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Will the new Nikon Z9 feature a heated handgrip and ‘Niko’ smart assistant? Nope.

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Will the new Nikon Z9 feature a heated handgrip and ‘Niko’ smart assistant? Nope.

The Nikon Z9 hasn’t been released yet, but the team over at nature photographer tour company Squiver has published a thorough ‘field report’ on the camera on its blog, going over the rather, shall we say, interesting feature set that they claim is offered by Nikon’s upcoming flagship mirrorless camera.

In the report – which, in case you’re still not getting it, was published April 1st – Squiver co-founder and nature photographer Marsel van Oosten, claims to have spent the past month ‘extensively’ testing the Nikon Z9. He starts off by going over the specs, saying:

The Z9 is built around a newly developed FX-format stacked CMOS 80.2MP sensor with a 20-stop dynamic range (19.77 EV) with a native 50–102,400 ISO range (expandable to 25–204,800). The Z9 has an updated hybrid AF system comprising 1,080 on-sensor phase-detection AF points as well as 850 contrast-detect points, covering 98% of the image frame.’

Moving to the outside of the camera, van Oosten says the body ‘ is considerably smaller than a D6 and a whole lot lighter despite having an integrated vertical grip.’ Better yet, he claims that the entire camera is apparently made from titanium, a first in the photography world, if true. Which, again, it almost certainly isn’t.

These features may or may not appear in the final version of the Z9.

But wait, there’s less more! The first surprise feature, according to the field report, is a new switch on the bottom of the grip that displays a fire icon. Van Oosten says this little guy will turn on a heating element inside the grip and shutter button that will keep your ‘hands and fingers toasty warm on those cold winter shoots.’

The next trick up the Z9’s sleeve, apparently, is a little button near the microphone of the camera that will initiate Niko, a new smart assistant that will ‘help you find the right exposure, find the nearest Starbucks, or give feedback on your images.’ According to van Oosten, there are three different feedback levels Niko can provide:

Beginner (“Great shot, well done!”), Constructive Critique (“Have you tried a vertical composition?”), and Passive Aggressive (“I don’t care about this image, but someone else might”).

There does appear to be a bug, however, as van Oosten explains:

When this function is enabled, it shows up on the LCD screen as “Virtual Ass” because it’s too long. This will be fixed with a future firmware update.’’

Other features that van Oosten claims are present in the Z9 include built-in 5G connectivity that allows you to identify any animal species in frame, as well as Nikompanion, a new in-camera dating app for photographers, and MosQUITo, a new feature that uses ultrasonic sounds to keep mosquitos up to 3m (9ft) away while in the field.

Head over to Squiver for van Oosten’s full field report, linked below.

Squiver Nikon Z9 Field Report

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Canon's latest feature costs $120 and is meant for school photographers

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Canon's latest feature costs 0 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.

canon-four-crop-guidelines
The feature lets you choose between four guidelines, with some offering lines for different-sized heads like you’d find in a school, and others leaving room for pieces of equipments like balls and rackets.

Image: Canon

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.

Lumix-volume-photography-scanner
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?

Press Release:

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.



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Gear of the Year – Richard's choice: Leica D-Lux8

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Gear of the Year – Richard's choice: Leica D-Lux8


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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.

Leica D-Lux8 top controls
The D-Lux8 has a pleasantly photo-focused interface, with shutter speed, aperture and exposure comp dominating the controls. Yet it doesn’t quite manage to feel like a zoomable X100.

Photo: Richard Butler

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.

L1020074
Leica D-Lux8 @ 26mm (58mm equiv) | F2.8 | 1/60 | ISO 800

The D-Lux8’s image quality isn’t always up to the standard of, say, the Fujifilm X100 series, but its portability means you get photos in situations in which you might not have otherwise brought a camera. But, unlike a phone, makes you feel that you played a part in getting the photo.

Photo: Richard Butler

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

Sample gallery
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Canon makes Super35 global shutter sensor available to third parties

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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.

Canon LI7080SA progressive scan super35 sensor
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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