What Photo Gear

And the more interesting one out of Nikon’s 3 new camera’s today, is the Nikon P80 ultra-zoom digital camera. And this camera’s claim to fame, is going to be its 18x zoom lens featuring a whopping 27mm-486mm coverage (in 35mm terms.) So that’s from decent wide-angle to a paparazzi worthy telephoto range.

The camera looks suspiciously like a Canon S5 IS to me though, and I wish Nikon would’ve been a bit more daring with this one. Although this is a big re-design for Nikon’s P series (P stands for ‘Performance’) of digital cameras as previous P series models weren’t ultra-zooms - there are quite a few ultra-zooms out in the market right now. We’ve got the aforementioned Canon S5 IS, the Fuji S8100fd, the Olympus SP-560 UZ, the Sony H50 and the Panasonic FZ-18.

I wish Nikon would’ve thrown in an articulating LCD, or had taken the lens wider. (I’m still waiting for an update to the Nikon 8400 from 2004!) But all in all, specs wise, the Nikon P80 looks all set to rumble with all the other ultra-zooms. But will it be a case of too little too late for Nikon in this market segment?

The Nikon P80:

• 10.1 Megapixels
• 18x zoom lens (27-486mm equivalence) (f/2.8 - f/4.5)
• Vibration Reduction (And with a lens like that, VR is going to help a lot) (Nikon’s Press Literature only says that the P80 comes equipped with Optical Vibration Reduction, and interestingly, DPreview’s news article claims it comes with CCD-Shift VR, not lens based)
• Full Manual Controls
• ISO 64-1600 (ISO 3200 and 6400 only at 3MP and smaller)
• Available this April with an MSRP of $399.95

Hit the Read More Link to see the full Press Release.

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Nikon today announced a couple of new digital camera’s. First to be introduced are a pair of almost identical (save for one feature) compacts. The S52 and S52c (the S means they’re part of Nikon’s “Style” series of camera’s.)

And as I said, they’re almost the exact same camera’s, with the difference being that the S52C will be Wi-Fi enabled and will have an MSRP of $30 more than the plain S52. But otherwise, everything should be pretty much the same. They both feature a 3x zoom lens, with a pretty boring 38mm - 114mm (35mm equivalent) zoom range, the lens has a folding lens design, so you won’t see the lens extending away from the body even when zooming in and out. The good news is the lens will come equipped with Nikon’s Vibration Reduction (VR) to help minimize camera shake, and to help you get sharper pictures. (And this one is a true lens based vibration reduction feature, it’s not just the ISO boost you see in some camera’s)

The Nikon S52 and S52c:

• 9 Megapixels
• 3 inch LCD
• Compact body, less than an inch thick (3.7×2.3×0.8)
• 3x Optical Zoom (38-114mm equivalence)
• Vibration Reduction
• Auto ISO (from ISO 200-800) (Up to ISO 2000 in High Sensitivity Mode) (But ISO is selectable up to ISO 3200)

Full Nikon Press Release after the jump.

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The Canon 24-105mm L Lens is an almost 4 year old lens, so why feature a review now? Well, Camera Labs has chosen an interesting way to test the lens in its recent review - despite the 24-105 f/4 Lens pretty much being a perfect companion to the Canon full-frame camera’s such as the 5D, this time they’ve chosen to review it with 2 cropped sensor bodies - the Canon 400D / XTi and the Canon 40D DSLRs. (And they’ve even used two different copies of the lens.)

Being a 24-105mm lens, this lens would unfortunately end up being a 38-170mm lens on Canon’s 400D and 40D (due to the 1.6x crop factor.) So while it’s a versatile general walk-around lens for the Canon 5D it won’t be as appealing if mounted on a cropped sensor body.

But if you prefer the long end of your zooms, then the 24-105mm might just be a nice option. And while CameraLabs says not to expect a big jump in quality when upgrading from your stock lens and using this on your 40D or XSi or XTi, you will definitely get the benefit of better build quality, and being sure that your lens will be compatible with your camera when you do upgrade to a full-frame body.

If you head over to the Verdict section of their review, you’ll also see a very nice comparison to some of the other lenses that you are probably considering as well, like the Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 and EF-S 17-85 IS (for cropped sensor DSLRs only) and even the Canon EF 17-40mm lens.

From: Camera Labs via What Photo Gear

One of the more interesting camera’s announced in this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, Casio’s top of the line digital camera, and the first model in their Exilim PRO series of camera’s is now slowly starting to make itself into the shelves of retailers around the world, with appearances in Japan and Sweden so far.

Aside from its 6 megapixel sensor and 12x optical zoom (36mm-432mm) the EX-F1’s claim to fame is its ability to shoot at an astounding 60 frames per second. (60 frames at once, or 5 frames in 12 seconds) as well as be able to shoot full HD videos at 1920×1080 at 60 fps. And Casio has also thrown in an amazing ultra-high speed video capture of 1200 frames per second! (Unfortunately that’s only at a tiny resolution of 336×96 - tiny for sure, but certainly very usable for bloggers and the like)

A video preview, links to sample videos and images after the jump!

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As you may have noticed, we haven’t posted anything in almost 4 days now - and well, unfortunately we’re running into a few problems with our blog, after a little upgrade over the weekend didn’t go quite as planned.

But the good news is, we are looking to be up and running again within the next 24 hours! So stay tuned! In the meantime, get your camera out of that bag and start shooting! Spring is here! Or at least I hope spring has arrived in your part of the world, it’s still snowing here..

It’s been awhile since the first pair of of Sigma DP1 hands-ons - but now, we’ve got two full length and quality reviews of what is turning out to be quite an outstanding camera.

The first review comes courtesy of Photoreview.com.au - and it’s all generally positive for the DP1, but there was also one tidbit that I found interesting:

The stand-out feature of the DP-1 is its ability to record a much wider dynamic range that any digicam we’ve reviewed - and also than many DSLRs. Although both JPEG and X3F.RAW files looked rather flat when viewed on both the camera’s LCD and our computer screen, it was possible to obtain very good results from the test camera - but only when we worked with raw files.

And some excerpts from their conclusion:

Sigma’s DP-1 is a revolutionary camera - and quite different from any other digital camera in the current marketplace. This, in part, accounts for its relatively high price tag and restricted feature set (prime lens, pared-down set of controls, limited video capabilities). It is not a camera for point-and-shoot photographers. Nor will it suit photographers who only shoot JPEGs and prefer not to become involved in subsequent editing.

Click here to read the rest of their review.

And next up..

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