Table of contents for Issue 434 in Camera

There have been plenty of stories over recent times of interesting collections of photographs being discovered in junk shops or in attics during clean-outs. And I’m not so much talking here of pictures that have since been found to be historically significant in one way or another, but the photographs that were taken to record family gatherings, parties, travels and the other happenings of everyday life. Invariably prints – but sometimes transparencies if somebody’s relative or friend was a keen amateur photographer – over time they’d be consigned to the back of cupboards or packed in boxes to be forgotten until a clear-out happened. This clear-out is often prompted by the passing of the last holder of the family archives and, unless a younger family member was interested, the next…

THE SMALLEST AND lightest Canon Cinema EOS series camera we’ve seen so far, the EOS C50 weighs in at a mere 670 grams and is smaller than the EOS R5 C body. It’s still a full frame camera using the RF lens mount, but with a new 7K BSI CMOS sensor (32.3 MP for stills) mated with the ‘DiG!C DV7’ processor. The combo enable 3:2 aspect ‘open gate’ recording for format flexibility including in the vertical, and internal RAW recording at up to 7K and 50/60 fps (in 12-bit Cinema RAW Light) using the sensor’s full width. The C50 can record 4K DCI at up to 100/120 fps and Full HD at up to 150/180 fps for cinematic slowmo effects. The 4K footage is oversampled from 7K for enhanced image…

OK, SO IT’S actually 50-200mm in focal range, but as it’s a Micro Four Thirds lens, the effective focal length is 100-400mm which makes the new PRO series OM System telezoom a first. Its full title is the M.Zuiko Digital ED 50-200mm f/2.8 IS PRO and it’s only the second OM System lens to have a white finish after the monster 150-400mm f/4.5 PRO. Already widely adopted by Canon and Sony for their telephoto lenses, the white reflects more light to help reduce internal heat build-ups which can compromise the precision of metal components. The new 50-200mm f/2.8 is weather sealed to meet the higher IP53 protection rating, matching that of the OM-1, OM-1 II, OM-3 and OM-5 II camera bodies. This also includes insulation to enable operation in subzero…

Celebrating its tenth year, the Standard Chartered Weather Photographer of The Year competition is run by the United Kingdom’s Royal Meteorological Society and serves as an international platform to raise awareness of environmental issues that are putting our planet at risk – including heatwaves, extreme flooding and cyclones – while showcasing the awe-inspiring beauty and power of weather. The expert panel of judges – which included photographers, meteorologists, scientists, broadcasters and journalists – whittled down over 4000 entries from 12 countries around the world to just 25 finalists with the overall winner being selected by a public vote held online at the Royal Meteorological Society’s website. To mark the competition’s tenth birthday, photographs taken over the last ten years were accepted for entry. Professional cameras, smartphones and drones have captured…

Specifically open to photographers resident in Australia and New Zealand, the annual Sony Alpha Awards celebrates its tenth year of competition in 2025. Entries were invited in 13 categories, including Landscape, Portrait, Editorial, Creative, Sport and Astrophotography. New for 2025, the Nature category was expanded into three more specific categories called Bird Life, Sea Life and Wildlife. The Alpha Awards aspire to drive creativity, reward professionals and enthusiasts alike, and showcase exceptional photography. Entries must have been taken with Sony Alpha system cameras and lenses. However, entries to the Youth category could be captured on any brand of camera, and also smartphones. This year, entries in the Youth Category had to feature or be themed on the keyword “Bridge”. Entry to all categories was free. The 2025 competition attracted over…

HIGHLY COMMENDED The nature theme continues in this round with a great bird study – unusually in B&W – shot by Suhas Sudhakar Kulkarni. It’s appropriately called The Catch and Suhas panned at 1/160 second to introduce some motion blur in the background and give more of an impression of the bird’s speed. The camera was a Canon EOS R10 fitted with a Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8.0 IS USM telezoom. 2025 SIGMA SHOWCASE - OPEN FOR ENTRIES Sigma lenses is the sponsor for our Showcase competition, made possible through the generosity of the Australian distributor C.R. Kennedy & Company Pty Ltd. The grand prize for the 2025 Sigma Showcase is a Sigma lens to the value of $1000 and the winner can pick the model and the mount that they…

THE AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTOR of Ricoh products, C.R. Kennedy & Company Pty. Ltd., has opened the first GR Space in the Southern Hemisphere, located right in the heart of Brisbane. Following the GR Space galleries Shanghai, Tokyo and Beijing, this new creative hub is designed to celebrate the culture, community, and artistry surrounding the legendary Ricoh GR compact cameras. It will serve as a meeting place for photographers, artists, and enthusiasts to connect, learn, and showcase their work. The opening ceremony was attended by Kazunobu Saiki who is the general manager of Ricoh Imaging’s Camera Business Division and is known as the “godfather of GR”, having been involved with the line since 1996. As an indication of the importance of the new showcase space, Ricoh Imaging’s President, Yasutomo Mori, was on…

JOINING THE EXISTING 20mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm models, the RF 85mm f/1.4L is another of Canon’s hybrid stills/video fast primes, and all share the same dimensions to make it easy to switch them in and out in a video rig. It means they also all have the same balance when the camera is on a gimbal. And they all have the same screwthread filter fitting of 67 millimetres. A notable feature of these lenses is the use of a voice coil motor (VCM) as part of its autofocusing drive and which has more thrust to be able to move the heavy focusing group which is one part of a ‘floating’ focusing arrangement. The finer adjustments – using a lighter focusing element – are then performed by a ‘Nano USN’ ultrasonic…

THE RF MOUNT 100-500mm telezoom has been a big hit for Canon and now L mount users can have the focal range in a comparatively compact lens that’s also quite affordable. The Lumix S 100-500mm f/5.0-7.1 OIS is a fraction over 196 millimetres in length and weighs 1285 grams which isn’t excessively heavy for a lens with a 500mm reach. The zooming action is telescopic, so this lens does get longer as you zoom out to 500mm. It’s fitted with a tripodmounting collar, but this is detachable to help save a bit of weight when using handheld. Furthermore, the built-in optical image stabilisation gives up to 7.0 stops of correction for camera shake when using the ‘Dual I.S.’ tie-up with the IBIS in the Lumix S camera bodies.The external construction…

INSPIRED BY THE FM2 35mm SLR, Nikon’s Zf full frame mirrorless camera has been a huge hit in a black finish with a choice of five coloured leatherette inserts, but now there’s a silver body option to replicate a chrome FM2. Along with the silver Zf body comes three new insert colours called Cognac Brown, Teal Blue and Mauve Pink. Additionally, in this market you can have your silver body with the Moss Green, Stone Grey, Sepia Brown, Bordeaux Red and Sunset Orange colours that have been available with the black finish. Likewise, the three new colours are now also available with the black body so that’s a choice of eight to give your camera a bit of individuality. You can, of course, have standard black inserts with either body…

The Story The sixth annual Spirit of the Bush photography competition is a celebration of the resilience, beauty and community spirit that define rural Australia. Rural Aid CEO John Warlters says the competition continues to reveal the stories that often go unseen. “This year’s photos are a moving tribute to life outside the city limits. They tell stories of perseverance, pride and connection. There’s an authenticity to these images that resonates. Whether it’s a family working through drought, or a breathtaking sunrise over a remote property, the spirit of the bush shines through.” The Photograph Amy Ahchay from Calliope in Queensland captured the hearts of the judges with a candid image of local countrymen Rob and Gordon sharing a laugh over a cuppa in the paddock. “It’s a moment that…

In keeping with the OM Digital Solution’s positioning of the OM System brand as the camera gear for the great outdoors, the 50-200mm f/2.8 is another telezoom in the lens line-up that promotes the enhanced portability that’s made possible by the Micro Four Thirds sensor size. It joins the stonking 150-600mm and the upgraded 100-400mm in leveraging the near-doubling, in effect, of the focal length while maintaining significantly more compact dimensions and a lighter weight. It’s a very desirable combination if you’re spending a lot of time carrying your equipment around which is often the case when shooting wildlife, birds, adventure or sports. Unlike these other two models, however, the new 50-200mm is a PRO line model which means a step up in both the optical and physical constructions to…

COMPACT CINEMA CAMERAS are another current trend and, not long after the Sony FX2 and Canon’s EOS C50, Nikon announced the ZR which is a Z mount model primarily designed for video work. The ‘R’ obviously stands for RED – the cinema camera-maker that Nikon now owns – and the ZR also carried RED branding. Nikon describes the ZR as its “first Z cinema camera” and it features an all-new body built around the same ‘partially stacked’ 24.5 megapixels CMOS sensor that’s used in the Z6III and which enables a faster read-out speed. There isn’t an EVF, but the ZR has a large 10.1 cm monitor screen with a peak brightness of 1000 nits and in the videoorientated 16:10 aspect ratio. Significantly too, it supports the wider P3 colour gamut.…

WITH ITS FE mount lens system now topping 80 models, Sony continues to add more with the latest being a G Master grade 100mm f/2.8 Macro with builtin optical stabilisation. This is the first medium telephoto macro lens in the highperformance G Master line, and it enables up to 1.4x magnification (i.e. a magnification ratio of 1:0.7) which is 1.4x life size. The lens is compatible with Sony’s FE teleconverters so the 2.0x unit will give 2.8x magnification while also allowing an even longer working distance (which reduces the risk of disturbing flighty subjects). Sony says the optical design has been optimised for macrophotography – i.e. shooting over very short focusing distances – notably chromatic aberrations. The optical construction employs 17 elements in 13 groups which includes two ‘XA’ types…

THERE’S A PRETTY good chance you won’t be in the market for Fujifilm’s GFX Externa 55 pro cinema camera, but we’d thought you’d like to known about it anyway. It’s built around the ‘GFX 102MP CMOS II HS’ medium format sensor and the ‘X Processor 5’ engine that are used in the GFX series medium format mirrorless cameras. With its imaging area of 43.8x33.9 mm, it’s the tallest sensor available in a digital cinema camera and makes the GFX Eterna 55 both extremely flexible in terms of formats and also capable of an extremely high image quality. By the way, the ‘55’ refers to the diagonal measurement in millimetres of the sensor which is also the imaging circle diameter. You’ll be familiar with the Eterna name as one of video-orientated…

In this era of rapid change, a year is a very long time in any industry and certainly a lot has happened in the imaging business over the last 12 months. For starters, it finally looks like we’re recovering from the multiple hits of the smartphone – which decimated the compact camera business – and the many and varied impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic which have been ongoing for quite a while. Economic uncertainties remain, but there are plenty of signs that our industry is looking at the future with more confidence. Well, how else do you explain the Sigma BF, Fujifilm’s X Half and the GFX100R, a few cameras with sharp-intake-of-breath price tags, and a near-deluge of more exotic or highly specialised lenses. Very few of these products will…

In the world of 35mm SLRs, there’s the era before the Olympus OM-1 and the time after. It’s one of the great milestones in camera design, although it was the original OM-1’s smallness that made it such a big deal. It started life as the M-1 and made its debut at the 1972 Photokina exhibition. Dramatically downsized compared to anything that had been seen before, the M-1 was another masterpiece from Olympus’s legendary camera designer, Yoshihisa Maitani. However, word soon reached Leica that Olympus had adopted the model designation “M-1” and the German camera maker objected… even though its M-series cameras were 35mm rangefinders, not reflexes. Production had already begun, but the ever-courteous Maitani agreed to a revision and so, when his new baby was officially launched in 1973, it…

For a long time making the jump up to medium format photography from 35mm not only involved a good deal of expense, but also adapting to bigger, heavier and slower cameras, especially if you wanted an SLR. While the 6x4.5cm format had been around for many decades previously (at least dating back to the 1920s), Mamiya introduced the first SLR system to exclusively use the image size in 1975 – the M645 – and it sparked a revival. There were subsequently dedicated 6x4.5cm SLRs from Bronica, Pentax and Contax; and rangefinder cameras from Fujifilm and Bronica… the former’s all fixedlens models. The smaller frame size not only allows for more compact camera bodies but, logically, also more frames from a roll of 120/220 film… making it more economical on a…