You may notice that we’re covering more video gear than usual this week and that’s because the NAB conference is currently going on in Las Vegas where manufacturers are showing off the latest and greatest in movie-capturing wares. One of the new products aounced today is the LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3 professional RAID storage array.

The tower has 16 bays for hard drives, which gives it a maximum total capacity of up to 96 TB of data—that’s terabytes. The array is built for high-end professional video editing operations and provides the kind of huge storage options and ridiculous speeds required there in.

The press material promises transfer speeds up to 2,600 MB/s over a Thunderbolt 3 coection. They claim it will work just fine with 4K, 5K, and even 6K footage. All that data comes crammed into a tower full of hard drives that can be arranged in a variety of RAID configurations.

Like most of the NAB stuff we’ll be writing about this week, this is meant for pro video editors, and thus it will surely come with a high price. It will be available later this summer.

Most of us casual shooters are mostly familiar with consumer-grade drones that carry a GoPro or some other kind of small video camera. For a Hollywood movie, however, creators sometimes need more firepower, which is where the latest drone from DJI comes in. The Matrice 600 can carry up to 13.2 pounds of camera gear using its six powerful rotors.

The M600 is powered by an array of six batteries, which gives it a total maximum flight time of 15 minutes with a full payload. That may sound short, but in drone flight terms, it’s quite long. If you’re using one of DJI’s own Zenmuse cameras, the flight time jumps up over 30 minutes.

The flight controller is DJI’s A3 system, which can be upgraded to an even higher-end module with more GPS radios. The video link system has also been upgraded and now it can transmit full HD video in real time for up to three miles when shooting.

DJI also aounced the new Ronin-MX camera stabilization system (gimbal) that’s compatible with most of the popular large camera systems from the likes of RED, Canon, and Sony.

These are pro-grade tools, so you can expect to pay pro prices for them. The M600 starts at $4,599 before you start adding the fancy options. The Ronin-MX costs $1,599.

While these may not be geared toward us enthusiasts, it’s always interesting to see what’s going on at the cutting edge of the tech, because it will likely start trickling down into the consumer models before long.

There are lots of “see how it’s made” videos ruing around the inteet and not all of them are interesting, but this roughly nine-minute clip of how to make printing ink is one of the best I have ever seen.

The video documents the process undergone at The Printing Ink Company where they make pigments for mostly-offset printing workflows. They mostly deal in cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK as you probably know them), but they also mix a bunch of custom colors in the Pantone system as well.

Like most of these videos, the ink-making process is a rather intense combination of artistry and industry. The batches are rather huge, the tolerances are low, and the machinery is extremely expensive. But, there are human hands on almost every aspect of the process. I find it very inspiring.

Even if you’re not big into printing, just seeing them chop pieces of early-process ink off of the massive globs is pretty satisfying. I bet even the late Mr. Rogers would appreciate this one.

From: Digg

If you’re a Sony full-frame shooter and you like high-end lenses, 2016 has been a pretty solid year so far. Now, Zeiss has aounced an 18mm f/2.8 prime lens as part of their Batis series. According to the press material, this is the widest full-frame fixed focal length lens with autofocus.

The lens expands the low-end of the Batis series, which already included a 25mm f/2 and an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens. It has 11 elements across ten groups, four of which are aspheric on both sides, and seven of which are made form “special” types of glass.

The outside of the lens maintains the Batis aesthetic with a satiny black finish and a contoured shape without harsh edges. It also has the LED display on the top for displaying information like distance to the subject in focus.

It’s an interesting choice to see Zeiss adding a super-wide lens to the Batis line-up before more common lengths like 135mm or even 50mm, but they are covering ground that Sony doesn’t offer in a prime lens.

The 18mm f/2.8 Batis will hit store shelves in May for $1,499, which may not be as expensive as some would suspect for a piece Zeiss glass.

We’re looking forward to trying it out on some landscape photography to see how well Zeiss is able to reign in distortion at such a wide focal length.

For a long time, Pelican cases have been a go-to solution for photographers who carry lots of expensive gear into awful circumstances. They have always been tough, but that sturdiness also translated into weight. Now, however, Pelican has released the Pelican Air cases which weigh up to 40% less.

There are six new sizes in the Pelican Air series, each of which is made from their revamped HPX2 resign material. Despite the new lighter weights, Pelican says it has subjected all of the cases to the same strict performance tests, so they can stand up to impacts, and even being fully submerged in water.

There are now four different ways you can buy the Pelican case depending on what kind of padding you prefer. You can get it empty, with the “Pick N Pluck” cubed foam that most people associate with this kind of hard case, padded dividers like a typical camera bag, and TrekPak, which is a rather unique form of modular divider system that uses semi-rigid dividers and pins.

We have a new Pelican Air case on-hand and will be doing a live Hands-On video on our Facebook page today (Friday, April 15th) starting at 1 PM EST. Look for a full review in the coming weeks.

Lensbaby has just aounced its latest creative effect lens called the Twist 60. The lens is based the design of the first commercially available fast portrait lens created by Joseph Petzval in 1840. It creates a curved focal plane which results in a small section of the final image appearing in focus. The rest of the image falls into swirling bokeh and specular highlights that often become elongated, especially toward the edges of the frame.

The Twist 60 will be Available both as a stand-alone lens and as an optic swap drop-in lens compatible with its Composer Pro and other tilting Lensbaby housings. Since the effects associated with this special lens are more exaggerated at the edges, Lensbaby suggests using the Twist 60 on a full-frame camera body. Though, you'll still see some of the special qualities if you're using an APS-C body, it just won't be as dramatic. It offers the choice of Canon, Nikon, and Sony E/FE mounts.

While the original Petzval lenses, and the recent copy made by Lomography, used drop-in Waterhouse aperture plates, the Twist 60 has a gold anodized aperture ring that controls a 12-bladed aperture that spans f/2.5-22. As the name suggests, this metal-bodied Lensbaby has a 60mm focal length. It's comprised of four elements in three groups, has 46mm filter threads, and a minimum focusing distance of 18 inches.

The Lensbaby Twist 60 is expected to start shipping May 5, 2016 and is currently available for pre-order. The stand-alone version will set you back $280, while the optic-swap version will cost $180. That makes the Lensbaby version just a little more than 1/3 the price of the Lomo lens, and that’s if you need to buy the whole standalone lens.

We will share some impressions and sample images as soon as a sample lens becomes available.

Lytro Cinema from Lytro on Vimeo.

The road so far has been an interesting one for Lytro. Its original consumer-oriented camera introduced most of the public to light field photography, but ultimately lacked the imaging firepower to be a real success with photographers. Then, the higher-end Lytro Illum upped the image quality, but proprietary file types and a high price tag made it a hard sell. Then, Lytro aounced it was getting out of the consumer camera business altogether. Now, Lytro has aounced its future plans in the form of the extremely ambitious Lytro Cinema camera meant for TV and movie production.

The goal of the Lytro Cinema camera is to enable shots that were literally impossible with traditional movie cameras. Light field is all about capturing data about a scene, and the data sets recorded by the Lytro Cinema offer some unique opportunities for filmmakers. As the press material says, “every frame of a live action scene becomes a 3D model.” So, rather than adding special effects in post using techniques like Chroma Key (green screen, if you will) artists can actually use the depth information from the frame to put in the CGI elements.

Each frame holds the equivalent of 755 raw megapixels and they can be captured at up to 300 fps with a claimed 16-stops of dynamic range. That 755-megapixel number, of course, applies to the master file and the resolution of a single final frame will likely be far below that number, but this camera is capturing a rather astonishing amount of date.

Like with the Lytro cameras that came before, shooters are still able to pick their point of focus after the fact, but the Cinema camera is capable of much more. The camera can actually be shifted side to side or up and down. It can even move in and out. Because the shutter angle (think shutter speed in pure photography terms) has also changed, allowing for some very interesting motion blur options that weren’t possible before without special effects.

When Lytro said it was getting out of consumer cameras, they really weren’t kidding because this is meant for high-budget productions with seven-digit budgets. They already have some big names signed on to work with the product, including Oscar wiers, so it will be interesting if it starts to catch on. If it truly can make adding CGI to movies cheaper and easier for the studios, it seems like it has a lot of potential.

We’re used to interfacing with Facebook on a two-dimensional screen, but Zuck & Co. have made some pretty substantial investments in virtual reality, the most interesting of which is the much-anticipated Oculus headset. Now, at its F8 conference, Facebook has dropped some information about its saucer-shaped 360-degree VR capture setup.

Inside the enclosure is an array of 17 cameras: 14 of these form a ring pointing straight out from the middle, while two more point downward and the last one points straight up. The result is up to 8K-resolution video captured in every direction.

We’re seeing more and more camera systems using this format, including a new platform from GoPro, a new camera from Nikon, and the evolving Theta series from Ricoh. But, Facebook seems particularly motivated to make this a reality. With its huge investment in Oculus and an increased emphasis on 360-degree video embedded into our News Feeds, the company really seems to hope it succeeds.

The project is open source, so anyone who wants to put together one of these arrays can do so, assuming that you have the roughly $30,000 required to buy the necessary parts. It will be available through Git Hub.

From: Wired

The past year has been a pretty hectic time for fans of instant photography, with instant film checking in as one of the best-selling holiday gifts of the year, then getting hit with the unfortunate death of the beloved Fujifilm FP-100c instant film. The Impossible Project, however, is now trying to swing things back in the positive direction by releasing a totally new camera built for the classic Polaroid 600 image format. It’s called the I-1 Instant Camera and it’s rather intriguing.

The I-1 was aounced at the Bloomberg Businessweek design conference and will officially go on sale May 10th for $299. While it uses the same Polaroid pack film, there’s a lot about the I-1 that sets it apart from its retro counterparts.

The camera itself has a vaguely pyramid-shaped form factor with the film staying at the bottom and the body tapering up to a pop-up reticle system that's used to compose shots. There's very little visual clutter on the camera in terms of buttons and switches, due in large part to some of the new functional upgrades. The I-1 has built-in Bluetooth that allows it to coect to a companion smartphone apps which can change settings like aperture and shutter speed. It can also remotely fire the shutter on the camera. The battery is also now rechargeable, which the company says is more environmentally responsible.

The flash has been revamped too, and I can see that being a somewhat controversial piece of the camera. Rather than a traditional flash, it now has a ring of LED lights that surround the lens. I have a strong association with traditional heavy flash and the classic Polaroid 600 “look,” but I’m interested to see how this performs before making up my mind about it.

The elephant in the room when it comes to instant photography, of course, goes by the name of Instax. Fujfilm currently offers Instax Wide instant film cameras between $66 and $100. And, while the Instax images aren’t as big and don’t have the same classic, square Polaroid 600 form factor, the film costs less than $1 per frame, while the Impossible Project film hovers around $3 for each picture.

I personally believe there’s a market for each camera and format, but it will be interesting to see how the Impossible devotees react to a slew of new features and a modeized design. We’ll bring you some hands-on impressions and sample images as soon as we can get our hands on an I-1.

Official Site

Ikea stores are famous for their meat balls, their fuiture, and their stores’ ability to test the strength of a relationship. Recently, however, they started selling high-end art, which includes photography from some well-known artists. In order to promote the collection, Ikea has created a new camera app called Klikk, which will only take a single photo.

It’s part of a Belgian promotion and the single photo restriction is meant to give it the “feel” of the analog process. Once users take their single photo, they can submit it to a contest, the wier of which will have his or her photo featured in the next edition of the Ikea Art Collection.

It’s a fun concept even if it is an obvious gimmick. Personally, I wouldn’t be overly stoked to submit an image I wasn’t allowed to edit at all to a jury of professional photographers for judgment, but I do like a challenge. I would probably be paranoid about hitting the button by accident.

From: Format

One of the cooler things about sharing office space with our Popular Science (we’re also owned by the same company) is that they stay tapped into everything NASA is up to, which pays off for us when they do something like drop nearly 3 million photos of earth taken from space into the public eye.

The image were taken by the Advanced Spaceboe Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, which is a piece of Japanese gear that resides on a NASA satellite.

Each image is reportedly a 37 mile square that shows off a piece of the earth. The images were used for research, but they’re also rather beautiful.

The capture devices is a camera, but it also does more than a typical viewable spectrum camera can. measuring other things like temperature and even elevation.

You can dig into the images here. There are a lot of them and some of them are pretty boring and weird looking because they’re meant for science and not necessarily desktop backgrounds. Still, there’s a whole lot of beauty to be found in there.

It’s easy to find wedding photographers preaching doom and gloom, and there’s even some evidence to back it up, but according to a recent survey by venerable purveyors of Pinterest wedding fodder, The Knot, things are looking up across the board for the wedding industry in the USA, and that includes wedding photographers.

The study actually has a rather huge amount of data to check out, but perhaps the most pertinent information here is that the average price of wedding photography paid in the US rose to $2,616 in 2015, up from $2,556 in 2014.

It’s not just rates, but volume seems to be on the rise (or at least staying consistent) as well. From the report: “The study found that one in 3 couples are hiring professional videographers to capture their ceremony and reception, and nearly 9 out of 10 couples hire a professional photographer.”

The regional breakdowns are also pretty interesting to look at. The most expensive places to get married are, pretty much, as you’d expect. New York in its various flavors occupy several of the top spots with Manhattan topping the list with an average wedding cost of $82,000+. The cheapest place to get married is reportedly Alaska, checking in around $17,000.

You can check out the results here. Have you noticed your business increasing this year? What do you think the trends will look like for 2016?

Storing large amounts of digital data over a long period of time is a problem many photographers deal with by stacking huge piles hard drives and ever-growing cloud storage accounts. University of Washington researchers, however, have figured out how to store digital data in DNA.

The team was able to encode four digital photos into “nucleotide sequences of synthetic DNA snippets.” Then, they were able to decode the images without losing any of the data. The process is as complicated as it sounds, but it could really have some impressive implications in terms of data storage. According to the report, it could “shrink the space needed to store digital data that today would fill a Walmart Supercenter down to the size of a sugar cube.”

Of course, this technology can be used to store any kind of digital data, but the researchers demonstrated the premise with photography because it’s such a common type of data that needs long-term storage.

The research, which is being done as a collaboration with Microsoft, sounds like a surprisingly physical process where molecules are created and then actually dehydrated for storage. The process is currently pretty cost-prohibitive, but then again, what new tech isn’t at its outset?

Read more about it here

If you’re one of those inteet commenters who loves to complain about medium format digital cameras being overkill, then get your Idea fingers ready. The Hasselblad H6D-100c has a 100-megapixel CMOS sensor and now shoots 4K video as well.

This actually isn’t the first 100-megapixel medium format rig we’ve seen, with the Phase One XF having been around for a while now, but the two are noticeably different cameras.

The H6D-100c promises 15-stops of dynamic range (DSLRs tend to fall in the 13 stop range, with exceptions of course) and can capture up to 1.5 frames per second for a sustained amount of time. That might not seem fast when we’re so used to hearing about cameras like the Canon 1D X Mark II and Nikon D5 that are capable of 14+ fps, but you have to consider the actual amount of data that’s being thrown around with these 100-megapixel files.

That uptick in speediness is a result of a complete overhaul of the components inside the H6D-100c. It has a new processor and updated software to help it move things along. The sensor itself is actually physically bigger than the lower-resolution models, checking in at 53.4x40mm.

The back of the camera has a 3-inch touchscreen display with 920K dots of resolution, which is pretty standard stuff. It has a USB-C coection, which should move data extremely quickly. There are also two memory card slots now, one of which is a CFast slot for high-speed transfers. The other is a standard SD.

The H6D-100c also shoots regular HD and UHD 4K video footage in a proprietary raw format that has to be converted using Phocus 3.0. Regular footage can be capture in H.264, but you’ll presumably lose out on some of that fidelity by doing so.

To buy it will cost you about as much as a nice mid-sized sedan, but it sure does look sweet.

Official site

Adobe Bridge started simply as an exteal file browser for Photoshop, but over the years it has evolved into a digital asset manager with its own nooks and craies worth exploring. And it’s not just the features recently added to Creative Cloud—such as automated cache management, which we cover in this tutorial—that make it an integral part of a photographer’s workflow. Some of its less well known tools, such as custom labels, metadata templates, and the path bar, will help you manage media more efficiently.

We’ll look into some of the new additions as well as some of Bridge’s tried and true features. Even if you prefer to work in applications other than Photoshop, you can almost always use Bridge as your asset manager (unless, of course, you use Lightroom for cataloging).

QUICK TIP IMPORT FILES To move images and videos from mobile devices and digital cameras that use PTP (Picture Transfer) or MTP (Media Transfer) protocols, attach the card or device to your computer and go to File > Import from Device. (This feature was broken with Mac’s El Capitan OS but is now accessible with the Bridge 6.2 update.) Functionality is basic—you can view and sort by metadata but you can’t change data. Select individual images to import or download them all.

Lomography has had some pretty impressive success resurrecting old lenses and now they’re throwing back all the way to the 1830s to recreate the Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 Art Lens.

The lens itself uses a design like that of the very first lenses to use optics for Daguerreotype photography in the 19th century. It has a focal length of 64mm and a maximum aperture of f/2.9. Rather than using a typical ring for aperture, the lens uses Waterhouse aperture plates that you actually have to put into the lens when you want to change your aperture. It comes with a set of standard plates with circular diaphragms, but it also comes with Lumiere and Aquarelle plates that create interesting pattes and textures in the images.

The lens comes in both black and brass finishes in native Nikon or Canon mounts. You can use add-on pledges to get the requisite adapters for Sony, Fujifilm, Micro Four Thirds, and Leica M mounts.

The images are dreamy by design, but you can get sharp results out of it once you get past the f/5.6 aperture. Once you start adding the patte aperture plates, things get a little trickier in the sharpness department, but it is a very unique and (in my opinion) pretty attractive effect.

Lomography has this Kickstarter thing down, so the campaign is already almost 200% funded with well over a month still to go. The cheapest options are gone, but some of the cheaper-than-retail options are still available at the time of this writing.

Click here to view the Kickstarter

The Panasonic GX8 is a pretty awesome little camera and now it has a sibling that comes with many advanced features, but a smaller price tag. The new Panasonic GX85 comes with a slightly odd name, as well as a 16-megapixel Live MOS, Micro Four-Thirds sensor. There’s no built-in AA filter, which Panasonic claims will maximize the resolution that comes through in each image.

The GX85 is also equipped with 4K video capture at up to 30 fps. It’s not a surprising move since Panasonic also sells 4K TVs, but it is nice to see UHD capture trickling more and more down the product lines.

The GX85 uses two types of image stabilization, including the 5-axis built-in stabilization in concert with the stabilization offered by OIS lenses. The resulting system provides up to 4.5-stops of stabilization when hand-holding.

The LVF Live View Finder has 2,764 dots of resolution and covers 100% of the camera’s field of view. The screen is a 3-inch LCD with 1,040K dots of resolution and the ability to rotate.

The GX85 has built-in wifi, a max ISO of 25,600, and a new electromagnetic drive in the shutter to make the make the whole thing more efficient.

It will be available in May for $799 with the 12-32mm kit lens.

We recently got a chance to try out Sony’s new RX10 III on a Sony sponsored outing San Francisco. The 20.1MP superzoom uses the same 1-inch backside illuminated, stacked sensor that’s in Sony’s RX100 IV and has many of the same features that camera introduced. This includes 4K video recording using the full width of the sensor and without pixel biing, as well as up to 40X slow motion video. But, the impressive 24-600mm equivalent lens with a maximum aperture range of f/2.4-4 is just as cool as that sensor. At 24mm it can focus as close as 0.1 inch (3cm) in front of the lens while at 600mm it’ll focus as close as 28.3 inches.

The body is practically as big as an SLR, though that brings with it a very comfortable grip and lots of room for plenty of dedicated buttons. A good portion of those buttons can be customized, though given the relatively short time we had with the camera we didn’t change many of them. The default for the C1 button is Zoom Assist.

Zoom Assist lets you quickly zoom out to 24mm if you lose track of your subject. Press and hold the button and the lens zooms out and greys out the area of the frame not included at the focal length you were zoomed to. Then, all you need to do is place your subject in the non-greyed area, let go of the button and the camera will zoom back to your original focal length. We used it numerous times over the course of the afteoon we spent with the camera and it proved quite useful.

The finder is an OLED with 2,359,296-dot resolution and gives a wonderful preview of your image while allowing access to menus and playback of images. The 3-inch LCD screen on the back of the camera can tilt up and down, though it doesn’t flip all the way up for selfies. Sony says that the Optical SteadyShot image stabilization can give up to 4 stops of compensation when shooting handheld. In our shooting it did a fantastic job and let us get sharp shots with the lens racked out at shutter speeds slower than 1/100 second.

While a lot of people scoff at the thought of a superzoom, we have to admit that we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the images we got with the RX10 III. It’s extremely versatile and lots of fun to use. The combination of a really nice lens with a sensor significantly larger than the 1/2.6-inch sensors found in many superzooms definitely puts the RX10 III ahead of most of the cameras in this class.

Let me first get this out of the way: I think “colorizing” a black-and-white photo is a great way to ruin a monochrome photo. That said, I get the appeal, and various research teams have been working on methods for adding natural colors to greyscale photos for quite some time. Now, researchers from UC Berkeley have come up with a method that’s actually very impressive and requires little input from the user.

You can read the full nitty-gritty paper here on the researchers' site, but basically they trained their algorithms with more than a million images, giving it a rather large database from which to pull reference data.

The goal of the software is to add color that’s as natural as humanly possible, which is easier for some images than it is for others. Basically, the more pertinent reference material it has seen, the better the typical result will be.

Looking quickly, or at small thumbnails, it’s actually pretty easy to be fooled. On closer inspection, you start to notice inconsistencies and other problems like weird edges, strange tints, or colors that just don’t look quite right.

As part of the examples, they include images from Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson (seriously) and the results look as if they were done by someone who is leaing the skill of colorizing images. Cool.

This tech has come a long way and I’m interested to see where it goes, but I’m certainly still not a fan of it, but that’s just my personal bias. I’m also kind of grumpy because it’s April Fool’s Day, which is typically the worst day on the inteet. This research is no joke, however.

From: Reddit

Back at WPPI 2016, I saw that Fotodiox was showing off an early version of their massive WonderPana XL filter system. Now, the system is showing up out in the wild and people seem to be truly impressed with how XL this thing really is.

For the unfamiliar, Canon’s 11-24mm F/4 lens is a rather massive piece of glass with a front element that bulges outward from its body and an integrated lens hood to help protect it. As a result, using filters over the front element can be a real challenge. So, Fotodiox has adjusted its WonderPana system, which is typically used for lenses like the Nikon 14-24mm wide angle zoom to accommodate Canon’s new monster.

The WonderPana system attaches to the lens and gives it a front filter size of—get ready for it—186mm. That makes for some massive glass discs. You can also use the WP80 Filter Bracket in order to use rectangular filters up to two at a time. Even though the actual front lens element isn't that big, the filters need to be oversized to prevent vignetting around the edges.

The WonderPana FreeArc XL retails for $229, which is just for the attachment system. You’ll have to buy the massive pieces of glass for it separately and those are definitely not cheap. You do, however, get a 186mm lens cap, which looks like it could also be used as a pan to hold a personal pan pizza.

From: Outdoor Photographer

Anyone who has followed the blogs on PopPhoto.com in recent years knows that I have an aversion to cutesy products with no real practical reason for existing. Toilet paper covers that look like film cartridges? No thanks. But, I’m willing to bend my strictly pragmatic rule today to share this awesome post-humous tribute to Fujifilm’s recently-discontinued FP-100c instant film.

The tribute comes in the form of a lapel pin from Shoot Film Co. which is run by photographer Mike Padua, who is also a ninja when it comes to finding awesome cameras in thrift shops. The pin depicts the film’s box with some darkly humorous changes made to the text.

It has been a very long time since I shot Instant film, so the loss of FP-100c didn't personally hit me as hard, but I do know that pain. In college, I had a bad habit of spending my food money on Polaroid 55, which was a peel-apart black-and-white film that produced both a positive and a negative and has since been discontinued. The outcry over the FP-100c discontinuation has been pronounced, but that's what happens when a product has a small group of very dedicated users. It's a sad thing to see.

You can get the pin for $7.99 from the Shoot Film Co. store along with a collection of other rather awesome pins, patches, and stickers, all of which are film-photography-related.

It wasn't the teeming hordes of pedestrians that alarmed Alex Sneiders as he made his way through the sweltering streets of Jodhpur, India. As this doctor from Owatoa, Miesota, recalls, something else about the famous “Blue City” tormented him. While indigos were certainly dominant in Jodhpur, the city offered the Mentor Series visitors a host of other colors, as well. “The blues were wonderful, but they also made great backgrounds for subjects with contrasting colors,” says Sneiders.

During the photo workshop in November 2015, Jodhpur was blanketed in smog. While this meant longer exposures and higher ISOs, the smog dimmed the setting sun enough that including it in shots like the one here had little effect on Sneider’s final exposure. The moral: Smog can be a photographer’s friend.

Sneiders explored the Blue City carrying two camera bodies, one outfitted with an all-in-one 28–300mm zoom and the other with a fast 85mm lens mainly for portraits. To take advantage of its faster aperture, Sneiders tried the 85mm for this dusky cityscape, but the focal length was too short. Glad that he came prepared, Sneiders switched to the 28–300mm and zoomed to 200mm. “It made the individual buildings and the sun more prominent,” he says.

So what was bothering him? While the structures were beautiful, they were very tightly packed along narrow, curving alleyways. “I became disappointed because I hadn’t gotten a good overlook of the city,” says the photographer.

Establishing shots (as these overviews are called by cinematographers) are pivotal in travel photography. As the trekkers started to wrap, Sneiders says, “off to the left, the setting sun caught my eye. The warm yellows contrasted with cool blues and excited me.” Forty shots later, he had his overview.

An affordable 50mm prime lens has been a fundamental piece of many camera systems for decades. Now, Sony is adding a 50mm f/1.8 prime to full-frame FE its lineup for just $250. There’s also a new 70–300mm f/4.5–5.6 G OSS telephoto zoom lens to go with it.

FE 50mm f/1.8 Prime Lens

It only got a small piece of the press release, but to me and lots of A7-series shooters out there, this is the really big news. The new standard prime weighs under seven ounces (less than half a pound) and cuts a similar form factor to other budget-minded 50mm lenses out there. It uses a revamped optical design with an aspherical element, as well as a metal mount (in the past, some cheaper 50s have used plastic in the name of affordability) and a circular aperture for more appealing bokeh.

The FE 50mm f/1.8 is coming in may and will cost $250. It’s a popular focal length with an affordable price, which makes the A7-series system even more accessible. It has seemed like a bit of a missing piece for a while now.

FE 70–300mm f/4.5–5.6 G OSS telephoto zoom

This is the longest lens in the E-mount system and it focuses closer than three feet, with a maximum magnification of 0.31X, so it’s rather versatile for a telephoto zoom, even though the variable maximum aperture is a bit slower than the f/2.8 you might see on a typical 70–200mm pro zoom. As you probably expect for a long lens like this one, it has built-in Optical Steady Shot for shake reduction.

Its 70–300mm should actually be a familiar focal range for many APS-C shooters, which makes this an interesting option for full-frame cameras. It will be available in May for $1,200

We’re looking forward to getting our hands on both new lenses as soon as they’re available, so stay tuned here for more.