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Leica switches teams with 1″ sensor branded camera on Sharp’s new Aquos R6 flagship smartphone

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With sanctions placed on Huawei around the world, it’s no surprise that companies that once had allegiances with them are now looking elsewhere for collaborations and marketing. One such company is Leica, whose name was famously branded onto the Hauwei P9 back in 2016 (even if the promo images were shot on Canon) and many of Huawei’s phones since then.

Now, though, it looks like Leica’s batting for another team, as the new Sharp Aquos R6 smartphone – with a huge 1″ camera sensor – has just been announced in Japan, bearing the Leica name around its lens. Don’t get too excited just yet, though. Its release might be limited to Japan – at least for a while.

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Sharp’s 8K camera will ship this year with a price point aimed under $4,000

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We haven’t heard much about Sharp’s 8K camera for a while. It was first shown off at CES 2019, a whole year ago, and it’s been pretty much radio silence ever since. At least, until CES 2020 last week where they had one on display, and a few updates to talk about – including a price point $1,000 lower than they said last year.

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Sharp shows off the first 8K consumer ILS camera under $5,000 at CES 2019

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It has no name, right now, other than “8K Video Camera”, but this 8K Micro Four Thirds camera from electronics giant Sharp is currently on display in prototype form at CES 2019. It was spotted by Dave Altizer at Kinotika discovered wandering through the CES show floor. And he decided to make a short video to tell us all about it.

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8K video is now a real thing and it’s being broadcast in Japan

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With all the talk of potential 8K Sony cameras recently, there have been a lot of cries of “Overkill!”, “Way too much”, “We’ll never need that!”. On the other hand, Japanese broadcaster NHK just launched the world’s first 8K TV channel. And it kicked off with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Six reasons why your landscape images aren’t razor sharp

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Picture this: you come home after a great day out photographing and you’re excited to look through all the beautiful images you’ve captured. However, after importing them you realize that they’re all garbage because they’re blurry.

I’m sure you’ve experienced that, as have the majority of us. Personally, I’ve had to throw away several promising images due to them not being sharp.

In a perfect world, you’d come home after every session with 100% of the images being tack sharp but unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. However, there are certain elements you should be aware of and take into consideration when in the field, that will reduce the likeliness of your images being blurry.

Listed in this article are the most common reasons why your images aren’t razor sharp.

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Sharp’s Aquos R2 Smartphone features a dedicated video camera

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We’ve seen all sorts of dual camera configurations in smartphones since they were first introduced a few years ago. Often times, various manufacturers would use the second lens for either optical zoom, or for creating bokeh shots. However, we’ve never heard of it being employed exclusively to shoot 4K video–that is of course until Sharp showed up with the new Aquos R2. The Japanese electronics company may not be known for smartphones, but their newest high-end offering might just have enough oomph to launch them into this competitive industry.

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The new Sharp 8K camera costs $77,000

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Just when you thought we’d settled on 4K, along comes 8K. Sharp have announced their new 8C-B60A (catchy name) 8K Professional Camcorder, and it will set you back $77,000 if you want one. While RED and Sony have both also released 8K cameras, this seems geared more toward broadcasters rather than cinema. It does sound like quite an impressive camera, though.

It captures 10Bit 8K footage (approx 33MP) at 60fps with a Super 35mm sensor (basically 1.5x crop APS-C). It comes with a custom 2TB SSD pack onto which you can fit a mere 40 minutes of footage.  It features a PL mount, and uses Grass Valley’s HQX codec which reduces file sizes and requires minimal processing to ease storage, transmission and editing.

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A forgotten solution for tack sharp photos

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For a few years now, I’ve had in my collection one very strange lens.  I bought it primarily for it’s value as a collectible so, up until now, I haven’t really spent much time playing with it. Made in 1975, this manual focus Minolta MC Rokkor-X 40-80mm f/2.8 lens is one strange puppy.  When it was first introduced, no other zoom lens could top its image quality and it really didn’t have much competition until more recent years.  This is largely due to its very unique Gearbox design that sought to overcome the problem with zoom lenses that we still face today.

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How to take sharp photos in the wind

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Normally, if you’re using a tripod, camera shake isn’t something you’ll have to worry very much about. However, there are some obvious exceptions. If you’ve ever found yourself taking pictures in heavy winds, you’ll know the difficulties of capturing sharp photos — particularly if you’re using a telephoto lens. This seems like an impossible situation; what do you do when a tripod isn’t enough to stop your camera from shaking? Luckily, there are ways to improve sharpness even in windy conditions and come away with photos that are completely usable. I’ll cover some of the most important here.

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