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Laowa’s range of compact Nanamorph series is an intriguing set of anamorphic lenses. Until earlier this year, it comprised three lenses of 27mm T2.8, 35mm T2.4 and 50mm T2.4. In April, two new 65mm T2.4 and 80mm T2.4 lenses were announced.
DIYP had the opportunity to see the new 65mm and 80mm lenses while at NAB 2023 this year and they are quite nice. Now, the lenses are finally available for sale. Except, you can’t just buy them. It’s an Indiegogo campaign.
If you ask me, this should’ve been a feature that all tripod manufacturers started offering a decade or two ago. I’m talking, of course, about a single lever that lets you lock and unlock the full range of length of your tripod legs in one go.
It’s a feature you typically only see in high-end Flowtech tripods from companies like Sachtler, OConnor and Vinten (all owned by Videndum). Sirui’s SVT75 wants to tackle Flowtech head-on but at a fraction of the price.
For those who haven’t followed Alice’s story over the last couple of years, Alice is an AI-powered Micro Four Thirds camera that works with your smartphone. The smartphone is used both as the display for the camera as well as powering its AI features. It was announced in September 2020 and later came to Indiegogo. While shipping was expected to begin in the Summer of 2021, backers are still waiting to receive their cameras to this day.
Photographer and YouTuber Jimmy Cheng, also known as RED35, travelled to visit the Alice HQ to take a hands-on look at the camera and see what it could do. It’s long overdue, and past examples shown off in campaigns are believed to have been non-functional concept prototypes. Now, though, it looks like it can finally do all (or at least much) of what it promised.
It seems like everybody’s going magnetised these days. We’re constantly seeing magnets in use with our photography and video tools, whether it’s magnetic mounts on gimbals, filter systems, light modifiers, or whatever. Well, here’s another magnetic filter system from Freewell. It’s called K2, and it’s currently launching on Indiegogo.
While Freewell is not a new company, they’re typically better known for producing small filters for drones. They cover pretty much the entire range of DJI prosumer drones, as well as a number of drones from Autel and Skydio. They also produce small filters for action cameras such as the Insta360 RS and GoPro Hero series. But they have made a few larger filters for a while now.
In November, Tokina announced three new reflex lenses in the SZ Pro lineup. They had focal lengths and apertures of 300mm f/7.1, 600mm f/8 and 900mm f/11. What makes these so special compared to all of the reflex lenses Tokina’s released in the past? Well, these are the first designed specifically for APS-C mirrorless camera systems. This means no more adapters and they can also make the lenses smaller.
At the time of the initial announcement, the lenses were available via Indiegogo, where they raised a pretty meagre $16,100. But Tokina has announced that they’re going on general sale on February 3rd. There are only three mount options available at the moment, including Sony E, Fuji X and Canon EF-M. I’m still hoping that we’ll see Nikon Z and Canon RF versions at some point.
Great Joy has announced its newest full-frame anamorphic lens. The Great Joy 85mm full-frame T2.9 1.8x Anamorphic lens adds to the 50mm T2.9 and 35mm T2.9 launched earlier in the year to round out the set quite nicely. As with the first two lenses in the range, the new 85mm T2.9 is also being launched through Indiegogo with a super early bird price of $1,229 or $1,495, depending on the mount you want.
It’s available in 6 different mounting options with Canon EF/PL being the more expensive option and Sony E, Canon RF, Micro Four Thirds and Leica L being the slightly cheaper option. Naturally, it comes in a cinema housing with 0.8 MOD pitch gears and matches the 85mm front outer diameter of the other two lenses with a similar length – which varies depending on the mount.
Tokina has now fully unveiled the new 300mm f/7.1, 600mm f/8 and 900mm f/11 lenses announced a couple of weeks ago. The trio of lenses is now available to back on Indiegogo and the specs and prices don’t look too bad. The lenses are a somewhat new take on the old mirror reflex lens format, designed specifically for APS-C mirrorless allowing them to be extremely small for their long focal lengths.
They’re not available in a wide range of mounts, and I hope more will be coming in the future, but for now, it’s Sony E, Fuji X and Canon EF-M. That last one is an odd choice given that EF-M is essentially a dead system now. Given that they’re manual focus lenses, hopefully, we’ll see it coming for Canon RF and Nikon Z at some point (and maybe even Micro Four Thirds).
After a successful campaign in 2021, Rotolight has gone back to Indiegogo to launch their new NEO 3 Pro and AOES 2 Pro LED lights. The new lights bring some added features over the non-pro versions, including the “True Aperture Dimming” feature from their Titan LED lights, a bunch of Masters of Light Presets and wireless trigger compatibility with Godox, Profoto and Elinchrom flash systems.
Both lights also boast 25% more light output than their predecessors, making the NEO 3 Pro what Rotolight claims to be “the brightest LED on-camera light ever made”. The lights feature RGBWW LEDs offering up to 16.7 million colours including 2,500 gel filters from LEE and Rosco. They offer a range of quick-access Kelvin presets from 3200K up to 6300K with a 99% CRI for maximum colour accuracy.
It seems quite obvious when you think about it. A memory card that features its own native USB plug so that you don’t have to deal with card readers, especially in the days of OTG memory sticks like the SanDisk iXpand. After all, with a lot of memory card formats these days, the physical size of them is mostly for easy handling by human fingers than actually needing to be that big to store all the electronics.
Well, the X-Driver, which just launched on Indiegogo, takes advantage of this dead space in the CFexpress physical format by removing some of it and replacing it with a Type-C USB plug. This lets you pull the card straight out of your camera and right into your smartphone or PC for backup, editing and sharing while fitting within the physical CFexpress specifications.
Well, this is pretty cool, if a little expensive. Lukos is an ultra-wide HDMI IPS display offering 100% sRGB and 3840×1100 resolution for a whopping 32:9 widescreen view, advertised as an “advanced monitor for entertainment and productivity”. The size and aspect ratio of it is very reminiscent of the “Duo” laptops from ASUS that kicked off with the ZenBook Pro Duo a couple of years ago.
And it looks like it should provide a similar level of functionality, too, acting as an extra super widescreen monitor onto which you can place all kinds of small apps to keep them handy but out of the way. Or, drag your Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects panels on there to free up screen space on your main monitor.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
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.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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