Cameras and Photography Explained

LEDE ON

The camera company executive interviews with the media at the CP+ show in Japan are slowly hitting the Interwebs as PR at each company signs off on them. One thing that seems to have happened is that the kimono widened a little and we got some talk about what many companies are working on (the OM Pen F isn't dead yet, though Generalissimo Franco still is). I suspect that's because they're embarrassed that they didn't introduce anything new in months, and want customers to realize that they haven't all left the engineering buildings for a long hike up Mt. Fuji never to return. Just as soon as someone tells them where the new parts all went and that they're ready to use, they'll get right back to work.

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New Compact

Panasonic muddles on

The new Panasonic TZ300 strikes me as a "must do something" launch. Except that what they did is take out the viewfinder from a TZ200 and not add anything particularly significant. But at least Panasonic has a compact superzoom again.  

Let's start with the sameness between the TZ200 and the new TZ300: same 20mp 1" image sensor (though it's now backlit), same 24-340mm (equivalent) f/3.3-8 lens, same fixed Rear LCD. There's nothing really wrong with the image sensor; it's fine for its size, and I'm sure the BSI version is going to deliver maybe a third of a stop more dynamic range. The lens I found wanting on the TZ200, though, and nothing seems to have changed. Sony's RX100VII lens, which wasn't exactly given accolades, beats the same Leica-designed 24-340mm (equivalent) f/3.3-8 lens that was on the TZ200 I tested. Maybe I had a bad sample? But I seriously doubt that, as others complained about it, too. I suspect that diffraction is a limiting factor on that lens, and it had quality control issues the last go around.

Meanwhile, we still get DFD (Didn't Focus Dead-on; no, wait, Depth From Defocus) will all its issues, and a video burst for continuous action (4K Photo). The 4K video, unfortunately, is cropped, so you basically end up with a 36-540mm lens when 4K is invoked in any way. Yes, we do now get a (Europe-required) USB-C port for communication and power, but we get a micro (Type D) HDMI port when a microphone port probably would have been more useful.

The sad thing is this: eight years ago the TZ200 had very good control and handling for a compact superzoom. But it left a lot to be desired in the quality of the stills and photos that were taken. This new TZ300 pretty much is identical in control and handling to its predecessor, but Panasonic simply didn't really address any of the shortcomings we reviewers noted eight years ago, and added that new one of "no viewfinder." 

So what we have here is that a Camera Company sees that compacts are selling again, so dusts off something they stopped making many years ago and puts no effort into improving it. Missing from the TZ300 are phase detect autofocus, Panasonic LUTs (!), a tilting and better Rear LCD, and a bunch more things you'd expect these days. It's as if Toyota resurrected the Scion thinking that its time had finally come. 

When companies take the wraps off something they had mothballed and put no effort into their iteration effort, to me that shows not just a lack of imagination and creativity, but almost a sense of desperateness. 

Which brings me to this: does Panasonic actually have a coherent brand strategy? Across both stills and video, I'd say no, they don't. Not when you can now buy an eight-year old design that's been downgraded.

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Legal

Did we win or lose?

The judgement in GoPro's lawsuit against Insta360 has been published. Both sides are declaring victory. On the utility patent side (the technical stuff), Insta360 was found not to have infringed on stabilization, distortion correction, aspect ratio, and leveling patents. On the design patent side (how it looks), Insta360 was found infringing on the Hero camera design, at least for Insta360's original models (they've since changed their design). Insta360 claims they spent at least US$10m defending themselves against GoPro's suits. It's unclear how much GoPro spent as it appears to be buried in General and Administration expenses, though their 10K for 2025 did list legal expenses as "substantial." 

As to why GoPro sued in the first place, it's easy to see the management motivation: sales to Asia and Pacific (APAC) in 2023: US$245m. In 2025: US$77m. GoPro's making noise about the new camera(s?) they'll launch at NAB later this month. Let's hope that gets them back to innovating rather than protecting.

Meanwhile, DJI has now sued Insta360 for patent infringement on drones. It seems like all the action camera companies are now drowning in lawyers.

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Tip

macOS updates require free drive space

I've seen this pop up on a number of sites, so I wanted to warn you so that it doesn't happen to you. When you update from an earlier macOS to the current macOS Tahoe (26.4), if you have older external drives mounted that are not AFPS GUID formatted, the update may try to update those drives to the current Apple standard (and you want that, because AFPS has safeguards that the old Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format doesn't).

The problem happens when you don't have enough free storage space left on a drive. The process of changing formatting requires a great deal of free space (Apple says 40GB). Apparently the update process doesn't check if it has enough space (or perhaps generates an unknown need for space and can't calculate whether you have it). Drives that fail the updating process become unusable as they're in multiple formats that haven't been resolved yet. 

So: don't keep external drives attached to your Mac when making macOS updates that might involve drive format updates. 

Moreover, you should always have a complete backup of your internal drive, as if you ever encounter this problem when trying to update the internal drive, it can end up unbootable and you'll have to perform a complete reinstall to get it running. I've warned about not accepting Apple's minimal SSD sizes for a number of reasons, and this is one of them: those of you with 128GB internal SSDs can get to a storage threshold that makes the system not updatable (though you would have also noticed and ignored performance drops before you got there). 

This is one of the trickier aspects of high tech: deprecation of older technologies can result in loss of data if you're not paying attention. But we need deprecations to happen to make progress in features and performance. Additionally, in today's environment, you really can't afford to just "freeze" your system and forgo security updates, so you need to be updating. 

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Wrapping Up

And in other news

▶︎ Apple discovers ticoRAW. With version 26.4 of macOS (Tahoe) Apple finally has built in support for Nikon's High efficiency* and High efficiency raw formats. Apple becomes the last major player dealing with raw files to enable this support. Apple's support page, however, still lists that only Lossless compressed is supported, but that page was last updated in February 2026. 

▶︎ AI gobbles up Sony cards. Just in time for World Backup Day, Sony is no longer supplying CFexpress cards (Type A or B), or Tough SD cards to dealers and customers. Referencing the shortage of NAND chips, Sony made the decision to at least temporarily halt distribution of cards, as they cannot guarantee supply. This is a bit disturbing as Sony is a fairly major player in storage cards (though their Nextorage spinout may now be bigger). 

▶︎ Nikon divests Mark Roberts Motion Control. When Nikon acquired the British-based MRMC back in 2016, it raised a lot of eyebrows. Yes, the MRMC robotic arms were mounting Nikon DSLRs for unattended placement at big sporting events at the time, but the big use of arms with remote control really happens at a level and in areas where Nikon has lost ground (Olympic events, Hollywood, etc.). Curiously, now that Nikon has elbowed back into Hollywood with RED and has one of the best mirrorless cameras for sports in the Z9, Nikon is now in the process of selling MRMC. I don't think the recent write downs at the MRMC division played well in Tokyo, and I had been expecting MRMC to play more closely with Nikon Imaging, but MRMC seems to have a mind of its own. While their robot arms have been used in ways that caught viral attention recently (Apple TV+'s Severance and the Netflix Ed Sheehan one shot production in New York), I've noticed that more and more I'm seeing non-Nikon cameras on Mark Roberts arms. Since I'm planning on attending the NAB Show coming up, I had already noticed that MRMC had a separate booth—though across the aisle—from Nikon this year. Now I think we know why (RED is in Nikon's booth). 

▶︎ DNG is now an ISO Standard raw image format. Twenty years later, Adobe's attempt to create a standard for raw files is now officially recognized by the International Standards Organization (as ISO 12234-4). Back in the early days of Fred Miranda and dpreview forums, many discussions about the then splintering raw format definitions were visible (all camera maker raw formats actually utilize a form of TIFF under the covers). It was a heated topic, particularly when companies such as Nikon introduced encrypted white balance information into their raw files. The issue then, and still present to this day, was archival longevity of raw files, as the formats for Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, and Sony are all proprietary and not documented in a way that would allow someone to write a 100% accurate processing tool in the future (or today, for that matter). At the moment, Leica, Ricoh, and Sigma save raw files as DNG. Whether the standardization process will get any of the major makers to convert future products to DNG is unknown, but for a company like Nikon that embraces ISO standards throughout their organization, I wonder if this might be the tipping point for the future. 

LEDE ON

It's tempting to say "nothing happened this week." Everyone in Tokyo is taking a breather after a successful CP+ show, after all. But of course a lot did happen (e.g. war is now ongoing, more tariff gyrations, fear of economic slowdown, yen appreciation against the dollar while falling against the Chinese Yuan Renminbi). For Fujitsu, Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony, their fiscal years end at the end of March, and the last month hasn't quite worked out exactly as each expected. When the full year financial results are reported in late April and early May, I expect that to be followed by some new short- and mid-term management plans that were at least partly triggered by recent events. Nothing earth-shocking is in store as far as I can tell, but I'm hearing a lot of micromanagement bits starting to leak in Tokyo, and even here in the US subsidiaries.

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Tip

Reducing Noise on Input

Bill Ferris, an Arizona wildlife photographer who's active on dpreview recently wrote a short post that echoes what I've been teaching for some time now. To reduce noise in your input data:

1. Use the widest aperture that provides acceptable depth of field.
2. Use the slowest shutter speed that stops subject (and camera) motion.
3. Fill the frame with your composition.

The first two are about optimizing exposure. Exposure is LIGHT filtered by APERTURE filtered by SHUTTER SPEED. When you use too small an aperture or too fast a shutter speed you're effectively increasing the randomness of photons in your image, which is the primary source of "noise" these days.

The third is more about the visibility of noise. If you have to crop your original data to get your final composition, at the same output size you increase the visibility of what noise was captured. So if your goal is a 24" print and you cropped your original 2x and output to that size, you'll get a significant increase in the visibility of noise that is in the image versus having enough full frame pixels in the first place. This part is trickier than you think. One reason why I stopped using m4/3 is the 4:3 aspect ratio. Almost all my output is 16:9 these days, so in using 4:3 for the capture I'm always significantly cropping my final image. This makes the area captured that's used in the final image even smaller than I obtain with full frame, thus amplifying the randomness of photons. (Note that choosing sensor size is all about trade-offs. For me, the trade-offs no longer work great. For you, they might. See next.)

Yes, noise reduction software can help, but that's dealing with things you've already captured. Remember, my mantra is optimal data capture, optimal data processing. What I'm talking about in this tip is optimal data capture. Where noise reduction software comes into play is with optimal data processing.

After I launch byThom MAX I'll eventually serve up my three-part seminar on noise: (1) sources of noise; (2) minimizing noise during capture; and (3) dealing with noise after the capture. One of these (long) presentations is already done. The other two are in progress. Until then, enjoy this brief hint at a key component of presentation #2. 

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Commentary

The case for high-end APS-C

In this week's tip, I mentioned aspect ratio, capture area, and tradeoffs. I'm lucky enough to be able to fill the full frame with my subjects, both on the sidelines at sporting events, and in Africa taking wildlife photos. While I "suffer" from size, weight, and price penalties doing so, matching top full frame bodies with the best possible lens is still my primary choice. I'll put what I create up against anyone, as I'm using optimal gear using optimal capture techniques. 

But realistically, most folk on safari aren't getting the animal approaches or carrying the really long lenses I and other pros do. Particularly in Kenya and Tanzania, there are times when you simply can't fill the frame with your composition, even at 600mm. The nice thing about the Nikon Z8/Z9 is that they also are convenient APS-C cameras, too, by simply flipping a setting (which can be automated into a button). Sure, you only get a 19mp crop that way, but if that 19mp is fully used and you've set exposure properly, the results can still be stunning at up to about 24" long axis. 

One reason the Nikon D500 and the Canon 7D DSLRs were so popular is that they gave you much of the top end body capabilities and performance in a smaller package where you could use somewhat shorter optics, plus you saved a ton of money by equipping that way. I know of one professional sports photographer who has never given up on his D500's because he gets what he needs from a lighter, smaller outfit. Newspaper and Web sports photos simply don't need massive file sizes, and photos are used at sizes that don't reveal the noise gain from the smaller capture area. 

There's no accepted definition of consumer, prosumer, or professional when it comes to cameras. However, I'd tend to point to the D500 and 7D (and now R7) bodies as truly prosumer, as they have professional body attributes that are reduced slightly by some consumer-type approaches. For instance, sensor size, which has a big impact on cost, all else equal. 

Nikon got burnt by overextending in DX (APS-C) during the DSLR era. As sales volumes came down, Nikon found that they hadn't cleared the previous generation of cameras when they were launching new ones, so at one point Nikon was selling anywhere from eight to twelve (!) cameras in a very tight spacing. After the D500, Nikon moved radically away from proliferating APS-C cameras. 

Sony has done something different. They, too, were over proliferating APS-C early in the mirrorless era (NEX and A#### cameras) and ran into the same inventory pile up. Now they've moved to four spaced-out models that don't iterate very often (if at all). 

Canon seems to be the only one iterating mirrorless much like they iterated DSLRs, with models all over the spectrum, including the arena this comment is about: high-end APS-C. The Canon R7 and Fujifilm X-H2s are really the only two remaining high-end APS-C cameras that fit the prosumer definition I prefer to use (pro features and performance with some consumer limitations). Apparently, Canon will update the R7 sometime this summer, pushing it even closer in pro features and performance. 

But where's Nikon? They were the ones that really established this market (with the D100 originally, and particularly with the D300 and D500 later on). Nikon even has the right lens set in the Z System for the sports/wildlife DX user (e.g. the 400mm f/4.5 VR S would be a great lens to pair with a Z90 prosumer body, as well as the 70-180mm f/2.8 for a second body). 

And where's Panasonic? Their m4/3 start seems to have them afraid of even trying APS-C. 

I'd argue that top-end APS-C bodies should be present in any mirrorless lineup that wants to be complete and win more customers. Canon looks like they'll have that with the upcoming R7 II. Fujifilm still needs to up their game with autofocus performance on the X-H2s. Nikon needs something far better than the current top of their APS-C line, the Z50II. Panasonic needs to stop watching pitches go by and swing their bat. Sony thinks the A6700 is top end enough, but I'd disagree on a number of levels, starting with the position of the viewfinder, which impacts rotation stability on fast action. 

In particular, Nikon and Sony seem to be iterating less often and concentrating mostly on rationalizing a modest number of full frame bodies. This is a little like an auto maker deciding that they don't need to make a full range of product, just a quiver of mid-size and large SUVs. We know what happens when you do that: you get smaller. I wonder how small a camera maker can let themselves get before they become irrelevant. Perhaps Sony doesn't worry about that because they have a history of casting off businesses that become irrelevant. But Nikon doesn't have that opportunity, as Imaging (cameras and lenses) are near 50% of their overall business, and the only group that is consistently profitable enough to keep expanding the overall company. 

So while I'll continue to use my full frame Nikons, I'll be the first one to congratulate Nikon when (if) they come out with a high-end APS-C model. It would be the right camera for so many customers, I just don't know why it doesn't exist already.

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Wrapping Up

And in other news

▶︎ Photoshop gets an AI Agent. Adobe's latest Photoshop public beta includes a new AI Agent, which you can chat with to process your image. Short form, you tell it something and it uses the built-in Photoshop tools to accomplish that. For instance, you might type "reduce the highlights and boost the shadows and also remove distractions." This works a bit like an Action, in that each step will be executed individually and thus leave an entry in the History panel, but it works slower than an Action so that you can see the steps as they are performed. You can also use the chat to ask the AI how to do something, and it will just describe the steps it would take instead of actually performing them.

My take on this is that it's useful if you don't know how to do something specific, such as apply a blend mode only to the highlights, but this new AI feature is not something I'd tend to use myself. For instance, this AI Agent doesn't agree with me on cropping, let alone what constitutes a highlight or shadow. Thus it is more brute force than I would tend to use Photoshop. Great Photoshop processing never reveals what was done and requires subtlety in decision making. I don't believe the Agent is up to that level at this time.

LEDE ON

By this point last year we had four significant camera introductions. This year, none. Every company I talk to quietly confirms that their original plans for this year have all been pushed later and later, to the point where some off-the-record-but-honest responses tend towards “we don’t know when our next big product intro is going to appear; later this year is our best guess.” 

The AI elephants in the room have got all the mice scrambling for floor space. When I talk to my supply side friends, they all tell me “100% of what we’re shipping is going to AI demands.” That starts with chemicals and wafers, and ends with completed chips. I’ve been told that even Apple is scrambling to keep their supply chains going full steam. So to continue the analogy: even the cape bufallo is finding the room crowded and difficult to navigate. 

This isn’t going to let up in 2026, as the current stated plans of the AI elephants indicates that they'll want even more of the room in 2027. Meanwhile, we’re in the midst of key top management planning time in Tokyo, as the end of the fiscal year for all but Canon at the end of this month triggers final consideration on how to make the coming year better. Through the grapevine I’ve heard a couple of the ideas being considered in Godzilla’s stomping grounds. Those won’t work. Godzilla will still stomp them (oops, my keyboard seems to have substituted a new metaphor!). The ideas that might work at keeping sales numbers up are (a) more significant firmware updates; (b) better marketing, particularly in customer education; (c) deeper targeted discounts that aren’t 100% on repeat but linked to (b) and (d); (d) event-driven customer experiences; (e) bundle parties (cameras plus lenses producing discounts); and (f) making a louder splash when you do have a significant new product to introduce.

But a new great camera with a new sensor, new ASIC, lots of updated features and performance, that will make you run to the store to see it? We’ll eventually get a couple of those this year, but they’ll be later than expected, and probably available in lower volume than demand. I doubt those few new key cameras will move sales numbers much.

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Report

WPPI 2026

Once again I attended the wedding and portrait oriented show for professional photographers that occurs each year in Las Vegas. I went mostly to keep in touch with what’s happening in an area of photography that I don’t generally practice, but also because I’m working on a book that has a section on lighting, and lighting and posing are the two headline ingredients at the show. It’s not that I don’t know light, having lit my first studio in 1973, it’s that running full lighting setups is not something I do every day, and I wanted to make sure that I’m not fogetting something as I write new material.

I’m not going to get too into the WPPI details here—if you have a specific question drop me an email and I’ll try to answer it—but I did have a number of observations as I attended sessions, took photo walks with instructors, and browsed the large trade show of gear and services that runs alongside the educational components: 

• The back of the camera is the primary compositional choice. I mentioned this last time I wrote about WPPI: most photographers here simply compose with the Rear LCD. There were a couple of holdouts. Mostly old-school names you’ve heard before who started with SLRs, used DSLRs, and now treat their mirrorless systems the same way (see Joe being Joe, below). But the younger crowd would be quite happy with the viewfinderless ZR, and I saw quite a few of those around the show. As I’ve noted before, when you’re dealing both with your camera and someone posing in front of it, hiding behind the viewfinder tends to break the connection between you and your subject. Connecting with your subject is how you help interact with them and adjust their pose.
• CaptureOne is the tether choice. Virtually every live demonstration (of which there were hundreds) had the camera tethered into a MacBook running CaptureOne. A number of presenters even went so far as outright claiming “CaptureOne is the only reliable choice" for tethered work. I never saw a hitch with a CaptureOne tether in any session, though there were lighting and audio hitches, so maybe there’s some there there to that claim. Also: almost everyone was using some of Tether Tools bits and pieces (e.g. cabling). 
• Creativity is not dead. On a Fujifilm walk with a monster combo of GFX100II and 20-35mm f/4 lens in hand, instructor Chris Berry told me to “break the camera.” Not literally, of course. But rather stop doing things the way I usually do. It’s true, as a raw user, I don’t tend to break outside of long-considered exposure norms. So I grabbed Elvis, cranked up exposure compensation to +3EV, dialed in a filtered Astia+G, and took the image at the head of this section. Not. What. I’d. Normally. Do. And that was sort of the point Chris was making: the creativity you need to stay afloat in this business comes from pushing boundaries, trying new settings, and “breaking” things. Indeed, that’s one of the places that “personal style” comes from. When Insta was new, running a filter on your capture was the thing that set an image apart and possibly stopped a doom scroll (to some degree, still does). But if in going outside the usual box you start finding something you like and that tests positive when you show your images to others, then you’re doing the right thing. Ultimately, photos are to be looked at, examined, maybe even studied and analyzed. If your image looks like every other one out of a Canikony at default settings, it would be incredibly difficult to sell your photography to others as a service. WPPI has thousands of attendees who are making money off of photography. One reason they do is that they keep tuned in to what’s happening on the “creative” side. (And yes, that image is +3EV in exposure. At the end of this news story, I’ll show you how I processed it to get closer to what I was thinking. But it’s pretty incredible what the Medium Format image sensors can hold in terms of dynamic range, and the level of detail at 100mp is pretty amazing. The above image in its original form would print 37” on the long side, by the way.)
• But don’t forget to do what sells. Another speaker went through the process of “breaking” something to demonstrate images that catch attention, but he runs a production studio and keeps careful track of his actual sales. He reports this: the creative images pull people into the studio, but customers still end up choosing to buy the more traditional ones. So make sure that you’re still giving them that option. This plays into something I learned when doing editorial work for magazines: (1) the magazine was attracted to me because of a style/look I produced; (2) they asked for images specifically that fit their style/look and tended to run those over (1). But every now and then, my style/look won the call, which triggered other magazines to ask about my availability. Put another way: do what sells, but also do more. That more should be unique to you and the result of your creative process going further than what you were asked for.
• Speedlights are too old school to consider. Virtually no one was using camera-company flash units. The standard in most demonstrations was Profoto A2 and B30 strobes. A few used the lower cost Godox (or Adorama Flashpoint) similar lights. The first reason the on-camera flash units get no love is output: you get more light from the big rigs. The second is ease in “modification.” Soft boxes, grids, gels, and more all work very simply in the current Profoto designs, and are extremely fast to set up and/or swap out. When you really want to control the light as do the portrait and wedding photographers, you need a lot of power, up close, and softened. Of course, a full three-light and modifiers Profoto rig is going to set you back US$6000+, and you still need stands to put the lights and modifiers on. So it’s a tough sell. But instructor after instructor kept making it look easy, so I’m sure Profoto made quite a few sales. 

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Report

Joe Being Joe

I’m always up for watching Joe McNally in action. He tends to start out from a tame starting point that isn’t a lot different than the rest of the pack, but as he starts working a scene his special powers start heating up and next thing you know you’ve got a juiced up Full Joe running around the room. A good case in point was his presentation at the Lighting Summit, where, like most of the other instructors he began with “a model and three lights” and did the usual things with them. Here’s Regular Joe making soup:

You see Joe at the left, his model and some of the lighting in the middle, plus the result of the image he just took via the CaptureOne tether on the far right. (Pardon the exposure here; there’s virtually no ambient light in the room, and I have no control over the stage light or the projector. If you’re wondering: Z50II with the 16-50mm f/2.8 lens at ISO 6400 to 12800 on these images, as I’m using a slowish shutter speed to keep the frequency-based ambient lighting from throwing color bands and drifts.)

At some point as he’s working, some secret chemical starts getting dispersed into Joe's bloodstream and he begins building his superpowers. At some point he'll wonder if he really wants to just make soup any more. Maybe a spicy salsa, stew, or curry instead? I mentioned the “creative” side above, and one aspect of that is noticing things and another is not self-editing. These are things that the superpowered Full Joe does in spades. 

Eventually Full Joe jumped off stage with his model and one light, started interacting more with his model asking her to do nontraditional things (acting!), raised the light over her head, engaged the audience in what he was thinking, and ended up with this setup:

And here’s what came out of his camera into CaptureOne:

The strange ceiling light and some of the backlight color comes from the fact that Joe added two Profoto A2’s with colored gels behind the audience and pointed them straight at the camera (you can see them on the previously taken images on the far right, before he repositioned himself and the model so that the lights didn’t appear directly. Again, this is me taking a photo of a screen showing the CaptureOne tether, so I have no control over the color and contrast. The actual image looked far better on Joe’s laptop, obviously. 

Joe being Joe, he also spouted something new I hadn’t heard him say before, and that’s about aspect ratio. Basically Joe says he’s mostly using 1:1 as his aspect ratio now because then he never has to turn the camera on its side. So much for vertical grips.

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Z Versus China

It seems clear that Nikon has gone completely cease and dissist on Chinese Z-mount lenses recently. The Viltrox suit coupled with letters from Nikon lawyers makes that perfectly clear. Many of those Chinese lens makers (or at least their US distributor) were at WPPI, so I spent time there asking the obvious questions. 

No one would talk much in the way of specifics, but the generality was pretty much always “we’ll still be selling Z-mount lenses in the future.” I did note that the ones that seemed the most nervous and vague about what’s going to happen were those with “performance” autofocus lenses. E.g. Viltrox, but not Laowa.

Which brings me to a hypothesis. Nikon has a dozen or so patents surrounding the Z-mount. Some of those are size and physical attributes, which almost certainly wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny in court and can be easily reverse engineered in a clean room. Others are extensions of the F-mount protocols, which have been known and used by third party lens makers without Nikon’s permission for decades now. It would be difficult for Nikon to assert those F-mount patent specifics now, as they’ve not done anything I can see to protect that information in the past. The FTZ adapter pretty much proves that Z System cameras still understand and can use F-mount protocols, when necessary, as the FTZ turns out to be nothing more than a signal pass-through for the most part.

Which brings us to the Z part of the Z-mount communications. For instance, there’s a second synchronous serial data stream now, and that appears to be there to manage better focus performance. Nikon is just starting to unleash that themselves, and I believe that one of the Z9II’s new features will be related to that new channel, as well. You have to ask yourself, for instance, why do the 24-70mm f/2.8 S II and 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S II focus faster? Yes, some of that’s the new SilkySmooth focus motor system. But I believe some of the faster focusing is due to specific Z-mount protocols, and that will become clearer with the next generation of cameras from Nikon.

Viltrox is also entering into the “focuses faster” realm now with their PRO lenses, and my hypothesis is that Viltrox has now picked up on something beyond the base F-mount protocols and are implementing this on their lenses. Couple that with Nikon completely missing their lens attachment rate goals (2:1 was the stated goal, they’re getting <1.5:1 out of China), and it seems that Nikon sees the problem being a financial one, which is the reason that it now appears that they’re asking for mount licensing fees. 

Coupled with this is the entreprenuerial nature of the China lens market. There’s a lot of cross licensing, design sharing, and engineer movement going on between the various Chinese lens companies. So knowledge about what works and what doesn’t is getting shared very rapidly among the Chinese lens producers. This suggests a couple of things: Viltrox is the first to be sued because they are the ones showing the most impressive growth and now starting to nibble into the arena where Nikon S lenses play, but the entire Chinese lens market is learning from Viltrox, thus the warning salvo of cease and dissist letters. 

I’m not against Nikon asking for companies to sign mount licenses and even paying FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) royalties. However, the way Nikon is going about things and the fact that they haven’t communicated to Nikon customers what they’re doing and why is just clearly a bad business decision getting badder by the day. All this in a year when there won’t be a lot of new camera announcements from them, too. 

I’m starting to see this as a “make or break” year for Nikon. Either they remove these frictions, launch a successful Z9II and some key lenses of their own, plus figure out how to move more units through dealers, or they don’t, don’t, and don’t. In the “make” case, Nikon will see sales growth and some market share increase to continue the positive path they’ve been on. In the “break” case, Nikon will lose some customers and find themselves in a deeper market share war with Fujifilm for third place, with the potential for dropping to #4. 

It’s probable that top management and the legal team in Tokyo don’t believe any customers see any of this legal action. They’d be 100% wrong. It’s possible that top management thinks that customers won’t be concerned about any of this legal action if they did know about it. That would also be 100% wrong. Nikon needs to resolve the mount license situation quickly, and the basic way to do that is FRAND patent licensing coupled with making a clear announcement about that. 

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Wrapping Up

And in other news

▶︎ Apple adds Neo, updates other MacBooks. It was a big week for Apple in terms of updates and discontinuations. I won’t be updating my full Mac advice articles on this site until I deploy the new site design, so we’ve got a lot to cover here in short form:

• Discontinued: MacBook Air M4 (13 and 15”), MacBook Pro M5 (13” with 512GB SSD), MacBook Pro M4 (14 and 16”), Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 512GB memory, Studio Display A13, and Pro Display XDR. Many of these are great products for photographers and are seeing discounting as retailers try to get rid of their inventories. Don’t be afraid to buy those that I recommend.
• Added: MacBook Neo, MacBook Air M5 (13 and 15”), MacBook Pro M5 (15”) with expanded SSD, and MacBook Pro M5 (14 and 16”) with Pro and Max chip options, two new Studio Display options (regular and XDR).

There’s a lot to unpack. First, generational speed gain is about 15% from M4 to M5, all else equal. While that sounds modest, as you move into the advanced versions (Pro and Max) some of the core changes may make more of a difference, if utilized. That said, most of you won’t notice the difference between M4 and M5 performance, all else equal.

Let’s start with the MacBook Neo. It’s very tempting as it has a low starting price and doesn’t give up a lot to get there. But I won’t be recommending it to photographers because the storage limitations (max 8GB RAM, max 512GB SSD) are too constraining. It’s not that the Neo can’t do Lightroom/Photoshop, it’s that you’re almost immediately into the Ram Doubler-like compression and swapping as you work on images, even 12mp ones. As you start to do more, you’ll wait more. I just don’t see a Neo being able to grow with you as you start taking and processing a lot of images. If anything, you’ll chew through the life of the small SSD fairly rapidly with all the swapping going on. The more megapixels your camera has, the more you’ll feel that.

On the other hand, Apple did something I 100% approve of with the new MacBook Pros: 1TB is now the minimum SSD size. For a prolific photographer I’d still recommend storing your images on an external drive, but this larger built-in drive size is no longer likely to get in your way of storing your catalog, cache, and swap files. A base level 14” meets all of my basic requirements for a photographer’s laptop now and lists at US$1699. I’d still consider upping the RAM to 32GB, as RAM=performance in the Apple Silicon world. That extra RAM will add US$400 to the cost, though. But the result would be a wickedly good machine that travels well and should last you for some time. You can still go crazy upgrading a 14” MacBook Pro (or 16”), getting you all the way to US$7049 (M5 Max, 40-core GPU, 128GB RAM, 8TB SSD, nano-texture display). But at that extreme you’re deep into “competes with highest-end desktops” performance, and I’m not sure why most of you need that in a portable. (Disclosure: some of us do. I have a MacBook Pro M4 with 64GB RAM and 8TB SSD, but that’s because I need my desktop when I travel.) What I’d suggest to all those considering the MacBook Pro is to look at sales on the M4 models, but definitely not be afraid of the lowest level M5 models.

The MacBook Air is somewhere between the Neo (not a great photographer tool) and the MacBook Pros (superb photographer tools). We now have 13" and 15” Airs with M5, 16GB, and 512GB SSD starting at US$1099 and US$1299 respectively. If you want a really excellent option, pick the 15” M5, 32GB, and 1GB SSD at US$1899. That’s not going to have issues with Lightroom or Photoshop, give you some growth space, and provide excellent performance for virtually anything you might do. 

Meanwhile, the Apple external display choices need to be noted: the basic US$1599 Studio Display didn’t reallly change, it mostly got an updated A19 chip at its core (the original was A13). The more expensive Studio Display XDR is where changes came: downgraded from 32” and 6K to 27” and 5K, and updated to A19 Pro chip with a built-in camera. The XDR version is now “only” US$3299, though. Note that neither of the new displays work with Intel-based Macs; we’re in an Apple Silicon world now. 

All in all, Apple is pushing Mac very rapidly in capability and performance that now provides workstation-level ability in a highly portable form. Apple’s not done with Mac for the year, but this first salvo is pretty darn awesome. Somehow Apple has kept a lid on their pricing (with a little juggling) while continuing to push performance at a high pace. The MacBook Neo’s an insane machine for its US$599 price if you’re just looking for a computer to do Web, email, office productivity, and other basic chores. But it’s not quite enough for an active photographer on the road; the base MacBook Air would be the better choice.

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As promised, here is the start of one of my “processed” versions of Elvis. The primary difference is that I’ve applied so far is an anamorphic flare. What I was thinking about as I was “breaking” the camera was “Elvis wears white and he’s in heaven and I’m at the museum where all the old Vegas neons goes when it dies,” so I want an all-white, almost heavenly look. 

So what I’m doing here is breaking Photoshop. It needs a lot more breaking to get to what I was imagining, but now you might be able to see where I’m headed. I need to get home and work on this with the big computer some to do what I want. The flare needs to go behind Elvis and I need more flare effects. It’s difficult making these decisions on a laptop.

LEDE ON

Who was it that wrote that the Trump-mandated tariffs were unconstitutional and that they wouldn't reduce the trade deficit? Oh wait, that was me, back when the "tariff war" was first declared. Now that the Supreme Court and the full year trade numbers has confirmed what I wrote, much of it looks pretty prescient. Yet it was just applied basic macroeconomics and an actual reading of our Constitution. Of the nine bulleted items I listed would happen, six have become arguably true, the other three are just still arguable.

So now we can expect all the camera makers to reduce their prices and you get issued refunds, right? That's where human behavior takes over from macroeconomic theory. Congress has this way of, once they have your money, not giving it back. Meanwhile, the camera companies didn't see the end of the world after having to raise prices, just a lowering of their profit margins, so what's their motivation to lower prices again? 

Don't get me wrong. I do expect further price adjustments moving forward, but I'll bet those will come mostly in the form of constant and repeated sales rather than the permanent lowering of list prices. I had a boss once whose mantra was "price high, and discount if you have to, because it's near impossible to unilaterally raise prices, but real easy to unilaterally lower them."

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Analysis

Taxing Times

You didn't think I'd stop with just the Lede, did you?

We're almost a year after all the original tariff turmoil and guess what, we're back in choppy waters. Let's start with de minimus. That's the part of tariffs that applies to <US$800 items sent directly to customers. Until last year, the idea was to eliminate cost at the Customs department by eliminating the tariff on low-priced items coming in directly to the customer. Then the Trump administration cancelled de minimus and imposed new tariffs by country. While you might think that the Supreme Court threw all that out with their decision last Friday, Trump said that he reinstated tariffs (see also next paragraph). What you probably don't know is that the Big Beautiful Bill that Congress passed last year officially ends de minimus in 2027, so tariff collection will likely start on small overseas purchases regardless of what's happening with the "by edict" Trump tariff declarations.

While the Supreme Court was pretty clear about the way tariffs were declared last year and said, no, that's a Congressional authority, not Executive Branch one, Trump within hours imposed new tariffs, using a different mechanism. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the President to impose up to 15% tariffs for as many as 150 days when there are large trade discrepancies. Trump used that authority to immediately impose 10% tariffs on everything. Then someone in the White House actually read the section in question, realized that they had already agreed to 15% tariffs with a number of companies such as Japan, and the next day Trump said, "oops, I meant 15%." 

So, two things about that: (1) Congress will have to act within 150 days to extend these new 15% tariffs, and that's unlikely in the current environment because it would happen just before the next election; and (2) the reasoning is once again problematic, and will likely get tested by the courts as once again exceeding the authority given by Congress. Section 122 doesn't actually refer to "trade deficit" it refers to "payment deficit", of which the US has very little (the US heavily exports "services", which balances out "trade"). In essence, we have an autocratic regime that can't read and has indicated that they will do what they want and keep trying to find some methodology that might make tariffs stick. In other words, businesses still have no idea what their costs are (and will be), as they keep fluctuating as the tariff battle continues. 

I mentioned before that supposedly one reason for imposing the tariffs in the first place was to reduce the US trade deficit. Other than a brief dip in October, we seem to be pretty much back to "normal" with our physical goods deficit. The only real change that is clearly due to the tariffs is where the goods are being imported from (e.g. not China, though how much of the increase from places such as Vietnam is really just "shuffling" is unclear). We're still paying more for all those goods at the retail side, because, well, someone has to pay the tariffs, and guess what, it isn't who Trump says it is, it's ultimately US consumers.

From the camera maker standpoint, things are back to chaos. Sure, 15% may be less than what they had been paying (or not in several cases). But it's also far less than the previous China tariffs, as well, reintroducing the potential for stronger competition with Chinese lenses again. And, no, no one is going to be reimbursed for unconstitutional tariffs any time soon (if ever), so it's no different than if a parts supplier changed their pricing (and may change it again) and insisted on keeping the money you've already sent them. Note that every camera maker said their profits were reduced by tariffs in their last fiscal year, but that's not going to go away in the foreseeable future.

As much as I've maligned the bean counters in Tokyo in the past, they currently have my sympathy, because they're trying to run their spreadsheets when the inputs keep changing in (mostly) unpredictable ways. Coupled with Japan's 30- and 40-year bond yields now spiking upwards—which has implications on corporate borrowing—the accounting side within all the Japanese camera companies has to be nervous and twitchy at the moment.

For those of you outside the US who probably think that the whole tariff situation doesn't impact you, you'd likely be wrong. With a quarter of sales for companies directly impacted, plus the net impacts of some negotiated deals that have been made, it's probable that pricing is being impacted worldwide, just not nearly as much outside the US as inside. Product decisions are being delayed, as well, because pricing impacts aren't certain. 

My advice to this site's visitors really doesn't change. First, are you sure you need new gear, or are you just a GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) addict? If you need something, then buy on sales if you can or perhaps consider refurbished gear, but don't believe that "things will get cheaper in the future." They might, but that's far less likely at the moment than likely. 

Meanwhile, I'm reminded of a Churchill quote: "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to pry our leader out of the bucket.

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Analysis

I'm Bullish and Bearish on AI

The mainstream media and the big tech companies investing in AI certainly are making loud noises, much like elephants fighting with hyenas. Most of what you hear and what you're afraid of because of those terrible sounds is going to result in a lot of nothing, however. 

The trillions of dollars being invested in server-farm-based, one-company-owned AI systems is not likely to pay back returns. I see distinct parallels to the so-called Web 2.0 run up at the turn of the last century. A lot of cacophony followed by a lot of merrymaking players going poof. 

On the other hand, the serious investment and training of AI models is already paying off big. I, like many of my Silicon Valley friends, run my own LLM (large language module) on my laptop. Yes, I said laptop, and yes, I mean it runs entirely on my laptop. What do I use this for? Sort of as an intern/assistant. While working on my new Web sites, I've had my LLM offer up coding suggestions and verify code, for instance. Sometimes I'll throw an idea at it and see how it responds. But I'm doing the work, I'm just looking at ways to do it more productively. And I can say that it works. Quite well, actually.

If you're a betting person, you can make a bear or bull bet on AI today. 

Meta is a bear bet for me. I see no clear way they can pay back their growing investment in AI, just as I saw no clear way for them to pay back their huge investment in VR. The closest they come to a payoff is the Rayban/Oakley glasses, but because that's an isolated product for them, I don't see it generating the ROI that is needed. Meta's primary source of revenue is selling you advertising on their social media platforms, stet.

Apple is a bull bet for me (and my laptop with the LLM on it is a MacBook Pro). Apple makes hardware, and specifically, they make hardware that takes advantage of technical advances to give users clear new and useful capabilities. While they poke around with centralized AI with Siri, et.al., the real benefit for Apple is if they make hardware that runs AI efficiently and user-useful ways. Which is exactly what is happening and I predict will continue.

What does this have to do with photography? Well, Topaz Labs is an example of them making a bet on my bull side: they want their AI models to run on their centralized servers for which they charge a toll. Frankly, their local model AI (Topaz Sharpen AI, for example), worked more than well enough for me. If anything, they've muddied their models and made them near impossible to use in any productive way, but they'll be happy to sell you use tokens if you want to try using it.

Adobe, meanwhile, is dipping toes in both waters, with both some on-machine modeling as well as centralized. That probably is going to work out okay for them, because, yes, there will be times when my laptop just isn't going to be able to handle some really sophisticated requests and needs a big GPU farm somewhere to do all the computing. 

PetaPixel recently published an article titled "The First Mainstream Manufacturer to Put AI in a Camera Will Regret It," apparently not realizing that all of our current cameras have localized AI models working in their autofocus system (and in other areas, as well). Which gets to part of my point: there's much that AI can help with that's very useful. It can now focus my camera faster and more accurately than I can (though I still override it when it gets it wrong, a much easier process for me to manage). My laptop AI can whip up a Javascript function and test it faster than I can. Adobe Photoshop, both on machine and off, does a better initial selection than I can and does it faster, too. These are the types of AI uses that make sense, and they also often make more sense on local devices (can you imagine your camera waiting for the server to tell it where to focus?). 

Much of the AI hype and fear running around the mainstream media these days is really marketing (and anti-marketing) messaging. Sam Altman is a used car salesman, trying to get you to buy the premium model you don't need. Marc Andreessen is essentially trying to get his investments to make more money, not help you. Elon Musk thinks he can control you by jerking his X controller back and forth. Many of those who helped develop our current AI and LLMs in scholarly venues have cashed in where both high salaries and unrestricted research investments allows them to "live better" both at home and in the lab.

Reality will hit home at some point. It always does with tech. All the promises and gee-whizzing eventually have to have real payoffs for users, or else a lot of (venture) capital disappears in the night. So be careful where you place your bets. New shooter coming out...

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CP+ Announcements

Here come the lenses (more in sight)

▶︎  Tamron 35-100mm f/2.8. At US$900 (E-mount) and US$930 (Z-mount) this is going to be a popular lens, methinks. The MTFs suggest it is very good out through the DX corners, but the real desired trait is the modest size (4.8" long) and weight (20.3 ounces) for a fast aperture zoom that covers all the standard prime focal lengths (35mm, 50mm, 85mm). This is a lens the Z5II and A7V crowd probably can get behind, even though the initial reviewers all seem a little meh about the focal range. But here's something to chew on: with a Z50II this lens is an effective 53-150mm f/2.8, and appropriately sized. While it's no 50-100mm f/1.8 like the old Sigma DC, it does give a reasonable "fast (not quite) 70-200mm alternative for DX users. To bad it doesn't have VC (stabilization). The curious aspect to this is that Tamron also has a 28-75mm f/2.8 lens, so Tamron is seriously overlapping their own offerings now. 

Along with the lens comes the new, optional Tamron Link accessory, which plugs into the lens' USB-C socket and allows you to control it from your mobile device. This US$50 dongle has a 16' range (Bluetooth) and almost no specifics about it in Tamron's marketing and promotions. So let me explain: using the Tamron Lens Utility app on your smart device and using this new dongle you have quite a bit of control over the lens. This is useful for doing repeatable focus pulls in video, setting precise stopping points for any of the control rings, setting how much rotation of a ring is necessary to get full effect and which direction it goes, switching between linear and non-linear ring responses, jumping between two focus positions, focusing during time-lapse recording, setting precise astrophotography focus positions, setting a focus limiter, and assigning functions to the lens buttons. Videographers are going to like this little tool better than still photographers, but given you can also do firmware updates via the Tamron Link and the Lens Utility app, it's probably worth having for anyone with multiple Tamron lenses.

▶︎  Voigtlander 40mm f/2. And if the Tamron is too big and heavy for you (sic), the new Septon from Cosina will attract your attention, as it's a half-pound pancake. Sure, it's manual focus, but with the focusing aids we have these days—including Nikon's MF subject detection—that's not the liability it used to be, particularly for wide angle optics.

▶︎  Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S II. The second in Nikon's lens remakes for the Z-mount (and not the last), this lens is much like the 24-70mm f/2.8 remake: smaller, significantly lighter, better optically, faster focusing, and with a plethora of small changes that will make you like it more, such as the Arca-Swiss dovetail support on the removable Tripod Collar and the polarizer friendly lens hood. The only thing not to like is the new, higher, US$3199 price. 

▶︎  Nikon 28-75mm f/2.8?. Here's a real curiosity: B&H is listing two versions of this lens (20107 and 20137) at a US$200 price difference, with the higher priced one saying "New Item - Coming Soon."  People are interpreting that as a new version of the lens, but it isn't. The problem is that Nikon had to introduce a new version number based upon the change in country of manufacture (that tariff thing raising its head, again). The only difference between 20107 and 20137 is which country the lens is made in, and Nikon took the opportunity to reprice the lens based upon "current" tariffs. Of course, no sooner did Nikon do that the US changed the Vietnam tariff rate ;~).

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Wrapping Up

And in other news

▶︎ Cage Fighting. SmallRig seems to be fighting with themselves, as they just announced a new HawkLock cage for the ZR. One key difference is that it leaves the top right plate controls completely uninhibited. Another is the V-mount power option that mounts at the back. 

▶︎ WANDRD Unrolls. Their popular PRVKE pack now comes in two non-rollup models, the Zip and the Pocket. No rollup on top, and the Zip has a zippered back pocket, the Pocket has a larger back pocket for "more stuff." These are generally well-made and well-thought out packs, replete with a lot of nice features. The PRVKE now comes in Roll, Zip, and Pocket versions at 21L and 31L sizes. 

▶︎ Feeling Colorful?. Want to test how well you remember a color? Try dialed.gg. Good luck with that. I had difficulty getting above 98.5% correct. But if you think during image processing you're going to dial in the actual color you saw last week, guess what this little game is telling you? ;~) Sure, you've been capturing reality. But which reality is that?