Camera
LowePro PhotoSport Outdoor BP 24L AW III backpack review: A great pack for hikers who dabble in photography
| Photo: Tim Barribeau |
These days, it’s not often I need a full camera bag – if I’m using my camera, I usually bring it along to something else, it’s not the sole reason I leave the house. Which makes the PhotoSport Outdoor Backpack BP 24L AW III ($250) a smart compromise: it’s half hiking daypack, and half camera bag. And while it doesn’t truly excel at either, it does them well enough that it’s a bag I’d be happy to bring with me any time I head into the woods.
Key Features:
- Hiking friendly features
- Good layout and useful pockets
- Removable (and useful) camera insert
Specs (from manufacturer):
- Size: 27x22x50cm (10.5×8.75×19.75 in)
- Weight with dividers: 1.5kg (3.3lbs)
- Hydration pocket size: 3L
- Capacity: 24L (backpack), 5L (removable camera pouch)
- Example loadout: single camera, 2-3 lenses, accessories
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Hiker’s delight
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| The PhotoSport looks like it was designed for the trail. Photo: Tim Barribeau |
The PhotoSport Outdoor Backpack’s name tells you just about all you need to know: it’s a photo and outdoor backpack. It looks like just about any hiking day pack you could pick up at your favorite outdoor retailer but with the extra utility of carrying a camera and lenses while you’re out for the day.
“Like most hiking backpacks, the PhotoSport’s build focuses on weight support and distribution.”
Like most hiking backpacks, the PhotoSport’s build focuses on weight support and distribution, more so than most other packs I’ve tried. Unlike the Wotancraft New Pilot or Peak Design Everyday Backpack, the PhotoSport has a hip strap built-in rather than as an optional add-on, and it has enough padding to put the bag’s weight on your hips where it belongs.
The sternum strap has a whistle (which isn’t really important but is fairly common in outdoor gear), and the back panel does a decent job of providing comfort and airflow. However, I’m 6’2”, and the hip straps hit a bit too high for me to use them properly. In the larger sibling models to the 24L backpack, the smaller and larger sizes can account for height differences, but in this one, you have one choice for where the straps land.
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| The hydration pocket (which can double for laptops in a pinch)… |
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…and included rain cover are all hallmarks of a decent hiking backpack.
Photo: Tim Barribeau |
There’s a hydration pocket that holds up to a 3-liter water reservoir, with a passthrough for the straw, which is absolutely necessary if you’re going to spend any appreciable amount of time hiking. It also has loops to store your hiking poles, a flexible external pocket for stowing a jacket or helmet, a water bottle pocket and even a rain cover. All practical, outdoor-focused features.
Plus, you have the usual medley of pockets, including one on the hip strap, a small top flap pocket for stashing things you need to get to easily, like your sunglasses, a water bottle pocket, and a large drawstring pocket at the top of the bag for storing all your non-camera gear.
Camera Storage
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When the camera insert is stowed, it’s easy to get to via the side entry…
Photo: Tim Barribeau |
To stash your camera gear, the PhotoSport has a single side access pocket (on your left side) where the included LowePro camera insert lives. It’s large enough to hold a body with an attached zoom lens, and 1-2 extra lenses, as well as some assorted bits and pieces like SD cards. While that’s not a lot, if you’re going for a hike, more than that will weigh you down quickly.
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…and the insert can also be pulled out to free up space or carry on its own.
Photo: Tim Barribeau |
Because the bag uses an insert system, you can quickly pull the camera section out if you just want to carry that or set it aside (somewhere safe) if you want to use all of the bag’s internals for non-camera reasons. The insert can be attached to the bag’s hip strap, carried on its own with an included neck strap, or even attached to the bag’s shoulder straps to sit against your chest. And those same attachments can be used with your camera directly if you want your camera clipped into your bag rather than directly around your neck.
Jack of all trades, master of none
Unfortunately, while splitting the difference between a hiking pack and a camera pack, there have been losses on both sides of the equation. Some of them are small; for example, there’s no place to clip the hydration straw or the single water bottle pocket. And some are substantially more noticeable – a better hiking backpack these days will have better back padding and ventilation system than the PhotoSport provides. Even after just thirty minutes of carrying it on a warm day, and I was sweating against the cushioning.
On the camera side of things, while the insert is stowed, you only have access to the contents from one side of the insert, so any that are on the other side of a divider are out of reach until you pull the whole thing out.
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| Photo: Tim Barribeau |
None of this is anything that’s a deal breaker, as long as you go into using the bag knowing what it is and what it isn’t. This isn’t a camera bag that works well as a commuter bag. There’s no specific dedicated laptop slot (though you can use the hydration pouch area), and it has a huge number of straps and flaps that look aggressively outdoorsy. It’s also not a camera bag. This should seem self-evident, but don’t go looking for a way to stash multiple bodies, lenses, and accessories into the PhotoSport – if you do, you’ll just be disappointed when it’s not that. And it’s not a hiking backpack to take all of your gear for days of trekking through the wilderness.
But if you’re trying to do a little bit of all of the above? Then it’s great.
Conclusion
If you’re going for a hike, and want to bring your camera so you can capture some interesting images along the way, the PhotoSport Outdoor Backpack BP 24L AW III is all but perfect, with space for just enough gear, both camera and otherwise, to support you through the day. But don’t go expecting it to be as good for hiking as a dedicated hiking backpack, nor as good for carrying camera gear as a dedicated camera backpack.
| What we liked | What we didn’t like |
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| Photo: Mitchell Clark |
This year we attended Adobe Max in person, where we got to demo several of the new features in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe Camera Raw. If you missed the announcement, you can read our coverage of it here, though we’ll be covering the hits here.
We documented the demos on our Instagram, but in case you missed it, we’re rounding them up here. We were also able to interview some folks at Adobe while at the show, so stay tuned for more on the future of Photoshop, Lightroom, and other Adobe projects like Content Credentials.
Adobe Camera Raw Adaptive profile
Adobe has added a new profile to Adobe Camera Raw, called Adaptive. It uses AI to analyze what’s in the scene, and adjust exposure, tones, saturation, and other parameters automatically, potentially giving you a better starting point for your own edits. It’s also designed to work with HDR images and produces both HDR and SDR profiles, making it even more useful for those who aren’t used to editing for HDR displays yet.
Since it’s substantially more opinionated than other profiles like Adobe Color or Adobe Landscape, there’s also an amount slider that lets you tone down or turn up the results.
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Photoshop automatic distraction removal
Perhaps one of the niftiest features Adobe added to Photoshop is the automatic distraction removal tool. It analyzes your photo for cables, wires, or people that may be in the way of your subject, then automatically fills in the areas they took up.
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Lightroom Quick Actions
Lightroom’s new Quick Actions, available on Mobile and Web, will automatically mask parts of your image like subjects, backgrounds, and skies, and let you make adjustments to them.
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Lightroom Frame.io integration
Frame.io is now built into Lightroom, letting you access images uploaded to the cloud service. Combine that with Frame.io’s Camera To Cloud feature, available on some Fujifilm, Panasonic, Nikon, Canon, and Leica cameras, and you can take pictures on your camera then watch them appear wirelessly in Lightroom.
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Content Credentials
Adobe’s Content Credentials system is part of a larger industry-wide initiative to help prove what content on the web is authentic, and to keep track of what edits have been made to it. While at Max, we got to take a look at the Chrome extension meant to surface the credentials attached to images on social media and other sites, as well as the closed beta site that lets you attach content credentials to your own images, and view what credentials are attached to existing images.
We got to sit down with one of the senior directors of the Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe while at the conference, so expect a more thorough check-in of the technology to come.
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Generative Extend in Premiere Pro
Photoshop has had several generative AI features in beta for a while now, but now Adobe has introduced one for its Premiere video editing software. It lets you extend a clip by up to two seconds, helping you fill in gaps, transitions, or slightly flubbed takes with imagery generated by Adobe’s Firefly model.
According to Meagan Keane, Principal Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Pro Video, the idea came from asking customers what some of their biggest editing pain points were. The Pro Video team was then able to take that to the research team, and the result is Generative Extend.
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| Photo: DPReview staff |
As part of DPReview’s 25th anniversary celebration, we’re looking back at some of the more significant cameras to come along over the past 25 years, and today, we’re highlighting the camera that led the 4K revolution in consumer cameras: the Panasonic GH4. Officially announced in early 2014, we published our GH4 review on October 16, 2014 – ten years ago today.
We’ve all become so used to 4K video that it no longer registers as unique. It’s found on virtually every mirrorless camera made today, smartphones, action cameras, miniature gimbal cameras, webcams, security cameras, and even those wacky $100 ‘pro’ video cameras you see on Amazon and wonder who buys them.
But, of course, it wasn’t always that way, and we have the GH4 – the first mirrorless camera to capture 4K video internally – to thank for opening the metaphorical floodgates and ushering in the 4K era.
I had a personal interest in the GH4: as someone who had adopted the GH line early on for video projects, I was as curious as anyone to know how it stacked up. Although I was on staff at DPReview, I wasn’t involved in writing the GH4 review and probably read it with as much anticipation as anyone else.
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| Photo: DPReview staff |
It’s worth remembering that the GH4 was a hybrid camera designed to appeal to both stills and video shooters, and it had features to appeal to those who wanted to do both. Like the GH3, the camera was built around a 16MP sensor, but it supported 12fps burst shooting (7.5fps with focus tracking), a 1/8000 shutter speed and 1/250th flash sync. It even had a rather lovely 2.36M-dot OLED viewfinder.
But realistically, nobody was buying a GH4 just to shoot stills. You bought it because you wanted a solid video camera that could shoot stills when needed.
“Realistically, nobody was buying a GH4 just to shoot stills.”
The GH4 could capture 4K video at up to UHD 4K/30p (3840×2160) or DCI 4K/24p (4096×2160) internally and supported both Long GOP and All-I codecs at bit rates up to 200Mbps. Although we take bit rates like this for granted today, this was very high at the time. The camera also produced pleasing 1080p video, though as we called out in our review, its HD video wasn’t as good as the perfectly oversampled 1080p video from the Sony a7s.
Despite the impressive specs and beautiful video to match, we had some nitpicks. To start, 4K video captured internally only had 8-bit 4:2:0 color, providing less flexibility for color grading in post. (10-bit 4:2:2 color was supported, but only when recording externally.) Additionally, the GH4’s sensor was 4608 pixels wide, requiring the camera to use a smaller, native crop of the sensor when shooting 4K. This resulted in a 1.1x crop for DCI 4K and a 1.2x crop for UHD 4K.
Equally as crucial as its video specs, the GH4 illustrated Panasonic’s commitment to supporting a professional video workflow.
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The camera included several now-common tools to improve the video shooting experience, including focus peaking, two zebra settings, control over Master Pedestal (black level) and luminance scale, and a ‘cinema-like’ gamma preset. It also allowed users to set the shutter speed and ISO as shutter angle and gain and could generate color bars for calibration. It was also possible to switch between capture frequencies, meaning the camera could support NTSC, PAL, and true 24fps cinema standards.
“Equally as crucial as its video specs, the GH4 illustrated Panasonic’s commitment to supporting a professional video workflow.”
Alongside the camera, Panasonic released the optional DMW-YAGH interface unit. This $1999 accessory unit added two XLR inputs for audio, an SDI input for timecode, four 3D-SDI connectors capable of outputting 4:2:2 10-bit video and a 12V DC power socket. The unit attached to the bottom of the GH4 and felt oversized relative to the camera. Beginning with the GH5, the interface unit was phased out in favor of the DMW-XLR1, a much more affordable option in the style of the hotshoe-mounted XLR adapter we’ve become accustomed to today.
The GH4 was also the camera Panasonic used to debut its newest autofocus technology: Depth-from-Defocus, or DFD. DFD attempted to build a depth map of a scene by making tiny focus adjustments and analyzing changes in the image. With an understanding of the out-of-focus characteristics of a particular lens, the camera could build a depth map of the scene.
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| The optional DMW-YAGH ‘Interface Unit’ provided a more extensive selection of video industry connectors for using the GH4 as part of a high-end video rig. | |
However promising the technology may have been, DFD never quite met expectations. Panasonic really wanted to make it work, and it’s possible that, given fast enough sampling and processing, it might have continued to improve. Unfortunately for Panasonic, cameras using phase-detect autofocus consistently provided a better AF experience, particularly when shooting video, and the company eventually made the jump to phase-detection with the Lumix S5II in 2023, finally arriving in the GH series on the GH7 in 2024.
In our review of the GH4, we found a lot to like and a few frustrations. For example, despite having an autoexposure compensation dial, the camera didn’t allow you to use it when using Auto ISO in manual exposure mode, and there was no Auto ISO option when shooting video in M mode. Overall, though, we were mighty impressed and saved our biggest praise for the camera’s video capabilities:
“The GH4 was also the camera Panasonic used to debut its newest autofocus technology: Depth-from-Defocus, or DFD.”
“It’s in terms of video that the GH4 really stands out. It produces some of the best video we’ve yet seen – losing out only to the Sony a7S’s moiré-free 1080 output. The ability to capture good quality 4K, whether for use at full resolution, downsampling to 1080 or cropping to 1080, adds real flexibility to the camera. Low light performance is solid if not exceptional,” we concluded.
The GH4 landed in the retail market at a price of $1699, or about $2260 today adjusted for inflation, which isn’t far off the $2199 price of the GH7. It’s amazing to think about how expectations for video have changed over the years. However, the GH7 has its work cut out for it: rather than being an obvious standout in the crowd, it has to compete in a marketplace of cameras brimming with video features. Maybe in another ten years, we’ll look back to see how it held up.
| Photo: DJI |
DJI has announced the Air 3S, an update to its existing dual-camera Air 3 model that upgrades the primary camera to a larger Type 1 sensor and adds features that promise to make the drone easier to operate at night. DJI is positioning the Air 3S as “perfect for travel photography.”
The main camera on the Air 3S gains a 50MP Type 1 (13.2 x 8.8mm) CMOS sensor and features a 24mm equiv. F1.8 lens. That’s an upgrade from its predecessor, which utilized a smaller Type 1/1.3 (4.8 x 3.6mm) CMOS sensor with a marginally faster F1.7 lens. The telephoto camera remains unchanged between the two models, using a 48MP Type 1/1.3 sensor and featuring a 70mm equiv. F2.8 lens.
In addition to stills, both cameras can capture up to 4K/120p or 4K/60p when shooting HDR. All video can be captured in 10-bit, even in regular color mode, and D-Log M and HLG modes are available. The maximum ISO has been raised to 12,800 (3200 when shooting D-Log M). However, DJI says the Air 3S includes a new, more advanced video encoding algorithm that reduces video file size by over 30% without compromising image quality.
DJI claims both cameras can capture up to 14 stops of dynamic range and says the new main camera should capture even more detail than the camera on its more expensive Mavic 3 Pro model.
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The DJI Air 3S is similar to its predecessor, the Air 3, but it gains a larger Type 1 (13.2 x 8.8mm) CMOS sensor on its main camera.
Image: DJI |
Beyond the cameras, DJI has added several appealing features to the Air 3S:
A new Free Panorama mode enables users to create panoramic shots by stitching together images across a manually selected subject area. This works with either camera, but DJI suggests the best results will come from using the telephoto camera, which reduces distortion.
The Air 3S also includes features designed to make it easier and safer to fly at night, including Nightscape Obstacle Sensing, with the Air 3S becoming the first DJI drone to feature forward-facing LiDAR. Additionally, the drone includes downward-facing infrared sensors and six vision sensors (two each at the front, rear and bottom). According to DJI, this combination of sensors provides the Air 3S with “nightscape omnidirectional obstacle sensing,” which should allow the drone to automatically identify and navigate around obstacles for safer nighttime photography.
This technology also enables DJI’s next-gen Smart RTH (return-to-home) feature, intended to allow the drone to return safely to its takeoff location, even at night.
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The Air 3S is available with either DJI’s RC-N3 controller, which requires a smartphone to monitor the camera feed and aircraft status, or the RC 2 controller (above), which includes a built-in 700-nit 5.5″ 1080 screen.
Image: DJI |
The Air 3S also includes real-time vision positioning and map construction technology, designed to allow the drone to memorize a flight path and to return safely when adequate light is available, even in areas without satellite coverage.
The new model also features DJI’s ActiveTrack 360 subject tracking but introduces a new subject focusing feature designed to keep a subject in sharp focus, even during manual flight or when a subject moves off-center. This should allow a pilot to focus on creative decisions like composition or camera movement while ActiveTrack keeps the subject in focus.
There are a few hardware specs worth noting as well. The Air 3S weighs 724g (1.6 lbs), just 4g more than its predecessor, and is rated for 45 minutes of flight time. It includes DJI’s O4 video transmission system that transmits 10-bit video at up to 1080/60p and 42GB of built-in storage. A new Off-state Quick Transfer feature allows files to be transferred from the drone to a smartphone or a computer even when powered off.
Finally, for the privacy-conscious, a new Local Data mode completely disconnects the drone from the internet, ensuring that all data stays only on the device. DJI likens this mode to airplane mode on a smartphone.
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The Air 3S is available in several packages. The Fly More combo shown above includes the RC 2 controller, ND filter set, two additional batteries (for a total of three), a charging hub, extra props and a shoulder bag, will retail for $1599.
Image: DJI |
The charging hub that ships with the Air 3S supports PD fast charging and features a power accumulation function. It allows users to transfer the remaining power from several depleted batteries into the battery with the most remaining power – something anyone who has had to use drones in remote locations without a charging station is likely to appreciate.
Price and availability
The DJI Air 3S is available for purchase in several configurations: the drone with the RC-N3 controller, which requires a smartphone to monitor the camera feed and flight status, will retail for $1099. A Fly More combo with the RC-N3 controller, ND filter set, two additional batteries, a battery charging hub and shoulder back will retail for $1399. Finally, a Fly More combo with DJI’s RC 2 controller, which includes a built-in 700-nit 5.5″ 1080p screen, ND filter set, two additional batteries, charging hub and shoulder pack, will retail for $1599.
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