LEDE ON
It seems that the camera producers are all claiming that they’ve “secured” memory and some other critical part supplies for the year. I noted that in at least one case they also talked about increased pricing, though. Meanwhile, CaptureOne doesn’t have a parts issue, but they’ve now announced that their pricing will go up 6%. Frankly, in times of inflation I expect everyone pushes their pricing as much as they think they can get away with.
The problem I see coming is that all these cost increases that are happening—don’t forget cards, SSDs, and hard drives—eventually will have people giving up something, with subscriptions being one of the first to go. Particularly subscriptions that don’t add anything to the product over time (I’m looking at you Nikon NX MobileAir).
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News
Sony’s Month
Sony awoke from their product slumber with a bang, announcing the now 67mp A7RVI along with a 100-400mm f/4.5GM OSS lens. If that wasn’t enough, the Xperia 1VIII smartphone also came along for the ride. It didn’t hurt that a lot more FE lenses showed up at the Beijing photography show, including a prototype of the Sigma 85mm f/1.2, or that the first major firmware update for the popular A7V showed up. It was a busy month for Sony users, and the news provoked fandom responses.
Let’s start with the big lens. The new fixed aperture 100-400mm looks like a real winner. Only a third of a stop slower than f/4, this US$4300 lens is a solid focal length for both sports and wildlife, and my sports photography friend Patrick Racey Murphy seems to like it a lot. Yes, it’s in a different price range than the competitor’s 100-400s, but the difference between f/5.6 and f/4.5 is meaningful to a lot of users, both for low light work as well as for background separation. Nikon’s got their work cut out for them, as the aging Nikkor 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S isn’t as sharp at 400mm or as full featured as this new Sony.
Most of the talk this month was A7RVI worship. A new stacked image sensor coupled with attention to getting dual gain results (at least with mechanical shutter) makes for a lot of the excitement. At 67mp (technically 66.8) it’s the most pixels in a full frame sensor, yet the early results show the new sensor more than holds its own while making some clear rolling shutter gains. 30 fps blackout free bursts aren’t exactly what you might expect on a pixel pusher, though the A7RVI is not quite a sports camera due to some lingering roll in all-electronic shutter.
New to the A7RVI are a bigger battery, 32-bit float audio, illuminated buttons, and a dual USB-C arrangement. The grip is also a bit different due to the larger battery. While the EVF is still 9.44m dot, it gets a brighter OLED panel that can provide HDR viewing in a near P3 space.
Overall, it looks like Sony addressed many of the primary complaints about the A7R. They may have even fixed my primary complaint about the preceeding model with that dual gain use while operating under mechanical shutter. The Mark VI seems like a solid update that will win new buyers, though it has risen US$600 in price from the original V to US$4499.
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Canon's Month
“Hey, we’ve got a new camera and new lens, too” said Canon on the same day as Sony fanned heat from their supporters. Surprising to some, Canon’s new offerings didn’t quite get the same rabid response as did Sony’s.
That’s probably because the new US$2500 R6 V is basically the current R6 III in Nikon ZR form. In other words, designed for “advanced creatives.” The R6 V did have one significant fan on day one, though: the fan built into the camera to keep it cool while recording video. That’s fine, but Canon now has to explain why their ZR needs a fan while Nikon’s doesn’t.
Personally, I find it difficult to believe that there is enough market for the Canon R6 V, Nikon ZR, and Sony ZV-E1—let alone the FX’s—to all thrive. Moreover, I don’t think any of the three hit the nail quite on the head; each has liabilities and missing features that the others don’t, an indication that no one really yet knows exactly how their small full frame slinger should be configured.
Along with the camera, Canon launched a new 20-50mm f/4L IS USM PZ lens (US$1400).
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Nikon's Month
Nikon didn’t launch any new products while I was out of town, but there were two announcements from them of note.
The first was Nikon’s full fiscal year results, which produced quite a bit of the usual “Nikon is dying” response from the amateur inexperts. While most of the Nikon businesses either hit or were close to their forecast revenue, the issue that triggered the naysaying was the higher-than-expected loss. Nikon Imaging actually sold more cameras and lenses than originally expected, but a lot of the volume was lower priced Z50II and Z5II models, plus the write-off associated with the “sale" of Mark Roberts (now in bankruptcy) didn’t help the bottom line for the group. Considering Nikon didn’t launch a new camera in the last half of their fiscal year, the results seem fairly strong to me.
The Nikon weaknesses are three: (1) Nikon Precision seems to have no way to take advantage of the semiconductor boom and keeps missing targets due to write-downs and delays; (2) the new Components and Manufacturing businesses aren’t showing the expected sales and profit growth that was promised; and (3) free cash flow has been negative for four straight years now, and in a time where interest rates are no longer zero in Japan that has longer term implications if the problem is not fixed. Still, I’d simply characterize Nikon’s results as weak this year, and not close to fatal. We’ve seen this play before, and the protagonist survives just fine.
Nikon’s other announcement was developmental, as in “we’re working on a 120-300mm f/2.8 TC VR S lens.” Uh, thanks Nikon, but we already knew that. We did get a few photos of the new lens, though, and they reveal that Nikon learned nothing from my criticism of the placement of the controls on the 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S. The Fn buttons are nowhere near where my hand will be, among other things. Meanwhile, for some reason everyone is betting this new top line lens will sell for US$8000. I’d say that’s tremendously optimistic. It’s more likely a US$10,000 lens, particularly given the inflationary market we’re currently in (sensing a theme, yet?).
Do I want one? Not exactly. At 120-300mm plus 420mm via TC and effective 610mm via DX crop on the 45mp cameras, it just barely qualifies for my wildlife use, yet it looks to be almost as big as the 400mm f/2.8 I currently use. On the other hand, if I do more sports in 2027 than I did in 2026, maybe I’d be more interested.
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Fujifilm's Month
If Nikon was relatively quiet, Fujifilm was mostly silent. While management did talk about possible lenses to the press—I think Fujifilm is starting to feel the Chinese lens threat—nothing much else got said. The fiscal year results were good (an 18% increase in revenue from the digital side, though that pales against the 26.2% increase on the InStax side).
It strikes me that Fujifilm is at a critical juncture now. They’ve built a small user base that seems loyal. They’ve made very good products at the high compact (X100VI and GFX100RF), APS-C (X-E5 and X-T50 added to the bigger lineup), and medium format (GFX100II). As a Fujiflm user would I be looking to upgrade anything? And as someone outside the brand, can they make something that would get me in?
I see Fujifilm’s main problem as still lagging in autofocus. But fixing that isn’t enough, I think. Fujifilm needs to get X-Pro and X-H users to upgrade now, and that’s going to be tougher given the competition’s advancements.
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Panasonic's Month
Panasonic took a small idea and made it larger. Literally. The modest-sized LX100 is now replaced by a larger-sized L10. The good news is all the S1II-sourced goodies (autofocus, video, etc.). The bad news is that I think Panasonic might not have gotten the UX quite right (I’ll hold final judgment on that until I can test one; I still have to post my Ricoh GRIV review first). It certainly looks as if I’d be using the customization features on the camera to get it to operate the way I want it to.
My first impression is that it presents as a very simple camera externally, only to send the user into customizations to get it operationally optimized. The fact that subject detection doesn’t fall back to general autofocus when no subject is detected isn’t user friendly and also seems wrong for a “simple” camera. Couple that with the body size increase on a m4/3 sensor camera that was properly sized before, and I’m not sure what to make of things from press releases and quick glances. At least we have an on/off lever instead of a button. At US$1500, the L10 is in a rich crowd, though each of the competitors has a completely different take.
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Wrapping Up
And in other news
The Chinese lens parade continued throughout the month.
▶︎ 7Artisan’s 135mm f/1.8. The budget Plena is here, with FE and L mounts coming. I’d be surprised if it seriously matched a Plena, though.
▶︎ Thypoch’s 24-50mm f/2.8. An autofocus zoom from an unlikely source takes on the Sony.
▶︎ BrightinStar had a big month. An autofocus 12mm f/2.8 for the FE mount, plus some additional manual focus lenses.
▶︎ Laowa produced a zoom fisheye. The 4.5-10mm f/2.8 is small, but that’s partly because it only covers the APS-C sensor.