Dan Havlik

Pentax’s parent company, Ricoh Imaging, has been teasing that it would be announcing a new full frame digital SLR for several months now and today that phantom camera was finally unveiled. Ricoh just introduced the long awaited Pentax K-1, which is equipped with a 36.4-megapixel full frame CMOS sensor about the size of a piece of 35mm film.

We’ve just come back from a press event today to launch the new Sony A6300. This compact mirrorless camera has a lot going for it, including a new 4D Focus system that can lock focus on a subject in as little as 0.05 seconds, which Sony claims is the world’s fastest autofocus (AF) acquisition time.

The new Canon EOS-1D X Mark II was unveiled last night and as with many pro digital SLRs aimed at sports photographers and photojournalists, the new camera has impressive speed. In particular, it can fire off bursts of images at 14 frames per second with auto exposure (AE) and predictive autofocus (AF) through the viewfinder, and 16fps with the mirror locked. (The previous model offered 12fps and 14fps burst speeds, respectively.)

Phew, what a busy month it’s been for new photo gear! While the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has not, traditionally, been a major event to debut high-end photography equipment, CES 2016 was definitely an exception with dozens of interesting imaging releases. (And hopefully this is a trend that continues at future CES events, which, in recent years have been rather ho-hum for photography gear.)