DSLR News

Photographers have a chance to make some history if they join Samsung, Nick Cannon and Julianne Hough for the Ditch Your DSLR event next week to potentially break a Guinness World Record.

During a Canon event today before the start of the photokina show in Cologne, Germany tomorrow, we got some hands-on time with the long awaited Canon EOS 7D Mark II. Even though our time with the 7D II was brief — we were pretty much loaned the camera and allowed to shoot for a few minutes — we got a pretty good sense of how this APS-C-based digital SLR performs. In short, it’s feels like a mini machine gun.

Nikon filled out its full-frame digital SLR line this morning in announcing the new D750, which uses a 24.3-megapixel FX-format sensor. Nikon also announced two new photo accessories this morning: the AF-S Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G ED lens and the SB-500 Speedlight flash. All three products will go on sale on September 25th.

Ricoh Imaging Americas Corp. just announced the launch of the new PENTAX K-S1 D-SLR camera. This model offers users a newly designed 20.12 megapixel CMOS image sensor (with a sensitivity of ISO 51200), an in-body shake reduction (SR) mechanism, an AA (Anti-Aliasing) filter simulator for moiré reduction, a 100 percent field of view glass pentaprism viewfinder (with a magnification of approximately 0.95) and 5.4 fps shooting at a fast 1/6000 shutter speed. 

Pentax has unveiled a new limited edition "Prestige" version of its K-3 digital SLR with a distinctive gunmetal chassis. According to Pentax, the K-3 is a special edition camera created to commemorate “the many awards bestowed upon the K-3” by photography publications and websites.

Every year member magazines from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) gather to consider and vote on the top products of the year in 40 categories, ranging from cameras to tripods to software and printers. This year’s selections represent technological sophistication along with features and functionality that make them leaders in their respective categories.

The Nikon D4 is a large sized, 16MP, lightning fast D-SLR, with high-definition video capability good enough to satisfy an independent film producer. At first, my thought was to see how the D4 worked when used for the more mundane subjects I shoot than what it was designed for, and to see how it compared to the APS-C sized cameras I prefer. But, by the time my experience with the camera ended, I had shot a tutorial video with it (www.setshoptutorials.com and then click on “Anatomy of a Still Life”), found its fast framing rate more helpful than I expected, and decided I especially liked Nikon’s D4, an FX camera, when shot in the DX (APS-C) mode. Although the primary difference between the D4 and the D3 is the D4’s increased resolution and its advanced video capability, I found the whole package that represents the D4’s feature set just as important, so let’s look at those.