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About John Aldred

John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs people in the wild and animals in the studio. You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.

No, this is not a Canon EOS R5 mirrorless camera – It’s a robot in disguise

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The threat from the Decepticons never seems to go away – at least, it won’t if Michael Bay gets his way. In what might seem an unlikely but very welcome pairing, Canon has teamed up with Takara Tomy – the company behind the Transformers toys) to produce Canon EOS R5 mirrorless cameras that are actually Transformers. At a quick glance, these EOS R5 cameras with lenses look quite convincing but up close, it’s easy to spot their secret.

There appear to be two models of the “camera”. One is an Autobot which, naturally, turns into Optimus Prime R5 while the other turns into Decepticon Reflector R5. Obviously, these aren’t real functional cameras and they’re 80% scale compared to the real thing. They’re also not too terribly expensive if you’re a collector of these sorts of things. They’re probably not the kinds of toys you’d buy for your young child, though.

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Techart’s 2nd Gen Leica M to Sony E autofocus adapter promises faster AF performance thanks to new motors

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Techart announced its initial Leica M to Sony E mount adapter way back at the beginning of 2016. Now, almost seven years later, they’ve announced the new Techart LM-EA9, the second generation of their Leica M to Sony E autofocus adapter. It comes with a sleeker design and features four built-in small, lightweight servo motors that offer more power and faster autofocus operation than its predecessor.

This motor-driven adapter means that you can use all those old Leica M manual focus lenses on your Sony E mount cameras with full autofocus capability. And because it’s a Leica M mount, you can adapt it to pretty much any other kind of old lens mount format, such as Nikon F, M42 or Pentax K, opening up a whole world of lens options.

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Quantum Mirror lets Sony shooters send images straight from their camera to the DALL-E 2 AI

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Regular readers here at DIYP will recognise the name Nick Sherlock. More commonly known for his adventures with 3D printing, he’s turned his hand towards coding. This time, he’s produced an app for Sony mirrorless cameras called Quantum Mirror that submits the photos you shoot to the DALL-E 2 AI to generate variants of them for some interesting and sometimes surreal results.

Nick stresses that he’s not affiliated with either Sony or OpenAI and this is not an official app. In fact, it’s so unofficial that he also provided a disclaimer stating that its use will get your account banned – they considered it a “web scraping tool”, apparently. So, he says not to install it, but to check back once the beta is over and there’s a public API available. But, for now, its principle is pretty cool.

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This DJI Mavic Mini goes up against a bald-faced hornet’s nest and… well, it wins

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This probably isn’t a tutorial you’ll see on the DJI YouTube channel anytime soon and it’s almost certainly not a suggested use for the DJI Mavic Mini – or any of their other drones for that matter – but when a photographer who goes by the name Dripped found his backyard infested with a bald-faced hornet’s nest, his go-to was indeed the DJI Mavic Mini.

Well, ok, his go-to was to call around and get some quotes from local companies to have the nest removed but after receiving quotes that he says were “into the thousands”, he decided to give it a go himself. That’s where the Mavic Mini came into play. Does it really need to be said that you probably shouldn’t try this at home?

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Things are looking up for Nikon Imaging as they report a 48% increase in profit over last year

Nikon released their financial results for the first quarter of its 2023 fiscal year (FY2023) recently and it shows an increase in revenue in just about every segment of the company, including its Imaging Products Business – ie, cameras and lenses. In fact, when it comes to profit, Nikon reported a 47.8% increase over the previous Q1 period in FY2022 and overall revenue appears to almost be back to pre-pandemic levels.

In Q1 FY2020 (reported at the beginning of August 2019), its Imaging Products Business reported a revenue of 67.3 billion yen (~$500 million) and an operating profit of 3.5 billion yen (~$26 million). Last year’s report for the same period showed Nikon at 50 billion yen (~$370 million) revenue and 9.2 billion yen (~$70 million) profit. This latest report shows revenue of 61.2 billion yen (~$452 million) and profits of 13.6 billion yen (~$100 million).

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This is how you use a light meter properly – they’re really not that difficult or scary

While they were once a fixture in every studio and photographer’s gear bag, light meters seem to have fallen out of fashion ever since digital photography came along. And while it’s true that we now have a lot more options for exposing our shots, the humble light meter can still play a very valuable role in nailing the shot quickly and consistently.

The cost of messing up the exposure of a shot, twiddling some dials and shooting another isn’t as expensive as it was in the film days, light meters can still save you a lot of time and hassle. And in this great video, Daniel Norton walks us through how to use a light meter, along with some tips and tricks to make your life a little easier when using one.

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Sigma has officially announced the 20mm f/1.4 and 24mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lenses for E and L mount

Sigma has officially announced the two newest lenses in their Global Vision Lenses lineup for Sony E Mount and Leica L mount. As expected, they’re the Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG DN Art and the Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG DN Art series lenses. Both lenses are primarily aimed at astrophotographers, although the 24mm is also targeted towards general photography use.

Both lenses come with some features advantageous to astrophotographers, with the introduction of a manual focus lock and a rear filter holder as well as front filter threads. The 20mm f/1.4 DG DN also comes with a “Lens Heater Retailer” to “keep this useful astrophotography weather accessory firmly in place while in use”. The lenses were announced during today’s Sigma Stage event.

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Panasonic reported to be dumping “low end models” to target professional photographers and filmmakers

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It seems that Panasonic is dumping development of their lower-end camera systems in favour of higher-end kit for enthusiast and professional photographers and filmmakers, according to a report from Nikkei Asia. Exactly how low-end Panasonic will go is unclear, but it seems that they’ve finally admitted defeat in certain sectors of the market against the onslaught of ever-improving smartphones.

It’s not much of a surprise. Many companies have been killing off compacts for several years already, putting their efforts where things pay a little better. Only a handful still produce even high-end compacts now. And, well, it looks like Panasonic’s following suit and killing off their lower-end stuff.

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Images leak of Sigma’s upcoming 20mm f/1.4 and 24mm f/1.4 lenses ahead of today’s announcement

Images of new Sigma lenses leaking ahead of an official announcement are as inevitable as Thanos. Sigma has a new products presentation live stream planned for later today (in about 3 hours from now) where it’s expected that they’ll announce the new Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG DN Art and 24mm f/1.4 DG DN Art series lenses. The basic specs leaked last week and now we’re getting to have a look at them.

As well as the images, there are also a few new bits of information, including expected shipping dates and a Japan price for the 24mm. There’s no word yet on what they’ll cost in the rest of the world, but I’m sure that information will be coming later today during the official announcement. I’ve embedded the upcoming stream here in case you missed it.

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This 360° amphibious camera takes its optical design from the eyes of fiddler crabs

One of the big problems you encounter when moving a camera from dry land to under the water is the difference in the index of refraction (IOR). That’s the thing that often makes rivers and lakes appear much shallower than they actually are when you’re looking at them from the water’s edge. For 360° cameras, this difference in IOR can be a big problem when it comes to shifting from the air to underwater.

A team of researchers at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), the Seoul National University and The University of Texas at Austin, though, have developed a system based on one of nature’s designs. They’ve taken inspiration from the fiddler crab to develop a 360° camera system that works both in and out of the water.

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