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News
Some news here and there from the digital photography world.
Sony yesterday released updates for 6 models:
- the full frame A7RII, A7SII, A7II and the new flagship A9. For the A9 there is just a modification for the overheating warning, while the other models received an interesting list of improvements, especially the A7RI/A7SII a change when noise reduction is set to NO, and this seems to target the wide complain from stars shooting people with the star eater problem of these cameras (even with no noise reduction set, the camera apply a noise reduction effect, technically known as "spatial filtering"Read more ... Add new comment
- Referenced brands in this article: Sony
Today Sony has published an article (see here) in which it reports that the NPD Group's Retail Tracking Service (www.npd.com) has seen Sony becoming the second vendor in the US regarding full-frame cameras, surpassing Nikon.
- Referenced brands in this article: Sony
Company Serif has announced the availability of Windows version of Affinity Photo, after its availabilty for Mac. Affinity Photo is a product "similar" to Photoshop, with advanced features for handling images including RAW of course.
Differently from current Lightroom product, it provides supports for layers but it misses the advanced cataloguing feature of the Adobe product. Performance are not (yet) satisfyng on Windows systems in my opinion, but price is very interesting around 50 $ one-time (discount untile 22nd of December), not like Adobe that forces user to a subscription.
Sony has announced the new top-of-the-line mirrorless APS-C (1.5 crop factor with respect to full frame) camera: the A6500.
This announcement is quite unexpected, since the A6300 has been launched just 6 months ago... very little time ago. Someone supposes that the A6300 was delayed and the A6500 is on original schedule, that's why they are so close.
- Referenced brands in this article: Sony
Yesterday Canon has announced a new mirrorless interchangeable lens camera: the M5. Canon so far hasn't show so far much determination in entering the mirrorless market, for obvious reasons giving its extremely wide consumer base especially for non-mirrorless lenses and its models have less features and performances with respect to other manufacturers, especially Sony, Panasonic, Olympus and Fuji.
The new M5 appears the first "serious" model (i.e. at least comparable to other manufacturers' models), let's see in detail the feature, also looking at some direct concurrent models of Sony (the new A6300) and the Panasonic and Olympus micro four thirds:
- Referenced brands in this article: Canon
We have published a deep review and comparison between two popular lenses for compact Sony mirrorless (APS-C format, E-mount) like A5100, A6000, A6300, NEX: Sony E 50 mm f1.8 OSS versus Sigma 60 mm f2.8 DN (Art series).
Two great primes compared: the review is at this link.
- Referenced brands in this article: Sony, Sigma
Sony has updated the firmware for Sony A6300 to version 1.10. Officially the changes are:
Improves overall stability and operability of the camera
Improves stability in picture shooting mode by optimizing temperature control (effects vary according to temperature).
so there is no direct mention to the overheating issue that affects this wonderful camera when shooting video (and, more rarely, when shooting stills), though there is a vague point to overall operability and surely some improvement has been done on overheating when shooting stills.
- Referenced brands in this article: Sony
Adobe has updated Lightroom to version 6.6. For the Creative Cloud users (monthly subscriber) there are 3 new features:
- Guided Upright tool: draw 2 or 4 lines on the image to indicate vertical/horizontal or vertical+horizontal (4 lines) lines in the image and LR will straighten it to minimize the keystone effect (perspective). It is available in the Transform Panel but first activates after having activated Lens correction. A video shows how it works (see below in the article).
- Pending Sync Activity section: in Preferences - Lightroom mobile tab, it show sync activity to detect any sync errors.
- Deleting synced data is now done from the web interface to avoid that you can accidentally remove them.
- Referenced brands in this article: Adobe
The Nik Collection of plugins for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and for Apple Aperture, bought by Google in late 2012, are now offered for free.
The plugins are the following ones:
- Analog Efex Pro: simulation of analog films.
- Color Efex Pro: various color filters.
- Silver Efex Pro: black and white treatments.
- Viveza: colors/contast enhancements.
- HDR Efex Pro: high dynamic range images treatments.
- Sharpener Pro: advanced sharpening.
- Dfine: noise reduction.
Today Adobe has released Lightroom 6.5, news are:
- a new features: when merging multiple photos into a panorama, dust spot removal set to one photo is automatically applied to the other photos;
- boundary warping in panorama merge has been improved;
- additional cameras support - among them the new Nikon D5, Nikon D500, Canon 80D, Canon 1DX Mark II, Sony A6300 (full list is available at this link);
- additional support for many lenses (full list available at this link).
Now the most important fixes:
- Referenced brands in this article: Adobe
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