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John Aldred

Senior News Editor

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Articles by John Aldred

DPReview is shutting down in three weeks

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Unless this is an April Fool joke that somebody hit publish on a little too soon, it looks like DPReview will be shutting down completely as of April 10th. An announcement published on the site today states that DPReview will be closing as part of Amazon’s annual operating plan review. According to the announcement, DPReview will remain live but read-only from April 10th for a short period of time.

The company hasn’t said how long the site will remain online in a read-only mode after user interaction is disabled, but they have said that it’ll be visible “for a limited period afterwards”. It’s a very swift ending for a website that’s been around for 25 years and become one of the largest and most respected on the Internet.

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Panasonic S1H II specs leak – 8K and phase detect AF

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A video from Ordinary Filmmaker has popped up on YouTube with information about an upcoming Panasonic camera. It’s not the S1 II announcement that many of us were perhaps expecting but an update to Panasonic’s video-centric camera, the S1H. Yes, that’s right, it seems the next camera on Panasonic’s list will be the S1H II. Normally, such videos don’t get much attention from us, but he has been right before.

Amongst the highlights of the leak are a 50-megapixel(ish) resolution sensor capable of shooting 8K video at up to 60 frames per second and 8K and 6K ProRes RAW. Of course, the headline feature is Panasonic’s new phase-detect autofocus system, first introduced on the S5 II. And yes, that’s coming to the S1H II as well.

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Canon EOS R5 Transformers now available outside of Japan

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In August of last year, Takara Tomy and Canon teased something new. Two Canon EOS R5 “cameras” that transform into either an Autobot or a Decepticon transformer. At the time, it seemed that the items would only be being released in Japan, but now, it looks like they’re hitting a wider release. They’ve also added a third Canon Transformer to the collection, too!

Joining Optimus Prime and Refraktor is Nemesis Prime. This one also transforms into a Canon EOS R5, making the set of three look pretty much identical when they’re “in disguise”. But when they transform into robots, the three look quite distinct with their unique colouring.

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Sony almost joined team Micro Four Thirds in 2008

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A recent interview published in Nikkei Business with Sony Vice Chairman Shigeki Ishizuka reveals that Sony once considered joining the Micro Four Thirds camera system. Back in 2007, three years before the Sony E mount was first released in the Sony NEX-3, he says Sony was invited to team up with the pair and join the MFT system.

Back then, the Micro Four Thirds System Standard Group was headed up by Panasonic and Olympus (now OM System). Since that time,  they’ve also added Yongnuo, Venus Optics (Laowa) and DJI, amongst others. It sure makes you wonder how the camera landscape would look today had Sony decided to take the plunge.

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Photographer’s Block? Here’s how to get out of a creative rut

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This is an interesting video from photographer Rick Bebbington discussing a topic that can hit all of us. Not just photographers but all creatives. Creative Block (or Photographer’s block, if you prefer). A mental block that’s stopping you from being as creative as you’d like, preventing you from pursuing those projects or even coming up with ideas for them in the first place.

Rick covers a number of topics and describes five ways that help him get over a creative block and refind his passion and creativity again. What makes the video most interesting to me is that all of this is advice I’ve seen coming from social media groups, online forums before those, and even face-to-face with other photographers. I don’t necessarily agree with them all.

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Three new full-frame and APS-C Sigma lenses coming soon

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Lens manufacturer Sigma is expected to announce three upcoming mirrorless lenses in their Contemporary range in the coming weeks. All three of the lenses are designated “DN”, which means they’re designed for mirrorless, but only two of them are also designated “DG”, denoting full-frame. The third is a “DC” lens destined for APS-C sensors.

The full-frame lenses are a wide angle 17mm f/4 DG DN Contemporary and a fairly standard 50mm f/2 DG DN Contemporary. While specs have only been leaked relating to the Sony E Mount version, I think it’s a safe bet to say they’ll be coming on L mount, too. The third is a 23mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary, offering a similar field of view go 35mm on full frame for Sony L, Leica L and Fuji X mount cameras.

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Slowing down everyday activities to make one second last for one hour

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The Slow Mo Guys are back again, slowing down time. This time, it’s part 2 of something the boys did in 2021. Shooting at 90,000 frames per second and playing back at 25fps, they’re able to slow down time to 1/3,600th of its regular speed. This means that one second of real-time is able to be slowed down to precisely one hour. This presents a very unique view of the world around us and the events that happen in it.

Obviously, this concept proved popular last time they did it, so they’ve done it again. Slowing incredibly fast events down by 3600 times makes it very easy to see exactly what’s happening. Sure, 90,000fps isn’t quite fast enough to capture things like electricity arcing from a Tesla coil, but it’s still pretty fast and shows some everyday events in a whole new light.

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This unique camera gives a clay pigeon’s view of the world – until it’s blasted out of the sky

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This definitely ranks highly amongst the oddest camera mounting jobs I’ve ever seen. This one-time-use camera rig from Thomas Renck mounts to the top of a clay pigeon. Yes, those things. Then it’s fired out of the trap to be brought back down to earth by a shotgun. If you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky – depending on your perspective – it might just be brought back down by simple gravity. At least the camera would survive.

It’s an odd experiment, for sure, but it allowed Thomas to get some pretty unique and interesting footage. The footage isn’t of amazing quality, though, because it was built around a $28 keyring camera, with a 3D printed spinning mount. Actually, the mount’s quite ingenious, keeping the camera pointed in a single direction while the clay spins through the air.

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The Mitakon Speedmaster 65mm f/1.4 is the fastest lens available for Hasselblad XCD

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ZY Optics has announced that its Mitakon Speedmaster 65mm f/1.4, initially released for Fujifilm GFX cameras, is now available in Hasselblad X flavour. This makes the manual focus lens the fastest lens available for the Hasselblad X system. It has an aperture range from a bright f/1.4, stopping down to f/16, with a field of view on Hasselblad X cameras similar to that of a 50mm lens on full-frame cameras.

Being such a wide aperture lens and taking advantage of a medium format sensor, its relative depth of field is also shallower than it would be at f/1.4 on full-frame for the same field of view. Its diaphragm contains nine aperture blades for what ZY Optics describes as “outstanding bokeh” and they say it produces no vignetting at all, with consistent sharpness from edge to edge.

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Humane is a mysterious wearable AI camera startup that’s raised $230M

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A company by the name of Humane, founded by husband and wife team Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, both former Apple executives, has raised $230,000,000. This figure is after the Series C round of fundraising that added $100m to its existing kitty. It’s a somewhat secretive company but their goal seems to be to bring to market wearable AI cameras. But beyond that, there aren’t really many details, save for a few blurry screenshots.

What is clear is that Humane has teamed up with Microsoft and OpenAI to leverage human AI experiences at a large scale. The company says they are also working with LG to develop potential R&D projects for future Humane products and their core technology. Exactly what it will offer, though, is still pretty unclear. Both figuratively and literally, from looking at the screenshots.

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