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The DJI Mini 3 Pro: A great first drone for Landscape Photographers

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Those who know me are aware that I’ve been talking about getting a drone for ages! Years, in fact. Put off by the many restrictions and rules that went hand in hand with owning and flying a drone, my biggest concern was that I just wouldn’t use it enough.

I thought that it would be mostly unused, sitting on a shelf gathering dust, but when DJI announced the Mini 3 Pro, the time was finally right to jump in and place the order. Having now owned the Mini 3 Pro for around 5 or 6 months, I thought I would share my thoughts from the point of view of a landscape photographer owning his very first drone.

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Sigma officially announces the 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports for mirrorless – but no Z mount

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Well, it looks like the rumour mill got it wrong this time. It was indeed correct about Sigma announcing the new 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports lens today – a lens that Sigma says is “the world’s first and only” 10x ultra-telephoto zoom lens on the market designed specifically for mirrorless cameras. It appears it was a little off, though, about Sigma’s introduction of Z-Mount into their lens lineup.

Anyway, the new Sigma lens offers the kind of large focal length ranges we’ve come to expect from “Bigma” lenses. With a minimum focal length of 60mm and a maximum focal length of 600mm, the lens is designed to cover various kinds of outdoor shooting, such as sports and wildlife at a wide range of distances. For now, though, it’s only going to be available in Sony E and Leica L mount. Sorry, Nikon shooters!

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Raspberry Pi announces a new higher resolution Camera Module 3 with autofocus and HDR

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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a number of cameras over the years for its credit card-sized single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi (and it’s variants). The first iteration was a relatively mediocre 5-megapixels. The Pi Camera 2 brought this up to 8.1-megapixels. Now, the new Camera Module 3 bumps this up to a little more useful 11.9-megapixels. It’s also the first Raspberry Pi camera with phase detect autofocus.

Sure, it’s not the 60+ megapixels of high-end mirrorless cameras, but this is a Raspberry Pi we’re talking about. It’s not designed for shooting high-resolution landscapes and fine art photography. It’s largely for smaller-scale applications like basic live streaming, monitoring and AI. The increased resolution, though, along with the addition of autofocus, opens up more potential options.

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The Nitecore BB Mini is a pocket-sized blower for cleaning your lenses with wind output of 40mph

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Nitecore has announced the BB Mini, a smaller variant of the recently released Nitecore BB2 (review here). The BB Mini ($39.95) is a little less powerful than its larger sibling, but not by all that much. The BB2 puts out air at up to 80km/h (49.8mph), while the BB Mini still puts out an impressive 65km/h (40.4mph). The company claims that’s 185% of that put out by a more traditional rocket blower.

The other touted benefit of a powered blower such as the BB Mini over the standard rocket blower is that it puts out its air continuously in 10-second bursts instead of having to keep stopping every second or two to fill the thing back up with air and then giving it another squeeze. A built-in battery provides 150 cleaning cycles, which they say covers about 30 lenses on a full charge.

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Panasonic says the reason PDAF took so long was to not compromise image quality

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In an interview between Gizmomo Freaks and Panasonic during the launch of the recently announced Panasonic Lumix S5 Mark II and S5 Mark IIx, the obvious focus of attention was the addition of Phase Detect Autofocus into the new camera. Sure, PDAF isn’t the only thing the S5 Mark II holds over its predecessor, but this is the first Panasonic interchangeable lens mirrorless camera ever to have PDAF. So, it’s kind of a big deal.

Why did it take so long for Panasonic to implement it, though, while all of the competition had been using it for years? Well, in short, the official answer was that they didn’t want to compromise on image quality, and they felt that the technical limitations of how phase detection autofocus works would do exactly that. Now, though, technology appears to have come to a point where all that’s changed.

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Think tank release two sizes of SpeedTop crossbody camera bags with silent opening

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Think Tank has just announced two brand-spanking new cross-body camera bags. Called the SpeedTop Crossbody series, the bags come in two different sizes and boast a number of new innovative features. Generally, cross-body bags are best for easy access and convenience.

They are perfect for quickly accessing your camera and a couple of lenses when you need to, for example, if you’re doing event and wedding photography. Think Tank knows this, which is why one of the best features of these bags is the silent magnetic lid that enables quick and quiet access to your gear. All one-handed and without the need to open a zip.

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DJI’s RS 3 Mini shrinks their flagship gimbal down to travel size with a 2kg load capacity

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DJI has announced their newest gimbal, the DJI RS 3 Mini, a small, lightweight handheld gimbal designed for travel use. DJI says that the RS 3 Mini “continues the excellent stabilization performance of the RS 3 series, allowing users to create professional-grade content while travelling around landscapes or in urban locations”. With a weight of less than 800g, it’s significantly lighter than the RS 3’s 1.3kg or the RS 3 Pro’s 1.5kg.

Despite being lighter weight, the DJI RS 3 Mini can still carry a payload of up to 2kg and features Bluetooth shutter control with DJI’s 3rd-generation stabilisation algorithms. It also offers easy switching between horizontal and vertical formats, depending on whether you’re shooting for YouTube vs TikTok and sports a 1.4″ colour touchscreen display.

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Nanlite expands its second-generation PavoTube II series with the 15C II and 30C II RGBWW tube lights

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Nanlite has also today announced the new Nanlite PavoTube II 15C and 30C RGBWW LED tube lights. These replace the original PavoTube 15C and 30C and add to the PavoTube II 15X and 30X RGB LED tube lights announced way back in October of 2021. What’s the difference between X and C? Well, we’ll get into that a little further down below, but the two new PavoTube II lights offer some nice improvements over the originals.

The new PavoTube II 15C and 30C offer white balance adjustment from 2500-7500K with green/magenta adjustment as well as full RGB control, AC and DC power, onboard controls, smartphone app control and wired DMX. The new second-generation lights also offer improved internal diffusion to create a more seamless look on-camera and provide a smoother, cleaner light when lighting subjects from out-of-frame.

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Nanlite’s refreshed Forza II lineup improves colour rendering, light intensity and durability

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Nanlite has announced its newest Forza Mark II LED lights. The Forza 60 II, 60B II, 300 II, 300B II, 500 II and 500B II inherit the even field of light of their predecessors, but the bicolour versions have been tweaked to provide consistent power throughout the colour balance range with improved colour accuracy. They’ve also had their designs altered to help provide better internal structure and higher durability on set.

The second generation of Nanlite’s Forza series LEDs offers a white balance range from 2700-6500K for bicolour versions and a fixed white balance of 5600K for the daylight versions. The feature set is slightly different between the 60 II/60B II and the 300 II/300B II/500 II/500B II LEDs, with the latter offering more advanced features and specs not found in the more entry-level 60 II/60B II.

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Godox XPro II trigger for Nikon, Canon and Sony appears on Canadian retailer’s website

Godox doesn’t appear to have made an official announcement yet, but the Godox XPro II trigger, first released in June 2022 for Leica now appears to be popping up for Nikon, Canon and Sony. There are no listings on Amazon that I can find, except for the original Leica version, nor are they even mentioned on the Godox website, but listings have popped up on retailers offering not pre-orders but showing it as available to buy now.

The listings popped up on the website of Canadian retailer, Strobepro. There are listings available for the XPro II-N for Nikon, XPro II-C for Canon, and XPro II-S for Sony cameras. Each carries a price tag of CAD$122.95. Oddly, that’s even cheaper than the $129 XPro II-L for Leica that’s been out for seven months.

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