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Maxima 7 vs Aputure 600D Pro vs Nanlite Forza 500 specs comparison

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Having been initially announced in February of last year, the Maxima 7 LED light was finally released yesterday. In the time since the Maxima 7 was first announced and now, though, the top lights in that sort of category have been the Aputure 600D Pro and the Nanlite Forza 500. So we thought we’d take a look at the specs and see how each of the three lights stack up against each other on paper.

Now, the real proof will come when the Maxima 7 starts getting into the hands of users who can actually do these side-by-side comparisons for real, but this might give you some clues as to which you might want to go for, depending on your needs.

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Mitakon has finally released the Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II for Micro Four Thirds

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Micro Four Thirds shooters have been waiting a long time for this one. This APS-C format lens was initially released way back in 2016 for Fuji X, Sony E and Canon EF-M mounts, but notably lacking was MFT. Well, that’s all changed now, as ZY Optics has launched the Mitakon 35mm f/0.95 Mark II with a Micro Four Thirds mount… In Japan.

On a Micro Four Thirds camera, the lens offers a field of view equivalent of a 70mm focal length on a full-frame body, but with a nice wide f/0.95 aperture for shooting in low light conditions and getting that shallow depth of field. It features the same construction as its APS-C brethren, with 11 elements in 8 groups and a 55mm front filter thread.

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Hollyland announces Lark 15 Solo Kit wireless lav mic for budget shooters who only need one mic

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Hollyland’s Lark 150 dual wireless microphone kit has been quite popular since its release a few months ago. The original kit contains two transmitters and a single receiver that runs on 2.4Ghz wireless frequencies. A lot of users didn’t want to have to pay for a kit containing a pair of microphones, though when they only needed one.

In response to those needs, Hollyland has now announced the Hollyland Lark 150 Solo Kit aimed towards lower budget users and vloggers. It contains just a single transmitter along with the receiver. But the transmitter is also available to buy now as a separate purchase for those who purchase the Solo Kit, but wish to upgrade to the dual kit in the future.

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Maxima 3 LED spot announced – Maxima 7 sunlight simulator LED spot finally available to buy

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This one’s taken a while. Initially announced in February 2020 to much fanfare, the Maxima 7 LED spotlight is now available to buy. And it’s brought a little one with it, the Maxima 3. All the specs of the Maxima 7 were previously released at launch, and you can see those here, so let’s talk about the new Maxima 3.

The Maxima 3 is a 300W COB LED light with a CRI of 96+ and a TLCI of 97. It’s available in two versions that are either tungsten or daylight balanced, with a COB LED life of 50,000 hours. As with the Maxima 7, the Maxima 3 LED contains a focusable 8″ Fresnel lens and accepts Bowens mount modifiers.

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Fujifilm announces the compact XF 18mm f/1.4 weather resistant lens

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Fujifilm has announced its new XF 18mm f/1.4 R WR lens for their X system APS-C mirrorless cameras. Part of Fuji’s series of compact, portable primes, the XF 18mm f/1.4 R WR offers a field of view equivalent to 27mm focal length on a full-frame body with a wide f/1.4 aperture and weighs just 370g.

Ideally suited to genres like travel, landscape, architecture and street photography, this autofocus lens should also be well at home with subjects like astrophotography thanks to its wide aperture, weather-resistant design and coatings to help control ghosting and flare.

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DJI’s Air 2S drone comes with a cool new 1-inch sensor that shoots 5.4K video

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DJI has today officially announced the new DJI Air 2S drone, rumoured only last week. And it does indeed look as that leaked teaser suggested, with an extra pair of sensors on top and a large 1-inch camera sensor. But not only does the DJI Air 2S get a sizable sensor size upgrade over the Mavic Air 2, but it also gets a resolution bump, offering video at up to 5.4K resolution.

The DJI Air 2S offers up to 31 minutes of flight time with four-way directional obstacle sensors, APAS 4.0 advanced autopilot system, and a new MasterShots feature which uses automatic flight path planning to set the drone’s course while recording video and then automatically merges it all together in a neatly edited video.

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The DigitalFoto Tree Frog is an awesome pocket LED light for small products and macro

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Over the last few years, I’ve become a big fan of small pocket-sized LED lights. They used to not be as good as they are now, offering pretty limited functionality and they just didn’t produce great colour. But LED tech has come a long way since in a few short years, leading us to where we are today with products like the Digitalfoto Tree Frog.

I have two DigitalFoto Tree Frog lights that I’ve been using to light my 3D printer for live streams and for shooting small product photos and b-roll. We’re still in lockdown here, so that’s pretty much all I can point my cameras at right now. One of Tree Frogs I have is a pre-production model and the other is a final retail version. For this review, I’m only going to focus on the retail version.

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Sony’s Xperia 1 III and 5 III smartphones sport a 70-105mm equivalent periscope zoom lens

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Sony has announced its two newest smartphones, the Xperia 1 III and the Xperia 5 III, both of which contain a triple-rear camera setup with a hybrid zoom lens offering the equivalent field of view to that of a 70-105mm focal length range on a full-frame body at its extremes. It also contains the usual standard 24mm and ultra-wide 16mm equivalent field of view cameras.

The variable focal length of the “hybrid” zoom system is thanks to a periscope system built into the camera module which physically moves the elements closer to or further away from the sensor. It seems to offer minimum and maximum focal lengths on the zoom, but nothing in between – for which it reverts to digital processes.

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Canon announces three new 100mm macro and 400mm & 600mm telephoto RF lenses

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Well, it’s just a big ol’ gear day for Canon today, huh? Along with the Canon EOS R3 development announcement, Canon has also announced three new lenses. Well, I say “new”, two of them, the RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM and RF 600mm f/4L IS USM as mentioned in the previous image leak post, just appear to be EF lenses with a built-in RF adapter.

But there does appear to be one completely new lens, which is the Canon RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM. This lens actually seems to be a completely new design, with different optics and a new Spherical Aberration Control Ring, to adjust the shape and character of foreground and background bokeh.

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DxO PureRAW cleans up noise and softness in your photos before you load them into Lightroom

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DxO has announced DxO PureRAW, their new software to… Well, I suppose “pre-process” is the best term to describe it. It pre-processes your raw files before you load them into Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, Capture One or whatever raw software you happen to use. Its goal is to help improve your starting point with increased sharpness and reduced noise.

DxO PureRAW is not a plugin. It’s a standalone application through which you run your raw files before your usual editing workflow. It claims to remove noise, chromatic aberration, vignetting, distortion and to improve sharpness and clarity using DxO’s DeepPRIME AI tech after which it exports out a set of new DNG raw files for editing.

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