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Hasselblad’s new X2D 100C Lightweight Field Kit costs almost $13,000

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Hasselblad has announced a new Lightweight Field Kit bundle for its X2D 100C medium format mirrorless camera. The Hasselblad X2D 100C was released in September 2022 at the cost of $8,199 for the body only. Three new f/2.5 lenses were also announced alongside the camera, although they’re not exactly lightweight. Hasselblad’s new kit includes two f/4 lenses to minimise weight.

The Hasselblad X2D 100C Lightweight Field Kit contains the X2D 100C camera body along with the XCD 4/21 and XCD 4/45P lenses. Bought separately, the camera with those two lenses comes out to around $13,050. As a bundle, though, there’s a little bit of a saving with a price tag of $12,759. When it comes to weigh savings, though, the whole combo, Hasselblad says, weighs only 1,810g.

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Nextorage announces its new V90 and V60 UHS-II SD cards

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Sony offshoot, Nextorage, has announced its newest UHS-II SD cards. The announcement brings two new series of memory cards. There’s the UHS-II SE (NX-F2SE), which is a V60 cards offering read speeds up to 280MB/sec, and there’s the UHS-II Pro (NX-F2PRO) V90 card, with read speeds of up to 300MB/sec and write speeds up to 299MB/sec. There are three cards in each series, with the UHS-II SE V60 cards coming in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities and the faster UHS-II Pro V90 cards in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities.

Nextorage says that both the NX-F2SE and NX-F2PRO series cards are built tough with an IP57 rating, drop resistance from up to 1.5 metres, tested for 10,000 insertion and removal procedures, and come with a 5-year warranty. The company says they’ve passed 9 different types of durability tests to deliver maximum peace of mind.

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Westcott FlexiGels make colouring your lights as easy as possible

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Westcott has launched a new set of FlexiGels for the Westcott FJ400 strobe. Interestingly, though, they’re not made of your typical gel material. These are an 8-pack of reusable gels made from silicone rubber. They’re designed to fit right over the bulb of the FJ400 and colour the light with red, orange, light orange (which they say is similar to a CTO), yellow, green, blue, purple or pink.

The great thing about silicone rubber “gels” is that it should make swapping them out on a whim fairly easy. It’s a great insulator of heat to prevent you burning yourself. And as it goes over the bulb, Westcott says it’s compatible with umbrellas, softboxes and whatever other modifiers you want to use. But there may be potential negatives.

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The SIRUI A100B Bi-Color is an automatic inflatable photography light

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Sirui just made an interesting announcement. A 100 watt auto-inflatable LED light. It is not the first inflatable light we’ve seen here. Pipelight, whom we met at IBC, also made an inflatable light. But unlike Pipelight, SIRUI targets everyday users and not just huge production companies.

Interstingly, SIRUI is not launching this product the usual way but via a croud funding platform on their own website. While there is an inherent risk in supporting a product before it ships, the april target date suggests that the product may actually be almost ready.  (Looking at the update section indicates that the A100B is already in production)

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Sony officially announces the FE 50mm F/1.4 G Master lens

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After relatively few leaks, Sony has now officially announced the new Sony FE 50mm f/1.4 G Master lens. It comes hot on the heels of Sigma’s recently announced 50mm f/1.4 DG DN Art series lens, but at significantly higher price. This cost over the Sigma might be a tough pill for some Sony shooters to swallow.

Sony’s new lens features an 11-blade aperture that opens up to a wide f/1.4 and stops down all the way to f/22. Two XD linear AF motors with internal focus ensure quick silent focusing. It has a dust and moisture-resistant construction, with Nano AR II and Fluorine coatings for maximum image clarity as well as to help raindrops fall off that front element.

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Rode’s 5th Gen NT1 microphone makes it impossible to clip your audio

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Rode has announced the Rode NT1 5th Generation large-diaphram cardioid condenser studio microphone. Building on the sound of the classic Rode NT1, the new 5th generation model offers some great advantages over its predecessors. It still brings features we’ve come to expect, like extremely low self noise, wide frequency response, high sensitivity, high SPL handling and an XLR socket that utilises 48v phantom power.

The new 5th gen NT1 has an extra trick up its sleeve, though. It also has USB-C output for plugging directly into your computer. The USB output uses an ultra-low-noise, high-gain Revolution preamp, offers up to 32-bit float digital output at 192kHz. It also features an on-board DSP with advanced APHEX processing, including compressor, noise gate, high-pass filter, aural exciter and big bottom.

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Tamron’s ultra-wide 11-20mm F2.8 lens is coming to Fuji X

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Tamron has announced that the company’s 11-20mm F/2.8 Di III-A RXD, initially launched in April 2021 for Sony E mount is coming to Fuji X. The news from Tamron isn’t a release announcement just yet, but a development announcement. So, it’s coming, it’s on the way, but they haven’t yet said when – or confirmed that the price is the same as the Sony version.

This marks the 4th lens in the Tamron lineup for Fujifilm X mount cameras, adding to the 17-70mm f/2.8, 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 and 150-500mm f/5-6.7. The full specs for the lens haven’t been released yet, although I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the important ones will be identical to that of the E mount version, as is the case with the 150-500mm f/5-6.7, with some slight variance in length and weight.

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Meike releases two new drop-in filter adapters to use EF lenses on Sony E and and EOS R cameras

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Meike has released two new drop-in filter lens adapters. There’s the Meike MK-EFTE-C which allows you to mount Canon EF mount lenses onto Sony E mount bodies. The other is the Meike MK-EFTR-C to adapt Canon EF lenses to Canon RF mount lenses. Both lens adapters appear to offer a passthrough connection for electronic communication, allowing full control over your lens from the body itself.

It will be interesting to see if and how Canon responds to the announcement, given their recent actions towards 3rd party RF lens makers. This isn’t exactly a lens, but it will communicate with the camera in the same way autofocus lenses do, translating everything to EF signals to be passed along to the lens you have mounted on the other side. Still, both adapters come supplied with clear and VND filters.

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DJI Osmo Mobile SE is a scaled down Osmo Mobile 6 with longer battery life

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DJI has announced the new Osmo Mobile SE gimbal for smartphones. It’s essentially an Osmo Mobile 6 with a smaller form factor, longer battery life and a better price tag. The Osmo Mobile SE has the same load capacity as the Osmo Mobile 6, and it’s compatible with all of the same accessories, including the magnetic phone clamp, which is supplied with it. In fact, it’s so close to the Osmo Mobile 6 that I’m not entirely sure why DJI is releasing this.

It has the newest Active Track tech for following subjects, with Bluetooth 5.1 to maintain communication between the gimbal and your smartphone. It offers all of the usual shooting features through the app, including timelapse, panoramics and hyperlapse. It accepts smartphones up to 3.3″ wide, which covers pretty much all of them – perhaps with the exception of folding phones – weighing up to 10.2oz, or around 290g.

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Leica announces two new lightweight 35mm and 50mm f/2 Summicron lenses for L mount

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Leica has announced two new lightweight Summicron-SL lenses for Leica L mount at 35mm f/2 and 50mm f/2. You might be wondering why Leica’s announcing two new 35mm and 50mm f/2 lenses when they already have the Leica APO-Summicron-SL 35mm f/2 and 50mm f/2. But when you compare those to the two new lenses, the size and weight saving, not to mention the massive cost saving, make it quite obvious.

The new Leica Summicron-SL 35mm f/2 and Summicron-SL 50mm f/2 lenses are significantly smaller and lighter than their APO counterparts. In fact, both of the new lenses share identical dimensions, making it easier for video shooters to swap between them without having to rebalance gimbals, etc. They also cost less than half of the APO versions, making them a financially viable option for a lot more L mount photographers.

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