Personal ramblings on photography
LensRental, after doing it for the EOS R, tore down a Nikon Z7 to show what’s inside:
This is not marketing department weather resistance. This is engineering department weather resistance. Anything that can be sealed has been sealed. I’m impressed, and I will say for future cut-and-paste blurbs: this is as robustly weather sealed a camera as we’ve ever disassembled.
Remember this is a ~US$3,500 camera body, which the build quality impressed.
Lensrentals has a teardown of the Canon EOS R Mirrorless Camera. Nicely engineered camera, albeit nothing out of the ordinary.
It was rather a boring disassembly, really, about what we should expect for Canon doing a Canon 6D Mark II quality mirrorless camera. It’s neatly laid out and nicely engineered inside. One thing that struck me is that it’s not very crowded inside there, or as we like to say “they left a lot of air inside”.
Leica just announced the M10-D a M-mount rangefinder digital camera, that doesn’t have a screen or other controls at the back. Sounds familiar? It seems the timing is in sync with the Pixii I talked about yesterday. Similarly, to control anything but aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation, you have to use the companion smartphone app.
The Leica M10-D is a stripped down version of the M10-P. Is it cheaper? No. Both have an advertised street price of US$8,000.
It is not everyday that there is a new rangefinder camera not made by Leica.
The French startup Pixii announced their camera.
The Pixii is a rangefinder digital camera (yes, an actual rangefinder) with an M mount for the lenses. Of course M39 screw mount lenses can be used with an adapter. There is not much known about the specs, neither the sensor size, nor the price. One of its key features is that it doesn’t have a screen, but rather just have connectivity to a smartphone.
From PetaPixel:
No word yet on pricing or availability. PIXII says those details will be announced in the coming weeks.
To be continued…
As I guessed a year ago, Yashica isn’t back. Petapixel has reports that Yashica’s “Unexpected” Y35 Camera is Worse Than Anyone Expected
While the concept may be novel and fun for people yearning for the look and feel of film cameras while having the convenience of digital, execution appears to have been lacking.
I personally didn’t believe the idea was any good. It seems that it is not even good in its making.
PetaPixel has two articles about hacks on top of the Fujifilm Instax instant camera.
An Instax Camera with the Leica M lens: a prototype using the SQ10 as a base, where the M lens mount replaces the lens, to produce square images. The hybrid model of small sensor and Instax printer make this work, as the coverage of an M lens is insufficient for even Instax Mini. Still the image quality is seriously limited by the quality of the sensor and the “printer”.
Combining a Hasselblad 500 and an Instax Mini 9: the Instax mini act as a film back for the Hasselblad.
We were really happy with our first tests. The full frame of the film is exposed and the images are sharper than we’ve ever seen on this type of film. There are still a few ongoing issues with light leaks and with focusing because of the slight difference in focal plane length.
Interesting to see the creativity in that area.
