DSLR News

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

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) member magazines recently convened for their General Assembly to vote for the best photo and imaging products launched by the industry in the last 12 months. The voting took place during the General Assembly that was held in spring, 2014, in Vancouver, Canada.

The Nikon D810 has been on sale for less than a month but the company has already issued a product advisory on the 36.3MP, full-frame digital SLR.

Starting with the 2014 CES trade show, held at the turn of the year, and continuing through press time for this issue, we’ve seen a goodly number of new products come to the fore. All this is only the start—this being a photokina year we’ll see a whole new round of products, including CMOS-sensor medium formats, with prices to match, coming our way. I trust that this report will give you a good sense of what’s here and what’s coming down the pike. So, here are my quick picks of those products that caught my eye, plus a snapshot of some of the trends.

Instead of trying to be just another me-too camera, the K-30 from Pentax Imaging is trying to be different, and that’s a good thing. First, there was the introduction of the K-01 mirrorless camera and now there’s the K-30 SLR, for when the going gets wet and not-so-wild. The rugged Pentax K-30 is designed for photographers who enjoy outdoor lifestyles and combines a weather- and dust-resistant compact body, HD video recording capabilities, and a glass prism optical finder with a 100 percent field of view, something most welcome in the small SLR category. To keep itself high and dry, the camera has 81 seals and is built to be cold resistant and function in temperatures as low as 14˚F, which is a number not all that uncommon here on Daisy Hill, Colorado, in the winter.

Just when you thought the megapixel wars were over—or at least subsided—along comes the Nikon D800 with a whopping 36.3-megapixel (7360x4912) full-frame CMOS sensor. It’s wrapped up in a pro-quality magnesium alloy body that’s sealed and gasketed for dirt and moisture resistance. That rugged body weighs almost 2 lbs and when attached to the 24-120mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S VR II Nikkor lens (23.6 oz) that I tested, the package tips the scales at 3.46 lbs. It’s big.

Recent years have seen staggering innovations in cameras, most notably involving ISO speed, sensor size in compacts, and video capabilities. Despite these advances, however, one thing has divided the industry for more than 10 years but has rarely been talked about—that is, until recently—optical low-pass filters. Many cameras include them, but some do not. There are believers in both camps but the only thing that’s clear is that the issue is far from decided.