Camera
Google mid-priced Pixel 8a brings processor and feature boost to familiar cameras
Image: Google |
Google has announced the Pixel 8a, its latest mid-priced smartphone, bringing the sensors and lenses from the Pixel 7a but the more powerful processor and features from the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. It also gets a brighter screen, now earning Google’s ‘Actua’ branding.
The main camera is a 64MP camera with an F1.89 lens with an 80° angle of view (approximately 26mm equivalent, in 35mm terms). This uses a Type 1/1.73 (7.4 x 5.5mm) sensor.
There’s also a 13MP ultrawide with an F2.2 aperture and 120° angle of view (∼12.5mm equiv). The front camera remains a 13MP camera with F2.2 lens and 96.5° AoV (∼19mm equiv). Both these cameras use Type 1/3 (4.7 x 3.5mm) sensors.
Pixel count |
AoV | f/ | Pixel size | Sensor size | Crop factor |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main wide | 64MP | 80° 26mm e |
F1.89 | 0.8μm | Type 1/1.73 (7.4 x 5.5mm) |
4.7x |
Ultrawide | 13MP | 120° 26mm e |
F2.2 | 1.12μm | Type 1/3 (4.7 x 3.4mm) |
7.4x |
Front camera | 13MP | 96.5° 19mm e |
F2.2 | 1.12μm | Type 1/3 (4.7 x 3.4mm) |
7.4x |
While the cameras themselves remain unchanged, the 8a gets an upgraded screen, now offering a peak brightness of 2000 nits. This, and a wider color gamut, earn it the company’s ‘Actua’ branding, previously only used on the top-end phones. The panel is not exactly the same as that in the Pixel 8, though, with the company calling it a glass-OLED, rather than the plastic-OLED panel used in the 8.
Google says one of its core aims with the new phone was to deliver “the best camera in a smartphone under $500.” Underpinning these hopes is the use of the same Tensor G3 processor used in the more expensive Pixel 8.
The Pixel 8a will be available in four colors, including Aloe (pictured), Obsidian (black), Bay (blue) and Porcelain (off-white).Image: Google |
The Pixel 8a includes features such as ‘Best Take,’ which takes a burst of images and then lets you choose the expression for each person in the image. It also includes Magic Editor, which uses generative AI to fill in the background, allowing you to select, resize and move subjects in the image, and Magic Eraser to remove distracting objects.
It also includes a “photo unblur” system that tried to up-res blurry parts of your images.
New to the Pixel 8a is Audio Magic Eraser, which analyses the audio in videos, splits it up into what it thinks are the different sound sources, and lets you selectively delete just the distracting audio elements.
It also includes the Guided Frame feature that gives audio cues for people with limited vision, which has been expanded to help take photos of pets, food and documents, as well as faces. As with all recent Google cameras it also utilizes the company’s ‘Real Tone’ processing to more accurately render a wider range of skin tones.
The company promises a 15% increase in battery life over the 7a, and the 8a maintains the same IP67 weatherproofing rating as its predecessor. It’s also essentially the same dimensions, at 152.1 x 72.7 x 8.9mm (6.0 x 2.9 x 0.4″).
The Pixel 8a will be available starting from $499, in 128Gb or 256Gb varieties. Google promises security updates will be provided for seven years from launch.
Camera
Canon's latest feature costs $120 and is meant for school photographers
Image: Canon |
Canon has announced a new ‘Cropping Guide’ firmware update, which aims to make framing portraits easy and consistent. The feature costs $120 per camera and is available on the EOS R50, R10 and R7.
According to Canon’s website, the function includes four guides with built-in borders for standard print sizes. The guides are designed to work whether you’re shooting in landscape or portrait and to let you frame both headshots and full-body portraits.
The framing guides are clearly meant for professionals shooting high-throughput portraits; think school photos, sports events, or corporate events where everyone in the company has their picture taken. Driving this point home, Canon’s press release mentions that it’ll show the feature off at the School Photographers Association of California trade show early next year.
There is one caveat for anyone looking to add the function to their camera: you have to send your camera to a service center to activate it. That could be a problem if you only have a single camera body, though that’s likely not the case for most working photographers. Also, a lot of mass portraiture work happens in cycles; schools and sports leagues all tend to have pictures taken at the same time of year. Canon also sells versions of the EOS R50, R10 and R7 with the feature pre-installed at a $120 markup from the normal models’ MSRPs.
Still, it’s hard to ignore that Panasonic and Sony sell similar features delivered via an immediate firmware download. There are some other differences, too: Canon’s framing guide is only available on its APS-C cameras, while Panasonic and Sony limit their versions to more expensive full-frame cameras like the Lumix S5 II, a7 IV and a9 III.
Panasonic’s solution, called Lumix Volume Photography, also goes further than just including frame guides; it also integrates with Opticon scanners, letting you bake a student’s information into the photo file for easier sorting. However, it also costs $199, versus Canon’s $120 and Sony’s $150.
Panasonic’s firmware upgrade for volume photographers includes a suite of features meant to make their jobs easier.
Image: Panasonic |
There will be people who balk at any mention of paying for new features, and you could argue that it’s a slippery slope leading to cameras riddled with microtransactions or subscriptions. Ricoh started selling an $80 software graduated ND filter feature for some of its cameras earlier this year, but surely we don’t want that to become the new normal.
On the other hand, this specific function is something that most people buying these cameras will never want or use, so why should they pay for the development work that went into it or have to navigate around it in their menu system? Let the professionals who will almost immediately make the money back in time saved fund it instead of baking it into the price of the camera.
However Canon’s regular customers feel about paid functions, the company will likely only pay attention to how the pros respond. As we saw with Sony’s a1 II, pricing for professional products is based on how much the market will bear rather than the types of value calculations hobbyists make. If you’re a professional who shoots portraits, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. Would you or your company pay for this feature, and would its availability be a big factor in you choosing which camera to buy?
Canon Launches New Cropping Guide for Select EOS Cameras, Empowering Customers to Capture Beautifully Optimized Photos
MELVILLE, NY, December 9, 2024 – Canon Inc., the parent company of Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, announced today a new Cropping Guide feature that will be available via a firmware update for the Canon EOS R50, EOS R10 and EOS R7 camera models that allows users to more easily frame their subjects through the use of four tailored on-screen guides. The new feature will be available December 9th from Canon USA for the price of $120 USD. For customers who have previously purchased one of the camera models compatible with the feature, they can send their device to a Canon Service Center and it will be returned with the Cropping Guide feature installed. For those new customers interested in the above mentioned models, the option to purchase them pre-loaded with the feature (for an additional cost) will be available via Canon Direct and other dealers starting December 9th.
The new Cropping Guide feature provides on-screen guidelines that help shooters position subjects with precision, helping to ensure consistent and professional results while saving time on editing. It allows for Canon users to position the frame at the time of capture so that post-production and editing can be kept at a minimum. Lastly, the Cropping Guides can be applied to horizontal or vertical framing scenarios, allowing for a wide range of shooting situations.
Canon will showcase its new offering to visitors to the School Photographers Association of California (SPAC) trade show from January 21-25 in Las Vegas, NV at the South Point Hotel and Casino at Booth #715. This new feature is specifically designed for school photography, sports events, or any scenario in which subjects need to maintain a consistent position.
Availability
Cropping Guide will be available December 9th. For additional information about the software, a list of compatible cameras and how to access the Cropping Guide, please visit here.
Camera
Gear of the Year – Richard's choice: Leica D-Lux8
There’s a lot of gloom surrounding cameras and photography, in the past year or so. The devastating impact of smartphones on mass-market cameras seems to be being followed by a wave of AI-generated images that threaten to wash photography away as a creative form, if you believe those prognosticators with half-empty glasses. And yet it’s hard to think of a year in which I’ve found it so difficult to choose a piece of gear to call out, because so many of them have been so good.
Having chosen Nikon’s Z8 last year, the obvious decision this time round would be Canon’s EOS R5 II: a camera that’s almost unbelievably good at almost anything you might ask of it. The Nikon’s Z6III’s performance comes with a small footnote, but overall it’s also sensationally capable and costs over 40% less.
On the lens side of things, Sony has made a usefully small full-frame F2.8 zoom and Sigma has developed what is essentially a full-frame version of its 18-35mm F1.8, creating the world’s first AF F1.8 zoom for full-frame in the process. Then there’s Fujifilm: not content with updating probably the best kit lens on the market (albeit with a loss of speed and reach at the long end counteracting the gain of width at the other), it’s also replaced its premium standard zoom with a much smaller, lighter optic.
The Fujifilm 16-50mm F2.8 R LM WR II would probably be my choice in any other year. Its lightweight re-imagining meant it was small enough for me to take on a five-day hike across North Wales, and helped me assemble one of the best galleries I think I’ve ever shot.
“It’s just exciting to see anyone introduce an enthusiast compact”
And yet instead of any of these worthy winners, I’m going to choose a camera whose merits come with some appreciable caveats and that I’ll spend much of this article appearing to criticize.
Let’s get this straight out of the gate: in many respects the Leica D-Lux8 is refresh of a seven year old camera. And its price tag of $1599 lands somewhere between fanciful and absurd.
And yet, in an age when second-hand Panasonic LX3s often attract 40% of their original price on eBay, despite their wonky skin tones, outdated performance and 2008-vintage batteries, it’s just exciting to see anyone introduce an enthusiast compact.
And while the D-Lux8 shares the bulk of its hardware with the LX100 II, it gains one of the most photo-focused user interfaces I’ve had the good fortune to use in the seventeen years I’ve been writing about cameras.
It also gains a much less distracting viewfinder, which I also appreciate, and its AF tracking, while not coming close to the standards of modern mirrorless cameras, is also improved.
There’s a nagging doubt whenever I’ve used a recent D-Lux or LX100 of why it doesn’t feel even more special, given its dial layout and aperture ring suggests it should feel like a smaller X100, but with a zoom. Personally I think the added lag of waiting for the motor-driven zoom to respond helps to distance your input from the camera’s reaction. Or it could just be that the photos don’t look as good, thanks to its less sharp lens, deeper minimum depth-of-field and absence of Film Simulation fairy dust.
But the 8’s new interface is delightfully shutter speed and aperture focused. There aren’t many custom buttons and you don’t need a great many: it’s a good-looking little camera that focuses your attention on taking photos. And that’s something I’ve really missed.
Maybe there’s still time for another blossoming of enthusiast compacts, now they’re starting to find an audience, retrospectively. Or maybe I just need to accept that my own preferences don’t match those of the wider market.
But even if the D-Lux8 doesn’t herald a new Spring for the serious compact, it’s not a bad note for the category to go out on. Price aside, it’s a lovely little camera.
Leica D-Lux8 sample gallery
Camera
Canon makes Super35 global shutter sensor available to third parties
Canon’s LI5070SA sensor delivers 4K at up to 60p with no rolling shutter, with Canon suggesting ‘Cinema’ as one of its potential applications.
Image: Canon |
Canon has made a 4K/60-capable Super35 (∼APS-C) video sensor with global shutter available to third-party buyers.
The 10.3MP sensor added to the product page of its industrial equipment and semiconductor business unit is 27.4 x 15.3mm, making it a 1.34x crop, relative to a full-frame stills camera, but in a roughly 16:9 aspect ratio.
Its 4288 x 2398 pixel count is clearly designed for delivering 4K footage. We’d usually expect Canon to have already offered it in a camera, if it planned to, before offering it to external users.
Canon sold a 4K/60 Super35 ‘GS’ global shutter version of its EOS C700 camera, back in 2017, though available specs suggest its sensor was slightly smaller, so presumably wasn’t the same as the one now being offered to external companies. Notably, Canon claimed its dynamic range was one stop lower than the progressive scan Super35 chip in the regular C700 model. There’s still a chance this new chip will underpin a successor to the C700 GS.
An image of Canon semiconductor’s LI7080SA sensor: a progressive scan Super35 sensor that closely resembles its global shutter cousin.
Image: Canon |
At present, we’re not aware of any other consumer camera maker using Canon sensors. Specialist industrial / security camera makers such as Illunis have used its sensors to make high-speed and high-resolution cameras for applications such as aerial photography and machine vision applications, but we’ve not seen its 120MP or 250MP APS-H chips in consumer cameras, including those from Canon itself.
Canon said it was developing a DSLR based on its 120MP sensor, back in 2015. Prototypes based on EOS 5DS bodies appeared at trade shows, but no final product ever emerged.
Canon’s semiconductor business also offers a “full-frame” global shutter sensor. Again this has a roughly 16:9 aspect ratio and proposed uses include microscopy, factory automation and traffic surveillance. This sensor has been available since early 2023.
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