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Canon’s new G9 X Mark II 8.2fps RAW burst mode, dual lens and sensor stabilisation

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Canon have updated their popular G9X compact camera with a couple of new additions. While it remains largely unchanged from its Mark I predecessor, it does feature a couple of pretty significant changes. The two biggest two being the massive speed increase from a 1fps Raw “burst” to 8.2fps as well as a new dual IS system utilising both the sensor and lens.

Although compact cameras seem to be slowly dying off due to the advancements of cameras in smartphones, it isn’t stopping some companies. Some people just prefer the versatility of a zoom lens and better ergonomics. The G9X Mark II is also the first Canon PowerShot to feature Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi and NFC, as well as improved AF tracking.

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Panasonic’s new Lumix GH5 shoots 4K@60fps without cropping and 4:2:2 10Bit footage

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This is the one that many Panasonic video shooters have been waiting for. And it seems to have many of the features they’ve been asking for, too. The Panasonic GH5 has a new 20.3MP sensor with no low-pass filter, new processor, dual SD card slots, and in-body stabilisation. It boasts the highest ISO capabilities of any Lumix camera, for outstanding low light shots. It also has a new 225 point AF system, up from the GH4’s 49 point AF, which can track moving subjects for both stills and video.

Previous big announcements with this camera included a couple of major attractions for video shoots. One was that it would shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second, and the other was that it would shoot 4:2:2 10Bit footage. It is capable of these, but not at all framerates. At 60fps, 4K video is 4:2:0 at 150mbps. At 30fps, it will shoot 4:2:2 10Bit at 150mbps. It can, however, do 4:2:2 4K 60fps over the HDMI. In the future, however, a firmware is planned to allow 4:2:2 10Bit with 4K at up to 400mbps recorded internally to SD.

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Nikon finally launches the D5600 in the USA along with a couple of compacts

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Nikon’s D5600 entry level DSLR has been available in some parts of the world for a couple of months now. At first it wasn’t looking like it was going to be released in the USA at all. Today, however, Nikon have officially announced the Nikon D5600 in the USA. It’s a minor update to the D5500, but it offers potentially significant workflow differences, depending on what and how you shoot.

The first is the addition of BlueTooth, which brings the Nikon D5x00 product range in line with the new SnapSeed protocol. For timelapse shooters, you now have the ability to convert your stills sequence straight to video instead of keeping individual files. Handy if you’re more worried about storage space than quality. Finally, you can now scrub through your images in playback mode using the touchscreen LCD.

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This action camera is the first to feature FLIR thermal imaging

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It’s getting pretty hard to innovate with action cameras these days. They pretty much already have all the features most users could ever need now. The only real way to go up now is to improve the quality. Better picture, better dynamic range, better sound, less compression, and so on. The folks at FLIR, though, have very different ideas.

They’ve just announced the new FLIR Duo, FLIR’s entry into the action camera world. What’s so special about it? Well, as well as having a regular 1080p video sensor, it also contains a Lepton thermal imaging sensor. That’s right, this little action camera can see heat. Your drone can now literally become the Predator, and it even has video output for streaming with FPV systems.

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Putting a night vision lens on your camera won’t help it see in the dark but it does look pretty cool

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I’m a huge fan of old and weird lenses. They have unique qualities to them that can be difficult or impossible to achieve in post. So, when I see new a new video from Mathieu Stern, it always piques my interest. His latest video shows off a very strange lens. Designed for military and police night vision systems, this rare C Mount 75mm f/1.3 manual focus AstroScope lens produces some pretty wild results.

Lenses for night vision cameras aren’t exactly optimised for the visible colour spectrum, so they have some very crazy aberration and colour distortion. The sensors used in night vision cameras are also generally quite a bit smaller than those found in APS-C or full frame cameras. This means there’s also a fair bit of vignetting. But the results have a strange dreamlike quality to them that I think is very cool.

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This free plugin shows the active focus point for your photographs in Lightroom

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One of the few advantages to using your camera manufacturer’s software is that they often show which autofocus point was being used when the shot was taken. There is already a plugin which adds this capability to Lightroom, but it hasn’t been updated since 2014. So, much of the today’s camera lineup is not supported.

With the author MIA, frustrated Redditor Joshua Musselwhite (AKA Whizzle) decided to write his own from scratch. As an underwater photographer, it was valuable information for him to have. So, he felt something needed to be done to support newer bodies. Joshua’s plugin is completely free, and at the moment it supports the Nikon D7200 and D800. He’s made the entire thing open source on GitHub, though. So, anybody can add new cameras as they wish.

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Photojournalist rescues driver from burning SUV caught on camera

Photojournalists are used to seeing some pretty intense scenes in the course of their work. It’s not often that they choose to become part of them, though. Cameraman and owner of RMG News, Austin Raishbrook made that choice when he put down his camera to rescue a trapped and unconscious driver from a burning vehicle.

CBS reports that Raishbrook was filming n SUV that had stalled on the outside lane of a northbound California freeway. The SUV’s lights had failed after two vehicles made glancing blows as they went past, but then a third slammed into it. This caused it spin and burst into flames. Raishbrook immediately “switched over from cameraman to rescuer”.

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Get amazing outdoor location portraits by mixing ambient light with your flash

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A common mistake made when learning to shoot flash outdoors is to try and crush every bit of ambient light you can. Many photographers think it’s either one or the other. Daylight or flash. But mixing the two and getting the best of both worlds often produces the most spectacular results. It’s also less stress in your batteries.

Photographer Francisco Hernandez visits this topic in his newest video. He takes advantage of the TTL capabilities of his Flashpoint/Godox flashes for his demonstration, but the same effect can easily be achieved with manual flash units. You may need something that supports high speed sync, though, depending on the ambient light levels and your aperture.

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These images may look like CG renders, but they’re actually photographs

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In a world where many CG artists are aiming for photorealism, one very skilled photographer seems to be going the opposite way. These images look like something straight out of 3DS Max or Blender. They’re not, though. They’re actually very carefully designed photographs, created by Norwegian design duo Lars Marcus Vedeler and Theo Zamudio-Tveterås at their studio, Skrekkøgle.

Looking at the final work is pretty surreal, and if nobody ever told you that they weren’t CG renders, you’d never be able to tell. In a way, it kind of makes you redefine “photorealism”. I mean, these are photos, so if your renders look like this, they’re photorealistic now, right?

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French woman attacked by crocodile in Thailand while posing with it for a photo

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It seems that “Selfie Stupidity” isn’t going to stop any time soon. In this latest act of idiocy, French woman Muriel Benetulier was attacked by a crocodile in the Khao Yai National Park while posing for a photo with it. Bangkok Post reports that according to Khao Yai park rangers, the attack occurred on Sunday afternoon. Mrs Benetulier and her husband spotted a crocodile around 2m (6’6″) in length basking in the sun near a canal.

As often seems to happen these days, Mrs Benetulier decided she wanted a photograph of herself with the crocodile. There were warning signs around, in English, warning hikers to keep to the trail and watch out for reptiles. They ignored them. Posing for the photo, she squatted near the crocodile to have her husband take the shot. As she was getting back up, she tripped, which caused the crocodile to attack.

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