For years now, the Paul C. Buff AlienBees lights have been a favorite option for photographers looking for studio lights on a budget. Now, the company has aounced an updated version called the DigiBees, which have been redesigned and have a few new features packed inside.

The DigiBees come in two different output options, including a 160 watt model called the DB400 and a more-powerful 320 watt version called the DB800. Each monolight weighs 2.5 to 2.9 pounds, depending on the output power you select. They both have a total of seven f-stops of variability adjustable in 1/10 stop increments from 1/64 power up to full blast.

The DigiBees use extra-bright LED modeling lamps rather than traditional bulbs and have an inteal fan to keep things cool. The strobes have a 5600K color temperature, which is what you’d expect from a strobe like this, and they are compatible with the full line of lighting modifiers and wireless triggers you’d expect.

As the Paul C. Buff site suggests, these are meant for heavy duty use, so they use a tough polycarbonate housing and a metal stand mount.

The DB400 currently sells for $309, while the DB800 costs just a bit more at $349. Personally, I would just go for the DB800 and get the extra power unless you’re specifically going to be shooting in really small spaces and need the lowest possible power setting. In signature Paul C. Buff fashion, the DigiBees are also available in a variety of colors in case the typical black case isn’t to your taste.

Official site

The engineers developing the Affinity photo editing software seem to be pretty busy these days with an impressive mobile demo last month and now a preview of some new features from version 1.5 of the software.

One of the big new additions in Affinity Photo v1.5 is the addition of a full-on HDR workflow. It will now important and merge photos into a 32-bit file that can be manipulated and edited to an impressive degree. The video shows the effects taken to the extreme, which is why they look painfully over-processed (at least to my eye) but there is serious potential if used responsibly. The engineers have tweaked the interface in this feature to give it a real HDR workspace with relevant tools.

The other feature in the demo shows off some impressive capabilities in terms of editing 360-degree panoramic images. The software can take a 360 pano taken from a camera like the Ricoh Theta S and allow it to be edited in real time. You can pull around the image and make edits that are then represented in the image no matter where the user may be looking within the picture.

A few other features are mentioned at the end of the video, including batch processing, the ability to program macros that map several actions to a single shortcut for faster workflow, and more focus stacking tools for macro shooters.

There’s no specific mention of when Affinity Photo v1.5 is going to be out, but I’m looking forward to see how it has evolved from the first release, which certainly wasn’t without faults but also showed some real promise and power when it comes to image editing.

The Xeen line of cinema-specific lenses hits most of the common prime lens focal lengths, but now Rokinon has extended its reach with the 135mm T2.2 Xeen medium telephoto lens.

The lens, as you might expect, doesn’t have autofocus and has a fast maximum aperture of T2.2. While it may not sound as fast as the f/2 number we’re used to on a high-end 135mm lens, you have to consider that it’s measured in T-stops instead, which means the number has been adjusted to account for the light that’s lost as it travels through the glass in the lens. It is indeed roughly equal to f/2.

Like the rest of the Xeen line, this lens will be available in mounts fitting Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony E, PL, and Micro Four Thirds. The outside of the lens has gear teeth in order to make it compatible with follow-focus devices commonly used by motion picture shooters. Plus, the clicks have been removed from the aperture ring, another feature essential for cinema-specific lenses.

The Xeen series of lenses now has a pretty robust line-up of glass that ranges from a 24mm wide-angle prime up to the new 135mm T2.2, hitting the critical prime focal lengths in between. It will be interesting to see what else Rokinon has up its sleeve over the next few weeks.

The definition of street photography has become rather broad in recent years. But David Powell’s images from the streets of Tokyo Japan have a certain undeniable purity about them that mixes well with his sense of composition and style.

This film by Smug Films shows an interesting—if slightly fluffy—look at his process and the things that brought him into street photography in the first place. The romance of taking the camera for a walk still lives, just like it has for decades.

I personally love seeing stuff like this because it makes me feel inspired to just go and take pictures. Sure, they aren’t always great and you won’t always find anything interesting, but getting into the process almost always feels good in and of itself.

Sixty years before Brandon Stanton became Humans of New York, Jaqueline Bouvier (Later, Jacqueline Keedy) was the “Inquiring Camera Girl” for the Washington Times-Herald newspaper. According to the description, she would travel around the city taking pictures of people and asking them questions so the images and text could appear in the paper for her column. She was apparently a pretty accomplished photographer in her day and now some of her personally used cameras are up for auction on eBay.

One of the main items up for bid is a 1960s-era Leicaflex with a 50mm Summicron-R (though the picture shows it with an Elmarit-R 28mm f/2.8). There’s also a Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 lens on the block, and a Nikon 35mm f/2.8.

The gear is pretty classic, and another auction for a large cement planter bucket owned by the Keedy family is going for $5,000, so this seems a lot more interesting if you’re in the market for some memorabilia.

By all accounts, former-Mythbuster, Adam Savage seems like one of the most interesting guys on the inteet. Recently, for his series Tested, he visited the Stanley Kubrick exhibition to see some relics used by the iconic filmmaker. Part of the collection is the fascinating f/0.7 lens he had custom-made in order to shoot actors by candlelight.

The discussion of the lenses starts around one minute into the video and gives an overview of some of the more interesting pieces of glass in the collection. We have talked about the iconic f/0.7 lens in the past, but it never gets boring to see such a fascinating piece of kit.

Kubrick has been discussed more than usual on the inteet lately thanks to a flare-up of the conspiracy theory about how he directed the “fake” moon landing video, despite vehement denial by everyone, including his daughter.

From: PetaPixel

Super slow-motion footage is something that we often take for granted here in 2016, if only because the inteet is so loaded with it. But, the stats on true super-high-speed can be baffling, and this video by The Slo Mo Guys is a nice little reminder of how far the high-speed camera tech has come.

In this video, they heat up kitchenware made of Pyrex glass to extremely hot temperatures and then drop cold water in them, causing them to shatter rather spectacularly. They start with a capture speed of 28,000 frames per second and go up from there. The most impressive video in my opinion is the roughly 120,000 fps video, which still manages reasonable standard-definition video quality.

The final video footage they shoot is at a rather insane 343,000 fps, which tus 5.1 seconds of video capture into 19.5 hours of footage. The final video is of drastically reduced image quality, but that’s to be expected since moving that many frames is challenging even at low resolution.

From: Gizmodo

It’s not all that common for high-profile photographers to get their own signature-series gear, but Moose Peterson is a pretty big deal in the nature photography game, and has been for some time, which is why he had his own signature series of camera bags in the ‘90s. Now, Mind Shift Gear is bringing back the Moose Peterson backpack with a redesign and some upgrades.

The backpacks use a three pocket design that helps accommodate the rather large lenses that are typically associated with wildlife and nature photography. The MP-1 is the flagship and can hold up to three DSLR bodies with lenses as large as a 600mm f/4 attached. The MP-3 and the MP-7 are somewhat smaller, but are still geared toward carrying around the gear necessary for intense wildlife shooting.

The real standout feature is the inclusion of the adorably-named “Moose Ear” flaps that automatically close to make sure the gear is covered as much as possible to protect it from the elements. Of course, there’s also a tripod mounting system on both the side and the front. There’s a stretch water bottle pocket and the whole thing is built to be tougher than the average bag so it can survive the wilds.

The MP-1 retails for $349.99, while the MP-3 costs $279.99 and the smallest MP-7 costs $199.99. In the grand scheme of serious wildlife photography gear, that’s actually pretty reasonable. You can buy the bags now at the Mind Shift Gear site.

We have been having a lot of fun creating these weekly photography quizzes and it has been fascinating to see which questions prove the most challenging. See how you stack up against this week's barrage of questions and be sure to share your score with us on social media!

A while back, I wrote about a technology that would try to automatically guess the appropriate colors for black-and-white images using algorithms. Now, there’s a demo site online from Algorithmia that lets users try the colorization process on their own photos.

I have spent some time this moing messing around with the technology and it’s obviously far from perfect, but is totally capable of putting up some surprising results.

This example was actually shot on Tri-X black-and-white film so there was never color involved with the photo to begin with. The color is applied with rough borders, but it seems to recognize the grass and the skin tone. It left the shirt white, which it was in person. The most impressive part of this image to me is the water, which got a rather subtle tint.

The lead image in the article (at the top of the page) is from a wedding a shot with a tricky white balance situation. The shirt was various shades of tan and the light was coming from a flash bounced off of a yellowish wall. The algorithm was thrown a bit and things look rather wacky, but I expected it to get the color completely wrong.

The final example might actually be the least impressive. It got the trees and the rocks, but seems to have totally missed the person in the bottom right coer.

It will be interesting to see how good tech like this can get going forward. It’s also a good way to spend a Friday afteoon at work when everyone else has sort of checked out.

Try it here.

While most of us view the majority of the images we see on a screen of some kind, it’s actually a pretty excellent time to make photo prints. There are tons of labs and different presentation options out there to choose from. Now, a Kickstarter project called Shots/onStone aims to provide prints made with real photo chemicals directly onto slabs of stone.

There are other stone prints out there, but it’s not often you see someone doing it using a truly analog process. The stone slabs use contact printing, which involves a rather laborious process that includes the creation of a full-sized negative, a darkroom, and several different chemical applications. Each stone is also UV coated to make it resistant to deterioration.

There are several artist editions offered as backing rewards, but the service will also be offering limited custom prints, so you can have your own photo committed to stone if you’re willing to spend the money.

This is the kind of thing that I personally love to see on Kickstarter because it’s truly unique and otherwise may not be able to exist because the process is so costly and time-consuming. It also makes me want to get some emulsion and go make photos on weird surfaces just because it’s possible.

Kickstarter

Not everyone has the cash to spring for a full-on medium-format camera rig for drone photography, but there are lots of other options out there, including the new DJI Zenmus Z3, which is its first dedicated drone camera with built-in optical zoom.

The camera uses the same 1/2.3-inch sensor found in other DJI Zenmuse cameras, but it sits behind a 3.5X optical zoom lens. In addition to the optical zoom, the camera also offers 2X digital zoom, which reduces the maximum resolution.

In order to accommodate the extra focal length, the gimbal system has been tweaked a little, since zooming in will emphasize camera shake. The product page recommends shooting only stills (not video) if both the optical and digital zooms are maxed out for a total of 7X.

The camera will retail for $899, but you’ll of course need a drone as well to take it up into the sky. Zooming while flying seems like it will take a bit of getting used to, but also seems like it will open up some pretty interesting visual effects.

Official site

In Focus: Neal Slavin's Prayer Project by americanphotomag

Portrait photographer Neal Slavin made a name for himself as a specialist in staging groups of people, from a fencing club wreaking havoc in a ballroom to a passel of well-behaved pugs. Now, with The Prayer Project, he’s photographing a very personal subject in the city he calls home, making very large-scale photos of communities at prayer, all unstaged and all in New York City.

“Every prayer group, every spiritual group, every religion, is in this great city,” he told us during a visit to his studio this summer to see the work in progress. He showed us prayerful gatherings from a candlelight service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to a Krishna Consciousness gathering in the Union Square subway station to an all-night voodoo ceremony in Brooklyn. “I’m a total New Yorker. I was bo here. I love the city. I thrive off it. Everything is here. … That’s how I came to define the perimeters of the project.”

From: American Photo

This may be one of the worst weeks in recorded history to release a mobile app that’s not called Pokemon Go, but Polaroid recently aounced its new mobile initiative, an app called Swing that encourages users to make and share 1-second moving pictures.

At first glance, the app has a strong resemblance to other familiar tech like Live Photos in iOS and even Boomerang from Instagram. Snap is a bit different in that it tries to unify the experience, limiting the moving photos to a single 1-second duration. Users also have to interact with the images to see them move. On the iPhone, you can literally swing the phone back and forth to see the image move, or activate it by swiping a finger back and forth across the screen.

The experience very much reminds me of the old lenticular baseball cards that would change the picture as you rotated the card thanks to multi-faceted surfaces on the card’s face. They also used to do it with movie posters, though it’s not something I have seen a lot of lately.

The presentation of the images in the app and even on the Polaroid site is actually very nice, with a clean design and tasteful visual elements. Scrolling through the images is entertaining, but having to interact with each one to really get the full value out of it subverts the inherent value that Instagram offers in the ability to scroll—sometimes mindlessly—through an endless stream of photos and short videos.

One of the big drawbacks right now is that the presentation happens within the app or on the Swing site, so sharing one to Facebook does so in the form of a link post. Expecting people to click through and actually interact with your images at a different link is a depressingly big barrier at this point in inteet history. In fact, you probably noticed that there aren't any Swings embedded on this page and you have to click away to see them. That's a problem that has seriously hindered other image formats in the past, like the ill-fated Lytro camera.

Bonus fun fact: Polaroid once manufactured a fun little camera called the Swinger, from which this app presumably gets its name. Here’s a wonderfully era-appropriate commercial for it.

Commercial product photography is a fascinating thing. An intense amount of preparation and work usually go into making an image that looks rather basic by design. When you’re doing a photoshoot for something called Barbie Dreamtopia, however, things get a little more exciting—there’s a lot more glitter.

This is honestly more insight than I would expect a Barbie behind-the-scenes video to really provide. We get to see the prep of the backdrop, the styling of the dolls, the image capture process, and even some of the image review process where everyone gathers around the tethered laptop. It's also interesting to watch the stylist primping the dolls by brushing on oil to make their plastic "skin" and hair shinier.

Barbie is big business and this is a serious shoot for a rather large-scale commercial product, so the team is using a medium-format digital camera (Phase One, if I'm not mistaken) as part of a really legit product photography setup. If you have never been a part of a shoot like this, the collaboration really is the best part, assuming everyone is on the same page. If there’s a personality clash, it can sometimes be a real grind.

Sorry if this ruins some of the magic behind Barbie’s dream land. I’m also sorry for that song.

One of the toughest parts of being an aspiring portrait or fashion photographer is finding models to be in your pictures. There are lots of options out there from dedicated services to the untamed wilds of Craigslist, but a new app called FStop is trying to simplify the process in the style of the popular dating/hook-up app Tinder.

In case you’re not plugged into the online dating app scene, Tinder shows you a person’s picture and profile, then you swipe right or left, depending on whether you feel like that person is a match. FStop works in a similar way, offering a heart icon and an “X” icon on each profile it displays. The interface works basically the same whether you’re a photographer or a model and if both parties click the heart, they’re put into contact to discuss possible collaborations.

One interesting aspect of the app is that it has its own integrated payment system that uses verifications to help take some of the sketchiness out of paying a model or photographer for his or her services.

Beyond models and photographers, the service also works for other creative professionals such as fashion stylists, make-up artists, and hair stylists.

The app is still in its early stages, so it will be interesting if it’s able to build the type of community that really fosters creative collaboration and not inherent creepiness like some other services you may have tried in the past. I'm currently signed up for the app so I'm curious to see how much action there is and how heart-able I am.

The cameras attached to drones, whether they’re proprietary models or simply GoPro cameras, have gotten pretty good. However, if you really want to push the boundaries on unmaed aerial photography (and your shoot budget), then medium format is the way to go. Drone-maker DJI owns a minority stake in the Hasselblad Group and now the two companies are offering a full-on drone-and-camera package including the Hasselblad A5D and the pro-grade DJI M600.

This rig is designed for super-high-end users so it comes at a high-end price. The M600 drone alone costs $4,600, retail, with the the Ronin MX gimbal adding another $1,600. Then things get expensive with the Hasselblad A5D, which doesn’t seem to have an official public price. Consider, however, that the Phase One medium-format drone camera checks in at a cool $60,000 and you’ll get the idea.

While none of us will likely be purchasing one of these rigs, they likely will be available through rental houses and, if you have the budget, they could provide some truly unique and interesting opportunities for really high-quality aerial photography.

The package comes with six batteries, the A3 flight controller, the Lightbridge 2 HD video transmission system and more drone-specific stuff that I would be terrified to crash into the earth.

Official site

The inteet has a long history of awesome videos made by strapping cameras to animals. In the Faroe Islands, however, animal-cams serve a more practical purpose as they use sheep to help populate Google Street View for the remote landscapes.

The project is a promotional campaign for the Faroe tourism agency hoping to generate attention for what looks like a rather beautiful natural landscape. The sheep cam setup includes a VR camera (it appears to be a Ricoh Theta), as well as a solar panel to keep it powered and a mobile phone in order to automatically upload the images. The camera takes one image every minute and, according to the video, captures mostly images of the sheep eating grass and sauntering about the islands.

The end game is a hope that Google will eventually come to the islands and use their big car and backpack camera rigs to create a more thorough VR experience of the island for Street View. It also doesn’t hurt the the campaign may generate some tourism money as photographers look for new “epic” landscapes to replace the overexposed beauty of Iceland.

Sony seems to be on a bit of a new 50mm lens kick lately. Not long ago we met the new “nifty fifty” in the form of the FE 50mm f/1.8 lens and now Sony has introduced its high-end Planar T* FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA prime geared toward professionals and advanced amateurs withE-mount Alpha interchangeable-lens compact (mirrorless) cameras. I had some time to shoot a bit with the new Planar lens in San Diego to get a few first impressions.

The lens uses a Zeiss Planar optical design, much like the layout used for the 50mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T* ZA lens that Sony has had in its Alpha-series full-frame line up for quite some time. The claimed effect is an image that minimizes overall distortion in the lens. Neutrality is a big plus for a standard 50mm lens like this, so it’s a logical optical design to choose.

The body of the lens has a built-in aperture ring with clicks that can be tued on and off. It can also be set to auto so the aperture can be controlled through the camera like with other mode lenses. I liked having the option of the ring, but found myself defaulting to the on-camera controls more often than not. Being able to tu off the clicks in the aperture ring is a nice touch for video shooters.

Inside the lens are advanced aspherical and extra-low dispersion elements, both of which should sounds pretty familiar in high-end lenses like this one. As the name suggests, the glass is equipped with the Zeiss T* coatings to help fight ghosting and flare. As someone who has spent a lot of time messing with lenses and finding out how they flare, I’ll admit that I was pretty impressed with how tough it was to get with this lens, even with the sun directly in the frame.

The motor inside is an SSM Super Sonic wave Motor that is, in fact, very quiet and relatively snappy considering the bulk of the glass inside the lens. The aperture is an 11-blade circular setup designed to produce appealing bokeh, which has clearly been a priority for Sony's glass designers, especially considering the recent launch of the G-Master series pro lenses.

The the Planar T* FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA will be available in July for $1,500 (U.S.), which is roughly the same price as the A-mount version for Sony DSLRs, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Keep scrolling for more sample images and impressions.

I may have a few relatively ancient rolls of film in my freezer, but none as old as the two Kodak rolls recently acquired by Rochester, New York’s Eastman Museum. The museum, which houses one of the world’s leading collections of photographic technology, had long hoped to get examples of these two film types back home to the place where they were first made more than 120 years ago.

The boxed rolls are so rare in part because most people sent their cameras back to Kodak for prints and reloading—a service that cost $10. But some camera buffs bought the roll film in boxes and loaded it themselves, a bargain at $2.50 as long as they didn't accidentally expose it. The cameras could take 100 2½-inch-diameter circular pictures.

The Kodak Film (also called American Film) was made on a paper substrate and discontinued about 12 years after its invention; this box is from 1888 and the film stopped being manufactured around 1900. This box is the only one known to exist. Transparent film (this box is from 1889), had a more illustrious life. Made with a nitrate substrate, it was used in the first 35mm movie viewing device by Thomas Edison's assistant.

Both rolls are now on view in the Eastman Museum's collection.

We first met the Light L16 camera last year, and got a chance to see the prototype in person back at the 2015 PhotoPlus Expo. Basically, the idea is to create a camera body with 16 individual sensors and smartphone-style lenses, then use clever and advanced software to achieve impressive photographic feats such as super-high resolution and an increased effective dynamic range. It’s a computational camera and the idea has been met with a wide range of responses from enthusiastically positive to incredibly skeptical. Now, Light has aounced that the camera is still on track to be released with better features than initially promised, thanks in part to a $30 million cash infusion from investors including Google.

The $1,699 camera is “sold out until 2017” at the moment, but the company says those who pre-ordered the Light L16 will be able to get an effective 28–150mm focal range instead of the 35–150mm range initially promised. The unit will also now ship with 256 GB of inteal storage instead of 128 GB.

The interesting thing about the focal range change is that it may not even be related to a change in hardware. A computational camera like this one will likely be able to evolve rather significantly through software updates, even more than traditional cameras do with normal firmware updates.

Making the L16 Prototypes from light on Vimeo.

I’ve been skeptical about new camera tech in the past, like the ill-fated, consumer-oriented Lytro, which was hamstrung by a prohibitive proprietary image type, but I think the idea of the computational camera is going to be one that becomes more and more important going forward. If you notice the latest trends in smartphone cameras—an undeniable force in the photography world at the moment, like it or not—the focus has clearly shifted slightly from improving hardware to making the cameras “smarter.” The iPhone camera, for instance, hasn’t drastically changed in terms of pure imaging hardware in some time, but there are reportedly 800 people working on the iPhone camera team. My guess is that the bulk of that work has to do with using software and computing power to do things with image data outside the bounds of simply making it look better. If smartphone cameras can do impressive things with one tiny imaging device and lots of processing power, it's only logical that 16 will make things even more interesting.

We won't know how effective this tech really is until the finished model starts hitting the hands of users, and even then there might be a considerable adjustment period, but I'm excited for its potential.

Official site

Like Alton Brown in his kitchen, I’m a big fan of tools that can have multiple purposes, and it seems like Phottix was prioritizing versatility with the design of the new Spartan Beauty Dish.

The modifier comes in 20-inch and 28-inch flavors, and is quite a bit deeper than a standard soft box, which typically resembles a large salad bowl. A reflector plate attaches in the middle to bounce direct light back into the white surface of the outer shell. That’s all pretty standard stuff for a collapsible soft box. With the Spartan, however, you can take out the reflector plate and replace it with a baffle and a front diffuser to tu it into a more traditional octobox.

One of the things I like about this setup is that the box includes the reflector plate, the inteal baffle, the outer front diffuser, and a fabric grid, so you can use it in pretty much any configuration you want without having to buy extra stuff. It doesn’t come with a speed ring, but it’s compatible with the Phottix Indra portable monolights as well as the Phottix Cerberus Hot Shoe Flash Mount.

It’s a clever setup and I’m interested to see how compact it can get when totally collapsed. I’m also interested to see what kind of effect that depth and the inteal reflective surface have on that classic beauty dish look.

Official Site

Everyone has a different preference when it comes to camera straps and, with the wide variety of straps currently on the market, it can be tough to decide which carry method is the best. I prefer an ordinary shoulder strap, but I know some shooters who prefer the old-school method of keeping it slung around the neck. The downside of that strategy is the pressure it puts on the neck, which is the problem addressed by the Camera Lift Strap, which is currently raising funds on Kickstarter.

The strap is built, for the most part, like a standard leather strap with a padded interior surface. There is, however, a small loop with a pair of strong snaps meant to coect to the top handle of a camera backpack. In doing so, the strap and the handle fully support the camera, taking the weight all the way off of the shooters neck.

Judging by the demonstrations on the Kickstarter page, the camera hangs in basically the same spot it would if it were wo normally. It’s a clever idea, but it does make for an extra step involved with taking off the camera bag. Also, it kind of encourages you to keep your camera bag on while shooting, which is probably ultimately more taxing on your body than a camera on a strap.

There are only two weeks left in the Kickstarter and it’s not quite half-way funded, so this may never actually make it to market, but it’s a clever idea. Personally, I think the number of neckstrap shooters out there has just shrunk too low to really make this a viable product.

Kickstarter (Via DPReview)

The big news out of the Fujifilm camp today is the introduction of their outdoor-ready X-T2 camera, but the company has also aounced a notable firmware update for the X-Pro2, as well as its plans for new lenses through 2017.

X-Pro2 Firmware

The big news with the X-T2 is the revamped autofocus system, and while the X-Pro2 won’t have all of the same AF points as its sportier sibling, it will get the new AF algorithm, which Fujifilm says will make it faster and more accurate. It will not, however, get the AF-C Custom Settings functions, which makes sense. The parallax correction for the optical viewfinder has been tweaked to be more accurate, and the X-Pro2 will now be compatible with the EF-X500 flash that was aounced with the X-T2.

New firmware isn’t quite as exciting as a new gear aouncement, but it’s great to see Fujifilm actively supporting their flagship cameras so soon after release. The X-Pro2 is already a pretty great camera, so faster, more accurate focusing certainly won’t hurt.

Lens Roadmap

I have always liked Fujifilm’s practice of aouncing lens road maps, if only because it helps assure its users of its commitment to the X-series camera system. There are three new lenses on the roadmap:

XF23mm F/2 R WR: A compact, weather-resistant prime with a 35mm full-frame equivalent field of view.

XF50mm F/2 R WR: A short, portrait-oriented prime

XF80mm F/2.8 R LM OIS WR Macro: A true 1:1 telephoto macro lens for close-up photography

Interestingly, the 80mm macro lens replaces a 120mm macro that appeared on an earlier version of the lens roadmap. According to Fujifilm, the motivation is to make more compact lenses to meet market demand. The new additions will bring the total X-series lineup to a total of 25 lenses.

This opeess and support for its users has honestly been one of my favorite things about Fujifilm in recent years. Thoughtfully using software updates to bring new features to current cameras and letting users know what’s coming down the road are both valuable assets to users bought into the X-series ecosystem. We’re looking forward to seeing just how much of an improvement a software update can make on the X-Pro2’s performance when it becomes available in October.