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Nikon announces its new “Extraordinary” Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.2 S portrait lens for Z mount mirrorless

As well as the Nikkor Z 26mm f/2.8 Pancake lens, Nikon has also today announced the release of the Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.2 S lens for the Nikon Z mirrorless system. Billed as “extraordinary”, it’s a lens that Nikon Z shooters have wanted for a long time. As with the 26mm f/2.8, the development announcement for the 85mm f/1.2 S came at the beginning of the year while being shown off at CES.

It’s Nikon’s new premium portrait lens, offering a traditional focal length for the genre while providing the super wide aperture that lets you get a creatively shallow depth of field, as well as allowing you to shoot in darker conditions. Nikon says that it’s a “truly unique optic” with outstanding optical performance that “goes beyond the impressive sharpness”.

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Nikon’s 26mm f/2.8 pancake lens is the company’s slimmest and lightest full-frame AF lens ever

Nikon has announced its new Nikkor Z 26mm f/2.8 lens, which it describes as “a premium pancake for everyday carry”. Despite being such a small and light lens, it’s designed to cover a full-frame sensor, with Nikon claiming that it “packs a tremendous punch with superior sharpness and beautiful blurred backgrounds” thanks to its f/2.8 aperture. It’s the first lens Nikon has made for the Z system that they consider to be a true “pancake” lens.

It measures less than 1″ in length (23.5mm to be precise) and weighs a mere 125g for shooting things such as street photography, travel vlogs and landscape photography. Nikon says that its small stature and weight have been achieved thanks to an “all-element focusing system” powered by an STM stepper motor for fast and accurate positioning.

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Godox officially announces the XPro II Trigger for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji and Olympus/Panasonic

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This one sure took some time to happen. Initially announced back in June 2022 as a new trigger for Leica only, the Godox XPro II has been pretty elusive as far as other camera systems go. Last month, other brand versions started popping up on Canadian retailer websites, but there’d still been no official announcement from Godox and no general availability.

Well, now, Godox has officially announced the new XPro II trigger for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji and Olympus (OM System)/Panasonic. It’s a little cheaper than we previously thought, too, with the new versions showing a $40 lower price tag than the first XPro II Leica version. Godox has made no mention of their being an updated XPro II model for Pentax, although B&H has one listed.

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Nikon is limiting third party manufacturers from competing on Z Mount lenses, a report

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This is a bit of an interesting one and it potentially explains why we’ve seen a handful of autofocus Z mount lenses over the last few years – but not the flurry we’ve come to expect with other systems like Sony E mount. According to a report on Nikon Rumors, Nikon hasn’t gone full-on Canon when it comes to third-party autofocus lenses, but they are being somewhat restrictive.

It seems that Nikon apparently does officially license third-party manufacturers to create autofocus lenses, but it does so on a lens-by-lens basis. This only seems to be the case for autofocus lenses, though. They will approve them, but only if they don’t directly compete with something already in the Nikkor Z lineup but complement the lineup instead.

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RED slammed for “DESTROYING the camera industry” with patent trolling

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RED seems to have been fraught with controversy pretty much since they first launched way back in 2005. The big issue at the moment – and for most of the last few years – has been their patents covering raw video. It’s a long drawn out topic that’s currently being fought out between RED and Nikon after Nikon’s inclusion of N-RAW in the Nikon Z9. Nikon’s disputing it, seemingly arguing that RED shouldn’t have been granted in the first place.

Well, now another voice has entered the fray, Theo Browne from t3.gg, with his opinion on what’s going on. He posted the video on his second channel, Theo Rants, stating that while RED was one of the early pioneers of 4K digital video, they’re now actively in the process of destroying the camera industry. A pretty strong accusation!

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Six years after release, Nikon releases new firmware for the D850 DSLR to improve skin tones

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Nikon has released a new v1.3.0 firmware update for the Nikon D850 DSLR, six years after its initial release in 2017. Widely regarded as one of the best DSLRs ever made, it’s largely been usurped by the Nikon Z7 II, but there are still plenty of Nikon D850 bodies out there, and they’re still available to buy new. So, Nikon continues to support them.

The new firmware update introduces the Portrait Impression Balance feature, which was introduced with the Nikon Z6 II and Z7 II mirrorless cameras. This feature allows photographers to correct skin colours in-camera using hue and brightness adjustments. And while this won’t be a big deal to those who shoot raw, it will be for those who shoot jpg (or raw+jpg) or video (certain conditions apply).

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Nikon adds Eye AF while shooting video to the Nikon Z50 with new firmware

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Nikon has released the new version 2.4.0 firmware for the Nikon Z50, and it looks like the focus (no pun intended) for this one is eye-detection autofocus. Among other eye-detection AF performance improvements, the big one is eye-detection autofocus being added to the camera’s AF modes while recording video.

The last few updates for the Nikon Z50 have essentially been bug fixes or adding support for various new lenses. This one actually brings a new feature that should make the Nikon Z50 a much more attractive option for activities like vlogging. The notes for the new firmware all list improvements to the Eye-AF system.

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Nikon’s Super Telephoto Z lenses get a firmware update for linear focus ring rotation

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Nikon’s Nikkor Z super telephoto lenses are fantastic pieces of kit, there’s no question. For what they cost, you’d expect them to be pretty spectacular, too. Like most modern autofocus mirrorless lenses, though, they use a focus-by-wire system when manually focusing. Focus by wire lets you make big adjustments by turning the ring quickly or fine adjustments by turning it slowly. A fantastic innovation for photographers, not so much for filmmakers.

So, Nikon has released new firmware for their 400mm f/4.5 VR, 400mm f/2.8 TC VR, 600mm f/4 TC VR and 800mm f/6.3 VR lenses to bring linear focus to the focus rings of those lenses. This lets them be used in video rigs with follow-focus units with the certainty that they’ll nail the target every time.

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Voigtlander announces the ultra-bright Nokton 50mm f/1.0 and Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 lenses for Nikon Z

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Cosina has announced two new lenses for the Nikon Z mount mirrorless system. One is an extremely impressive-sounding Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm f/1.0 Aspherical full-frame lens. A standard field of view with an ultra-wide and bright aperture that’s anything but standard. The other is the Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical lens, which is also full frame, offering an extremely wide field of view.

The lenses aren’t entirely new. The Nokton 50mm f/1.0 is already available in Leica M mount. The Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 is also available for Sony E mount. But the addition of another mount expands the possibilities for Nikon Z mount shooters – even if they are both manual focus lenses.

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Nikon Japan announces increased pricing for several products and “open pricing” for most lenses

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This is a bit of an odd announcement. Well, partially odd. Nikon Japan has introduced new price revisions for a number of accessories with “open pricing” for the majority of Nikon Nikkor lenses. The announcement comes with Nikon saying pretty much what everybody has been saying since the start of the pandemic. It’s a result of the ongoing global silicon shortage and the increased costs of raw materials.

The list of products for which prices are going up seems to be limited to a handful of accessories and a couple of Coolshot laser rangefinders. But what’s particularly interesting and a little bit unusual is the second list. It contains a very large list of Nikon Nikkor lenses for both the company’s Z mount mirrorless and F mount DSLR camera systems. These lenses are shifting over to an “open pricing” system, letting retailers put whatever price on them they want. But can’t they already do that?

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