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.

Canon’s AI-powered “PowerShot PICK” expected to launch on January 29th, but only in Japan

January 25, 2021 by John Aldred 1 Comment

According to DC Watch, Canon Marketing Japan Inc. is expected to officially announce and start pre-orders for the upcoming PowerShot PICK (that’s the name of their AI-powered camera, apparently) at 12 noon on January 29th – But only for those in Japan. It’s being launched on the Japanese crowdfunding platform, Makuake, so those of us outside of Japan are still going to have a bit of a wait on our hands.

The camera is based on a prototype we saw in person as a concept camera at The Photography Show in 2018. Even back then, it was a neat little camera with some impressive features. Judging from the current leaked photos, it appears to have had something of a slight redesign since then, and it looks like it’ll be available in either black or white.

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Pergear’s APS-C 10mm f/8 Fisheye lens is basically an $80 lens cap you can shoot photos with

January 25, 2021 by John Aldred 2 Comments

Pergear has launched their new 10mm f/8 fisheye pancake lens. It’s available in an array of APS-C mounts including Fuji X, Sony E and Nikon Z as well as Micro Four Thirds. It has a fixed f/8 aperture as well as a focus with a range of only 30cm up to infinity. It’s a tiny lens measuring a mere 55mm x 10mm, weighing only 80g and it’s designed specifically for mirrorless cameras.

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Tearing down the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.7-7.1L IS USM reveals a very complex design

January 22, 2021 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

This is probably one of the most in-depth lens teardowns I’ve seen from Lensrentals. Their efforts weren’t by choice, though. The lens lied to them. The team recently posted a teardown of the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM lens that had a broken element inside it. It appeared as though the element might reside inside the stabilization system, which is relatively easy to remove.

It turned out, though, that the IS system of the lens was simply masking the true location of the broken element. This resulted in the need to pretty much completely dismantle the entire lens, down to almost its core constituent parts, in order to track down exactly where in the optical makeup it was.

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Images of Fuji’s new GF80mm, XF27mm and XF70-300mm lenses leak ahead of official announcement

January 22, 2021 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Fujifilm has announced that their upcoming Fujifilm X Summit is happening on January 27th at 1pm GMT. At the X Summit, Fuji is expected to announce their new 102-megapixel Fujifilm GFX100S camera, along with three new lenses; the GF80mm, XF70mm and XF70-300mm.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of info leaked about any of the upcoming announcements yet, and while I haven’t seen any real photos of the camera leaked, Nokishita has leaked images of the three impending lenses.

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Check out these unique camera angle ideas to step up your composition

January 22, 2021 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

Composition is a wonderful thing. There are so many ways to compose your shot effectively, and there are all kinds of “rules” out there as to what makes for a good or bad composition. Often you get people spouting off these rules as “the only way to compose a shot!” but they are of course, speaking complete nonsense. There are many ways to frame a shot depending on the story you want to tell, whether it’s with stills or video.

Zach Ramelan leans more towards the video side of composition in this one, offering up a number of unique camera angles, compositions and techniques that aren’t very common. At least, not effectively. But they can be very effective and a great way to tell a story and provide extra narrative and subtext to the shot.

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Aputure has finally released their Light Storm LS60D and LS60X LED lights

January 21, 2021 by John Aldred 1 Comment

First announced in May last year, the Aputure Light Storm LS60D and LS60X LED lights are now officially here. Available in both daylight (LS60D) and bicolour (LS60X) variants, the new lights offer an adjustable beam angle, weatherproofing. Both lights also offer a multitude of power options from the supplied AC adapter or through the use of a weatherproof DC input.

It’s taken a little longer than expected for Aputure to bring these to market, having initially expected them to come in Summer 2020, but they look like a pretty exciting addition to the Light Storm product lineup.

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Sony’s announcing… something on January 26th

January 21, 2021 by John Aldred 1 Comment

Sony is, apparently, announcing something on January 26th, according to a video placeholder that’s popped up on the Sony Camera YouTube channel that’s set to premiere at 3pm UK time (10am Eastern, 7am Pacific) on January 26th.

There are no clues as to what it is, except for the fact that it’s on Sony’s camera channel and there’s a big Alpha logo on the thumbnail. So, we at least know they’re not attempting to bring back the Walkman. But what it could be? Who knows. Maybe it’s just another lens. Perhaps it’s a camera. Could we be on the brink of the Sony A7 IV?

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Canon’s cute little AI-powered PowerShot camera is coming soon

January 21, 2021 by John Aldred 2 Comments

I’m not the type of person to sit on the edge of my seat waiting for companies to announce new things all that often, but this one has got me a little bit excited. Cast your mind back to 2018. Canon was at The Photography Show showing off some cool new concept camera prototypes. One of them was a little AI-powered camera that would track and follow its target.

Now, according to Canon Rumors, that camera is actually going to be hitting the market real soon. It’s essentially an automated camera that responds to voice commands and features automatic subject recognition and tracking to let it keep up with its moving subject.

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Check out these eight 3D printed photo & video tools designed to make your life a little easier

January 21, 2021 by John Aldred 6 Comments

I put off getting a 3D printer for the longest time. I didn’t want to get one just for the sake of having a new toy that I’d get bored with, so I held off getting one until I felt I had a genuine need for one. Now, I have five – the most recent of which are the Snapmaker 2.0 A350 and its predecessor, the Snapmaker Original, and I find them absolutely invaluable.

I’ve been using them recently to print a bunch of tools and accessories to help me with my photography and filmmaking. Some of them are workflow and organisation accessories while others are actual tools used to create content. So, here, I’m going to talk about some of the most useful things I’ve printed lately.

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Irix’s 45mm f/1.4 is now the world’s fastest medium format Fujifilm GFX lens

January 21, 2021 by John Aldred 2 Comments

Well, that was a surprise. We knew Irix had a fast medium format lens on the way because they released a teaser a couple of days ago. But it turned out to be faster than the teaser suggested – only hinting at an aperture of at least f/2.8. We thought it was going to be something new and shiny, but it seems that all they’ve done is stick a GFX mount on their existing 45mm f/1.4.

This isn’t a bad thing, however, as it’s still the fastest aperture native mount lens available for the Fujifilm GFX system. Although it does raise some questions. Like, if the 45mm f/1.4 had such a large image projection circle, how come the original version for DSLRs couldn’t offer any kind of tilt-shift capability? And isn’t it cheaper to just get a DSLR version and a lens adapter for GFX?

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