Using a lens wide open at its largest aperture (or the smaller number, like f/1.8 or f/2) usually isn’t ideal if you want maximum sharpness. You need to stop down a bit first (something like f/5.6 or f/8).

So it’s tempting to think that smaller is always better. Keep going to f/22, get even sharper results. Right?

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple.

Past a certain point — roughly f/11 on a full-frame camera, f/8 on APS-C, although it varies by the lens — you’re no longer fighting optical aberrations. You’re fighting physics.

Diffraction causes light to bend as it squeezes past the aperture blades, spreading what should be a sharp point into a soft blur. The smaller the aperture (ie, the higher the number), the worse it gets.

That said, shooting wide open isn’t wrong. Chasing absolute sharpness can become counterproductive. And most of the time, I like to shoot wide open or close to it. When I need sharpness across the whole frame, I shift to something like f/8 or f/11. I rarely go smaller than that without a specific reason, like if I’m shooting cherry blossoms close-up while also trying to get the Jefferson Memorial in reasonable focus; in that case, I might shoot at something like f/22 or f/32.

But shooting at f/22 or f/32 can come with annoying downsides.

One is the sharpness issue. But there’s another good reason not to shoot at the smallest aperture your lens can do: dust spots.

At wide apertures, sensor dust is essentially invisible — the light cone is wide enough that any shadow it casts is soft and diffuse. Stop down to f/22 and every speck becomes a sharp, well-defined blob in your image. It’s the most reliable way to discover just how dirty your sensor actually is (which isn’t a joke: it’s actually how I check a sensor after cleaning it).

Sure, you can remove dust spots later when editing, but that’s tedious, and even the best automated tools for it still only do a decent but by no means perfect job.

Aperture rules of thumb:

• For maximum sharpness: Around f/5.6 to f/11 (on most lenses).

• For a lovely blurry background: Wide open, the largest aperture your lens offers (eg. f/1.4 or f/2.8). But it might not be tack sharp and will probably have some lens vignetting around the edges.

• For maximum depth of field: The smallest aperture your lens has (eg, f/22 or f/16). But expect some sharpness issues and for every dust spot to show.

Wide Angle

• New premium fixed-lens compact lens from Panasonic. Panasonic has announced its latest entry in the premium fixed-lens compact cameras, the Micro Four Thirds Lumix L10. And yes, it does look quite a lot like a simplified Fujifilm X-series. It seems quite interesting. Something that sets it apart from some of its competitors is its fast Leica-designed 24-75mm (equivalent) zoom lens. Definitely worth a look when it comes out (expected to start shipping mid-June). I can see it being very popular across a wide audience.

• New premium Nikon zoom. Nikon has announced the development of a new Nikon Z version of the 120-300mm f/2.8 TC VR S zoom. It also has a built-in teleconverter, adding to its complexity. All sounds wonderful, but the price is likely to be a sticking point. No price confirmed yet, but it’s likely to be north of $10,000.

• GoPro seems to be bleeding out. Revenue has plunged in recent years, GoPro owners aren’t replacing their cameras year after year, and DJI and Insta360 have proved to be seriously good action cameras. GoPro is trying new things: the new cinema lines and going for the technical angle with defense and aerospace contracts. But they’re also making the company available for sale. I’d love for someone with a proven track record like Sony to scoop them up.

• It’s getting harder to back up the internet. We’re used to storage prices constantly dropping. But the demand from AI infrastructure is reversing that. A flow-on effect is skyrocketing prices and scarcity are making it much more expensive and difficult for digital archivists to back up data.

• Thousands of new Dorothea Lange photos have been digitized and made available online. UC Santa Cruz has published thousands more Dorothea Lange photos online. You’ve probably seen some of the highlights, but the massive archive allows for a far more nuanced look at her work.

• It’s starting. A respected photography gallery has displayed and made for sale an AI-generated color version of a famous Ansel Adams photograph known as Moonrise. The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust has understandably objected to this unsanctioned reproduction and use.

• Copyright registration fees. I’ve written before about some of the welcome changes being considered for submissions to the US Copyright Office. Less welcome: fee increases. I suppose it’s probably inevitable, and the Copyright Office has never been adequately resourced. But the ASMP is pushing back on proposed 55% increases.

What I’ve Been Working On

Lots of housekeeping in my rather large image archive lately. But the fun part is that that also means rediscovering some old shots. I’ve posted a handful of them here.

Fun to Know: There Are 12 Hasselblad Cameras Currently Sitting on the Moon

When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, they used heavily modified Hasselblad 500EL cameras. But when it was time to come home, NASA was strictly limited by weight. To make room for the 55 pounds of moon rocks they were bringing back, the astronauts detached the film magazines and jettisoned the camera bodies onto the lunar surface.

It happens to the best of us at some point. You go to review a shoot, and the files just aren’t there. It happened to me just last week when I accidentally deleted a handful of photos I meant to keep.

If you just had that stomach-drop moment, the good news is that your photos are probably still there — even if you formatted the card. So there’s a good chance you can recover them.

Here’s what to do.

1. Stop using the card. As in, now. This is the single most important step, and while it might sound obvious, it really matters. When you delete a file, the camera just marks that space as “empty.” But if you keep using the card, the data will get overwritten, which makes it immeasurably harder — often impossible — to recover. If you’re using an SD card, sliding the physical lock switch on the side is a very useful precaution.

2. Scan it before you buy anything. All the good data recovery apps let you scan the card for free. You only pay for a license once you actually see the thumbnail and confirm your photo is recoverable. So don’t buy a license until you know you can recover what you need.

I’ve tried pretty much all of the best data recovery apps over the years, and these are the ones I’d recommend:

• Stellar Photo Recovery (My Go-To): This is the one I usually reach for first. It’s a solid all-around performer, handles RAW files well, and just gets the job done without unnecessary fuss. And, importantly, it lets you see the thumbnails and select specific images to recover.

• EaseUS (Straightforward): If you want a dead-simple, clear interface, this is it. The price is reasonable, though their website is a bit cluttered with popups. It also has one of the best free thresholds.

• DiskDrill (Heavy Duty): This is the most powerful app on the list. It works incredibly well and does a lot more than recovering data from memory cards. I don’t love its habit of installing some always-on background monitoring services on your computer to keep your drives healthy, but the data recovery is very effective.

• PhotoRec (The Free Alternative): I’ve used this for years, and it’s saved me more than a few times. But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s completely free, rock-solid reliable, and you can’t beat the price, but there are a couple of catches. For one, it’s a command-line app. For another, there are no thumbnail previews, so it’s an all-or-nothing process.

So next time your photos look like they’re lost, there’s still a good chance that you can recover them pretty quickly and easily.

What I’ve Been Working On

• I’ve posted several pieces on shooting with the Fujifilm GFX100RF medium-format camera. More to come this week, including my full hands-on review.

• I’ve been testing out the Viltrox Vintage V2 flash on a Fujifilm X100VI. It’s a tiny, retro-styled external flash. While it doesn’t push out high-power light, even a little pop can still come in very handy in creative ways.

• Yesterday, I explored the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art with a fisheye lens as part of my ongoing efforts to find the best fisheye options for Nikon Z cameras.

Wide Angle

• New ultra-high-res view of the sun. The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission has transmitted its widest high-resolution view of the Sun to date, a mosaic of 200 individual images captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI).

• Bittersweet. Former Washington Post Photographer Jahi Chikwendiu has won a Pulitzer for Feature Photography for his photographs taken for two stories about a young couple, Tanner and Shay Martin, who struggled with Tanner’s terminal colon cancer while Shay carried their daughter. Emphasis on “former” — in a brutal cut, the Post fired all of their staff photographers recently.

• World Press Photo selected its Photo of the Year. It’s Separated by ICE by Miami Herald photographer Carol Guzy.

• Getting back into shooting film? The Darkroom has tested the best 200 ISO color negative film stocks and ranked them. The top two aren’t surprises, but some others were new to me.

• New Artemis II photos released. NASA has released a massive archive of images from the recent Artemis II mission around the Moon. They haven’t been culled, so there’s a lot of duplication and similars; here are some of the best ones. The Atlantic has an even better selection (but it’s paywalled).

• Apple is piling on new AI-powered photo features, with new Extend, Enhance, and Reframe. The Extend is probably the most notable, and it sounds a lot like the recent efforts to extend the frame of the Wizard of Oz screening at The Sphere in Las Vegas by fabricating new imagery to extend the frame beyond what was actually filmed. Probably not something I’d use, but I can appreciate the appeal.

Fun to Know: The first digital camera was the size of a toaster

In 1975, a 24-year-old Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson invented the world’s first self-contained digital camera. It weighed 8 pounds, shot at 0.01 megapixels (that is, 100 pixels by 100 pixels), and took 23 seconds to record a single black-and-white image onto a standard Philips audiocassette tape. Kodak management buried the tech because they feared it would cannibalize film sales. You can see the contraption here.

If you’ve ever looked at a new camera’s spec sheet, you’ve probably noticed the marketing department boasting about massive, six-digit ISO capabilities. Numbers like ISO 204,800 or even ISO 3,280,000.

But there’s usually a catch hidden in the fine print: the distinction between “Native” ISO and “Extended” ISO.

What’s the actual difference? It basically comes down to hardware versus software.

• The native range is what the sensor is physically engineered for. That’s where you get the best dynamic range, the cleanest files, and the most accurate color. You generally want to stick to this range for most shooting.

• The extended range pushes beyond the hardware limits using digital amplification — essentially, software pretending to be hardware. Those “Lo” and “Hi” settings at the extreme ends of your dial — are essentially an in-camera software trick. When you shoot at an extended low setting like ISO 50, the camera is actually just taking a photo at its base native ISO (usually ISO 100) and digitally darkening it by a stop before saving the file. It is doing the exact same thing as dragging the exposure slider to the left in Lightroom.

The problem is that because it’s a digital pull, you are instantly sacrificing dynamic range, making it much easier to permanently clip your highlights.

A bit like a stereo. You can turn up the volume to a certain point and it still sounds clean. Push it past what the speakers can physically handle, and everything starts distorting. You’ve gotten louder, but it comes with a real cost to sound quality.

In practical terms, stepping into extended ISO means noticeably more noise and grain, crushed shadows and blown highlights, and colors that start looking washed out. The drop-off isn’t always gradual — image quality can fall off a cliff the moment you cross that line.

So why use it at all? Sometimes it’s the only option. A great example is this Blue Planet II footage of mobular rays feeding at night — shot entirely on faint bioluminescence, grainy as anything, technically poor. But it captured behavior happening in total darkness that simply wasn’t possible to photograph any other way. That’s what extended ISO is built for — for when it’s a last resort but you just need to get the shot.

Think of it as a reserve fuel tank. Not for everyday use — but genuinely useful to have when the lights go out.

Updates

Here’s what I’ve been working on this week:

• I posted my hands-on review of Viltrox’s wide-angle conversion lens for the Fujifilm X100VI. It takes the camera’s fixed 35mm perspective and converts it to a 28mm. Both are traditional street photography perspectives, but I prefer the slightly wider view. And the Viltrox conversion lens does a great job: sharp, clear, and less than half the price of the Fujifilm-branded equivalent.

• If you’re shooting with Godox flashes, you’ll have found that while they’re great flashes, they can be a bit rough around the edges in terms of user experience. If you’ve ever been stumped why your remote trigger won’t fire your off-camera flash, here’s the most likely culprit.

• I’m working on a series of posts on the Fujifilm GFX100RF medium-format fixed lens camera. They should go live in the coming week.

Wide-Angle

• Old-school black-and-white prints. If you’re shooting black and white, you’ve probably found that getting them printed at most labs results in just OK quality. There might be a slight blue color cast, and the rich depth just isn’t there. That’s because most print labs print black and white photos on color paper, and the results usually aren’t great. But there’s a handful of labs that still print traditional silver halide prints on real Ilford black-and-white paper. I’ve gotten great results from The Darkroom and Fromex. If you’re in the UK, you can print directly through the official Ilford lab (now known as Harman Lab; in the US, their orders are sent to The Darkroom for printing). I’ve also been very impressed by the end results of black and white from Whitewall, even though they’re not using traditional silver halide paper.

• New Nik Collection 9. DxO’s latest update brings some massive workflow improvements, most notably AI-powered Depth Masks and one-click subject masking to speed up local adjustments. They’ve also overhauled the color grading tool into a single unified wheel and introduced 18 blending modes, alongside new analog-style effects like halation and chromatic shift.

• Great deals on OM System cameras. B&H has some great deals on the OM System cameras. The original Olympus OM-1 (as in, the film version) was my first SLR, and I still have fond memories of shooting with it. When I shot with the digital Olympus OM-1 (it was the last camera with the Olympus branding before they switched completely to OM System), I was very impressed indeed. The lineup has been fleshed out with several other cameras. They’re Micro Four Thirds, rugged, eminently packable, and have high image quality. It’s a combination that makes them favorites for travel photographers and macro shooters. Definitely worth checking out if you’re after a high-quality, high-versatility option that’s smaller and more manageable.

Photographers at Work

• Capturing India. Renowned Indian photojournalist Raghu Rai has died. The NY Times has a smattering of his stunning photos.

Why you don’t actually need the fastest memory card for your camera (probably)

This might sound a bit odd coming from someone who has invested a lot of time and money in speed testing memory cards, but the reality is that your camera probably doesn’t need the fastest memory card you can buy.

Memory cards are getting more and more expensive all the time. Lately, demand from the AI industry has been pushing the price of flash memory up, which is in turn driving memory card prices higher.

But you’re going to need memory cards for your camera — you’re not going to be taking many photos or shooting much video without one. This is a place where smart buying can save you real money. The key is to not overbuy.

A fast memory card sounds like a good thing. And it is. But you don’t necessarily need the absolute fastest memory card on the market.

You just need a card that’s fast enough for your specific camera. Sure, there are cameras where you do need that blazing fast speed for high-bitrate 4K or 8K video or long RAW bursts. But most cameras just don’t.

If you buy a card that outpaces your camera’s internal tech, it will still work — backward compatibility is built in with most memory card standards. But it also means that you’re paying a massive premium for bleeding-edge speed that your camera physically can’t take advantage of.

So it’s important to first take a close look at your camera’s specs and requirements. If your camera has a UHS-I SD slot, putting a more expensive UHS-II card in it will not give you any better performance in the camera. And if your camera only needs a V30 SD card, there’s really no point forking out the big bucks for a V90 card.

There’s a reason, after all, that I’ve gone to quite a lot of effort to put together my memory card recommendations for specific cameras. Because anyone who gives you blanket advice to just buy the fastest memory card you can is just wasting your money.

What you want instead is a memory card that’s fast enough.

There is, however, a partial exception. I have more on that on the website.

News

• Don’t expect memory card prices to come down anytime soon. If you need memory cards, prices are only headed in one direction at the moment. The latest to increase their prices is Prograde Digital; they’ll be increasing prices in May in response to industry-wide higher costs.

• GoPro has announced three new higher-end 4K and 8K cinema cameras. They’re aiming for “low-cost, compact cinema cameras” rather than photography, but they’re an interesting development nonetheless. They have GoPro’s own new GP3 chip and a much larger Micro Four Thirds sensor. I bet the Top Gear/Grand Tour crew would have loved to have these available.

• Lightroom update. The April 2026 update adds background processing for tools like Denoise, better intentional shallow depth of field in assisted culling, and new camera RAW format support for the Sony A7V.

• Video + now photo. DaVinci Resolve is known as one of the top-tier video editing apps. Now they’ve added RAW photo processing as well. But they’re not just copying Lightroom — they bring their own powerful color grading and editing tools to the party. Given how little effort Adobe has put into Lightroom’s video tools, this looks like a really smart move from Blackmagic Design to try to become the go-to tool for more content creators. The core version is free (you want the DaVinci Resolve 21 Public Beta version); some of the more advanced tools will require a subscription.

• Something to watch if you shoot video. Behind-the-scenes legal battles over video codec licensing are quietly impacting the hardware we use to shoot and edit. HEVC has been widely adopted in many cameras for several years, but litigious patent holders are pushing many manufacturers to look elsewhere, and some major computer manufacturers have already dropped hardware decoding. So it’s at least conceivable that you might have trouble editing and playing all that video footage you’ve shot in the past decade or so. The newer AV1 codec has some advantages as the next-generation codec, but its downside is that it requires more advanced hardware to encode and play.

• Seeing in the dark. Scientists at NYU have come up with a new, less expensive, and less toxic way to create infrared sensors. It could be interesting for true infrared cameras one day, or even extending low-light capabilities of regular cameras.

Updates & Hot-Take Mini Reviews

• I’ve been using the Viltrox WCL-X100VI wide-angle conversion lens on the Fujifilm X100VI lately. The X100VI has a fixed 35mm lens; this add-on lens creates a 28mm perspective. And it’s less than half the price of the Fujifilm version. Here’s my take on it.

• I’ve been shooting with the Fujifilm GFX100RF, a medium-format fixed-lens camera. There’s a lot to like about it: 102MP images, superbly sharp lens, overall excellent image quality, and small enough to be a walking-around camera. But there’s also enough to give me pause, especially it’s limitations in the kind of mixed lighting you get in street and travel photography. But if you like a slower, more deliberate style of photography and want super-high resolution, it’s a fun camera to shoot with.

• And I was shooting with the Nikon Z 85mm f/1.2 S at the cherry blossoms recently. It’s really designed as a portrait lens, and there are good reasons not to use it for travel-style photography (mainly, it’s big and heavy). But it was a fun experiment in very narrow depth of field and low-light shooting.

Photographers at Work

• It’s French food, but not as you know it. Truck-stop diners seem like a distinctly American thing. But French photographer Guillaume Blot has spent six years capturing the disappearing world of roadside diners of provincial France. He has now compiled some of the shots in a new book.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with DC’s cherry blossoms lately. And while the core focus of my shooting at the Tidal Basin is mostly to give visitors a realistic visual sense of what to expect when they visit on any given day, it’s such a fun challenge to come up with something different and new each day I’m there. To keep my readers’ interest, but also my own. Because I can assure you, it’s not always picture-postcard perfect, especially in the early-morning hours when I’m usually there.

Sometimes I’m more successful than others. Sometimes the light or the weather is just flat as flat can be. Or it’s cold and windy. Sometimes I’m just not feeling it. But sometimes everything comes together nicely — light, weather, and cherry blossoms. And it’s fun and satisfying when that happens.

Today’s photos are some that I’ve taken of this year’s bloom (you can see some from previous blooms here).

Because I’m trying to provide a realistic view to my readers in near-daily updates, and they’re included in same-day posts, I’m coming at this with a quite different objective than most of the other photographers who head down to the Tidal Basin — and there are a lot of them during the season.

I want to provide my readers with a “this is what it looks like right now” approach. I shoot almost exclusively hand-held, better to be able to move around quickly and capture different perspectives from as much of the Tidal Basin as possible in a short period of time. Little to no processing or cropping. I shoot RAW, so some basic processing is non-negotiable, but I steer clear of things like the saturation slider and the fancy AI removal tools that image editing apps are getting flooded with. Occasionally, I have some fun with some pre-dawn BYO lighting just for kicks. But for me, the fun is in the challenge of the capture, not in the processing. To use whatever’s laid on by nature on-site, not what my computer can do.

The cherry blossom bloom is over now, so it’s on to some other fun projects.

Gear Updates

• Sony is suspending sales of its memory cards. That includes their CFexpress Type A, Type B, and SD cards, due to the global shortage of semiconductors for flash memory. For a while, Sony was the only prominent maker of CFexpress Type A (which high-end Sony cameras use), but other manufacturers have since stepped up.

• Pocket power. DJI is launching a tiny but high-spec gimbal camera. The DJI Pocket 4 has a 1-inch sensor, 14 stops of dynamic range, 10-bit D-Log, and 107GB internal storage. While it’s more relevant to influencers and on-the-ground journalists than photographers, it’s becoming a legitimate B-cam for pros, not just a vlogging gadget.

Photographers at Work

• Fly me to the moon. The Artemis II astronauts are shooting with some interesting cameras. From inside the capsule, they’re using Nikon D5 DSLRs (released 2016). (For future lunar landing missions they’ll take Nikon Z9s. Apparently, the long record of rock-solid reliability, low noise, and high dynamic range was the deciding combination. And mounted to the outside are four specially modified GoPros for streaming the moon flyby. Again, not the latest models — these are the old GoPro HERO4 Blacks (released 2014).

• There’s a wonderful collection of the Artemas II photos here. Reminds me of a slim but fascinating book I read a while back: Hasselblad and the Moon.

Wide Angle

• All-you-can-eat copyright registrations? There’s a new copyright bill before the Senate that could be great for photographers who file their images with the Copyright Office. The current limit is 750 images per $55 filing fee. The new bill, known as the Visual Artists Copyright Reform Act (VACRA), proposes an annual flat rate for unlimited submissions (broken up into a max of 3,000 images per submission).

• Tests suggest Google’s AI Overviews tells millions of lies per hour. And this. I won’t rant, but yeah . . .

We’re still in the thick of cherry blossom season in Washington, D.C., which has meant a lot of sunrise shooting for me in the past week (and also some in the rain). I’ll include some shots in next week’s newsletter after the bloom winds down. For today, I’ve included some shots from Granada, Nicaragua, a very photogenic and fun town I’d head back to in a heartbeat.

DSLRs are Dead. Long Live the DSLR.

There’s a lot to like about mirrorless cameras. They come with a lot of whizz-bang features, some of which are genuinely useful. They’re often smaller. They’re naturally quieter. And their reconfigured lens flange requirements have allowed lens manufacturers to step up their game.

Sales of DSLRs have been on a steep slide for years. They now amount to a rounding error in terms of all cameras sold these days1 The reality is the market has moved on, and manufacturers have stopped making new ones.

But I think it’s a mistake to write DSLRs off just yet or put them in the back of the cupboard. Because there’s still a lot to like about them. And there are some things they do even better than mirrorless.

So whether you’re wondering whether to sell your DSLR gear and migrate to mirrorless, or whether you want validation for a choice you’ve already made, I thought it might be worth a quick reality check. Because we hear a lot about the great new things that mirrorless bring to the party. But you hear much less about the areas where DSLRs still lead the way.

I shoot with both, and DSLRs still shine in some very practical ways.

First is battery life. Unless you’re using the back screen constantly, you generally get much better mileage from a battery in a DSLR because the optical viewfinder takes much less power than a fully electronic one.2 And in-body stabilization is now ubiquitous in mirrorless cameras; it was used but less commonly in DSLRs. And we’re not talking fine margins here — there’s a big difference in how many charged batteries you’ll need to take with you for a full day’s shooting.

Second is the optical viewfinder. I get it, electronic viewfinders can do things optical ones can’t, like showing live-view visual exposure, film emulation profiles, and focus peaking. But give me a clear optical viewfinder any day. They can’t be beaten for resolution, response time, and refresh rate.

DSLRs are also faster off the mark. Put a mirrorless camera up to take a shot of a fleeting scene, and it might not power up in time. That second or so from hibernating to ready to shoot can make all the difference, and it’s something I’m often frustrated by with mirrorless cameras.

Finally, there’s the lens value. There’s an enormous selection of used DSLR and SLR lenses out there, often at great prices. The mirrorless ranges are coming along nicely, but they still have a lot of catching up to do in terms of the breadth of choices. Sure, you can use a mount adapter, but that adds an extra layer of complication.

Mirrorless cameras certainly lead the way when it comes to silent shooting, burst speeds, and overall size. And I do shoot with them regularly. But if you’re thinking of trading in your gear, your hesitation might be well founded. I’d recommend renting a mirrorless body for a week or two first, because there are good reasons you might prefer shooting with your DSLR, and you might find you already have exactly what you need.

Hot Take Mini Reviews

I’ve been testing out:

• Fujifilm GFX100RF. This is a medium-format camera in a fixed-lens walking-around body. It’s very much the same DNA as Fujifilm’s other X cameras, but with a much larger sensor. While I’m enjoying it, it’s not really one of those cameras you just pick up and intuitively get great shots. You need to spend some time with it to get the most out of it. There’s no in-body stabilization, and even the tiniest movement will show up in those high-res files. The fixed lens maxes out at f/4, which isn’t particularly fast when compared with 35mm standards. And the 102MP files it produces are massive! I’ll have more details on it as I shoot more with it, and I’ll post some examples in a couple of weeks.

• Nikon Z 85mm f/1.2 S. This is a beast of a lens. A very fast prime with outstanding optics. The reason it exists is for portraiture, but I’m not using it for portraits. Instead, I’ve been using it as a low-light and narrow focal plane travel lens to try to get something different than I get with my regular stable of lenses, especially for dreamy cherry blossoms shots. The f/1.2 on an 85mm is incredibly unforgiving, but it’s also not something that you can get from other combinations.

Wide Angle

• New Lightroom Updates: Adobe has release new updates for Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. Topaz Gigapixel is now integrated directly into the cloud-based Lightroom app (but not Lightroom Classic) for generative upscaling — no extra subscription required. In Lightroom Classic, they’ve also improved the AI-assisting culling, which has been basically an experimental feature and pretty hit and miss so far.

• It’s still possible to get real silver-based prints, both color and true black and white. The Darkroom is one of the few labs still offering them. They combine a digital projection onto the paper with a traditional wet-process developing. No, they’re not as cheap as the more common dye-sub or inkjet prints, but they do have a quality that those methods just can’t quite match. I’ve previously ordered black and white prints from them (on real Iflord black and white silver gelatin paper), and I recently ordered some color prints from them and was very impressed with the results. I’ll be ordering more.

• Rock-solid backup is never the wrong decision. Carbonite is offering 75% off personal plans for automatic backup of your drives (and those precious photos on them!). They also have 30% off professional plans if you need something heavier duty. It runs through March 31. I use Backblaze myself, but I’ve used Carbonite and it works well, and both are set-and-forget services that run silently in the background. And at this price, it’s a great deal. Just be sure to get the plan that includes an external hard drive if you’re using one.

What I’ve Been Working On

• The spring equinox’s natural light show at the Lincoln Memorial (more on that below)

• Lots of cherry blossoms. And saucer magnolias. And I have some really fun gear I’m testing out — more on that in next week’s newsletter.

• I’ve added some new photography tools to my website and improved some that were already there:

  • Aperture and f-stops calculator

  • Aspect ratio calculator

  • Find the best print size for the aspect ratio of your images

  • Convert video megabits to memory card megabytes

  • Memory card video capacity calculator

You Don’t Have to Do What Your Camera’s Autoexposure Says

I was reminded of this once again when shooting the photos I’ve included here. I typically use aperture-priority mode when shooting, but in many shots I’m also using exposure compensation to override the camera’s auto exposure calculation. It’s a quick and very effective way to adjust the exposure on the fly without switching to full manual mode.

It’s convenient to shoot in P or A modes, but just because your camera’s autoexposure says it has chosen the “right” exposure, you don’t have to accept that.

Autoexposure is fundamentally based on averages. It’s trained on many thousands — perhaps millions — of images that teach it what the “right” exposure should be. But in tricky lighting conditions, it can be thrown off. Or, to be more accurate: it’s probably going to be thrown off. And what it considers the “correct” exposure simply might not match what you’re trying to create.

I use both under and over exposure compensation, but in the examples here, I relied heavily on underexposing what the light meter was saying. As it happens, the Nikon Z8 that I was mostly using is remarkably good with varied scenes of highights and shadows like this, but it still has a tendency to try to overexpose a bit in its attempts to bring up shadows. But in shots like this, I want the shadows to be dark — the whole point is making the highlights stand out. (Other good options are spot metering or highlight metering.)

Another benefit of slightly underexposing: it tends to make colors richer (and old trick from shooting slide film). In this case, it preserves the natural orange glow; overexposing will wash out the natural color.

About these shots: These were all shot a couple of days ago, on the morning of the spring equinox. Because Washington, D.C.’s National Mall is aligned east-west, around the spring and fall equinoxes, the sun rises directly along it. And if you happen to get a clear sunrise, the sunlight will shine directly into the main chamber of the memorial, which is normally in deep shadow. It bathes the statue in golden light and casts some really sharp and interesting shadows. It only lasts a matter of minutes before the sun is too high to shine in. There’s no enhancement done to these shots — that’s how the scene actually looks. It’s a scene I’ve shot many times over the years, and it’s a good reminder to turn around even if everyone else is watching the sunrise.

Photography News

• Nikon messed up. Nikon has apologized for a manufacturing problem affecting some Nikon Z6III, Z5II, and ZR cameras. Apparently, some substandard parts worked their way into the manufacturing chain. Nikon is offering free repair (and shipping). It doesn’t affect all copies of those models. You can see if your camera is affected by checking the serial number on Nikon’s site

• I bet you can’t guess what the best-selling fixed-lens camera is right now. Fixed-lens cameras are all the rage right now. We hear a lot about cameras like the Fujifilm X100VI and the Ricoh GR IV. But guess who’s actually making the top-selling fixed-lens camera in Japan at the moment. And by a healthy margin, too. It’s Kodak!

• The first-party lens tax is getting harder to justify. It used to be that buying a third-party lens was a calculated compromise — you saved money, but you usually knew you were taking a hit on autofocus reliability or weather sealing. That just isn’t a given anymore — while there are still misses, there are also many hits in the third-party lens options. The latest retail data out of Japan shows exactly how much the landscape has shifted. Tamron (23%) and Sigma (17.8%) are now actively out-selling Sony (13.1%) in the interchangeable lens market, with Canon and Nikon trailing even further behind. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they make lenses for multiple mounts, but still.

• The missing link for digital provenance. Working in dangerous places means protecting both physical safety and the digital security of the files themselves. In regions with heavy surveillance, encrypted, in-camera metadata signing (Content Authenticity Initiative standards) is becoming a literal lifesaver to prove provenance and protect photographers’ local sources and fixers. The bottleneck used to be that the standard press workflow would break that encrypted seal — either when generating a JPEG or when adding captions on deadline. But with Adobe integrating Content Credentials into Lightroom’s export, and Photo Mechanic finally rolling out full C2PA support last month, that encrypted chain of custody now survives the jump from the camera all the way to the editor’s desk.

Worth Seeing

• From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. / through June 2026). This is a fantastic, highly technical look at the physical evolution of early photography. It traces the shift toward grand-scale, whole-plate portraits — specifically looking at the transition from high-end daguerreotypes to mid-range ambrotypes and affordable tintypes. And it’s not just the images — the exhibit also goes into detail on the behind-the-scenes of producing these images. You can read more about it here.

• The artist behind JFK’s camelot. Blind magazine has a great feature on Jacques Lowe, JFK’s personal photographer. I’ve spent some time on things JFK, and there are some shots here I hadn’t seen before. It’s paywalled, but it’s a high-quality photography magazine (online) that you might want to subscribe to (or sign up to their newsletter).

Good to Know

Is AI-assisted image editing compatible with copyright protection?

The U.S. Copyright Office set a firm boundary in its 2025 policy report: “human authorship” remains the absolute baseline for protection. Practically, this means using editing software to assist the workflow, like AI Denoise or Generative Expand, doesn’t strip away legal ownership — the underlying creative expression of the photograph is still yours. However, images generated primarily from text prompts are considered machine-authored and remain uncopyrightable. I’ll be curious to see how this impacts AI-generated video and movies.

And on that topic . . .

There are efforts to increase the 750-image limit per copyright registration. It used to be that you could upload tens of thousands of images in a single filing, if you wanted to. But since 2018, the Copyright Office has imposed a limit of 750. For high-volume shooters, there is some hope on the horizon — a bipartisan bill called the Visual Artists Copyright Reform Act (VACRA) is actively trying to force that limit up to 3,000 images. Until (if) that passes, though, we’re still dealing with the reality of the lower cap, and the Copyright Office still remains woefully understaffed.

Fun to Know

The first digital camera was the size of a toaster.

Speaking of Kodak . . . In 1975, a 24-year-old Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson invented the world’s first self-contained digital camera. It weighed 8 pounds, shot at 0.01 megapixels, and took 23 seconds to record a single black-and-white image onto a Philips digital data cassette — not a standard audiocassette, but a specialized tape used for recording digital instrumentation data. When Sasson demonstrated it to Kodak management, their response was essentially: that’s cute — but don’t tell anyone about it. The company declined to commercialize it, wary of what it might do to film sales. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Wide Angle

• The surprising rise of the fixed-lens compact. It’s not your imagination — compact cameras really are surging. After almost being killed off by smartphones, data suggests that their comeback is fueled in part by people wanting something with a much more traditional camera feel. No wonder Fujifilm and Ricoh have been so confident jacking up their prices on cameras like the Fujifilm X100VI and Ricoh GR IV.

• The 17mm tilt-shift double-take. Oddly, two 17mm f/4 tilt-shift lenses have been released almost simultaneously in the past week. They’re from third-party lens makers TTArtisan and Laowa. And no, they’re not just rebranded versions of each other — they’re entirely different optical designs. Tilt-shift lenses are definitely niche offerings, but if you’re shooting architectural work, these are pretty interesting options to have available rather than the big-ticket versions from Nikon and Canon. The Laowa sounds particularly interesting to me, and I’m looking forward to trying it out. [TTArtistan / Laowa]

• The end of stitching 360 drone footage. DJI’s upcoming Avata 360 captures native 8K spherical video, completely eliminating the massive bottleneck of manually stitching clips at the desk. Crucially, it cleared FCC approval right before the new US ban cutoff, making it likely the last new DJI drone American pilots can actually buy.

• DxO PureRAW 6 is now out. I’ve been using it now for a few weeks, and the results can look like magic on high-ISO images, especially from older cameras. And they’ve addressed the file bloat when creating the new DNG versions.

• Lightroom Classic gets a culling upgrade. The upgraded Assisted Culling tool now automatically detects and flags closed eyes in group shots, which is a massive time-saver for high-volume event and wedding work. It also finally adds native support for WebP files.

• Protecting the work while evolving the business. The photographers’ trade association ASMP is officially backing the “No Artists / No Art” campaign to fight AI portfolio scraping, while simultaneously publishing a fantastic blueprint for updating our daily business models. If you’re feeling the friction of the endless hustle for one-off gigs, their guide on shifting to a “creative partner” role to landing recurring revenue is well worth your time.

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Photographers at Work

• A masterclass in long-term focus. South African visual activist Zanele Muholi just took home the 2026 Hasselblad Award for decades of work documenting Black queer visibility. Their black-and-white portraits are stunning.

• One of my favorite photographers, Ovidiu Selaru, has just published a new book of his street photography in London. It’s called, appropriately enough, London in Frames. I don’t have a copy yet, but I just know it’s going to be stunning. And if you’re not following him on Instagram, I highly recommend checking out his work.

Why you probably don’t actually need the fastest memory card you can buy

This might sound a bit odd coming from someone who has invested a lot of time and money in speed testing memory cards, but the reality is that your camera probably doesn’t need the fastest memory card you can buy.

Memory cards are getting more and more expensive all the time. Lately, demand from the AI industry has been pushing the price of flash memory up, which is in turn driving memory card prices higher.

But you’re going to need memory cards for your camera — you’re not going to be taking many photos or shooting much video without one. This is a place where smart buying can save you real money. The key is to not overbuy.

A fast memory card sounds like a good thing. And it is. But you don’t necessarily need the absolute fastest memory card on the market.

You just need a card that’s fast enough for your specific camera. Sure, there are cameras where you do need that blazing fast speed for high-bitrate 4K or 8K video or long RAW bursts. But most cameras just don’t.

If you buy a card that outpaces your camera’s internal tech, it will still work -- backwards compatibility is built in with most memory card standards. But it also means that you’re paying a massive premium for bleeding-edge speed that your camera physically can’t take advantage of.

So it’s important to first take a close look at your camera’s specs and requirements. If your camera has a UHS-I SD slot, putting a more expensive UHS-II card in it will not give you any better performance in the camera (it might give you better performance offloading the photos to your computer, but only if you have the right type of memory card reader). And if your camera only needs a V30 SD card, there’s really no point forking out the big bucks for a V90 card.

There’s a reason, after all, that I’ve gone to quite a lot of effort to put together my memory card recommendations for specific cameras. Because anyone who gives you blanket advice to just buy the fastest memory card you can is just wasting your money. What you want instead is a memory card that’s fast enough.

I have a more detailed post on this here.

See the gear I'm currently shooting with

Real Deals

• Sony a7R V - $900 OFF. A whopping discount on this pretty incredible camera. And B&H’s kit ($3,298 for the body) includes a ThinkTank Retrospective bag, a spare battery, and a fast memory card (and since it's a high-res, 61MP beast, this is one of those times you actually do want that fast memory card I just talked about).

• Think Tank camera backpack - $83 OFF. I have more than a few Think Tank bags and cases — okay, maybe too many, truth be told — and they’re consistently excellent. This is the BackStory 15 ($170). There’s also a slightly smaller version, the BackStory 13 ($150).

Want to Visit Panama City’s Biomuseo?

Some more photos of the Biomuseo, along with travel tips for getting there.

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I’m in cherry blossom mode for the next few weeks. If you’re headed to Japan for sakura and have a several-hour stopover at Narita, I highly recommend hopping on a train for the short trip to Narita-san Temple. It’s the perfect way to clear out those long-haul cobwebs. Today’s dispatch includes some photos I’ve taken there.

I’ve been spending the week playing with an advance copy of DxO’s PureRAW 6 to see how well it can revive some of the shots I’ve taken over the years on my travels with older cameras in sub-optimal lighting conditions. Because the combination of older digital cameras and sub-optimal lighting can be a brutal mix.

If you haven’t used the new generation of RAW noise reduction tools, they’re very different kettles of fish from the old-school software we used to rely on. And you can get some stunningly better results.

Traditional tools operate after the demosaicing process. They look at a finished, noisy picture and essentially try to smudge or blur the grain away — which is exactly why older high-ISO photos often end up looking like they’re made of plastic or smeared with vaseline.

The current generation of AI tools, like Lightroom Denoise tool and DxO’s PureRAW, do something fundamentally different. They attack the noise during the demosaicing process. They use AI (the machine-learning type, not the generative-AI type) to figure out what is noise and what is actual texture while the file is still just raw 1s and 0s, before the pixels are even fully built. The results are incredibly sharp, and the process can actively breathe new life into high-ISO images or RAW files shot on older cameras. And not only can they revive old files, but they can functionally extend the life of those older cameras. So maybe we don’t all need to buy that latest and greatest whizz-bang camera model, after all! :)

Related: DxO PureRAW 6 Is Out: Is the Upgrade Worth It?

Photography Gear News

• ProGrade Digital to the moon! In a marketing coup, ProGrade Digital has announced that their data storage is used in NASA Artemis lunar missions. Hasselblad and Nikon haven’t done too badly over the decades by being the space gear of choice.

• New GoPro cameras coming soon. GoPro has announced its next-generation GP3 processor. It promises better battery life (yay!) and less risk of overheating. And, as with seemingly everything these days, it packs in new AI features. But the interesting part for me is that they plan to use this to expand into the higher-end cine market.

• New budget color films. Many of the old film stocks have been discontinued, but there are still determined efforts out there to create new films, especially at more budget-friendly prices. Like this Chinese company, Lucky Film Co.

• New drool-worthy Apple 27” Studio Display. Apple has announced new 27” Studio Displays. The standard model is pretty much as you’d expect. The new XDR looks pretty amazing for videographers and photographers but comes at a very Apple-like price point.

Deals

• Nikon Z7 II - $600 OFF. With the Nikon Z7 III expected soon, there’s a great deal on the Z7 II ($1,897 for the body), which is still an extremely good camera. It pairs wonderfully with the 24-120mm f/4 S versatile zoom, which is itself $150 OFF ($997).

• Sony a7R V - $900 OFF. A whopping discount on this pretty incredible camera. And B&H’s kit ($3,298 for the body) includes a ThinkTank Retrospective bag (my longtime favorite travel photography bags), a fast memory card, and a spare battery.

• Sony a7 III - $300 OFF. Although this camera came out several years ago, it really made a splash with its image quality, and especially its low-light shooting. It’s just a wonderful camera to shoot with ($1,898 w/28-70mm lens). Run its RAW files through the latest generation of denoising, and you end up with superb RAW quality.

Wide Angle

• A 6-planet parade: Astrophotographer Josh Dury captured this great shot of a 6-planet parade across nearly 180-degrees of the sky.

• Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Voting is still open for the London Natural History Museum's Reader’s Choice awards.

• Texas Launches a Statewide Ethical Wildlife Photography Contest: Wildlife in Focus just announced the inaugural Texas Wildlife & Nature Photographer of the Year contest. Unlike many competitions, this one explicitly requires that all images depict wild, free-ranging wildlife photographed ethically and truthfully in natural conditions without baiting or staging.

• The life of a wildlife photographer isn’t easy!: A beautifully shot and fascinating short film on wildlife photographer Joshua Holko‘s work photographing wolves and bears in the Boreal Forest of Finland.

• Australian wildlife photographers do well this week: Matty Smith won Underwater Photographer of the Year (UPY) 2026 for an over/under shot of elephant seal pups in the Falklands. Meanwhile, Jono Allen was named the 2026 World Nature Photographer of the Year for his shot of a rare white humpback whale calf. Some other stunning shots in the competition worth checking out here.

• Wildlife on a plate: Speaking of wildlife, if you have young kids in the house, a fun project is to make them custom plates with your photos of animals on them. I made a bunch for my kids using Zazzle (other services like Shutterfly also offer it), and they’ve held up really well. You can do it on paper plates (great for birthday parties!) or ceramic coffee mugs.

New Photography Books

• Brooke DiDonato, Take a Picture, It Will Last Longer: I’ve come across her work before. It’s conceptual, fine-art portraiture and surrealism, and it’s an entirely off-kilter look at the Ohio-inspired suburban setting. She breaks all the rules, but it works really well. Bookshop.org / Amazon

• Scott Kelby, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic Book. I relied on Martin Evening’s guides for years — they were the gold standard. But Scott Kelby knows a thing or two about Lightroom himself and has a very accessible way of explaining it. This is the updated version. Bookshop.org / Amazon

• David Busch, Nikon Z6 III Guide to Digital Photography. Busch’s guides have been rock solid for years. If you own a Z6 III, this will help you get way more out of your camera. Chances are, it can do a lot more than you thought. Bookshop.org / Amazon

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When you set up your camera, you probably noticed that you have a choice of two colorspaces. The default is nearly always sRGB. The other choice is nearly always Adobe RGB.

Does it matter which you choose?

Colorspace is a topic that can fill a very thick and technically dense book (like this one). But here’s the plain-English version, focused specifically on which one you should choose when setting up your camera (printing and processing is a whole other rabbit hole).

If you shoot RAW, it barely matters. The color space setting only applies to JPEGs. Your raw file captures everything your sensor sees regardless of which option is selected. So it doesn’t affect the underlying RAW image. (It does, however, apply to the JPG preview that’s embedded in the RAW file.)

But if you shoot JPG, it is more important. For JPEGs, sRGB is the safer option if you plan to share the files online or send them to a print lab. sRGB is basically the universal colorspace that’s used on the web. All web browser and social media platforms can understand it. And all print labs can use it. If you email photos to friends and family, the colors will be fine whether they’re looking at them on their phone or a computer.

Adobe RGB does have benefits in some situations. If you’re working with graphic designers, print magazine photo editors, or higher-end print labs, Adobe RGB will give you a broader range of colors (or gamut) to work with. But even then, it’s mostly relevant to physical print output.

But Adobe RGB comes with a big catch. If you try to share JPGs that have been embedded with the Adobe RGB profile online, on social media, or email them to friends and family, there’s a risk that they’ll look washed out and with muted colors because many apps and platforms — especially social media — strip or ignore the embedded color profile and assume everything is sRGB. In which case, the images will look quite drab. Which is hardly a way to impress. And it can cause a lot of unnecessary confusion with clients when sending them files.

The upshot: If you shoot RAW, it really doesn’t matter much. If you shoot JPEG and want to keep things simple, stick with sRGB. It’s the universal standard. The only real reasons to choose Adobe RGB are if you’re dealing with a client or lab that specifically requests Adobe RGB.

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Photography Gear

• New Nikon 70-200mm f2.8. Nikon has released a new version of its workhorse zoom: the Nikon NIKKOR Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S II. I use the current model, but this new one is smaller, lighter, and faster. There are good reasons this focal length is a favorite of photojournalists and sports shooters, and it takes a key place in the so-called “holy trinity” alongside the 24-70mm f/2.8 and 14-24 f/2.8. It also comes at a pro-level price point: $3200. I’m sure it’s a spectacular lens, although I’m very happy with the existing version as well.

• Filter that simulates Kodak Portra 400 film. We’re used to in-camera film emulations. Now PolarPro has added one to the other end of the lens. They’ve created a new lens filter that simulates the look of Kodak Portra 400 film. Interestingly, it’s actually a circular polarizing filter, presumably meaning that the effect can be tweaked as you’re shooting.

• Stylish camera bags. If most camera bags look too much like camera bags for your taste, there are stylish good options. Check out the bags by Oberworth, like these and these, for example.

Updates

• I’ve been refreshing my memory card recommendations to include the latest models. These should save you a lot of hassle if you’re looking for the right kind of memory card to get for your camera.

• And I’ve been working on turning a bunch of digital resources and tools I’ve developed over the years to use in my own work into shareable goodies that I’ll be making available soon to paid subscribers to this newsletter. Stay tuned!

• Coming very soon: cherry blossoms! Lots and lots of cherry blossoms! (And those saucer magnolias aren’t too shabby either.)

Wide Angle

• Winter Olympics photos. We’ve been treated to some wonderful sports photography for the past few weeks. Now that the Winter Olympics are a wrap, check out these unusual Winter Olympics photos [The Atlantic / paywalled] and these favorites compiled by AP’s photographers. [AP’s Instagram].

• DJI is suing the FCC to try to get the ban on foreign-made drones overturned.

In Case You Missed It:

Most of the time, hitting Format in your camera performs a Quick Format.

That’s the default on pretty much all cameras. It simply wipes the card’s directory while leaving the actual photo data intact. It is fast, and it leaves a crucial safety net: if you accidentally format the wrong card, your photos are still physically there. As long as you don’t shoot new photos over them, you can easily rescue the entire shoot using standard off-the-shelf data recovery software.

Some cameras also offer a “Full” (or low-level) format. This scans the entire card for errors and permanently overwrites every single sector.

It sounds like that should be the better approach. And it’s tempting to run a Full Format every time to keep things completely clean; it’s thorough, even if it’s also slower. But that actually does more harm than good. Flash memory has a finite number of write cycles. Deep cleaning your card every time you clear it unnecessarily burns through its hardware lifespan.

I stick to quick formats for my daily workflow. I only run a full, in-camera format in a few specific situations:

• Brand new cards: To catch factory defects before relying on them for a shoot.

• Performance drops: If the buffer starts unexpectedly lagging during burst shooting or high-bitrate video.

• Persistent errors: To force the card to identify and map out bad sectors.

• Disposing of the card: To ensure old files are permanently unrecoverable.

Regardless of which method is needed, I always format the card inside the exact camera I intend to use. That ensures the file system and folder structure are perfectly optimized for that specific device and eliminates the risk of file system mismatches.

Photography Gear

• New Tamron zoom lenses. Tamron has released a bright standard zoom for full-frame Nikon Z and Sony E: Tamron 35-100mm f/2.8 Di III VXD. Priced around $900 and expected to start shipping in late March. Looks like a fun and versatile lens for travel photography.

• Nikon sales paradox. Reading the tea leaves, Nikon’s latest reports offer hints that Nikon might soon pivot back to premium, high-margin mirrorless camera bodies. Something to watch closely if you shoot with cameras like the Z9 or Z8. [Petapixel]

• RAMageddon is here. AI companies are gobbling up memory hardware at a staggering rate. That’s creating shortages and driving prices through the roof. Expect everything from laptops to phones to memory cards and, yes, cameras, to keep increasing in price more rapidly than normal. It could be a good time to buy sooner rather than later. [The Verge]

• Weatherproof gear wraps. My new Spinn.Design ProWrapps (no, that’s not a typo) were just delivered. They’re versatile protective wrappers that stick to themselves. I have some of the previous version. These are new and updated, now weatherproof, and were launched through a Kickstarter. They’re great for lenses and camera bodies. Same general idea as Domke wraps, just tweaked a bit with fully self-gripping fabric, and they don’t take up as much space in the gear bag.

Wide Angle

• Massive new photography museum. Rotterdam’s Nederlands Fotomuseum has officially moved into the historic Santos Warehouse, reopening as a massive vertical hub for photography that spans nine floors. It has display galleries, of course (and an incredibly large collection of 6.5 million objects), but I’m particularly intrigued by the fully functional analog darkroom, the open studio and workshops, and the viewing area over the restoration labs. It sounds like a must-see stop.

• Wildlife Photographer of the Year: People’s Choice. The 24-image shortlist for the 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year ‘People’s Choice’ award by London’s Natural History Museum is now open for voting. There are some stunning images, and you can check out the photos and cast your vote now through March 18.

• He got the shot (but only just). You’ve almost certainly seen the photo this week of the former Prince Andrew slumped and looking stunned in the back of a car after being arrested and questioned for hours. It really is a one-off. There are no other versions, no other similar angles. It was captured by Reuters photographer Phil Noble, and he explains how he got the shot (and almost didn’t).

Why You Don’t Want to Buy an SD Express Memory Card

SD Express and microSD Express cards have started hitting the market. But don’t buy one for your camera.

Sure, SD Express sounds like they’d be faster. And they are. Blazing fast speeds using the same PCIe technology found in computer SSDs. Even faster than UHS-II.

But they’re only faster if your camera specifically supports it. And your camera doesn’t — no current cameras do. An SD Express card will fit in your camera’s SD card slot, and it will work in your camera. But only sort of — it’s currently a trap.

That’s because the way they maintain backward compatibility means that you might end up with a card that performs slower than if you’d just gotten a UHS-II card.

To achieve those super-fast speeds, SD Express cards physically repurpose the second row of pins that UHS-II uses. This creates a nasty compatibility issue. If you stick an SD Express card into a modern UHS-II camera (like a Canon R6 II, Sony A7 III, Nikon Z5, or Fujifilm X-T5), it cannot fall back to UHS-II speeds. Instead, it throttles all the way down to sluggish UHS-I speeds (max 104 MB/s, but you might see less).

So you could pay a premium for “next-gen” technology only to get significantly slower performance than the cards you already own.

Unless you have a device specifically built for SD Express (and, right now, that’s only the Nintendo Switch 2 gaming system and some memory card readers), stick with UHS-II cards for now.

The Upshot: Buying an SD Express card for a current camera is a waste of money because you are paying for speed your camera cannot access, while simultaneously losing the UHS-II speed tier your camera can access.

Gear

• New Canon wide-angles: RF 14mm f/1.4 and RF 7-14mm f/2.8-3.5 L Fisheye STM. The 14mm, in particular, is making quite a splash.

• The company that used to be Olympus has released the OM System OM-3 tuned specifically for astrophotography. Its sensor is especially specced to create clear images of nebula and other celestial scenes.

• A firmware update for the Ricoh GR IV has added an electronic shutter option of 1/16,000 of a second. While not as fast as some high-end mirrorless cameras, it’s mighty quick for a small compact like this.

Wide Angle

• Photography charity. If you’re looking to contribute, check out 100Cameras. It’s a small but worthy charity aimed at empowering youth with all the good things about photography.

Photographers at Work

• I’m always amazed at the stunning photos that come out of the Olympics. It’s not just the emotion and intensity and colors of the subjects themselves. The athletes are inspiring, to be sure, but I also find it inspiring how good the photographers are, especially operating within the access constraints they deal with — they just find so many inventive ways to get a different perspective and framing. With the Winter Olympics running right now, amazing imagery is all over the place, but for some tightly curated collections, check out Getty Sports on Instagram and the running galleries maintained by the New York Times and CNN.

What’s Showing / Photography Exhibits

These look well worth catching if you’re in the neighborhood:

• Boston: First Look 2026. Through April 27.

• Paris: Martin Parr: Global Warning. Through May 24.

• London: Boris Mikhailov: Ukrainian Diary. Though February 22.

• Amsterdam: Blommers & Schumm: Mid-Air. Through February 22.

I took all of the photos in today’s newsletter with the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 waterproof action camera. After a lot of shooting over the years with the major action cams, this one stands out for taking photos. It’s tiny and rugged, so you can take it anywhere. And it’s great for way more than just action sports. I have a detailed post on what it’s like to shoot with on my website.

Latest Updates

• Miniature effects lens test. I’ve been having some fun shooting some miniature effect shots with the TTArtisan Tilt 50mm f/1.4. While I don’t have a lot of practical use for miniature effect, it is fun to play with.

• Fisheye lenses. I do enjoy shooting with fisheyes — you can get some really out-of-the-box perspectives. Nikon hasn’t released a Z-mount fisheye yet, and their F-mount fisheyes are all discontinued. So I’ve been testing out several alternatives on the Nikon Z8, including fisheyes from Laowa, TTArtisan, AstrHori, Sigma, and Nikon’s own discontinued F-mount fisheyes. So far, there’s no perfect solution if you want autofocus, but I found one manual-focus option that is surprisingly sharp for the price. You can see the shots here.

• Cherry blossoms incoming! It might be cold, but we’re past the solstice and heading toward spring. Washington DC’s cherry blossoms are a highlight of my year, and I’ve been working on some fun new features ready for this year’s bloom to help visitors photograph them. I’ll be rolling them out in the coming weeks.

Photography Gear

• Memory card price increases. AI infrastructure is incredibly power hungry, which is why we’re seeing energy prices climb rapidly. And there’s an effect that’s highly relevant to photographers: memory card prices are rising dramatically. Long-time RAM maker Crucial is closing their consumer business to focus on supplying AI business, and ProGrade digital has announced price increases of up to 123%. I suspect this might be a trend for a while, so maybe it’s worth stocking up on memory cards sooner rather than later.

• Fujifilm has posted record profits.

• Older Canon cameras and lenses hitting end of service. If you’re shooting with an older Canon camera or lenses (such as EF), Canon will stop servicing a bunch of them over the coming years. [More]

• Nikon is suing third-party lens maker Viltrox for patent infringement of their Z-mount autofocus technology. [More]

• Ricoh has finally released the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome. This is a camera that should be right in my wheelhouse — I love the GR series and regularly shoot black-and-white. But the dealbreaker for me is the price: $2199.

Field Notes

• Viltrox wide-angle adapter for the Fujifilm X100VI. This is an add-on lens that sits on the X100VI’s fixed lens. It takes the field of view from 35mm (equivalent) to 28mm (equivalent). Which might not sound like much, but it’s enough to make it a very different shooting proposition for me and more to my liking. It does add bulk. Fujifilm has its own version, but the one by Viltrox is much cheaper, and I’ve found it to be optically excellent. Just ditch the lens cap! My detailed review is coming soon.

• Lee Super Stopper ND Filter. I’ve used the Lee Big Stopper before (10 stops); it’s the gold standard of 100mm ND filters. But I hadn’t used the Super Stopper until recently. It’s 15 stops of light-blocking goodness for when you really want to slow things down. I’m shooting a series of very long-exposure daytime shots with it—I’ll post some of them soon.

Wide Angle

• Drone ban. The FCC is moving forward with its ban on foreign-made drones. Yes, that includes DJI and other popular drones used by so many photographers. It’s also targeting critical spare parts, so you might want to stock up on those now while you can.

• Creative Live is back. There are some extraordinarily good online classes on photography (and many other creative endeavors, for that matter). SkillShare and Creative Live have long been among my favorite places to find them. Creative Live went offline some time ago for a reimagining and rebuild, but they’re now back.

• An interesting behind-the-scenes essay by NY Times Director of Photography Meaghan Looram on how to handle the photo posted by President Trump of a blindfolded Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Their challenge: Was it real or fake?

• School photos. The Atlantic has an interesting article on “What’s the Point of School Photos Anymore”. Do people still buy them in the saturated age of phone cameras? Paywalled, unfortunately, but an interesting read if you’re a subscriber.

• Who took the shot? I wrote last year about a new documentary on what might be the photo of the Vietnam War, a photograph commonly known as Napalm Girl. The documentary, which is called The Stringer, is now on Netflix. I’m honestly still a bit confused on what to make of it all, but newly added to the mix is an interesting perspective by another photojournalist who was there that day, David Burnett.

Photographers at Work

• Massive layoffs at my hometown paper the Washington Post this week, including the entire team of staff photographers and most of the photo editors. Outstanding photographers all. They’ve done valuable work of visual journalism, not just locally but also frequently on assignment further afield. I’m dearly hoping they and their colleagues land on their feet.

• It wasn’t all lace and corsets. Alice Austen’s Larky Life - “The Victorian photographer has gained a cult following for her intimate and surprising images of women.” [The New Yorker]

• Alligators can be beautiful. Photographer David Walter Banks spent many nights camped out on raised platforms in Florida’s Okefenokee Swamp for these wonderfully colorful photos of alligators and their habitat. They’re from his new book.

• It’s the photographer, not the camera. The new movie Magellan by Lav Diaz looks visually stunning. All the more so when I learned it was shot entirely on a Panasonic GH7 M43 camera. It’s so visually stunning that I at first didn’t even notice that it wasn’t in the usual wide aspect ratio used for films but in the GH7’s native 4:3.

What I’m Reading

Because it’s not all photography all the time . . . When I can’t be out traveling in the world, reading about the world might be the next best thing.

• When It All Burns, by Jordan Thomas. This is a fascinating first-hand account of working as a California fire Hot Shot, the elite firefighters who take on the worst and most dangerous of California’s ever-growing wildfires. The author is also an anthropologist, so he’s able to put it all in the broader context of how fire has been managed in the region for thousands of years (hint: there’s a bunch of reasons it’s now so bad and getting worse). One of the most interesting books I’ve read for a while and about a subject I knew nothing about.

• The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. William Dalrymple has a knack for weaving incredibly complex history into fabric that’s not just robust but also quite beautiful. In this book, he tackles the overlooked centrality of India not just to how the region developed but also the world. Fascinating stuff. Also worth checking out his Empire podcast with Anita Anand.

Latest Posts & Updates

Here’s some of what I’ve been working on:

• Laowa 8-15mm f2.8 full-frame zoom fisheye. A rare zoom fisheye that can create either circular fisheye or frame-filling rectangular fisheye or for switching between APS-C and full-frame cameras. It’s sharp and fun to shoot with. Manual focus. Versions for Canon RF, Leica L, Nikon Z, Sony E, and Hasselblad X. My review | My sample images

• Meike 85mm f/1.4 AF. Priced attractively and very sharp. My main quibble is with the speed and reliability of the autofocus. My review | My sample images

• Ricoh GR IV memory card recommendations. I’ve been testing SD and microSD cards for years. The GR IV has an unusual combination for this type of camera: microSD as well as 53GB of internal memory. Here are my recommendations.

Great Deals Worth a Look

We’re up to our eyeballs in deals at this time of year. Here are some photography deals I’ve thought particularly interesting (and you can find my running, curated list of 2025 Black Friday Photography Deals here).

• Up to 50% OFF DxO apps. DxO is offering great deals on their apps, including NIK Collection (18% Off), PhotoLab (17% Off), PureRAW (23% Off), and ViewPoint (50% Off). There are similar discounts also on upgrades. Nik Collection and PureRAW have been core parts of my workflow for years. And if you’re a new customer, you can get an extra 5% off by using code HAVECAMERA at checkout. Ends 12/2.

• $40 OFF Photo Mechanic Standard (annual subscription). If you’re in the market for Photo Mechanic Plus, the same code will take $100 off the first year of a subscription to that. Use code WORKFAST2025. Ends 12/2.

• 50%-70% OFF Adobe Creative Cloud Pro. Adobe is offering big discounts on new annual subscriptions to Creative Cloud Pro: 50% Off for the first year. This gives you Lightroom, Photoshop, and a whole bunch of other creative apps and services that can come in very useful. For students and teachers, there’s an even bigger discount: 70% Off the first year. No code required. Ends 11/28.

• Up to 20% OFF used gear at KEH. After some used lenses or cameras? KEH has been one of my go-to sources for years, and I like the transparency and peace of mind they offer when buying used gear. Use code BFCM25. Ends 12/1.

• 20% OFF at LensProtoGo. My go-to lens and camera rental service has a flat 20% off all rentals. Use code RENTLPTG20. Ends 12/3.

• 20% OFF Darkroom gift cards. Shooting film? These can be used for yourself or as gifts for the top-notch film processing, true photographic prints, wall art, etc, at The Darkroom, one of the best remaining labs for traditional analog film photography that I’ve come across and used. No code required.

• 15% OFF at Framebridge (all framing of digital photos). I’ve had quite a few things framed at Framebridge over the years, and the quality and customer service has always been excellent. Upload your photo to their site, choose your framing options, and the finished product is delivered directly to you. Or you can get a more tangible idea of their frames at one of their stores. This deal applies to framing of digital photos. Use code VIP15. Ends 12/2.

• 50% OFF at Rocky Nook photography books. Rocky Nook makes some of the best photography books out there. Great content and excellent production quality. They’re offering 50% off sitewide. You can find their extensive photography collection here (make sure to use the page navigation at the bottom — there are way more books than appear just on the first page). Use code BF25. Ends 12/2.

• 40% OFF SmugMug. Share, backup, or sell your photos with a SmugMug’s slick platform that is dedicated to photography. No code required, but must go through specific link (affiliate link). Ends 12/2, must be a new account. Includes 14-day trial that must be upgraded to a paid account before 12/28 to get the discount.

New Cameras & Lenses

There have been quite a few new lenses and cameras released recently. Here are some I thought were noteworthy:

• Leica Q3 Monochrom. With a dedicated black-and-white sensor. Swoon.

• Fujifilm X-T30 III + XC 13-33mm ƒ/3.5-6.3 OIS lens. The latest update in Fujifilm’s excellent X-T# series.

• Sony FE 100mm f/2.8 Macro GM / full-frame / E mount

• Nikon DX Nikon NIKKOR Z 16-50mm f/2.8 VR / APS-C (DX) / Z mount

• Nikon DX Nikon NIKKOR Z MC 35mm f/1.7 / APS-C (DX) / Z mount

• 7Artisans AF 35mm f1.8 Z / full-frame / Z mount

• Viltrox AF 50mm f1.4 Pro FE / full-frame / E mount

• Laowa 200mm f2 AF FF / full-frame / Z, EF, E. This is the lens here I’m most excited to try out. On paper, it promises a lot, and I’ll be keen to see how it performs in real-world shooting.

Software Updates

• Lightroom Classic 15.0 has been released. It’s a major update with a bunch of new features and refinements.

• Affinity was impressive from the get-go, but it’s now also completely free. As in, not a free trial — just free. Canva bought it, rebuilt it, and is rereleasing it. It’s a combination photo image editor, vector graphics designer, and page layout tool, all in one. If you’re fed up with Adobe’s subscription price increases, or maybe just want something a bit different, it’s definitely worth checking out as a Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign alternative. Available for Mac and Windows.

Other Stuff

• Two photographers are among the 2025 MacArthur “genius” grant winners. Matt Black, known particularly for his work on US poverty. And Tonika Lewis Johnson, who describes herself as a social justice artist based in Chicago.

• Highly sophisticated commercial hacking software has been in the wild for almost a year, which can use malformed DNG RAW image files to infect specific models of Samsung Galaxy phones and basically take control of the phone remotely without the user having any idea. Looks mainly to have been deployed in the Middle East for specific targets.

• If you’re a fan of Formula 1 racing, or just even watched a race recently, you will have noticed how slick the video production is these days. It’s not just the cars themselves that push the technological boundaries. The camera gear also innovates in ways that can flow down to other camera future hardware. They don’t just rely on off-the-shelf GoPro gear. The days of being limited only to track-side or helicopter shots are long gone, and F1 has pioneered a bunch of different onboard videos. There’s a really interesting new video that breaks down some of the tech and technique that goes into it.

Photographers at Work

• There’s a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in DC: Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985. It’s open now and runs through January 11.

• Sydney’s Head On Photo Festival 2025 is in its last week, wrapping at the end of November.

• Documentary photographer Maddie McGarvey photographed a family in Appalachia for 15 years. The story and photos are in the NY Times.

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What I’ve Been Working On & New Deals Worth a Look

Continuing my deep dive into lens alternatives outside the obvious, I've been testing out and reviewing these:

• Viltrox 15mm ƒ/1.7. A small, compact, sharp, and surprisingly good wide angle for APS-C cameras. While there’s not a specific thing that makes it stand out—except maybe price—the package makes for a very interesting option for lightweight street and travel photography.

• Viltrox 28mm ƒ/4.5. An unusual fixed-aperture lens that is ultra-thin but also surprisingly sharp. For APS-C. At first, I thought it was more of a novelty lens. But its sharpness surprised me, and it’s ultra-small size makes for a very interesting option for minimalist street photography, especially on one of the retro-styled full-frame cameras like the Nikon Zf.

And I’m out shooting with, and in the process of reviewing these two fisheye lenses (both full frame):

• AstrHori 12mm ƒ/2.8 fisheye. Large and heavy and sharp.

• TTArtisan 11mm ƒ/2.8 fisheye. Smaller and lighter and also sharp.

After shooting with them both, I prefer the TTArtisan, but the reasons don’t have to do with it being smaller and lighter, and there are some things I don’t like about it. The short version is I’m able to more consistently get keepers out of it; I’ll explain in more detail in my review.

Hot Take Mini Reviews

• Think Tank Photo DarkLight tactical backpack. It’s small and narrower than your average backpack, but that’s precisely why I like it. I have plenty of bigger, bulkier backpacks, but I wanted something I could comfortably take on my bike and yet still pack a long telephoto lens. It has the usual Think Tank Photo quality and thoughtful touches. I’ve been using it over the summer, and I like it.

• Nikon 1.4x teleconveter. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with teleconverters. Yes, that extra reach offers great potential, but I’ve often been disappointed in the past with the practical results. I’m pleased to say that the Nikon 1.4x Z has been working well for me, and I’m really happy with it. I’ve been using it mainly on the Nikon Z 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 but also on the Nikon Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR and have been happy with the results.

New Camera Gear

There's been a flurry of notable new lenses announced in recent weeks:

• Sigma 200mm f2 / E and L mounts

• Sigma 12mm f1.4 / APS-C / RF, X, and E mounts

• Viltrox AF 14mm f4.0 Air / full-frame / Z and E mounts

• Viltrox AF 9mm f2.8 Air / APS-C / Z and E mounts

• Canon RF 85mm f1.4 L VCM / full-frame/ RF mount

• OM System M.Zuiko Digital ED 50-200mm f2.8 IS PRO / M43 mount

• Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 S II / full-frame / Z mount

• Sigma 135mm f1.4 DG Art / full-frame / E and L mounts

• Viltrox AF 56mm f1.2 Pro / APS-C / E and XF mounts

• Panasonic Lumix S 100-500mm f5-7.1 O.I.S. / full-frame / L-Mount

And the Nikon Zf camera is now available in several other colors, if that’s your type of thing.

Software Updates

• ON1 Photo RAW 2026 / new version. Major upgrade, including Resize AI 2026 now built-in.

• DxO PhotoLab 9 / new version. With several of DxO's other apps built-in, this app is getting incredibly powerful for RAW image processing.

• Luminar Neo / update.

• DxO PureRAW 5.3 / update.

• Lightroom Classic 14.5.1. GPU previews, better generative/remove tools, refined copy-paste, plus new camera/lens support.

Other Photography Stuff

• If you upgrade your Mac to the new macOS Tahoe version, it’s worth checking your display calibration. Mine was suddenly extra high contrast and a bit cooler, so a recalibration was in order.

• Instagram is finally (!!) getting an iPad app. I've pretty much given up on Instagram now that it strongly favors reels at the expense of photos. But if you're using it, the long-overdue iPad version might appeal.

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Photographers at Work

• Photos from NASA's 1960s Gemini program have been given the remastering treatment, and the results are pretty stunning.

• There’s a new exhibition at The Met of 64 of Man Ray's "rayographs" (i.e., photograms), including the most famous photograph ever sold at auction.

• There’s a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in DC: Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985. Open now and runs through January 11.

• Sydney's Head On Photo Festival 2025 is set for November 7 to 30.

• An exhibition of Dennis Morris's work with Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, and others is on at The Photographers' Gallery in London through the end of September. A sizeable selection of images from it are available online at the link.

In Case You Missed It

Recently Posted

• I’ve posted some photos taken with the Nikon Z 14-24mm f2.8. For me, it's a big improvement over the AF-S version (which was already an excellent lens). And it’s just fun to shoot with!

• I reviewed the Viltrox AF 24mm f1.8 Z. It’s a competent, workmanlike wide prime lens. But factor the price in, and it becomes a very attractive lens.

• To go along with that review, I posted a larger collection of Viltrox AF 24mm f1.8 Z sample images.

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Photography Deals Worth a Look

• 20% OFF all DxO software. Use code: LABOURDAY20. Runs 8/30 to 9/5. I’m a long-time user and fan of Nik Collection and DxO PureRAW—they’re well worth checking out, and both have free trials.

• 15% OFF photography magazines at Magazines Direct. Use code AUG15. Ends 9/1. They have general photography magazines but also some interesting specialized ones like urban photography, black and white, and specific camera brands.

  

News // Camera Gear

• New Ricoh GR IV. I can’t wait for this one. There aren’t a lot of camera releases I get genuinely excited about, but this is one of them. It’s a hefty price increase over the previous model, but I just love this series and still use my GR III and GR II regularly. [B&H Photo | Adorama]

• Camera gear prices have been going up in response to tariffs, sometimes by quite a lot. [The Verge]

• New Nikon Z8 firmware. Nikon issued a major firmware update (3.0) for the Nikon Z8 recently. And it had a lot of updates. But it has also caused some compatibility issues, especially with third-party lenses. To their credit, the fix was quick, and they've since released v3.01 with a single fix: "Fixed an issue that prevented the camera from operating properly with some lenses." Reassuring that they weren't declaring war on third-party lenses . . .

• Canon has filed a patent that might make those heavy tripods a thing of the past. They've come up with a way to emulate the look of a long exposure by bracketing slow shutters and merging the results back together. More explanation of how it works here.

• Yes, mirrorless cameras are taking over. You’re not imagining it. CIPA (a Japan-based industry group that publishes standardized camera and lens shipment data) has released their latest data up through the end of June. As of June 2025, mirrorless cameras make up about 93% of all interchangeable-lens camera shipments, leaving DSLRs with just 7%. Year over year, mirrorless units are up 23%, while DSLR shipments dropped nearly 42%. Overall, digital still camera shipments rose 19% from the same time last year. [CIPA]

• And speaking of . . . Nikon has added more of their F-mount DSLR lenses to their discontinued list. [Nikon Rumors]

  

News // Other Photography Stuff

• Adobe's Project Indigo sounds promising for putting the "camera" back into the phone camera. For now, the beta sounds buggy, but I'm intrigued. [The Verge]

• Photo Mechanic now has custom keyboard shortcuts. For now, it’s only available on the Mac version. This feels long overdue for an app that is so laser-focused on workflow speed. [Photo Mechanic]

• The new Jurassic World Rebirth movie was shot on Kodak film stock. Except maybe the dinosaurs . . . [Kodak via YouTube]

• GoPro is going after Insta360 alleging infringements of their intellectual property covering their action cameras. They've just won the first round. [GoPro]

• Photo agencies are boycotting the Oasis reunion tour over photo rights restrictions. The band’s management has told photo agencies and publishers that they own the rights to shots taken at the concerts for just a year, and then they will lose ownership of the images for any future use. [The Guardian]

• The latest National Geographic has a fascinating story about their archival process of caring for autochromes, the earliest color photographs before the debut of Kodachrome in 1935. They're decaying but also still developing. [National Geographic]

• Japan and Germany are obviously famous for their vintage cameras. And for good reason. I'd never really encountered British-made cameras, but recently stumbled across this fascinating website. [Early Photography]

Photographers at Work

• Two Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery shows examine how early photography built a nation. Mathew Brady, known as the father of photojournalism for his documentation of the Civil War, also won acclaim for nuanced portraits of famous figures. [Washington Post]

• Some wonderful images by Noemi Cassanelli on the last gasp of Hong Kong's artisans making hand-carved mahjong pieces. And some amazing images on her Instagram.

• Little Sydney Lives photography competition for budding shutterbugs aged 5 to 12. You can see the finalists here. If you're in Sydney, you can see the exhibition in person in Customs House through June 2026.

• Some wonderful pictures of this year's Tour de France collected at The Athletic. [NY Times]

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Photography Gear

• New lens reviews. I've posted some new reviews and sample images recently:

  • Laowa 10mm ƒ/2.8 AF Z Review

  • Laowa 10mm ƒ/2.8 AF Z Sample Images

  • Viltrox 16mm ƒ/1.8 AF Z Review

  • Viltrox 16mm ƒ/1.8 AF Z Sample Images

  • Viltrox 50mm ƒ/1.8 AF Z Review

• Ricoh GR IV is finally (!!) coming. There have been rumors of a new Ricoh GR IV for years. Literally. The GR III was released in 2019, and the GR IIIx was less an upgrade than just a different lens. It seems that it’s finally happening this fall. As much as I love my GR III, a new sensor is long overdue, and I’ll be right at the front of the queue for it.

• Nikon Z8 firmware update. Nikon has released a major firmware update for the Z8. It’s a very long list of updates and improvements.

• OM System OM-5 II. OM System (used to be Olympus) has launched an updated version of the OM-5. The original was good; this refines the concept. OM System pitches their OM range as "adventure-ready," focusing on compact mirrorless bodies that are weather-proofed and utilize a Micro Four Thirds sensor, along with a solid range of high-quality lenses. The original OM-5 was a hit; I expect this one to be as well. Priced at $1199 for body only; also available bundled with 12-45mm ƒ/4 or 14-150mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 lenses.

• Sigma 17-40mm f/1.8 DC. Sigma has launched another new fast zoom. It's for APS-C sensors, and so far there are versions for Canon RF, Sony E, Fujifilm X, and Leica L mounts (no Nikon (yet!)).

• Fujifilm is moving production of some of its most popular cameras from China to Japan to mitigate the effects of tariffs on the US market.

• Laowa 8-15mm ƒ/2.8. Laowa has released a new fisheye zoom for Nikon Z (also other mounts). Manual focus. Priced at $699. You bet it’s on my to-do list to try out. [Nikon Z Full-Frame Lens Options]

• Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4. Viltrox has released a new fast portrait prime in their Pro series for Sony E-mount full-frame. Their Pro lenses have higher-quality optics but also manage to keep their prices very affordable (at least compared to the big-name manufacturers) at $598.

Hot Take Mini Reviews

• Viltrox 16mm f1.8. I've had a lot of fun shooting with this lens. Very wide, and fast. And optics are great. Just a fun lens to use. [More]

• Plustek OpticFilm 8200i film scanner. I’m in the middle of a long-term project of finally (!) scanning my many thousands of negs and slides to free up some space. Now that I’ve done the strips, I’m moving on to the mounted slides. And for that, after using a bunch of different film scanners over the years, I’ve settled on this scanner. There’s no automatic feeder for it, so the process is slow and tedious, but the quality results are very good, and it doesn’t jam up like some other scanners I know!

• Viltrox 50mm ƒ/1.8. Can’t recommend this one. The autofocus is painfully slow, and the AF disengages completely every time the camera (Nikon Z8) goes into sleep mode.

Other Stuff

• Flash sync at 1/80,000 sec. Profoto and Sony have been working together to build compatibility with global shutters, such as those used in the Sony a8 III. The practical outcome is that TLL flash synchronization is now possible up to an astonishing 1/80,000 of a second. Yes, you read that right—not a measly 1/8,000 like current flashes. That means none of the downsides of high-speed sync. [Profoto]

• Updated Getty Images AI guidelines. With pretty much every image editing app now having some form of AI tool for retouching photos, Getty Images has updated their guidelines for retouching and modifications to stock images to make it clearer when and how it's acceptable (and when it's not) to use the new AI retouching tools in image editors. I particularly recommend their visual examples, which are really helpful (you might need to log in to see them). And their guidelines seem reasonable and sensible to me. And they're actually a little looser than I would have expected in terms of removing distracting elements, IP, and people (but this is for stock imagery, not photojournalism). [Getty Images]

• We're going to need a bigger screen. "Earth's Largest Camera Takes 3 Billion-Pixel Images of the Night Sky" [NY Times]

• The film stocks you can currently get. If you shoot with film or want to get back to it/into it, The Darkroom lab has an excellent guide to the various film stocks that are currently available. Includes color negative, B&W, and E6 positive (slide). [The Darkroom]

• Real photos vs generative AI. Columbia Journalism Review has launched a slick initiative to help human readers separate real photos from AI. One of the statistics they cite from a study published last year: 76% of US consumers are unable to spot AI-generated images. That’s only going higher.

• Adobe Creative Cloud prices are going up. Adobe is increasing its Creative Cloud prices to ram more AI down our throats support more AI features. [Ars Technica]

• Humans to the back of the line. Swarms of AI bots seeking training data are knocking libraries, archives, and museums offline. [404 Media / Washington Post]

• Kodak is cool again! [NY Times]

Photos & Photographers

• Some fun photographs by Derek Ridgers of Cannes back in the days before camera phones. But still lots of paparazzi. They've been put together in his new photo book. [CNN]

• The new edition of Black & White magazine is out, and it's a bumper issue of 2025 contest winners. It's packed with beautiful monochrome shots. [Black & White]

• Some interesting photography from Emirati photographer Hussain AlMoosawi playing with the striking geometric patterns of architecture in the United Arab Emirates. [CNN]

Gear & Stuff

• Price increases on camera gear are coming. Canon has confirmed that price increases on camera gear are coming. And if you have gear on backorder, you might never get it--they might ship it to other regions that don't have tariffs. Sigma America has also confirmed that price increases will be effective on June 2. There are also rumors of price increases coming in June from other camera manufacturers like Nikon. [Canon / Sigma]

• Fujifilm is suspending shipping some cameras to the US until they work out what's going on with tariffs and trade instability. It affects cameras like the Fujifilm X100VI and the new GFX100RF. [PetaPixel]

• Viltrox is a Chinese third-party manufacturer of lenses that has caught my eye recently. There are several competitors making inexpensive lenses, but most of them are still focusing on manual-focus lenses for their mirrorless offerings. Viltrox is prioritizing autofocus lenses. I've been testing out the Viltrox AF 25 f1.7 Z recently and have posted [my hands-on review] and some [sample images].

• TTArtisan has announced a new 35mm ƒ/1.4 Tilt lens (APS-C / manual focus). Versions for Nikon Z, Sony E, Canon RF, Fuji X, and M43 mounts. Priced at $169.

• Insta360 has released a new 360-degree camera: the X5. It shoots 8K video, but what I'm most interested in is using it for unconventional stills photography, and at 72MP images, this has a slightly higher resolution than the Ricoh Theta X. Insta360 has a very polished video showcasing it. [YouTube]

• Sony has announced a new fast high-end zoom for E-mount, the FE 50-150mm ƒ/2 GM. It looks impressive.

• Canon has increasingly been using robots to build their cameras and lenses. From their 2024 annual report: " Following toner cartridges, we have rolled out automated production lines for cameras and interchangeable lenses to further enhance productivity." [Canon Addict]

• Canon seems to be working on an ultra-fast wide-angle lens that's also small and light: an RF 24mm ƒ/ 0.7. Who knows whether it will ever make it into stores, though. [Canon Rumors]

• We're learning more and more about the ways that the information we take for granted on the internet isn't actually forever. Now, a company is taking that to an extreme with PrepperDisk, a combination local archive, wifi hub, and backup device for when the internet is switched off or deleted. [404 Media]

• GoPro’s camera sales are down, and they’re still losing money, but they’re leaning harder into subscriptions and updating their gear and apps. It’s a rough patch, but they’re working on a comeback with new features and lower costs. The past few models they’ve released have been mostly incremental upgrades, and it seems like they really need a new idea to catch fire. [GoPro]

• The new Panasonic LUMIX S1II has a 24.1MP partially-stacked CMOS sensor supporting both photography and video. It records 5.1K 60p, C4K/4K 120p video, and offers burst shooting up to 70 fps with AI-based autofocus. It also has 8-stop image stabilization, which is impressive. The more affordable S1IIe model maintains core features but with reduced burst rates (30 fps). [B&H Photo has a good overview]

Pulitzer Prizes for Photography

Congratulations to NY Times photographer Doug Mills, who won for Breaking News Photography. You can see the series of photos highlighted by the committee here.

And also to New Yorker contributor Moises Saman won for Feature Photography “For his haunting black and white images of Sednaya prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad’s torture chambers.” You can see the series of photos here.

Photographers at Work

• Some stunning photos from space from astronaut/photographer Don Pettit. [NY Times]

• While it’s a discouraging story of Australia’s ancient Ningaloo Reef being threatened by warming seas, it’s also accompanied by some wonderful photos by Nush Freedman. [CNN]

• It’s a hard shoot to make much of—Uber drivers waiting around for hours in an airport parking lot—but Mark Abramson made lemonade and pulled it off. Some great shots. [NY Times]

Other Stuff

• There's a new documentary on Edwin Land, who invented the Polaroid camera and gave us the idea that cameras could be small and portable and carried anywhere. Titled Mr. Polaroid; airs May 19 on PBS. Here's the trailer.

• With Vietnam War anniversaries upon us, the NY Times has an excellent piece on how photojournalism impacted the public's undertanding of the war. Includes many of the iconic images of the war, and more. [NY Times]

• And, speaking of . . . A recent documentary called The Stringer disputed who took the famous "Napalm Girl" photo during the Vietnam War, saying that credit shouldn't go to AP photographer Nick Ut but to local stringer Nguyen Than Nghe. After a year-long investigation and 97-page report, the AP says it's sticking with its original credit. It's not exactly a full-throated endorsement, though. Negatives have been lost, and many key witnesses are dead. "However, the detailed analysis by the AP investigators, interviews with the remaining witnesses, and the written historic accounts by the key witnesses who have died, all compel the AP conclusion that there is no basis to disturb Nick Ut’s credit for the famous picture." Interestingly, they also concluded after forensic examination that it was probably shot with a Pentax (or maybe a Nikon), not the Leica M3 it was long believed to be taken with. [Washington Post]

• The head of the US Copyright Office was fired two days after the office had released a pre-publication version of its opinion that training AI systems on copyrighted data might not, in fact, be fair use. [Ars Technica]

• It turns out that the more sophisticated AI large language models get, the more they're hallucinating. And there's currently no solution. [NY Times]

• Want to discourage AI from training on your images? There's a PLUS "Data Mining" field available in IPTC. The catch is that it only works if the AI companies actually respect it (given how many ignore robots.txt, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath). [Photo Mechanic]

• If you have a WordPress site where you share images, there's a new image optimization and compression (and WebP conversion) plugin worth a look: Squeeze. It has a lot of competition, but this one does things in some really interesting new ways that have me intrigued. [Squeeze]

Firmware Updates

• Leica has rolled out a slew of firmware updates for several of their models. [Digital Camera World]

• A couple of minor updates from Nikon:

  • Nikon Z 50 Firmware Version 2.60

  • Nikon Z fc Firmware Version 1.80

It’s National Photography Month!

Apparently it’s National Photography Month. Who knew? I’m not sure what practical effect that has beyond a marketing opportunity, but there you have it. Maybe you can find some good deals on photography gear and services before price increases kick in.

// Gear & Stuff

• DXO has released PureRAW 5. It's a big upgrade. The most important to me: *much* faster processing, a newer and better processing engine that gives better results, and a new engine for processing RAW images shot with a Fujifilm X-series camera. [DXO]

• There are more Nikon Z-mount lenses than I realized. As I've been gradually replacing my Nikon F-mount lenses with Z-mount versions, I've been surprised at how many options there are already. So I decided to put together a master list, as much for my own reference as anything. [Have Camera Will Travel]

• Fujifilm has launched the new medium-format street shooter. The Fujifilm GFX100RF looks interesting, but I already have the X100VI, which has lower resolution but also some higher specs. Frankly, I'd be more interested in a new X-Pro4.

• Will camera gear prices go up? While I have no inside answer on that, I do often get advance notice of upcoming sales and rebates on camera gear. I've started to see some big promotions pulled recently from major brands. No reason provided, but it's hard not to connect the dots to uncertainty about tariffs.

  

// Other Stuff

• The Sony World Photography Awards is reliably one of the most impressive competitions out there. The 2025 round is now showing in London. If you’re in London, they’re showing at Somerset House. If you’re not, the link has several of the photos. [London Times]

• And while you’re at it, the 2024 round was also super impressive. [London Times]

• If you’re in the New York area, the Weegee: Society of the Spectacle exhibit at the International Center of Photography is due to wrap on May 5. I wrote about it a little back in March.

• I enjoyed the photos accompanying this NY Times story on the latest threat to honeybees. Photos by Times photojournalist Graham Dickie. [NY Times] / [Graham Dickie]

• The latest release of ChatGPT (o3) has some impressive image reasoning that's being used to deduce locations from visual clues in photos. Neat tech, but it gets creepier the more you think about it. [TechCrunch]

// About these photos

During DC’s cherry blossom season, I find myself down at the Tidal Basin a *lot.* Often very early in the morning, well before sunrise. And often on most mornings for several weeks.

In the previous newsletter, I included some of my more typical cherry blossom shots. But to keep it interesting, each year I try to set aside at least one morning for playtime with some colored gels. These aren’t my usual style—they’re purely for fun. But the challenge of mixing it up does keep things interesting. These are some of the results I’ve taken in recent years.

These were all taken with speedlights with colored gels. Up to six off-camera Yongnuo Speedlites, usually in three groups of two. They’re not Photoshopped—it’s just the effect of the colored gels and experimenting with the flash output levels. The richness of the colors is from backing off the flash power a bit. One of the things I like about the different colors is that it can create layers—the cherry blossoms are typically clouds of fluffy white that can all blend into itself.

And since I’m working solo and on a tight deadline, I use minimal equipment aside from the speedlights. Most of the time, the speedlights are on ground-level or very short light stands, and I’m not using modifiers.

// Firmware Updates

There has been a flurry of notable firmware updates this week, including:

• Nikon Z9 updated to 5.20

• Nikon Z50 II updated to 1.01

• Sony a7C updated to 2.01

• Sony a7 III updated to 4.02

• Sony ZV-E10 updated to 2.02

// In case you missed it

At this time of year, I spend a lot of time out shooting Washington DC’s famous cherry blossoms. It’s always a fun challenge to try to get something a little different each day, regardless of what the weather throws at you. In the next newsletter, I’ll include some more out-there shots where I’ve used colored gels on multiple speedlights to create some cherry blossom photos that are quite different, but for today’s photos, these are all from the past couple of weeks.

// Gear & Stuff

• Used camera gear specialist KEH is running a sale with 10% off overstocked gear. Use promo code OS25. But you'll have to be quick—it ends at midnight on April 9. [KEH]

• A new fast SD card that made it into the Top 10 in my speed tests. I'm most familiar with OWC (standing for Other World Computing) for their Mac flash memory and storage upgrades. But it seems they're now branching out into memory cards, including SD cards and CFExpress cards. This OWC UHS-II V90 SDXC card is quick, and its sequential write speed actually tested a good deal faster than its rated speed of 250 MB/s.

• Nikon has launched a much-upgraded Z5 II, which is basically their entry model in their full-frame lineup. It packs some serious specs, though. B&H Photo has a good rundown.

• ThinkTank Photo have launched a couple of new tactical backpacks that have caught my eye. Do I really need *another* camera bag? Probably not. But I'm particularly intrigued by the narrow DarkLight 14L because it can handle long telephotos much better than my usual Retrospective shoulder bags. There's also a 20L version, which is laid out like a more traditionally proportioned camera backpack. [B&H Photo / ThinkTank Photo]

// Hot-take mini reviews

I’m currently testing out:

• Viltrox AF 25mm ƒ/1.7 for Nikon Z. Viltrox, a Chinese manufacturer, has been making some really interesting lenses lately at extremely attractive prices. It’s definitely inexpensive, but labeling it “cheap” would be a mistake. It’s an APS-C lens, and I’ve been using the Nikon Z mount version.

  • Likes: I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the optical quality. And it’s small and compact, not far off from a classic nifty-fifty.

  • Less fussed: The autofocus is a bit slow.

• Nikon Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR. I’ve had a Sigma 150-600mm Sports lens for years, which is an F-mount lens. But I’m likely to replace it with this (some more testing to do first, though). So far, the Nikon is working great, and it’s at a very attractive price point.

  • Likes: Good optics, quick autofocus, surprisingly light, competitively priced.

  • Less fussed: Well, who wouldn’t want a faster lens if money were no object? But I’m not about to drop 15K on a super-telephoto when it’s not a core part of my paid shooting.

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// Firmware updates

• Canon has released new firmware for the EOS R5 Mark II and EOS R1. Highlights include improved focus accuracy and temperature management. [Canon]

• There's new firmware (v.2.00) for the Nikon Zf. It includes a *lot* of updates. [Nikon]

// Other stuff

• An interesting essay (both photos and words) by DC-based photographer Louie Palu on something I never knew existed: death metal Caribbean cruises. [Washington Post]

• Could this be the silver gelatin print of the future? Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic makes its case [Digital Camera World]

• Wrestling with bad AI crawler bots that won't respect robots.txt on your website? You're not alone, and there are some useful and fun ways to deal with it. [TechCrunch]

• Google has rolled out a new multimodal update for its AI search for a visual search that can interpret within images and provide information about what's in the photo. In the short term, it could be useful for image keywording. In the long term, it could make image keywording entirely obsolete. [The Verge]

Why can’t cameras keep time???

For all the wonderful things that modern cameras do, why do they all seem to have so much trouble keeping accurate time? Every time I head out for a trip, I have to manually sync my cameras because their internal clocks always seem to slip. Fifty-year-old Casio digital watches seem to be able to do a better job.

Some more cherry blossom photos . . .