few posts get commented on goes up, as no one is going to want to constantly keep clicking buttons and then doom scroll to find all of today's posts. 

Density of information comes up as a problem in other ways, as well. I just clicked on one thread I had been responding in. With the old forum software I could see the headings for 50 or more posts, including the original one that set off the thread. Today? I see—again, this is on a 5K Retina display—just the original post fully. Then to find where I had responded in the thread I have to scroll through completely opened posts from others. I don't need to see those again in their entirety. Moreover, there's an already open "reply" area for me taking up space at the bottom of the first page, but I think that if I fill anything in there, I'm actually adding to the end of the thread, not specifically to that location in the thread. So more wasted space, because since most of the threads I participated in tended to hit the old maximum 150 posts mark: I don't need to scroll through (currently) five more screens of this, each with an extra place to post a reply. 

Finally, dpreview has always had the problem of people quoting an entire post in their response to it. In the old threaded view, this was not disruptive to info (title) density in the old threaded view. In the new view, even though the quoting is automatically minimized to five or six lines (with Click to Expand taking another line), this is pushing the per-pageview information density down still further. 

The problem for me is simple: the old dpreview forum design allowed me to quickly scan and find relevant things to respond to where I might help, while the current dpreview forum design means I have to scroll through every expanded post and (often) click through multiple pages of those. I don't have the time for that. So starting today I'm going to reduce my presence on dpreview, probably to near zero. I know others who did the same when the almost-closure happened a couple of years ago. I should also point out that, though Reddit also has a poor density per page, I can at least doom scroll through the entire r/Nikon very quickly to find interesting posts, click on one, and then doom scroll through a threaded view of the post and responses. Much less time wasting. 

Thus it's a sad day here in Anticrapville. 

Bonus coverage: If you think that what I might be getting ready to try with my sites is an attempt at antishitifying, you're now staring at the head of a nail centered on the target. If I'm going to consider continuing my work at photography and technology education, I need to do better, not worse. I don't want Doctorow pointing at me as an example. 

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No Surprises

Nikon discloses first half 2026 fiscal results

(Reminder, Nikon's fiscal years start in April and end the following March, and the ending date determines the "year"). 

The first half of their fiscal year showed Nikon mostly hitting their marks with the Imaging unit, with sales being slightly up from their forecast in August and income perfectly matching. That's still down from last year's first half, though unit volumes are up (mostly due to strong Z5II and Z50II sales, which have lower average selling prices than last year's Zf/Z6III binge). Foreign exchange rates and tariffs also had a negative impact on profit compared to last year. 

The Imaging group remains the largest component of Nikon, still with 46% of its sales, as well as being one of two truly profitable divisions in the first half of the year (the components business is the other).

Nikon now claims to have launched 50 Z System lenses. The number is actually 46, as Nikon apparently is including teleconverters and the SE versions of the 28/40mm lenses in their count. But hey, they promised 50, and they lived up to it (two quarters late).  

A new disclosure was also made: EssilorLuxottica, the Italian company that owns Lenscrafters, Pearl Vision, Sunglass Hut, Oakley, and Ray-Ban, among others, now owns 10.5% of Nikon's stock (and is authorized to buy as much as 20%). Here's looking at you, kid. The future's so bright, it now includes shades.

Bonus coverage: Meanwhile, Canon and Fujifilm reported increased sales, though Canon also reported hits to their profits due a number of intersecting reasons. Something is going to have to give in the ILC market, though: either we need to see significantly more overall volume, or further Fujifilm and Nikon unit volume growth will have to come at the expense of Canon and/or Sony. 

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Tip of the Week

Yellow dots now appearing in Nikon menus

Nikon has been mostly quiet about this (probably because the where and why has been changing), and I don't currently document this in my books (for the same reason), but you may now see yellow dots in your menus (Z9 generation cameras only, though not the Z9 ;~):

These happen when you've got a SnapBridge or Nikon Imaging Cloud connection active on your camera and those services want to push (or have pushed) something down to you. This started with firmware updates (via SnapBridge only), but now includes Recipes you might have selected on the Nikon Imaging Cloud site for download to cameras. 

The dots appear as a solid yellow ● on unselected items versus a hollow black ◦ on selected items (why isn't it just a black dot?). But if you see ● on a menu item (as with on the SETUP menu tab, above), it means that something is pending (it may or may not have been downloaded to the camera). This brings us to another new feature that Nikon (and I) have been mostly quiet about: SETUP > Firmware update > Auto update. 

Auto update allows you to have the camera automatically download a firmware update from Nikon Imaging Cloud. Nikon's documentation is a teeny bit misleading, as they state that three things have to be true for this to work (1 Nikon Imaging Cloud connection turned on, 2 camera turned off, and 3 camera powered via USB). Not true. The update will get noticed even if the camera isn't plugged into USB power delivery and will be downloaded to the camera, if possible. It just won't be installed. Also, Nikon sometimes forgets in their instructions to tell you that there needs to be a card in the camera, as that's where the update will be downloaded to.

Previously, the only way you'd know that your camera had a pending firmware update is that you went to Nikon's download site, or you noticed a "New firmware is available for your camera" text box at the top of SnapBridge. Now your camera can not only tell you, but even make sure you're updated. 

Here are the steps to set up a Z9 generation camera (ironically not the Z9 itself; do I have to flog Nikon on the lack of a full set of firmware on the Z9 again?) to update firmware automatically:

1. Make sure you've connected your camera to Nikon Imaging Cloud: NETWORK > Connect to Nikon Imaging Cloud > ON.
2. Set up the automatic update system: SETUP > Firmware update > Auto update > On > [time]. This step determines what time each day the camera will do the checking, with 00:00 being midnight. Note that Auto update may be scrolled off the Firmware update screen if you have a firmware update file already on the card in the camera.
3. Make sure that your camera is turned off and connected to USB power. 

Personally, I don't like keeping my camera connected via a cable to a USB power source. First, the camera isn't in a bag or secure storage when you do that. When your cat or dog comes to investigate and knocks your camera off your desk...well, don't blame me. If you forget it's there and accidentally snag the cable, you, too, could pull your camera off the desk, so I hope you have carpet with a thick pad underneath. I follow all of Nikon's steps except for USB power. When I see a yellow dot the next time I pull the camera out of its storage, I just go immediately to SETUP > Firmware update > Update (from Nikon Imaging Cloud) and perform the update.

While I've mostly written about firmware, above, the same thing can happen on the PHOTO SHOOTING > Set Picture Control menu if you've got pending Recipes for download. 

Overall, Push-to-Camera is a good, new thing Nikon is doing. I hope to see them expand on this and improve it (e.g. NX Studio needs a Push-to-Nikon-Imaging-Cloud option that can further push to the camera as a personal Recipe).

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Video of the Week

What did Thom last photograph in Botswana?

The following video contains stills from my most recent trip:

Cameras and lenses: Z8, Z5II, IR converted Z7II, 600mm f/6.3 VR S, 28-400mm f/4-8 VR. A little tip: the 28-400mm f/4-8 doesn't hot spot on IR converted cameras! That's highly unusual for a zoom lens, and makes for a compact kit with the Z7II. 

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Wrapping Up

And in other news

▶︎ Leica will now sell you the SL3 Reporter, replete with scratch-resistant olive-green finish, aramid-fabric armor, and blacked out buttons and dials (but the dot is still red). It'll only cost you US$500 to bling out your new Leica. Or is that black out? Sure to be on every war reporter's Christmas wish list.

▶︎ DxO went full update with new versions of PhotoLab (9.2), PureRAW (5.5), and Nik Collection (8.2). The two most interesting new features are that (1) PhotoLab can now work directly with Photoshop (ala ACR) and create Smart Objects, where you can go back and change your demosaic choices, and (2) Nik Collection Analog Efex now has paper texture blending.

▶︎ Tenba introduced the new Roadie v2 Spinner 22, a rolling camera case that can also be used as a backpack. Though virtually every story I've seen about this new bag claims "first-ever rolling camera case that converts into a backpack." Nope. I'm not sure that it was first, but the ThinkTankPhoto Airport Takeoff v2.0 can do that, too (as can a couple of other ThinkTankPhoto backpacks). The Tenba might be the first to do that with four wheels (spinner) as opposed to two (leaner). Note also that the Tenba Roadie is close to, but not quite, overhead compliant (it's a half-inch too big in two dimensions). At US$500, you'll want to pay close attention to that if you fly with it, particularly on some International carriers. 

▶︎ In the photographic-adjacent category of video, Atomos introduced the Ninja TX GO, a new US$799 5" 6K touchscreen HDMI monitor-recorder claiming to be able to do (in an update) direct adjustment of exposure settings on the camera (Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Panasonic, Sony, and Z CAM are mentioned). This appears to be the "new thing" for external HDMI devices, as the just introduced Portrays LH5C monitor is claiming the same camera control features. So something's been brewing in the Tokyo labs that everyone seems to agree on. The Ninja TX GO also goes to 1500 nits (500 more than the Nikon ZR) and records to an internal CFexpress Type B card or external SSD drives.

▶︎ And here's another video tidbit that will produce some head scratching: Sirui this week announced three autofocus, anamorphic, t/1.8 primes (50mm, 75mm, and 100mm), in the new Astra series. These US$999 optics are lightweight, which will help with gimbal work. But here's the head-scratcher: the new lenses will come in L-mount, FE-mount, and Z-mount. Only the RED Z-mount cameras currently support anamorphic capture. Does this announcement suggest we might also see video squeezing coming to, say, a ZR?

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Congratulations on making it this far. As you can see, this weekly "newsletter" style for News/Views can be quite elaborate and lengthy, particularly once I add in video instruction and other items. The fact that it will be sent weekly is part of its benefit: you're not going to have to scroll all my sites daily to find what I might have written, because you've subscribed for everything to come directly to your email InBox as it gets published each week. By putting everything in one spot, in a single format, it also saves me time. 

My current intention is to remove News/Views from all but the zsystemuser.com site (where you'll still get short, one line news items about the latest Z offerings), remove all ads and affiliate links from my sites, and generate on-going revenue through modest subscription fees that include the weekly News/Commentary newsletter, ongoing video instruction/presentations, monthly hangouts, and more. I call this new thing byThom Max, because I'll be on maximum while doing it, including going to all the trade shows I can, as well as other events, and covering them for the newsletter, as well.

I'll have more about byThom Max when I kick it off in 2026. In the meantime, if you're interested in subscribing, click here to receive updates.

Ah, the best laid plans...

I'm still up to my armpits in book revisions, partly because Nikon has been so active in firmware updates lately, but also because the Complete Guides are incredibly complex books to dial in perfectly, so my two latest ones still need a little tender love. Meanwhile, Nikon continues to introduce incredibly small differences with firmware between cameras, which means I have to read, test, and annotate carefully. 

Unfortunately, on my recent trip back from California, I came home and finally came down with COVID (yes, my first time with the disease). That put me even more behind. Even as I recovered, I wasn't trusting my soft matter to catch all those small bits in the book revisions, so I worked on other things that didn't take as much brain concentration. However, starting this week I should be back full time on the book updates. 

Thus, I might not hit my original goal of getting these revisions out by the end of September. I'm working on nine book updates at the moment, so please be patient. The ZR introduction also postponed the introduction of the next book in my Mastering series. 

And just a warning for the future: all Nikon's firmware changes have had me updating books more often than I originally anticipated. Every time I introduce a new update to a book, it costs me email and bandwidth charges. I'm not proposing to change my Z System Complete Guides or Mastering book pricing any time in the near future, but one reason why I'm pushing to get these updates done is that I don't want to be doing as many small incremental updates in the future. 

Ironically, the film and DSLR book prices may have to change some, though, because it seems that quite a few of you keep asking for new downloads because you lost the file, had a computer crash, your dog ate it, etc. I never adjusted my pricing for that. 

Topaz Labs last week sent an email to many of us who have owned their products. Here’s the email:

In effect, Topaz is going subscription (again). This time it seems to be an all-or-virtually-nothing approach on their part. 

As many of you may remember I stopped recommending Topaz Sharpen AI and Denoise AI (no longer available for new purchase), and don’t recommend their “replacement” Photo AI, mostly because it isn’t as controllable or ultimately as good as the standalone products were. The Sharpen AI and Denoise AI purchases got that same “perpetual license”. To Topaz Labs credit, I can still download installers for them, however updates to Photoshop over time have exposed issues with them. Ultimately, Adobe will render those two products unusable, so “perpetual,” means “until the operating system or parent software breaks it.”

Photo AI also has another issue these days: it’s effectively AI Raw Conversion, meaning that you’re now fully committed to AI images, even though they started as camera raw captures. Some people will like that, as they don’t have the knowledge or time to do their own raw conversion, but I wonder when the photo contests will start banning such images? (This is the same thing we had to decide in editorial photo use in the 1990’s, which most magazines and newspapers solved by using words “photo by,” “photo illustration by,” and so on. Only the “photo by” were done traditionally with minimal developing manipulation. So now we have “manual conversion” and “AI conversion”.)

In my view, Topaz Labs has transformed itself from a tool maker for photographers into an AI tool creator for designers and Hollywood. That’s fine, but it isn’t me. I might have been a “founding customer” (literally), but I’m likely to become a “former customer."

You've probably seen the following pie chart on a photography Web site lately:

This is a graph of total camera sales (not just mirrorless) using the just published annual Nikkei total sales report. 2024 was a growth year for camera sales (14% increase in shipments). The question I had on seeing Nikkei's article was this: in a growth year, who was growing and who was shrinking? 

That turned out to be an interesting question. So here goes, in order of best to worst performance from 2023 to 2024:

• Fujifilm — grew 72.1%
• Nikon — grew 18.5%
• Ricoh — grew 16.7%
• Sony — grew 16.5%
• Average — 14% growth
• Median — 9.8% growth
• Panasonic — grew 7.7%
• Canon — grew 5.7%
• OMDS — shrunk 11.1%

So, four companies are quite happy with that result, three not so much. 

I haven't seen the "mirrorless only" numbers from Nikkei yet, and that's likely going to reveal something different, as Nikon really doesn't play in compacts anymore and Ricoh is mostly selling compacts.

Overall, the four top companies—Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, and Sony—now account for 93.7% of the unit volume, up from 92.9%. If you want to restrict that just the top three, the number is 84.5% of shipments. In essence, we have an oligopoly in terms of cameras (at least as defined by Nikkei; this doesn't count products like GoPro, Osmo, etc.).