The 70-200mm focal length has been the standard tele-zoom choice for many years, offering near normal to a good tele range that suits many practical purposes. Yet, quite a few stock-in-trade 70-200mm lenses had been slow or lost significant aperture as soon as you left the shortest zoom setting, making them a real challenge for handheld, low-light, or even max focal length shooting. Certainly, improvements in sensors and processors in terms of the high ISO/image quality ratio have helped. If you’re too slow on shutter speed with a variable aperture zoom you can always jack up the sensitivity. But that’s not always a great choice and it seems to force you to compromise image quality just to make up for the lens losing “speed” just when you need it most.

Rick Sammon’s first comment when I asked about this picture was, “The best time to take a night picture is not at night.” Twilight is a better choice, and that’s when this image was made in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was the first stop for Rick and his wife, Susan, on their six-day tour last April of selected attractions along Route 66.

Fotodiox has announced the availability of its next generation LED light panels; the Fotodiox LED-312D, LED-312DS, and LED-1024AL. The new LED lights are compact and powerful, while remaining lightweight – perfect for both studio and location shooting. Fotodiox's LED panels generate little heat, use little power, and now the reduced bulk of these newest lights maximize portability and mounting possibilities to capture the perfect shot.

The Revival Auction Company will offer 66 lots of Leica, Nikon, and other collectibles on December 28, 2013. The Urban Spirograph will be the featured item. This rare motion projector will be offered with 88 original disks, and several duplicates. Very few remaining examples exist today.

The conventional camera strap does the job, but with some gear can put considerable strain on the neck, tempting you to hang your camera from the shoulder, where it may slip off or invite thieves. Like a good backpack, today’s ergonomically designed camera-carrying systems largely relieve that stress and throw in some extras in the bargain. New age straps feature a more comfortable neck/shoulder pad than found on conventional neck straps, so you’ll still be comfortable hours later, and often with a quick-release mechanism to rapidly detach the camera when the need arises. Many are of a sling design aimed at the “quick shooters” among you, and some are so innovative as to almost defy description. A few even let you comfortably and safely carry two cameras at the same time.

The Hoya Graduated ND10 is darker at the top, giving that area a 3-stop light reduction and then fading evenly to a 1 stop light reductionat the bottom. This creates more balanced exposure between the lighter and darker areas of a scene, especially useful for photos that include the sky.The aluminum filter frame rotates so the darkest area can be positioned as needed.

Nikon Inc. announced the latest addition to its digital SLR lineup, the Nikon D5300. Offering the benefits of SLR performance with the versatility of wireless connectivity, the D5300 allows users to easily capture and share images and videos. Though compact and lightweight, the Nikon D5300 packs an enhanced 24.2-megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor, EXPEED 4 image processing and the convenience of built-in Wi-Fi*(1). Users now have the power to take both frame-worthy and share-worthy photos and HD videos with one device no matter where they are.

Panasonic is proud to announce the new fashionable compact line GM series to its LUMIX Digital Single Lens Mirrorless (DSLM) cameras. The new DMC-GM1 incorporates a large Digital Live MOS Sensor based on the Micro Four Thirds system standard. The LUMIX GM1’s 16 megapixel sensor delivers a modern hybrid approach to image capture with both high quality HD movies and dynamic photos, and all with the press of a button. The LUMIX GM1’s exterior offers a refined, classic style with aluminum dials and brushed metal.

The subscription department of the company that owns Shutterbug has alerted me that an unauthorized telemarketer has illegally obtained a smallportion of our subscriber file and has been attempting to contact some subscribers for unsolicited renewals and payment of invoices.

Rokinon recently introduced their 16mm T2.2 Cine lens, a wide-angle lens for D-SLR and mirrorless cameras in both APS-C and Micro Four Thirds formats. With its fast maximum aperture, the lens allows for an impressive range of depth of field and with its smooth operating manual focus, it offers high sharpness and clarity. It features de-clicked apertures and follow focus compatibility that is ideal for video. It uses 13 optical elements in 11 groups with two aspherical lenses. Rokinon provides a wide range of mounts for Canon, Canon M, Fujifilm X, Nikon, Pentax, Samsung NX, Sony, Sony E, and Micro Four Thirds cameras.