Innehållsförteckning för 246 från Pro Photo

Announced along with the BF camera body, the Sigma 300-600mm f/4.0 DG OS Sports was announced as “a dream lens” and it almost certainly is for many sports and wildlife photographers. For starters, there’s the constant maximum aperture of f/4.0, but also optical image stabilisation giving up to 5.5 stops of correction for camera shake (at 600mm), and a physical size and weight that makes hand-holding feasible (albeit perhaps only for short periods of time). The icing on the cake is affordability with a price tag that is significantly less than the f/4.0-speed 600mm mirrorless system primes from either Canon or Nikon… and also Sony with which it will compete directly as the Sigma lens is available in the FE and L mounts. Finished in heat-reflecting white, the 300-600mm is…

From the late 1970s onwards, Fujifilm produced a long line of medium format roll-film cameras with fixed lenses in 6x4.5cm, 6x7cm and 6x9cm image sizes. The line culminated in 1998 with the GA645Zi which was essentially a medium format point-and-shoot ‘compact’ camera with a zoom lens, a built-in flash and fully automatic operation. Now this concept has been revisited in the digital era with the GFX100RF which is pretty much a medium format version of the hugely popular X100-series ‘APS-C’ format fixed-lens compacts. While being unique in the digital camera world, this is also a camera with an illustrious history. The GFX100RF has the same ‘GFX 102MP CMOS II’ sensor and ‘X-Processor 5’ engine as the GFX100S II, but in a significantly more compact body with a fixed Fujinon Super EBC…

Messing with the long-established conventions of camera design has met with mixed success in the past. New technologies have, inevitably, brought changes, but some basic conventions have carried on. Much is still owed to the very first Leica 35mm camera – a design that’s now 100 years old – and many elements remain of the Contax S from 1949, essentially the first ‘modern’ small format reflex camera as we knew them. Hasselblad shook up rollfilm reflex design in 1948, but also established a design configuration that’s still in use today (the Pentax 645Z and Phase One XF). Who have been the notable rule-breakers? Rollei certainly took a risk with the Rolleiflex SL2000F (1981) which adopted the modular box form – a lá Hasselblad – for a 35mm SLR system. Canon…

During the height of the 35mm SLR’s popularity very few brands got close to challenging the stranglehold that Canon and Nikon had on the professional sector of the market. Minolta and Pentax had a shot at it, but Olympus started to make real inroads with its later OM series models. There were plenty of high-profile users – David Bailey, Patrick Litchfield, Terence Donovan and Ernst Haas – and it was adopted as the system of choice for National Geographic magazine’s photographers. The legendary OM-1 and OM-2 set the scene, but it was the various OM-4 models – plus the brilliance of the Zuiko lenses – that gave Olympus its pro camera heyday. Compact, tough and well-featured, the OM-4 held its own against Canon’s F-1 and Nikon’s F3. The original OM-3…

Current to 27 April: Exhibition. Ocean Photographer Of The Year. Featuring 118 extraordinary images, this exhibition celebrates the vision of talented photographers from around the world. At the Australian National Maritime Museum, 2 Murray Street, Darling Harbour, Sydney, NSW 2000. Entry fee is $35 for adults, with concessions for children under 15 (and an $89 group fee for families), book online. Museum hours are 10.00am to 4.00pm daily. For more information and bookings visit www.sea.museum/whats-on/exhibitions Current to 27 April: Exhibition. Nikon-Walkley Press Photography Awards 2024. Showcases the finalists in the 2024 Walkley Awards For Excellence In Photojournalism. At the Exhibition Galleries, State Library Of NSW, 1 Shakespeare Place, Sydney, NSW 2000. Entry is free. Exhibition hours are 9.00am to 8.00pm Monday to Thursday, 9.00am to 5.00pm on Friday, 10.00am to…

Announced along with the OM-3 are updates to three lenses from the previous Olympus OM-D system which obviously get a change of branding, but also some design revisions. Obvious companions for the OM-3 because of their compact dimensions are two primes – the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 25mm f/1.8 II (equivalent to 50mm) and the 17mm f/1.8 II (equivalent to 34mm). Both have metal barrel constructions and are now weather-sealed to the IPX1 standard to protect against dust and moisture. The 17mm’s optical construction employs nine elements in six groups which includes four special types – two aspherical, one with a high refractive index (HR) and one ‘Dual Super Aspherical (DSA) which is particularly effective at correcting for both distortion and chromatic aberrations. This lens also uses the OM System’s…

It’s certainly the most affordable of Nikon’s full frame Z mount mirrorless cameras, but you’d hardly call the Z5 an entry-level model and this is even more than case with the Mark II upgrade which introduces both additional new features and various enhancements. It inherits the 24.5 megapixels BSI-type CMOS sensor that’s also used in the Zf and Z6II models and which is mated with Nikon’s latest-gen ‘EXPEED 7’ processor which means there’s some significant increases in speed over the previous model. Continuous shooting using the focal plane shutter increases to 14 fps – versus 4.5 fps previously – and JPEG capture is possible at up to 30 fps with the sensor-based shutter and with the option of ‘Pre-Release Capture’ buffering. The sensitivity range is equivalent to ISO 100 to…

I had just finished interviewing Dave Kelly – the creator of custom water housings for photographers and cinematographers (see issue 244) – and was heading for the door when he said, “You might find this interesting”. He put an A5-size card – an exhibition invitation – into my hand. The date on the card was for five years earlier, but it had two compelling black and white photographs of the Newcastle steelworks being demolished and which had been taken by Murray McKean. The exhibition of Murray’s photos was held at The University Of Newcastle Gallery and it was called Steel Life. I definitely wanted to find out more about this historic project and its photographer. I drove up to The Hill, a suburb of the city of Newcastle, last November…

The OM-3 has the same performance characteristics across its sensitivity range as the OM-1 Mark II so the full native ISO range is usable, with only a minimal loss of sharpness and saturation at the very highest settings. Even the one-stop push to ISO 51,200 holds up pretty well in terms of image quality. However, the colour saturation starts to progressively decline over the extension settings. These test images are JPEG/large/super fine files taken in the aperture-priority auto exposure mode with the aperture set to f/11 so the exposure time varies to compensate for the ISO adjustments. Noise reduction and noise filter are switched off. Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO.…

A marked departure from any of its previous designs – although arguably just as quirky – the new Sigma BF is a full frame mirrorless camera which uses the L mount and has a 24.6 megapixels BSI-CMOS sensor. However, that’s were conventionality ends and Sigma describes the BF as “…an uncompromising new vision for the digital camera”. At the international launch at Sigma’s HQ in Tokyo, company CEO Kazuto Yamaki stated, “We need a dedicated camera for everyday life… an everyday system camera for creative minds”. He described the BF as “a modern-day camera obscura” with “radical simplicity”. The simplicity begins with a one-piece bodyshell milled from a solid block of aluminium in a process which takes seven hours and makes for exceptional solidity. The number of external controls is…

Supertelephoto zooms look set to become a must-have in a full frame mirror-less system perhaps to counter what’s on offer with the cropped sensors. Sony has taken a different approach to Sigma with its new FE 400-800mm (the first lens in the mount to reach 800mm), opting for a slower maximum aperture in order to reduce the lens’s size, weight and cost. Consequently, the FE 400-800mm f/6.3-8.0 G OSS weighs in at 2.475 kilograms and is 34.6 centimetres in length. Zooming is performed internally so the barrel length and balance always remains the same. Focusing is performed internally too. Hand-held shooting is assisted by optical image stabilisation which gives up to four stops of correction for camera shake by itself and up to stops when combined with IBIS. Furthermore, the 400-800mm…

A substantial upgrade in video capabilities is one of the key aspects of the Lumix S1R II, to the point that Panasonic says it’s its “best-ever hybrid mirrorless camera”. The original S1R was launched back in early 2018 so its replacement has been a long time coming and there’s now much stiffer competition among high-end full frame mirror-less cameras, but the overall is extensive, including a new sensor and a more compact body. In terms of size and styling, the S1R II is now much closer to the S5 series cameras so it’s both smaller and lighter by around 20 percent which isn’t insignificant. A key control revision is the addition of a dedicated selector – at the base of the drive mode dial – to switch between the photo…

Wedding photography taken to the extremes has won Bettina Vass the title of the 8th International Wedding Photographer Of The Year. Not surprisingly, her picture – shot in an Icelandic ice cave – won the competition’s Epic Location category and Bettina also won the newly-established Emerging Artist Award. Bettina beat over 2000 other entries submitted by 450 photographers from a total of 63 countries around the world. Started in 2017 and based in Adelaide, the IWPOTY competition is open to both amateurs and professionals, and dedicated to the promotion of the art of wedding photography and the celebration of diversity across the globe. Born in Hungary, Bettina Vass is an award-winning elopement and wedding photographer now based in Reykjavik, Iceland. She specialises in photographing adventurous couples in the many challenging…