Nikon Announces DX 24mm Lens

Nikon has just announced the release of a new Z mount 24mm DX lens, and I for one am a bit confused by the news.  It was only in January that the company announced a Z mount 26mm "pancake" lens.  Although the latter was billed as a full frame lens, there was no reason it could not be used equally well on DX cameras, where it would have the equivalent focal length of 39mm, as attested by B&H Photo's webpage where the lens compatibility list included my own Zfc.  It seems then Nikon is willing to risk some duplication in its DX product line.

Compatibility only goes one way, however.  The new 24mm lens is only compatible with DX cameras, on which it will have the equivalent of a 36mm focal length, which means full frame Nikon photographers will have no choice but to stick with the 26mm.  

Aside from the issue of focal length, the 24mm is physically very small, measuring only 2.8" x 1.6," and has a maximum aperture of f1.7.  Interestingly, Nikon claims in its product announcement that the lens is "Capable of creating extraordinary shallow depth of field and beautiful background blur," though to achieve this I would assume the lens must be held extremely close to the subject since wide-angle lens by their very design have inherently sharp depth of field no matter what the aperture setting. 

The new lens is currently available for preorder at B&H for $279.95 and is expected to begin shipping on June 15th.  As for myself, I don't expect to purchase either the 24mm or the 26mm as the Nikon 16-50mm kit lens that came with my Zfc is more than sufficient for my purposes.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 f4 IS Pro Lens

 

My travel camera of choice has always been my Panasonic Lumix G9, a Micro Four-Thirds mirrorless model that's consistently shown itself to be reliable and given me great photos.  Of course, since the pandemic hit and shut down almost all the locations I enjoy visiting I haven't had much chance to use the camera for any form of travel photography whatsoever.  Fortunately, the crisis now seems to be largely past and I've celebrated by booking a trip to Japan in the autumn.

Once I'd finalized my travel plans I began reviewing my gear.  The lens I had always used when traveling with the G9, following the one-camera-one-lens mantra, was the Panasonic 14-140 kit lens that had come packaged with my GH-2 more than twelve years ago.  With the zoom focal range it gave me I didn't really need more than that one lens.  The only drawback was the lens's image quality.  To be fair, for a kit lens the 14-140 delivered much better quality than one would have expected of it.  In other words, the images, if not stunning, were always thoroughly acceptable.  When planning my latest trip, however, I decided it was time for an upgrade.  There's so much uncertainty in the world right now that one has to make the most of one's travel opportunities even if only because one can never be certain when and if one will next have a chance to revisit a given location.

The lens I chose as a replacement for the Panasonic was the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 f4 IS Pro, an optic that's gotten solid reviews wherever I've looked.  Some of those, such as that published in DPreview, specifically touted the lens's advantages for travel.  PCmag rated it at 4.0, designated it an Editor's Choice, and for the Bottom Line stated that the lens "delivers top-notch optical performance at all but its widest angle, making it one of the best long zoom lenses we've tested."  That was good enough for me.  After all, there aren't very many pro MFT lenses with that focal range available in the first place.

I actually went into the B&H store on 34th Street the week before last to get a first-hand look when the lens was still selling at its full price of $1,399.99, and I made up my mind then to come back later this summer to purchase it.  Then on Friday I happened to glance at B&H's website and saw the lens was currently on sale for $1,199.99, a savings of $200.  I had no intention of missing out on such a good deal and as soon as the store reopened on Sunday I ordered the lens by phone and then rode the subway down after lunch and picked it up.

I've only just begun shooting with the lens, but my initial impression is very positive.  As soon as I have sufficient photos to show, I'll post them here.

New Announcements from On1

Every autumn On1 releases a new version of its flagship PhotoRAW app and the plug-ins that are incorporated into it (and that are also sold separately as stand-alones), and early every summer it releases a substantive update to them.  PhotoRAW version 2023 follows the same pattern, and during the past several weeks On1 has been providing "sneak peeks" of what is to come.

Yesterday, for instance, I received an email announcing the release of On1 Resize AI 2023.5 whose most notable improvements are "the new revolutionary Face Recovery technology and the addition of the NoNoise AI technology for reducing artifacts when upscaling images."  Face recovery in particular has become a popular feature in resizing apps since Topaz Labs last year introduced it in an update to Gigapixel, and it's a gift to those photographers specializing in portraits.  

More important to me at least was the announcement in a Thursday email from On1 of improvements to PhotoRAW's Curves filter.  Ever since I first began with working with Adobe Photoshop in the early 1990's when it was still in version 3.0 I have always contended that the app's Curves tool was its most important feature for the control it gave the user over contrast and tonal values as well as individual color channels.  In a brief video that accompanied the recent email On1 outlined what promises to be a substantive upgrade to its own version of the tool.  While the histogram that now appears beneath the grid will be familiar to Photoshop users, other improvements are more unexpected.  For example, the filter interface now includes an eyedropper tool.  When using it, one has only to click anywhere in a given photograph to create a control point on the curve.  A cursor then appears in the photograph where the click was made which one can then move up or down to control the photo's relative brightness.  One can also now remove control points by right clicking on them, or one can alternatively enter input/output values manually.  These improvements can also be used on individual color channels in the same fashion.

At such time as I receive my free update to PhotoRAW I will begin working with the new features and post my findings here.

Nikon Announces the Z8

Nikon has just announced its newest mirrorless camera, the Z8, and it's already caused quite a stir among photographers even if only because it's almost exactly the same model as the bestselling Z9, pretty much everyone's 2022 camera of the year, albeit in a more compact body and at a more affordable price.

Like the Z9, the Z8 offers 8K/60p video (as well as 4K/120p); and as for stills, the Z8 not only offers the traditional 14-bit RAW and 8-bit JPG but is also capable of 14-bit High Efficiency RAW and 10-bit HEIF that can be shot at 20 fps (RAW and JPG) or 30 fps (fine JPG) on an all-electronic shutter with no moving parts.  All this with what Nikon boasts is its "most advanced autofocus system."

As far as I have been able to determine, the only difference between the Z8 and the Z9, other than the former's more compact body which come photographers such as myself might actually view as an advantage, is that the Z8's weather sealing, while excellent, is not quite up to the standard of the Z9.  Certainly these are small tradeoffs for a more than 27% price reduction.

Nikon expects to begin shipping the Z8 on May 25, and the camera is already available for preorder at B&H.  Even so, judging from the enthusiastic reception given the Z9, it might be sometime before supply catches up with demand.

Stable AI Announces New Apps

 

Stability AI, the company that brought out the enormously popular AI image generator Stable Diffusion, announced in an email I received today three new apps available for public use - Deep Floyd IF, Stable LM, and Stable Vicuna.  Of the three it was only the first, another text-to-image generator, that was of particular interest to me.

When I experimented with using Deep Floyd I found the results very similar to those I've obtained using Stable Diffusion, including the advanced options settings.  The biggest improvement I can see is the ability to modestly upscale images, though this was of course always possible using a third-party app such as Topaz Labs' Gigapixel.  At any rate, I'll keep working with Deep Floyd and see what comes of it.  Right now, at least, there fortunately seems to be almost no queue to delay me when entering prompts.