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The Wacom Cintiq 16.

Photo: Wacom

Wacom has announced its latest pen displays, offering three new models with the Cintiq 16, Cintiq 24 and Cintiq 24 Touch. Unlike the company's Intuos lineup, the Cintiq series features displays, allowing them to function as monitors and touch-sensitive devices. The latest Cintiqs offer slightly larger displays yet thinner designs, and subtle upgrades across the board.

The lineup now includes the Cintiq 24 Touch, which offers 10-finger touch capacity in addition to pen control. Previously, you had to opt for the Pro models of the Cintiq lineup if you wanted touch control. The Cintiq 16 and Cintiq 24 do not offer touch control.

The existing Cintiq lineup included a 16-inch and 22-inch offering, but the company has bumped the larger one up to 24 inches for greater screen real estate. Even the 16-inch received a slight bump in screen size as well. Despite the larger sizes, both are slimmer than the previous models. For example, at 22mm, the Cintiq 24 is almost half the thickness of the Cintiq 22.

The Cintiq 24 offers a large display.

Photo: Wacom

The resolution of both sizes is also greater than the previous models, jumping from full HD to 2560 x 1600 for the smaller device and 2560 x 1440 for the larger. Wacom improved color gamut on both, with each now covering 100% of sRGB. Cintiq also increased the maximum brightness substantially. All of these upgrades should offer a better experience for photographers looking to edit their images with the Cintiq tablets, even when working in bright locations.

Wacom released the Pro Pen 3 in 2022, but announced it again in February with its major refresh of the Intuos Pro lineup. Now, the Cintiq series benefits from the updated pen as well. All new Cintiq models are compatible with the Pro Pen 3, which offers lots of customization, responsiveness and accuracy.

The Cintiq 24 and Cintiq 24 Touch include an adjustable stand. All three models are VESA-compatible (75 x 75mm).

Image: Wacom

Additional upgrades include new anti-glare etched glass to reduce reflections, making it easier to see while editing or drawing. A USB-C port joins the existing HDMI and USB-A connections. The Cintiq 24 includes the Wacom Adjustable Stand, which allows for a range of angle adjustments, while the Cintiq 16 comes with fold-out legs. The Cintiq 16 is compatible with the stand, though it is a separate purchase.

The Wacom Cintiq 16, Cintiq 24 and Cintiq 24 Touch will be available sometime this summer, costing $700, $1300 and $1500, respectively.

Press release:

Made to Create, Built to Grow — Wacom Introduces the New Wacom Cintiq Line

Wacom unveils a new generation of Wacom Cintiq pen displays — the Cintiq 16, Cintiq 24, and Cintiq 24 touch — delivering professional-grade performance that puts professional creative tools within reach, combining Wacom’s Pro Pen 3 technology, compact design, and usability for creators ready to take the next step.

TOKYO – June 5, 2025 – Wacom today launched the new Cintiq 16, Cintiq 24, and Cintiq 24 touch pen displays, empowering creators to break boundaries with professional tools made attainable without compromise. Combining the flagship Wacom Pro Pen 3, a slimmer design, and sharp displays built for creative work, these models are built for artists and designers ready to level up their craft and dive headfirst into their boldest ideas.

“Creativity isn’t about limits—it’s about diving into the extraordinary,” said Koji Yano, Senior Vice President at Wacom. “The new Cintiq line is for creators who refuse to settle. It’s not just a tool—it’s the spark that turns ‘what if’ into ‘what’s next.’”

Natural Feel with the Wacom Pro Pen 3

Utilizing the Wacom Pro Pen 3, the new Cintiq models provide responsive, precise pen strokes thanks to enhanced sampling rate and pressure sensitivity. Artists experience fluid lines closely following movement—supporting expression with improved control.

Optional accessories let users customize grip thickness, weight balance, and button layout for comfort during long sessions. Another optional accessory is the Wacom Pro Pen 3 Wood Grip, sold separately, which stands out with its warm, textured finish—offering a more natural feel in the hand for those who prefer an organic touch during long drawing sessions.

Clear Display and Comfortable Viewing

Available in 16.0” (2560 x 1600 resolution) and 23.8” (2560 x 1440 resolution) sizes, the Cintiq line includes Pen-only and a Pen & Touch model (23.8” only). Direct bonding minimizes the gap between the pen tip and the cursor. Anti-glare etched glass reduces reflections and minimizes eye fatigue.

Streamlined Design and Quiet Performance

The flat design with a clean, modern profile supports versatile working angles. Both models are slimmer than their predecessors—the Cintiq 24, for example, is nearly half the thickness of the previous 22” model at just 21mm—making them easier to fit into a variety of workspaces. A fanless design ensures quiet operation and helps users stay focused during long creative sessions, without overheating.

Adjustable Stand and Flexible Setup

The Cintiq 24 includes the Wacom Adjustable Stand, which allows smooth, quiet angle adjustments. The Cintiq 16 comes with fold-out legs and is also compatible with the optional stand, sold separately. Both models are VESA-compatible (75 x 75 mm) for use with third-party monitor arms.

All ports are neatly arranged on the back for simplified cable management. All models support USB-C connection, and the 16” model also supports a convenient single-cable setup with power delivery. HDMI and USB-A ports are available on both models as alternative options.

All models come with time-limited licenses for creative software, including Clip Studio Paint EX and MASV.

Availability

The new Wacom Cintiq models will be available this summer. To learn more, visit: https://www.wacom.com/products/wacom-cintiq.

Image: Adobe

Back in February, Adobe announced that it was bringing Photoshop to smartphones. The new app offers much more robust tools than those found in the existing Photoshop Express, but it was initially only available for iPhones. Now, that app is also available for Android phones in beta, with limited-time free access to premium tools.

Adobe recognized that many people edit photographs or create art exclusively on their phones, and the existing Photoshop Express app was extremely limited in its capabilities. The new Photoshop app brings the existing platform's well-known editing and design tools to the mobile platform, allowing for greater control, even when working on a phone.

The app was designed from the ground up with an accessible interface for phones, resulting in a very different look from the desktop version. The editing tools are concentrated at the bottom of the screen with a simplified workflow. Instead of displaying all tools, it only shows the most commonly used ones, along with a layer stack on the right side.

The new app provides many of the familiar controls and tools found in the desktop version of Photoshop.

Images: Adobe

Critically, the app maintains one of Photoshop's main benefits: its non-destructive editing capabilities via layers. Users can create adjustment layers like in the desktop version and have the ability to create unlimited layers. There are masking and layer blending tools as well, allowing users to fine-tune each layer. Familiar tools like Spot Healing Brush, Generative Fill, Clone Stamp and more are also available.

To make selections on the small screen easier, Adobe added a Tap Select tool that automatically selects all obvious subjects and objects in an image. It then lists the different components that users can edit selectively.

The app is now available for download on Android in beta. It is free to download, and all of the app's features are free during the beta period. Adobe also says more capabilities are coming soon. Eventually, premium features will be locked behind a paywall and require an Adobe subscription.

Images: Fujifilm

Fujifilm's newly released X half camera takes quite a different approach to what we are used to from modern cameras. Fujifilm designed the camera, in part, to mimic the experience of shooting half-frame film. To get that full experience, though, you need the companion app, which is now available for download.

Of course, the app's standout function is the process that unlocks the unique features of the X half camera. When photos are taken with the camera set to Film Camera Mode, users will need the companion app to "develop" them so they are visible. The "rolls" of undeveloped "film" will show up in the app with icons of the film stock that was used. Once you process them, the app will automatically create a contact sheet while saving the individual images to your smartphone and app galleries.

The app will show your "rolls" of film, and once developed, will create a contact sheet.

Images: Fujifilm

At a basic level, like other camera apps, the X half app provides the ability to wirelessly browse and transfer images from the camera to a phone. When connected via Bluetooth, the camera will sync geotagging information with a mobile phone's geotagging information. It can function as an album for perusing photos and videos. Or, use it like a digital gallery by selecting two background colors and six frame styles to show off your work. It also allows for firmware updates.

While the app does not offer editing tools, it does allow users to combine two images into one to create diptychs, taking advantage of the sensor's vertical format.

The Fujifilm X half app is available for free for both iOS and Android.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

Travel photography can spark new inspiration and bring fun back to the medium, and, of course, allow you to document memories during your trips. But choosing a camera for your travels can be daunting. There are seemingly endless options available, with a long list of technical terms to sort through. If you're looking to pick up a new camera for travel photography, one of the first questions you'll have to answer is whether you want a DSLR or a mirrorless camera.

What's the difference between DSLR and mirrorless cameras?

DSLRs have fairly bulky components that mirrorless cameras skip out on.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

The primary difference between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras is suggested in the latter's name. DSLRs use a movable mirror to direct light into an optical viewfinder, while mirrorless cameras display the image electronically without those components. As a result, mirrorless cameras can be more compact and lightweight than DSLRs (though not all are).

Are DSLR or mirrorless cameras better for travel?

Mirrorless cameras are often (though not always) smaller than DSLRs.

Photo: Richard Butler

Mirrorless cameras have quite a few advantages over DSLRs when it comes to travel, mainly because they use newer technology. Most companies haven't developed a new DSLR in many years, so mirrorless cameras often benefit from the most up-to-date features.

Size and weight are typically among the most important considerations for travel cameras. It's no fun to lug around a heavy backpack while traveling. Because mirrorless cameras and lenses are generally smaller, they are better suited for travel. That's especially true if you like to travel light or if you will spend a lot of time carrying your camera around.

Because mirrorless cameras and lenses are generally smaller, they are better suited for travel.

Beyond size, the new technology available in mirrorless cameras offers many benefits. Although a smaller feature at face value, mirrorless cameras often charge over USB-C. That means you don't need a separate charger. You likely already have a USB-C cable or two when traveling to keep your other devices charged, so it's not an extra bit you need to pack.

Mirrorless cameras offer more precise and more versatile autofocus. Some modern cameras often have AI-derived subject recognition and tracking systems, helping you get more images in focus even in challenging situations. Image stabilization is also more common in mirrorless cameras than DSLRs, which is helpful in dimly lit situations like museums or thick forests. Additionally, mirrorless cameras are much easier to use for shooting video, making them ideal for those looking to vlog or record their travels.

Many mirrorless cameras can charge via USB-C, eliminating the need for a separate battery charger.

Photo: Richard Butler

DSLRs' main edge over mirrorless for travel purposes is better battery life. Unlike the electronic viewfinders in mirrorless cameras, the optical viewfinders in DSLRs don’t require power other than a small amount to display exposure information. If you know you won't have frequent access to power and can't bring spare batteries, a DSLR could be a better option.

Finally, DSLRs have been around long enough that the second-hand market is robust, with lots of very affordable options. If you're worried about your camera getting damaged or stolen while traveling, a DSLR could give you more peace of mind. It risks being a bit of a dead-end long term, though.

You can find some highly versatile yet compact zoom lenses for mirrorless cameras that are ideal for travel. This Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G is a great example.

Photo: Sony

Final thoughts on the best camera system for travel

At the end of the day, the best camera for travel is one that you'll actually want to have with you. The challenge isn't necessarily whether you can fit it in your luggage, but whether you want to drag the camera around when you are out and about on your trips. As a result, because of their generally smaller size and more modern features, mirrorless cameras are typically the better choice for travel.

Image: Sigma

Sigma has announced an ambitious series of super-bright cinema lenses, due later this year, raising at least the possibility of some of the designs making their way across to the photo space.

The Aizu Prime series of cinema lenses all cover a 46.3mm diagonal, making them suitable for use on "large-format" cinema cameras such as the Arri Alexa LF, slightly larger than what photographers would think of as 'full-frame.'

The series will include twelve lenses covering the 18mm to 125mm focal lengths, starting with eight lenses in the 25-75mm range. All the lenses will have T1.3 maximum apertures.

However, while it's plausible that some of these designs could be adapted to sit alongside the company's 35mm F1.2 and 50mm F1.2 Art photographic lenses, sadly, Sigma says all the lenses "feature an optical system developed exclusively for cinema applications." They are also priced at $8300 each.

The eight initial lenses will each be available in either PL or Sony E mounts, with choice of distance scales marked using metric measurements or feet. All eight lenses feature gears focus and iris control, have similar dimensions and share the same 95mm front diameter.

Alongside the Aizu Prime line, Sigma has also announced a 28-45mm T2 cine zoom, based on the optical formula of its 28-45mm F1.8 DG Art lens and a 24-105mm T3 zoom, derived from the 24-105mm F2.8 DG Art. Both lenses retain their autofocus functions, in contrast to the Aizu primes, which are manual focus lenses.

Sigma Corporation Announces Aizu Prime Line, the World’s First Cinema Lens Line to Feature T1.3 Across All Focal Lengths Brilliant at T1.3: Forging new expressions. Here begins a new benchmark for filmmaking.

Ronkonkoma, New York - SIGMA Corporation of America, the US subsidiary of SIGMA Corporation (CEO: Kazuto Yamaki. Headquarters: Asao-ku, Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa, Japan) is introducing the Aizu Prime Line―the world's first lineup 1 of large-format cinema lenses to achieve an aperture value of T1.3 across all focal lengths.

The lineup combines modern sharpness with an organic and naturally soft look, bringing rich texture and depth to visuals.

Boasting unparalleled brightness, refined expression, and reliable performance, the Aizu Prime Line embodies the proven technology and quality of “Made in Aizu, Japan” establishing the new standard.

The lineup of 12 lenses features a consistent T1.3 aperture across the full range from 18mm to 125mm. The initial release includes 8 lenses with focal lengths from 25mm to 75mm, covering core cinematic production needs.

1. As of June 2025, by Sigma.

KEY FEATURES Expressive power for profound beauty A consistent T1.3 across all focal lengths

The T1.3 aperture enables exceptionally shallow depth of field and graceful bokeh, seamlessly separating the subject while preserving a natural sense of depth and dimensionality. This refined visual language draws the viewer into the frame with a subtle yet powerful presence.

Optical design for the demands of cinema

All lenses in the Aizu Prime lineup feature an optical system developed exclusively for cinema applications. While maintaining modern sharpness, they avoid rigid or harsh depictions—delivering a natural, organic look. They provide quiet elegance and depth to the image, with distortion and focus breathing carefully minimized to ensure visual consistency, even in dynamic scenes.

Huge perspective range coverage

The Aizu Prime Line is designed as a system to cover a wide range of focal lengths from 18mm to 125mm. Initially, 8 core lenses ranging from 25mm to 75mm are being released, followed by 18mm and 21mm wide-angle lenses, and 100mm and 125mm telephoto lenses. This comprehensive system, covering from ultra-wide-angle to telephoto, is adaptable to diverse scenes and compositions.

Completely consistent look

Consistency of color balance, contrast, and flare characteristics ensures seamless integration between scenes, bringing a high level of harmony to the entire visual narrative across the lineup from 18mm to 125mm.

∅46.3mm image circle

The large ∅46.3mm image circle ensures full coverage not only for full-frame and Super 35 formats, but also for the latest large-format cameras such as the ARRI ALEXA LF Open Gate and VistaVision. This capability enables uncompromised filmmaking across a diverse range of projects.

High-impact close-up expression

The short minimum focusing distance enables striking close-up shots. By getting closer to the subject, the Aizu Prime lenses create visual tension and dramatic effects, adding impactful depth to the imagery.

Compact. Precise. Reliable. A compact design that unleashes creativity

Despite being built for large-format coverage and featuring an ultra-fast T1.3 aperture, the Aizu Prime lenses remain remarkably lightweight. This rare balance of exceptional speed and mobility offers the flexibility and creative freedom demanded by modern productions—from dolly and Steadicam to gimbal and handheld operation.

Precise operation and durability

The Aizu Prime lenses offer precise control, exceptional durability, and ease of maintenance. Despite its compact housing, it delivers unwavering reliability in demanding shooting environments. Every mechanical detail—from the wide focus rotation angle to the equal-pitch aperture ring—embodies the engineering expertise cultivated through the Sigma High Speed Prime series.

Supports ZEISS eXtended Data

The Aizu Prime lenses support ZEISS eXtended Data, offering real-time lens metadata during shooting. It also enables the export of distortion and shading correction data, streamlining workflows for VFX productions.

KEY SPECIFICATIONS

[Common specifications]

• Available mounts: PL Mount, Sony E-mount
• Image circle: 46.3mm

Product Name Close focus Front diameter Length* Weight* 18mm T1.3 LF TBD 21mm T1.3 LF TBD 25mm T1.3 LF 0.31 m / 1'0 95 mm / 3.7" 125 mm / 5" 1.7 kg / 3.6 lb 27mm T1.3 LF 0.33 m / 1'1 95 mm / 3.7" 125.4 mm / 5" 1.7 kg / 3.6 lb 32mm T1.3 LF 0.34 m / 1'2 95 mm / 3.7" 128.5 mm / 5.1" 1.7 kg / 3.6 lb 35mm T1.3 LF 0.35 m / 1'2 95 mm / 3.7" 128.6 mm / 5.1" 1.6 kg / 3.6 lb 40mm T1.3 LF 0.38 m / 1'3 95 mm / 3.7" 128.8 mm / 5.1" 1.6 kg / 3.6 lb 50mm T1.3 LF 0.48 m / 1'7 95 mm / 3.7" 126.3 mm / 5" 1.7 kg / 3.6 lb 65mm T1.3 LF 0.61 m / 2'0 95 mm / 3.7" 125 mm / 5" 1.6 kg / 3.6 lb 75mm T1.3 LF 0.73 m / 2'5 95 mm / 3.7" 128.1 mm / 5.1" 1.7 kg / 3.6 lb 100mm T1.3 LF TBD 125mm T1.3 LF TBD

*The figures are for PL Mount

Photo: Pascal Le Segretain / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images

George E. Smith, one of the co-inventors of the CCD sensor, passed away on May 28th at his home in Waretown, New Jersey. The Washington Post reports that his death was confirmed by his son, Carson Smith, but that no cause was provided.

Dr. Smith was a Bell Labs researcher in 1969 when he and his colleague, Willard S. Boyle, sketched an idea on a blackboard that would eventually become the first digital image sensor. The Charge-Coupled Device, or CCD, was the first digital sensor that provided usefully good results, yet was affordable enough to put in consumer products. The first vision for CCD application was a video phone, dubbed the PicturePhone, but the project was killed as it wasn't seen as commercially viable, and Bell Labs wanted profit in the short term.

After its patent registration in 1974, the CCD sensor formed the basis of early digital cameras and sparked the digital imaging revolution. Smith and Boyle's work was so influential that they won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009. "Digital photography has become an irreplaceable tool in many fields of research," says the 2009 Nobel Prize press release. "The CCD has provided new possibilities to visualize the previously unseen. It has given us crystal clear images of distant places in our universe as well as the depths of the oceans."

While we appreciate the technology for what it did for photography, it impacted virtually every aspect of life

While we appreciate the technology for what it did for photography, it impacted virtually every aspect of life, as the Nobel Committee explained in its physics prize announcement. Smith and Boyle shared the prize with Charles K. Kao, who was recognized for his work with fiber-optic cables. "Taken together, these inventions may have had a greater impact on humanity than any others in the last half-century," said H. Frederick Dylla, director of the American Institute of Physics, to The Washington Post in 2009. It's been a critical tool for astronomy, undersea exploration and image-guided surgeries.

On the camera front, Eastman Kodak used the sensor in a prototype digital camera in 1975, which was as big as a shoebox and used cassette tapes to store about 30 images. Following that prototype, the CCD sensor was widely used in consumer cameras from the mid-90s to the early 2010s.

The 1.5MP Kodak DCS315 CCD Sensor.

Photo: Binarysequence (CC ShareAlike 3.0)

The CCD sensor works by reading from the edge of the sensor, one pixel at a time, with the charge cascading from one pixel to the next. CCDs require a lot of power for fast readout, though. Unfortunately, consumer batteries at the time lacked that power, so live view in compacts was slow and laggy. Naturally, the development of digital imaging sensors continued, and the CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) sensor, which enabled faster readout, became the dominant choice in digital cameras.

CCDs are no longer used in mainstream digital cameras, but they are still used in scientific and other specialized applications, such as deep space photography. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera, the world's largest camera, uses 189 individual 41 x 40mm 16.4MP CCD sensors. Smith's legacy lives on, continuing to drive innovation and leading to discoveries.

Front runners of the 2025 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards are revealing some of the best entries so far in the 2025 contest. Over a thousand entries have already been received from around the world. The contest was founded in 2015 by professional photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks MBE and Tom Sullam to focus on "the lighter side of wildlife photography" and to help promote conservation with humor.

In line with its mission, the Comedy Wildlife Awards support a conservation organization each year. This year's partner is the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN), a UK charity that supports conservation leaders working in their home countries throughout the Global South. The charity has been funding conservation for over 30 years, helping more than 220 conservationists in 80 countries.

The popular competition is still open for submissions through June 30, so there's still time to submit if you have your own funny wildlife captures. There are nine different categories, including Alex Walker’s Serian Mammals Category, Spectrum Photo Birds Category, Fish and Other Aquatic Species, Nikon Young Photographer, Nikon Junior Category and more. It's free to enter, and winners will earn prizes like a safari in the Maasai Mara in Kenya for the top prize, a Nikon Z50II with 16-50mm VR kit for the Junior Category winner and a Nikon Z6II with 24-120mm kit for the Young Photographer Category winner. All category winners will receive a ThinkTank bag. You can learn more and submit your images at the contest website.

Go away

Photographer: Annette Kirby

Title: Go away

Animal: White Tailed Sea Eagle

Location of image: Hokkaido, Japan

Description: This was taken in Japan where I was observing a White-Tailed Sea Eagle putting their fish in a hole and protecting it. This one had a fish and saw another Eagle coming in to try and steal it.

Go give it a try!

Photographer: Bhargava Srivari

Title: Go give it a try!

Animal: Lion

Location of image: Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya

Description: The image shows Lion siblings at play, where one of the siblings seems to pushing the other one to do stuff that annoys their mom. Lions aren't natural climbers, so it looks like one sibling is encouraging the other to do something naughty!

I hate Ikea

Photographer: Brian Hempstead

Title: I hate Ikea

Animal: Common Myna Nest Build

Location of image: Kruger NP South Africa

Description: Photo taken at Kruger NP South Africa outside Skukuza Camp on Lower Sabie Rd at Sunset Dam in October and November during a self driving birding trip around National Parks of South Africa

Laugh like no-one is watching

Photographer: Emma Parker

Title: Laugh like no-one is watching

Animal: Blue Spotted Mudskipper

Location of image: Western Australia

Description: Two joyful mudskippers look they are having the best time in the mud - I just wish I knew what the joke was! Mud is fun

Happy deer

Photographer: Jeremy Duvekot

Title: Happy deer

Animal: Roedeer

Location of image: The Netherlands

Description: This roedeer was yofull running around and suddenly coming my way. Had only 1 chance and nailed it.

Aaaaaww Mum!

Photographer: Mark Meth-Cohn

Title: Aaaaaww Mum!

Animal: Gorilla

Location of image: Rwanda

Description: Caring Gorilla mum giving her infant a big sloppy kiss!

Queueing for the polar plunge

Photographer: Martin Schmid

Title: Queueing for the polar plunge

Animal: Gentoo Penguins

Location of image: Neumayer Channel, Antarctica

Description: A really spontaneous shot from an expedition ship in Antarctica. Those gentoo penguins seemed to orderly wait in queue to finally jump into the sea. Taken in January 2025.

Commandeer

Photographer: Rachelle Mackintosh

Title: Commandeer

Animal: Galapagos marine iguana and lava lizard

Location of image: Fernandina Island, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Description: A lava lizard takes charge of a Galapagos marine iguana and sets off on a ride. Judging by the iguana's possessed eyes, lava lizard may have taken over its soul, too. These two silly billies were hanging out with a big bunch of marine iguanas on a rocky beach. Photographed handheld on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos Islands in Oct 2023.

Waving Dragon

Photographer: Trevor Rix

Title: Waving Dragon

Animal: Gippsland Waterdragon

Location of image: Murrumbidgee River near Canberra, ACT, Australia

Description: Wandering along the Murrumbidgee River we spotted a few lizards sc urrying under the rocks looking for lunch, next thing this junior Gippsland Waterdragon popped up and gave us a friendly wave.

The wig

Photographer: Yann Chauvette

Title: The wig

Animal: Greater One-Horned Rhino

Location of image: Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Description: A Greater One-Horned Rhino feasting on aquatic fine dining, diving underwater and getting back up with a new wig made out of his delicious meal.

Compact, cute and fun. Whatever you think of its price or capabilities, it's undeniably fun.

Photo: Richard Butler

It's been an interesting experience to write about the Sigma BF and the Fujifilm X half in such close succession. Both, in their own ways, are unusual cameras that don't readily fit into existing categories. They're both designed to appeal to people who wouldn't go out and buy one of the cameras currently on the market.

In reality, they have very little in common with one another. The Sigma tries to look and feel attractive to people who aren't necessarily currently photographers and aren't arriving with preconceived notions of how a camera should operate. Conversely, the X half is aimed at a younger crowd, who may (or may not) already have the film camera it approximately mimics, but who definitely want to use something more engaging than their phone.

Cameras are supposed to be fun

Illogical, impractical, but engagingly playful.

Photo: Richard Butler

The common lesson both these cameras have reminded me of is that cameras are allowed to be fun. More than that, perhaps: they're supposed to be fun.

Most modern cameras are hugely capable, and the most significant differences between cameras of the same class is often one of usability and enjoyabilty, rather than image quality or performance. But there's also a high degree of homogeneity in mainstream models. There are plenty of cameras that do everything well, but in a similar manner. There's no harm in ones that do things a little differently.

This isn't to say either the BF or X half is beyond criticism, but their failure to follow conventional ways of operating, or to take themselves particularly seriously aren't a sensible basis to do so. In many respects it's to be applauded.

Photography is meant to be fun

The vast majority of photographers aren't professionals. There's no particular thing we have to achieve with our cameras, no specific shot that we need to get, to pay the bills. The objective is whatever we want it to be.

We don't take photos because we have to, but because we want to. It's a hobby we choose to do for the satisfaction of it. It may be that you set yourself a particular goal: to get a particular shot, to get better and photographing a particular subject, but you're still doing it because you choose to.

Photography isn't necessarily what you think it is

The Sigma BF would be a terrible choice for most professionals and for many types of photography beyond, but that doesn't mean it can't be a great camera in the right hands and the right contexts.

Photo: Richard Butler

At its heart, photography is a fascinating mixture of the technical and the aesthetic, the practical and the creative. This is the thing I've always enjoyed about it, personally: understanding the technology comes relatively easily to me, but my love of photography comes from applying this to the lifelong struggle I face in improving the aesthetic aspect of my photos.

But I also know people who come from the absolute opposite direction: with a clear vision of what they want to create and a seemingly innate sense for composition and balance, and yet barely know what an aperture is. We come from completely different starting points, we often get something very different out of the experience and frequently something very different out of our cameras. We both find something to enjoy about the process, but it's not necessarily the same thing at all.

If cameras that work differently, or prioritize playfulness over technical perfection can extend that enjoyment to a wider group of people, that seems like something we should embrace.

Image: Lenovo

Although Lenovo is a well-known brand, it is not typically associated with cameras. While that likely won't be changing any time soon, the company has announced a compact camera, as Yanko Design reports. The Lenovo C55 promises vlogging-focused features at a very low price, though we've not been able to confirm all the specs.

The Lenovo C55 looks like a classic compact with a glossy, white plastic shell. It's small, measuring 112 x 71.5 x 34.5mm (4.4 x 2.8 x 1.3") and weighing only 190g (6.7oz), making it a pocketable device. There are suggestions it's built around a very small Type 1/3 (∼4.9 x 3.7mm) smartphone sensor, around half the size of those historically used in most point-and-shoots.

It features a 2.8" LCD screen on the back and, like many point-and-shoots, lacks a viewfinder. A mode dial on top allows for easy switching between various modes, including photo mode, continuous shooting, loop recording, time-lapse, slow-motion, video and more.

Image: Lenovo

The C55 can record 4K video and offers electronic image stabilization. One of the most helpful features is a built-in ring light, so you don't have to fuss with separate lights when recording vlogs.

Beyond that, though, the information is a little muddy. The press images from Lenovo mention 18x digital zoom, but the lens's focal length isn't specified, so it isn't clear what that 18x zoom will get you and whether it's including any cropping to get to that number. There's also supposedly a front and rear camera, though there aren't any specific details on those, and the images of the camera don't appear to have a camera on the back. There does appear to be a mirror on the front to aid with self-recorded videos and photos.

Image: Lenovo

Things get especially confusing regarding the sensor. Multiple websites report, including Notebook Check, that the camera is built around a 64MP Sony CMOS Type 1/3 image sensor. Sony's semiconductor division doesn't list a sensor with those specs on its site, but its site typically only lists a small number of the sensors offered to the industry. The Lenovo press images also don't mention a specific megapixel count or sensor size; they only include a Sony-branded sensor graphic with text that, when translated, says "professional sensor."

It's also unclear whether this is truly a Lenovo-made device or simply one that bears the Lenovo badge through licensing. The camera is only available in China. It comes in two variants: a 64GB version and a 128GB version, which cost CNY 499 ($69) and CNY 559 ($78), respectively. Many similarly priced cameras from unfamiliar brands are available on Amazon, but it is interesting to see Lenovo building out (or licensing) its name in the camera realm.

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Fujifilm's X100VI seems destined to perpetually dangle just out of reach.

Photo: Richard Butler

Fujifilm's X100VI remains hard to get hold of, over a year after its launch. Demand significantly outstripped supply and the company has been struggling to catch up, despite talk of trying to increase production capacity.

So, if you're fed up of waiting for an X100VI to become available, and don't want to line the pockets of scalpers on eBay, what are your options?

Why do you want an X100?

The word unique has been devalued by misuse, but I'd argue the X100 series offers a genuinely unique combination of style and capability. Some users won't care that it's a beautiful-looking camera, others won't care about working to squeeze out every last drop of potential image quality, but the X100 series appeals to both groups and many people in between.

So, before you can pick an alternative, it's worth being honest with yourself about what aspects of it appeal to you. If it's purely the desire for a small camera with good image quality, then there might be other options. If it's the classic aesthetics, you'll find the task harder. And if it's a bit of both, you might be better off waiting until they become available.

Which compact cameras can I get, instead of an X100VI?

The Ricoh GR IIIx can be a substitute for some of the things the X100VI does, in an even more convenient package, but they're hard to get hold of, too.

Photo: Carey Rose

2025 seems to be the year of cameras being unavailable, even prior to talk of tariffs and trade wars. Models such as the Ricoh GR IIIx or Canon G7 X III, that can, in their own ways, offer some of the X100VI's 'high image quality in a small body' appeal, have also become hard to source. In both cases, their manufacturers insist they're still in production, and yet...

The Ricoh GR IIIx isn't a like-for-like substitute for the X100VI, but it'd be our pick of an excellent photographers' compact if you can find one.

What are the mirrorless alternatives to the X100VI?

Compounding matters, the small, rangefinder-style mirrorless cameras we used to suggest as ersatz X100 stand-ins seem to have fallen out of fashion. Canon has abandoned its EOS M system, so the EF-M 22mm F2 lens doesn't have a contemporary body to mount on. All of Panasonic's GX models are looking distinctly dated and, while OM System still makes a PEN camera, the E-P7 is only sold in certain markets.

An OM-5 with a 17mm F2.8 gets you some of the retro charm (albeit a call-back to a very different style of camera). You pay an image quality cost for the move to a smaller sensor and slower lens, with very good image stabilization potentially making up for some of that if your subject allows the use of longer shutter speeds.

Even with a small lens, the Sony a7C II leaves you quite a long way from the X100VI's size, price or experience.

Photo: Richard Butler

You can recreate much of the X100's technical capability with a Sony a6700, but there aren't any particularly compact circa 35mm equiv lenses to pair with it. A Sony a7C II with a 35mm F2.8 is another option but you're drifiting further and further away from the idea of a good-looking, enjoyable or compact camera at that point, and your expenditure risks spiralling.

Should I get an older X100 model instead?

Going back one generation to the X100V (left) sees you lose the X100VI's image stabilization and 40MP sensor, but go back further and you lose the newer design, movable screen and a further generation of responsiveness, so we wouldn't advise venturing beyond the X100F (right).

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

The continued shortage of X100VIs makes the previous models tempting, instead. The series has developed iteratively over fifteen years and six models, with appreciable improvements each time. The X100V is still a very nice camera, even if it misses out on the VI's higher resolution sensor and image stabilization. The problem is that their popularity also surged towards the end of their product life, so their second-hand prices can be as off-putting as those of the VI.

The X100F was the fourth-generation X100 and taking this further step back in time sees you move to an earlier lens design, less streamlined body and fixed rear screen, along with the performance drop you'd reasonably expect of an eight-year-old camera. It could still be a reasonable option, but it's only worth taking if you can get it at a significant discount compared with the X100VI's list price, which is an unlikely prospect at present. We wouldn't recommend going back any further in the series than that.

Buy now:

$2249 at Amazon.com$1599 at Adorama$1599 at B&H Photo Fujifilm X100VI, is it worth the wait?

Sadly – and even more so than when we tried to address this question with the X100V – there really isn't a great alternative to the Fujifilm X100VI. It's an excellent camera and one for which there are precious few plausible substitutes, and those that there are are also in short supply.

We'd generally suggest putting in your order with a trusted retailer and waiting for Fujifilm to address the backlog

If you can find a Ricoh GR IIIx, it's definitely worth a look, but beyond that we'd generally suggest putting in your order with a trusted retailer and waiting for Fujifilm to address the backlog. Unless there's some important and unrepeatable event (a significant vacation or family event, for instance) imminent, we'd advise against paying the ludicrous markups some resellers are charging.

Partly because, while we gave it a Gold award as a camera costing $1599, its lustre dims if you have to pay hundreds of dollars over that price. But mainly because we wouldn't recommend that anyone help to line the pockets of people who only bought them solely to profiteer. Because they're part of the reason you can't get an X100VI.

Jupiter’s ice-covered ocean moon Europa floats above the planet’s Great Red Spot in this 1979 image from Voyager 1. This is a mosaic of several images in orange and violet filters. The scene is about 22,000 miles across.

Voyager 1 ISS NAC, 0.96 sec (orange), 0.48 sec (violet), f8.5
Image: NASA/JPL/Alexis Tranchandon

I’m both an amateur and professional photographer. As an amateur, my photography is a source of great enjoyment, but nothing special. But my professional photographic work is more interesting. As a member of several large teams of planetary scientists and engineers, I get to photograph other worlds, from up close.

The cameras we use cost millions of dollars and are attached to some of NASA’s robotic interplanetary spacecraft, which take them to amazing places. But photography is photography, and the fundamentals of how we capture the interaction between light and matter to generate images are the same. I’m surprised how often the two kinds of photography overlap.

"But photography is photography."

We explore the worlds of our solar system using spacecraft bristling with many tools – magnetometers, mass spectrometers, radar, and so on. But cameras provide the most accessible information on the worlds we explore and are incredibly versatile in the range of phenomena they can capture. It’s rare for a spacecraft to head out to the planets without cameras of some kind.

Planetary Photoshoots

Our first visit to a new world is usually a flyby, using a spacecraft that doesn’t even slow down as it passes its target but grabs what images and other data it can in the precious few minutes or hours when it’s close by.

Every detail is planned months or years beforehand and rigorously tested before being uplinked to the spacecraft for execution. The flybys themselves are then a matter of watching and waiting, hoping everything goes smoothly, and excitedly pouncing on the new data when it hits the ground.

Some of the science team for the Lucy asteroid mission, at the moment we got our first look at images from the Lucy cameras that showed a moon, unknown until then, orbiting the asteroid Dinkinesh. The gobsmacked author is seated, center, in the blue t-shirt.

Image: Stuart J. Robbins.

That first picture of Dinkinesh and its moon Selam (left), from Lucy’s low-resolution tracking camera, is responsible for the reaction above. Much better pictures (right), from our long-lens LORRI camera were downlinked a couple of hours later. Dinkinesh is about 0.4 miles across.

Left: Lucy TTCAM, 1/1250th sec, f2.95
Right: Lucy LORRI, 1/500thsec, f12.6
Image: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/ASU/NOIR

Later, if we can, we return with spacecraft that carry the big rocket engines and fuel needed to get into orbit for an extended stay, often spending years in detailed exploration or even landing and roving for a much closer look.

Cameras

NASA was, by necessity, an early adopter of digital camera technology. The first close-up pictures of Mars, taken by Mariner 4 in 1965, were obtained with an analog vidicon camera, but were digitized (200 x 200 pixels, 6-bit) for transmission back to Earth at a blistering 8 bits per second.

This technology (upgraded to 800 x 800 pixels and 8 bits) was used until the late 1970s, and the Voyager mission’s astonishing images of the outer gas giant planets and their moons, and that final, famous, “pale blue dot” look-back image of the Earth, were all digitized vidicon images.

The first interplanetary photograph, of the Martian horizon, was taken on July 14th, 1965. The actual image is on the right. The scene is about 300 miles across. On the left is the first rendering of the image, made by an impatient engineer by hand-coloring pasted strips of printouts of the data numbers.

Mariner 4 TV camera, 1/5th sec, f8
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Goods

But starting in the 1980s, long before they were adapted to consumer cameras, solid-state CCD detectors became the norm, bringing greatly increased sensitivity and image quality. Camera designs tend to be conservative, though, because reliability is an overriding concern when the nearest repair facility is a billion miles away, and the tried and true often beats the innovative.

CMOS detectors, originally developed for NASA use, are now becoming common, but we chose a 1 Megapixel CCD detector for the LORRI telephoto camera included on our asteroid mission, Lucy, which launched in 2021. The format may be small and the technology old-fashioned, but we’d flown the LORRI camera before, on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and we knew that it would work.

Pluto, photographed in approximate natural color (left) and enhanced color that includes near-infrared data (right) by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 14th, 2015 (coincidentally, 50 years to the day after that first Mars image). Pluto’s diameter is 1,470 miles.

New Horizons MVIC, 0.60 sec, f8.7
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker

For larger format images, we often use long, skinny, “pushbroom” arrays. A scan mirror, or the entire spacecraft, moves to sweep the array across the target while the array is read out in lockstep with the scene motion. Pushbroom has the advantage over large framing arrays in that the detector is much more compact, and it’s also easy to incorporate color by using a series of parallel arrays, each with its own color filter, which scan over the target in turn.

Because maximizing detail is paramount, focal lengths tend to be long, and most planetary cameras are really telescopes. MVIC is the “wide angle” camera on New Horizons, but has a field of view of just 5.7 degrees (350 mm equivalent focal length), while its narrow-angle traveling companion, LORRI, has a 0.29-degree field (7000 mm equiv. focal length). Focal lengths are limited both by camera weight and by how steadily the spacecraft can track the target for the necessary exposure times.

Color

The simplest planetary cameras, like the New Horizons and Lucy LORRI cameras, are monochrome. For color, scanning with a set of linear pushbroom arrays, each with a different-colored overlying filter, is often used, as mentioned above. Other cameras obtain color images with Bayer-type filter arrays or filter wheels that step through the wavelengths in turn, as in the Voyager image of Jupiter and Europa above.

"When the nearest repair facility is a billion miles away, the tried and true often beats the innovative."

Matching human color vision is usually less of a priority than choosing the most scientifically diagnostic wavelengths; the New Horizons MVIC camera carries blue and red filters, but not green, and has two near-infrared filters, one tuned to a wavelength (0.89 microns) that is strongly absorbed by the frozen methane that’s abundant on Pluto’s surface.

Reconstructing “natural color” images from the resulting data can thus be tricky and somewhat subjective. But the aim is generally to show real variations in the color of the scene, whether or not they correspond precisely to what the eye would see, as well as to produce something aesthetically pleasing. Including wavelengths beyond human vision increases color contrasts and reveals patterns that the eye would miss, as with the Pluto example above.

Sometimes, color saturation is cranked up to bring out subtle features. We try to label released images to make these distinctions clear, though the provisos often get lost when the images are reproduced.

Color image releases of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, 2250 miles in diameter, from Voyager in 1979 (left), Galileo in 1997 (middle) and Juno in 2023 (right), illustrate the vagaries of representing planetary colors. Colors vary due to the different sets of color filters used and the preferences of the image processors. Voyager, in particular, missed the red color of the huge oval ring of volcanic fallout surrounding the Pele volcano (lower-right center, left image and lower-left, center image), because Voyager’s vidicon detector was blind to red light. Spot-the-difference fans can enjoy finding the changes wrought by volcanic activity between the Voyager image and the Galileo image, which cover much of the same terrain.

Left: Voyager ISS NAC, 0.49 sec (orange), 0.36 sec (blue and violet), f8.5 (NASA/JPL)

Middle: Galileo SSI, 0.4 sec (violet), 1/20th sec (green), 0.26 sec (infrared), f8.5 (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Right: Juno Junocam, red, green, blue filters, f3.2 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt)

Lighting

All interplanetary photography is outdoor photography, and the sun is our primary light source. We have one variable that earth-bound photographers don’t need to worry about, which is the varying brightness of the sun depending on our distance from it.

"All interplanetary photography is outdoor photography."

Pluto, which the New Horizons spacecraft flew past in 2015, was then 33 times further from the Sun than the Earth is, and sunlight was 1000 times weaker, something like the illumination in a cozy terrestrial restaurant. This effect is predictable, and our camera focal ratios and exposure times are designed to handle it.

New Horizons’ MVIC camera had no trouble obtaining those color images of Pluto in that dim light. But in 2007, when New Horizons flew past Jupiter en route to Pluto, and we were six times closer to the sun, and the sun was forty times brighter, MVIC was hopelessly overexposed, and we didn’t get any decent color pictures of Jupiter.

Part of the bizarre surface of Europa, seen by the Galileo Jupiter orbiter, under high sun (left) and looking very different in a closer image mosaic of the region in the yellow square, taken with oblique illumination (right). The yellow square is about 220 miles across. The left-hand image shows compression artifacts, a consequence of Galileo’s broken main antenna, which required severely compressing images for downlink at very low rates through its backup antenna.

Galileo SSI. Left: 1/240th sec. f8.5; Right: 1/80th sec f8.5
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

With the sun as our primary light source, we don’t have the luxury of repositioning it to our liking. But like any landscape photographer, we can control the lighting by choosing the timing and viewpoint for our images.

As on Earth, long shadows provide the most dramatic landscapes, highlighting subtleties in topography that would be washed out with the sun overhead. So low sun is best for understanding the lie of the land, while high sun is best for capturing brightness and color variations that give clues to what the surface is made of.

The night side of Saturn’s distant moon Iapetus (912-mile diameter) photographed in Saturn-light. The spacecraft rotated to track Iapetus during the exposure, streaking out the images of background stars.

Cassini ISS NAC, 82 sec, f10.5
Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Space being black, our sources of indirect light are limited, and space lighting tends to be direct and harsh. But sometimes, we can use indirect lighting to see where direct sunlight can’t reach.

Sunlit topography can reflect light into nearby shadowed regions; a NASA camera called ShadowCam on the Korean KPLO lunar orbiter exploits this indirect light to look for signs of ice in frigid lunar polar crater bottoms that never see direct sunlight.

Other nearby worlds can also provide indirect illumination, just as Earthshine illuminates the dark side of the crescent moon. Our best images of some parts of Saturn’s moon Iapetus were obtained, with very long exposures, using Saturn-shine. Saturn’s enormous rings provide dramatic indirect lighting on Saturn’s night side, which I’ve always found particularly beautiful, providing a soft light rarely seen in space scenes.

Ring-shine illuminates the night side of Saturn, as seen from Voyager 1 in 1980. Saturn’s shadow cuts across the rings on the left. The scene is about 50,000 miles across.

Voyager 1 ISS WAC, 15.4 sec, f3.5
Image: NASA/JPL

Saturn-shine illuminates the night side of Saturn’s active moon Enceladus. Jets and curtains of ice particles, erupted from geyser-like fissures in Enceladus’ south pole, rise up out of Enceladus’ shadow to catch the direct sunlight. The scene is about 250 miles across.

Cassini ISS NAC, 3.2 sec (red), 3.8 sec (green), 18 sec (blue), f10.5
Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/Gordan Ugarkovic

Composition

We’re rarely doing this for art’s sake; our goals are utilitarian, pursuing the best possible combination of detail and coverage to understand our targets. Considering where we are and what we’re looking at, though, the results are often stunning. And we still make aesthetic choices when choosing which images, or parts of images, to highlight for early public release.

Creative cropping. A parting shot of Pluto from New Horizons (left), and the most spectacular part of the image (right), which we chose for early public release. We would have loved to take this picture in color, but couldn’t spare the time to store the additional color data. Pluto’s diameter is 1470 miles, and the enlargement on the right is 230 miles across.

New Horizons MVIC, 0.40 sec, f8.7
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Saturn’s moon Dione, behind Saturn’s edge-on rings, seen below the south pole of the moon Rhea (top). Despite appearances, this is a real single-exposure image, not a composite. Diameters of Rhea and Dione are 950 and 700 miles, respectively.

Cassini ISS NAC, 1/12th sec, f10.5
Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Occasionally, when the timeline is relaxed and we have resources to spare, we have the luxury of planning photos primarily for their aesthetic appeal. The Cassini Saturn orbiter took many images during its 13 years in Saturn orbit that were designed primarily to capture dramatic alignments of Saturn, its moons, or rings.

When New Horizons flew past Jupiter in 2007, we enlisted the help of amateur space enthusiasts to help us compose some of these scenic shots, including this alignment of the ice-covered ocean moon Europa with Io, its volcanic sibling.

Jovian moons Europa (left) and Io (right), imaged by New Horizons shortly after flying by Jupiter on the way to Pluto. The night side of Io is illuminated by Jupiter. Three volcanic eruptions, one with the red glow of incandescent lava at its center, can be seen on Io. This image is a composite of a high-resolution monochrome image from the LORRI camera with color from the lower-resolution MVIC camera. The diameters of Europa and Io are 1940 and 2260 miles, respectively.

New Horizons LORRI, 1/12th sec, f12.6; New Horizons MVIC, 0.6 sec, f8.7
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Exposure

Like all photographers, we think a lot about exposures. Aperture is fixed by the camera system – all our subjects are at infinity, and we always shoot wide-open. For exposure times, the usual trades apply; we don’t want to blow our highlights, but we want to minimize noise and retain shadow detail.

We also want to minimize motion blur and camera shake, so the motion in the scene, and the steadiness of our platform, are important. The Cassini spacecraft that took the above long-exposure Iapetus image was spectacularly steady, other craft are less so.

"Like all photographers, we think a lot about exposures... we don’t want to blow our highlights, but we want to minimize noise and retain shadow detail."

But we have some unique challenges. First, we can’t make adjustments on the fly – shutter lag is a big deal when your camera is up to several light-hours away, and with flyby missions, our subjects would be long gone before we could tweak our exposures. And we rarely use auto exposure, mostly because of its unpredictability.

Second, we often don’t know how bright our targets are going to be if we’ve never seen them up close before. So we often fall back on the old photographer’s standby of exposure bracketing, or we increase dynamic range by taking a bunch of short exposures and stacking them later.

Exposure challenges. Left: The Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth, severely underexposed to limit smear, given the feeble sunlight at 42x the Earth’s distance from the sun. Noise was reduced in the final product (below) by combining nine of these individual images. Arrokoth is 22 miles long.

New Horizons LORRI, 1/40th sec. f12.6
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Right: The asteroid Dinkinesh, with blown highlights in the center of the image. Exposure choice here was a deliberate gamble, as we had to choose a single exposure for a long sequence of images with varying lighting. We chose to risk overexposure when the sun was behind us, as in this image, in order to optimize exposures in the rest of the images (including the image of Dinkinesh and Selam above), where Dinkinesh was fainter. Arrokoth and Dinkinesh are made of stuff with similar intrinsic brightness, but Dinkinesh is 20x closer to the sun, and sunlight is 400x brighter. Dinkinesh is about 0.4 miles across.

Lucy LORRI, 1/500th sec. f12.6
Image: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL

The final processed closest Arrokoth image (left and right), flanking an earlier image (center) taken in a similar way from a different angle, from greater distance. The images are arranged so Arrokoth can be viewed in stereo, either via parallel viewing (left and center) or cross-eyed viewing (center and right).

Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Summary

The adventure of planetary exploration continues. I’ve focused on U.S. missions here, which currently face serious budget threats. But this is now an international effort, with players including Europe, Japan, China, India, and several smaller nations. In addition to a fleet of spacecraft currently exploring Mars, spacecraft are currently on their way to Mercury, several asteroids, and Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, with launches planned soon to the Martian moons, and Saturn’s moon Titan. All of them carry cameras, and hold the promise of amazing photographic opportunities to come.

Additional notes:

Spaceflight is plagued with acronyms, and I haven’t attempted to spell them out here. For explanations and much more detail, follow the included links for the various cameras. The raw image data are generally available for download from the NASA Planetary Data System- see, for example this excellent search tool for outer planet images. Extensive processing of the raw data, often done by enthusiastic amateurs, is used to create many of the images here, but they remain true to the original data. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comments.

John Spencer is a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. A member of the science teams for NASA missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, and the Trojan asteroids, he has led the science planning for several planetary flybys. His earthbound photography includes documenting the excitement of planetary encounters, including the New Horizons encounter with Pluto.

For people in many western states, summer is synonymous with rodeo. Above, a rider sits on her horse after failing to rope a calf at the Flathead River Rodeo in Polson, Montana, part of the Indian National Finals rodeo circuit.

Photo: Dale Baskin

The theme for our June Editors' photo challenge is 'Chasing Summer'.

With summer just around the corner, we want to see photos that evoke the spirit of summer fun and adventure. Whether it's jumping into cold water on a hot day, melting ice cream, or epic road trips, we want to see what 'Chasing Summer' looks like through your lens. Our favorites will be featured on the DPReview homepage later this month.

This challenge is open to photos taken at any time.

Photos can be submitted between Sunday, June 8, and Saturday, June 14 (GMT).

Important: Images MUST include a title and a caption of at least 25 words to be eligible. We need to be able to share the story behind your photo. We will consider both photos and captions when selecting our winners, so make sure to tell us that story!

Visit the challenge page to read the full rules and to submit your photos for consideration as soon as the challenge opens.

Visit the challenge page to see all the rules

When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission. Illustration: Hasselblad

It was something that haunted the fringes of my consciousness, like some half-remembered nightmare. It couldn't have been real, surely? And yet it had the shape of an actual memory.

News of the death of filmmaker David Lynch no doubt caused plenty of us to recall the strange, compelling and sometimes distinctly unnerving visions he committed to film. This week it unexpectedly prompted some other memories.

The online auction of many of the auteur's personal possessions includes, as you might expect, a great deal of photo, video and film equipment. Buried in amongst it was a reminder of one of the weirder paths taken by the camera industry.

In amongst a lot that included a Pentax 645 film camera and a Sony NEX-5 was a relic from a period we'd seemingly collectively erased: a Hasselblad Lunar.

What were they thinking?

Like many instances of misbegotten folly, the Lunar sprang from the involvement of private equity. Hasselblad was bought by Swiss/German capital fund Ventizz in 2011, with TechCrunch predicting this could lead to something like the Leica/Panasonic attempt to expand the brand. They weren't wrong, but perhaps underestimated the level corporate hubris in the offing.

2012 looks like a very different era, viewed from our modern perspective. Compacts were still being released in their bucket loads, the enthusiast compact revival was reaching its peak with the likes of the Sony RX100 and Olympus XZ-2, and although mirrorless cameras were strongly emerging, with the likes of Fujifilm's and Canon joining the market alonside second-gen models from Nikon, Sony and Olympus, but DSLRs still ruled the roost with Canon launching the EOS 6D and Nikon its D600.

But one of the most talked about releases at the Photokina trade show, that year didn't come from any of the big brands. Or, at least, didn't have their name on it. Instead is called itself the Hasselblad Lunar.

As the show opened, Hasselblad announced a partnership with Sony, to "cultivate new markets for photo enthusiasts and consumer digital imaging products." This would include "a new range of advanced mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras (a.k.a. compact system camera), which will be followed by new products for DSLR and compact camera segments," it said.

The Hasselblad Lunar added exotic materials to a spec sheet remarkably similar to that of the Sony NEX-7.

Photo: Richard Butler

The Lunar was the first of fruit of this union. "the Lunar has both a vintage and a high-tech aesthetic, exemplified by its Italian design and its Swedish pedigree," the company's marketing claimed: "It’s unmistakable."

But for all the adornments of titanium, carbon fibre, exotic woods and leathers, the thing that was unmistakable to most people was how much it looked like a Sony NEX-7, right down the the Minolta-style hotshoe. We were able to shoot a side-by-side comparison that couldn't help but emphasize the similarities.

A side-by-side comparison showed a lot of commonality between the Lunar and the NEX-7

Photos: Richard Butler

The three lens models mounted on the 40-or-so prototypes that dominated the Hasselblad stand were also distinctly familiar. The 18-55mm, 18-200mm and 16mm lenses may have had the classic 'Hasselblad' logotype draped around their barrels, but even their model names included Sony's 'SEL' designation.

Click here to see our Photokina 2012 Hasselblad stand report with more photos

It was going to take more than Hasselblad's talk of taking "aesthetic and technological inspiration from the first camera to go into space," to sell the idea that Sony's $1399 enthusiast APS-C mirrorless flagship, launched a year earlier, should be worth $6995; craftsmanship, Tuscan leather, ruby record buttons or not.

Carbon fiber was one of the materials on offer.

Photo: Richard Butler

The result was immediate and widespread derision, with the company rattled enough to respond that the camera wasn't just an NEX-7, and that it wasn't profiteering, though details weren't given on what work Hasselblad has done, other than restyling the exterior.

The Lunar finally reached the market nine months later. We don't have an insight into how many sold, but the fact Lynch's lens is marked as a prototype could be taken as a hint that it wasn't many.

The a7R-based Lusso was the final model in the series. The Hasselblad Solar, rumored at the time of the original a7/a7R launch proved to be a hoax.

Illustration: Hasselblad

The Sony collaboration continued for another couple of years and a change of CEO, spawning the a99-based HV, the RX100-derived Stellar and Stellar II and even a variant of the Sony a7R, called the Lusso, produced in a limited edition of 100 for the Asian market. The company says the Stellar, at least, was profitable.

By 2016, new investment and new management had set a new course for the company

Photo: Damien Demolder

By 2015 the company had yet new management and, by the end of the year, new investment from the company that would later take full ownership: DJI. The Italian design studio responsible for the Hassel/Sonys was closed in 2014 and by the next Photokina, Hasselblad had a product and a direction that fitted much more happily with its medium format heritage.

Looking back it barely seems credible, but we were there as it happened.

Image: Sony

Last year, Wired reported that 28 Years Later, the upcoming sequel to the classic zombie flick 28 Days Later, was being filmed using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. A new IGN interview with the film's director, Danny Boyle, now confirms that at least some parts of the movie were shot with the phone and sheds even more light on that process.

Apparently, several iPhone shooting rigs were used on the production. According to IGN, there was one that held eight phones, one that held ten, and one that held up to 20, which could be used to create what Boyle calls "basically a poor man’s bullet time."

The phone rigs could be attached to cranes or carried by people.
Photo: Sony

He also says that having so much coverage also provided options in post. "It gives you 180 degrees of vision of an action, and in the editing you can select any choice from it, either a conventional one-camera perspective or make your way instantly around reality, time-slicing the subject, jumping forward or backward for emphasis." Boyle also called it "a wonderful tool" to keep the actors on their toes. "They get to know where the cameras are and they get to know lenses and they get to know what they're doing. But [the multi-camera rig] throws them."

As for why Boyle decided to use iPhones at all for the production, he says it's a callback to the vibe of the original. IGN points out that when 28 Days Later came out footage of an apocalyptic event would've been shot on cheap digital camcorders, similar to the ones they used to make the movie. Nowadays, such an event would be recorded on smartphones.

With that said, it's hard to say that the footage from the trailer looks like phone video. With some movies shot on iPhone, like Sean Baker's Tangerine or Steven Soderbergh's Unsane, the shot-on-a-cell-phone aesthetic is strong, but, to my eye, 28 Years Later just looks like a movie. That's not necessarily a surprise, though – on-set photos from Sony show the crew using full-blown cinema lenses in front of the phone's built-in cameras.

If you're at all interested in the movie, the full interview is well worth the read. It goes into how Boyle and his team use the widescreen 2.76:1 aspect ratio to put the audience on edge, and how the movie's story (penned by Alex Garland, like the original) was inspired by major events over the past two decades, such as Brexit. 28 Years Later is set to hit theaters on June 20.

When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.Canon EOS R50 V vs. Sony ZV-E10 II: which is the best vlogging camera? Product Photos by Mitchell Clark and Richard Butler

With the EOS R50 V, Canon has joined the fray of manufacturers selling boxy, EVF-less APS-C cameras aimed mainly at vloggers and videographers. Those who have been considering other models, such as the very capable Sony ZV-E10 II, may find themselves swayed by the EOS R50 V's much lower price tag.

In this article, we'll break down the differences between the two, so you can figure out if it's worth saving the money, or springing for the more expensive option.

Vlogging-specific features

Both cameras have loads of vlogging-specific features to make it easier to get the look and feel that you want. The EOS R50 V has a product demo mode that overrides its facial recognition autofocus so the camera will focus on whatever you're holding up to show it, a cinematic mode that bakes black bars onto your footage to emulate a movie-like aspect ratio and the ability to be used as a USB webcam without any additional drivers or software. Its vlogging controls will switch between vertical or landscape depending on the camera's orientation, and it has two record buttons: one at the top and a front-facing one on the right-hand corner.

Except for that front-facing record button, the ZV-E10 II has all those features plus a background defocus mode that you can switch on to prioritize a wide-open aperture for a blurry background. There are also a few other features handy for vloggers that we'll cover in later sections.

Rolling shutter

The EOS R50 V's sensor is quite slow compared to more modern models and therefore has quite poor rolling shutter performance in its standard 4K 24p mode. You'll have to be careful about how you move the camera and what subjects you shoot to avoid the dreaded jello effect.

4K 24p 4K 60p 1080p 24p EOS R50 V 31.9ms 15.7ms (1.56x crop) 12.3ms ZV-E10 II 16.7 ms 16.2 ms (1.1x crop) 6.8 ms

The ZV-E10 II's sensor is much faster and has good rolling shutter performance. You'll still see a bit of artifacting if you're shooting a very fast-moving subject or whipping the camera around, but it won't be something to worry about in most circumstances.

4K 60p recording

Both cameras can record in 4K 60p, letting you shoot slow-motion video, or achieve a hyperreal look that some viewers appreciate. However, the EOS R50 V has to crop in to a 1.56x center region of its sensor in order to read out the data fast enough for 60p recording. This will significantly tighten your frame, which may not be ideal for vlogging, depending on what lens you're using.

The Sony has to crop in far less – 1.1x – to shoot at 4K 60p.

The ZV-E10 II's 4K 60p mode has a much smaller 1.1x crop, so switching to it won't change your field of view nearly as much. Its 4K 60p footage is also oversampled from 5.6K, while the EOS R50 V's is a native 4K capture, so it can produce slightly more detailed results.

Color modes

The EOS R50 V and ZV-E10 II both have standard, punchy-rather-than-accurate color profiles, the ability to shoot 10-bit footage with an HLG response curve for HDR playback and a Log mode for those looking for more color-grading flexibility.

While both cameras have 'Log assist' modes to give a corrected preview to help with getting exposure right, the Sony also lets you load in custom LUTs and overlay them, to let you preview your 'look' of choice, though they won't be baked into the footage. The ZV-E10 II also has Sony's S-Cinetone profile, which is lower contrast than the standard color mode and thus gives you more room to make edits, without requiring as much grading as full-on Log.

Both cameras also include a variety of other color mode presets that you can tweak, which are meant to emulate certain styles if you don't want to spend the time to do it yourself in post.

Autofocus

Sony and Canon's autofocus systems are both at the top of the pack. Their tracking algorithms are generally reliable, and their subject recognition modes are even more so.

The ZV-E10 II has fewer of those available, though; it can recognize humans, animals, and birds, but the EOS R50 V can pick out all of those, plus vehicles. It also has an "Auto" mode that will automatically detect those subject types if they're in the frame, which can be handy if you frequently switch between filming humans and animals, people and cars, etc.

In both instances, these systems work hand-in-hard with the rest of the AF system: only selecting a recognized subject near your chosen AF point, if you want to specify.

Audio

Both cameras have microphone and headphone sockets and can support four-channel audio when paired with certain their respective multi-function shoe accessories. However, while the EOS R50 V has a standard stereo internal microphone, the ZV-E10 II has a three-capsule model that lets you choose whether you want it to bias towards sounds coming from a certain direction.

More importantly (the audio quality from multi-capsule mics usually isn't anything to write home about), the ZV-E10 II includes a fluffy wind blocker for its built-in microphone. You'll have to buy one separately for the EOS R50 V to get usable audio outdoors without an external microphone.

Shooting stills

Neither camera is particularly fun to use for shooting stills, thanks to their lack of an EVF and second top-plate control dial. However, the EOS R50 V does have the advantage of a mechanical second-curtain shutter, whereas the ZV-E10 II only has a fully electronic shutter. That means the Canon has a much higher flash sync speed: 1/250 sec vs 1/30 sec for the Sony.

Flash aside, both cameras can produce pleasing images with good colors. The Sony technically has a higher resolution sensor with 26MP compared to the Canon's 24MP, but such a small difference isn't noticeable in real-world use.

The extras

Both cameras have a few little things that stand out. For example, the EOS R50 V has a second tripod socket on its side, which makes shooting vertical video as simple as attaching your tripod plate to a different part of the camera. It also includes false-color monitoring, which can help you nail exposure for skin tones.

The ZV-E10 II distinguishes itself with a side-mounted SD card slot, meaning you'll never have to remove your tripod plate to get at your videos, something that can happen with the EOS R50 V. However, the 10Gbps USB-C port on the Canon is twice as fast as the Sony's, so there is an alternative option for getting data off it.

Sony also chose to use a much larger battery in the ZV-E10 II, which could be helpful on longer shoots. The battery life on the EOS R50 V isn't bad, and both cameras can charge via USB-C while in use, but you won't have to reach for a power lead as often with the Sony.

Kit lenses

Both cameras can be optioned with powerzoom lenses that have focal lengths suited to vlogging. Canon launched the EOS R50 V alongside a 14-30mm F4-6.3 lens (22-48mm equiv.), which is wide enough that most people's arms will be long enough to vlog with it, even with the 1.56x crop for 4K 60p (giving 35-75mm equiv). You can get it for $200 when purchased with the EOS R50 V.

The 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 (24-75mm equiv.) Sony lens is more versatile: it can zoom in much further, is faster at both ends and only adds $100 to the price. And while it doesn't go as wide as the Canon, in the ZV-E10 II's 60p mode it ends up being a 26.4mm equiv. compared to the Canon's lens which ends up as a 35mm equiv. thanks to its more severe 60p crop. However, we're not particularly thrilled by the Sony lens' image quality – we wouldn't be surprised if many ZV-E10 II owners end up wanting something sharper, though they'll likely have to give up the powerzoom feature to get it.

Conclusion

While the EOS R50 V is a capable camera with some interesting features like its side-mounted tripod socket, the ZV-E10 II's faster sensor and larger battery make it the overall more powerful camera for video. However, that comes at a price, literally – it costs $350 more. Depending on what you're filming, it may not be worth paying the extra; if you're mostly shooting semi-static subjects indoors, the rolling shutter and 4K 60p crop may not be as big a concern.

It's also hard to ignore that you could buy a cheap gimbal with your EOS R50 V and still come out ahead while getting much less shaky handheld video. However, if you're shooting faster moving subjects, or prefer extra bells and whistles like the background defocus button and microphone pickup area selector, the Sony definitely still justifies its price tag.

Read our Sony ZV-E10 II review

Buy now:

$1098 w/ 16-50 at Amazon.com$1098 w/ 16-50 at B&H PhotoBuy at MPB

Read our Canon EOS R50 V review

Buy now:

Buy w/ 14-30mm at Amazon.comBuy w/ 14-30mm at B&H PhotoBuy w/ 14-30mm at Canon

When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission. Photo: Richard Butler

There's a funny thing that can happen with technology. Sometimes, products will get so good, and so easy to use that manufacturers start adding throwbacks to years past that reintroduce a bit of the friction. Think home arcade machines that still require you to put in a quarter, phones that purposefully can't run most apps, and, yes, cameras that make you wait to see your pictures.

Fujifilm's recently announced X half is just the latest example. It includes a film camera mode that prevents you from seeing the pictures you've taken until you've shot an entire "roll" and then used an app to "develop" it. This isn't the first time a digital camera has required an extra step to see your photos either; there are several apps that emulate that experience on your phone. One example is Dispo, an app that gained whirlwind popularity a few years ago that makes you wait until 9 AM the next day to see the photos you've taken.

As with anything, these nostalgic recreations have elicited scoffs from some, and confusion from others. Isn't the whole appeal of digital photography that we don't have to live with these sorts of limitations? Why artificially undo decades of progress in user experience and design?

Disposable cameras and apps that emulate them are another example of doing things the hard way despite having "better" options

The answer is that, sometimes, it's fun to get a break from what you're used to. A person in the 1990s probably wouldn't find these cameras at all charming since they're just recreating everyday photography for them. For them, having to wait for their photos, perhaps with some anticipation about whether they even turned out, is a frustration they're obligated to put up with. Nowadays, though, that ritual can be an endearing throwback to a style of photography that we haven't had to deal with for years or, perhaps, ever.

To borrow a term from wrestling, there's a kayfabe – a playing pretend – to these sorts of experiences. Case in point: you can take the SD card out of your X half and get at the film mode pictures the second after you take them. Or if you really can't miss the moment, you can take out your phone – a do-everything device that would've seemed miraculous in film's heyday – or another, more traditional modern camera and use it to take a picture instead.

Temporarily going without the extras can help you focus

The limitations are artificial, just like they are in so many of the other activities we participate in; football players agree not to ruin the game by picking the ball up, and going camping doesn't mean permanently converting to an 1800s lifestyle without running water, electricity and toilets.

Sometimes, temporarily going without the extras can help you focus on something else that you'd typically pay less attention to. If you know you won't be able to immediately review your photo and fix something if it doesn't turn out, you may take a bit more time composing it and making sure your exposure settings are correct. Or you may enjoy not worrying about those things, and letting the photos be a surprise when you do finally see them. And when you choose to use a camera with all the modern features instead, you may find a newfound appreciation for them.

Of course, there will be those who just don't enjoy these kinds of modes, and that's okay too. On most of the cameras that include them, they're entirely optional. For cameras where it's not optional, such as the Camp Snap or the disposable film cameras it emulates... well, consider that a good reason to save your money instead.

Do you want to shape the online experience for one of the world's largest audiences of photography enthusiasts? DPReview is hiring! We're looking for a full-time Community Manager with experience building active and engaged online spaces to join our Editorial team and help grow our online forums.

Community Manager, DPReview Full-time remote in NY, CA, WA, TX, CT, CO, NJ, OR
Full-time contract opportunities available to candidates living outside of these locations The Role

We're looking for an experienced and passionate Community Manager to lead the charge in revitalizing and growing our online forums. This is a critical role for someone who thrives on building active, engaged online spaces and understands how to foster a positive and inclusive environment. You won't just be managing; you'll be innovating, strategizing, and executing plans to boost participation and breathe new life into our community discussions. If you have a proven track record of growing online communities and a knack for building active, engaging, and welcoming forums or discussion groups, we want to hear from you.

This role requires a high-energy self-starter with a strong bias for action. You see opportunities for engagement and growth and pursue them independently, without needing constant oversight. You’ll be a key ambassador, bridging the gap between our editorial team and our users, and you’ll play a vital part in shaping the future of our community.

What you will do:

• Own the strategy: Define, own, and execute the community growth strategy, setting measurable goals for participation, engagement, and user satisfaction. Identify opportunities to increase forum engagement and participation.
• Analyze and refine: Regularly analyze community data and user feedback to identify trends, report on progress, and refine strategies to boost forum participation.
• Engage and connect: Be an active, visible presence in our forums. Engage directly with users, answer questions, and spark conversations. Act as the primary liaison between our community and the editorial team.
• Innovate and program: Design and implement engaging community programs, campaigns, and events (e.g., Q&As, contests, themed discussions) to foster interaction and attract new members.
• Lead and develop moderators: Provide guidance and structured training to our dedicated team of volunteer moderators. Ensure moderation is consistent and aligned with our community guidelines. Develop resources and programs to support moderator effectiveness, handle recruitment and orientation, and arbitrate conflicts when they arise.
• Help create and publish content: Proactively seed discussions and solicit user contributions in the forums to develop unique, community-driven stories, and identify existing organic content opportunities, transforming both into engaging, publication-ready articles that meet DPReview's high editorial standards.
• Advocate: Serve as the primary advocate for the community within DPReview, channeling user feedback to the editorial and product teams.
• Manage and administer: Oversee the moderation queue, review and approve flagged posts, and handle user requests.

What You Bring:

• Proven community growth experience: Significant (3+ years preferred) experience managing large-scale online communities (forums, social media groups, etc.). Crucially, you have demonstrated success in growing communities, ideally including experience in revitalizing forums with declining engagement
• Initiative and drive: You are a proactive, energetic self-starter who doesn’t wait to be told what to do. You can identify needs, formulate plans, and execute them quickly and effectively.
• Exceptional writing skills: You possess exceptional writing skills with demonstrated experience authoring and publishing written content for a publication with high editorial standards. You can craft engaging articles that are ready for publication.
• Diplomatic communication: You possess excellent communication skills, capable of interacting clearly, professionally, and with empathy, especially when navigating sensitive community disputes or moderation issues.
• Strategic and analytical thinking: You can analyze the landscape, identify factors influencing community health, use data to make decisions, and develop creative solutions.
• Passion for photography (highly desired): A genuine interest in and knowledge of cameras, photography, and related technology is strongly desired and will be invaluable for connecting with our community.
• Authentic voice: An understanding of how to communicate authentically and establish a trusted, approachable presence that aligns with the DPReview brand.
• Experience with volunteers (a plus): Familiarity with managing or working alongside volunteer teams is beneficial.
• Flexibility: Ability to work flexible hours as needed to engage with a global community.

What a typical week might look like:

This is a new full-time position at DPReview, and as such, the role will likely evolve. However, we think it’s safe to say your week will be driven by strategic action. Your primary focus will be advancing initiatives designed to revitalize and grow our forums, analyzing results, and planning your next moves. Alongside strategic work, you'll spend time actively participating in key forums, talking with users, and getting a feel for the community pulse. You'll check in with moderators, provide support and training, and ensure moderation standards are applied consistently. You'll dive into community discussions to unearth interesting content ideas and dedicate time to writing articles for the main site. You'll also manage user support requests and review flagged posts.

Why DPReview?

We’re a small, passionate team dedicated to the world of cameras and photography. This is a chance to make a tangible impact on one of the most respected photography communities online. You'll have the opportunity to shape strategy and see your ideas come to life. If you're ready to roll up your sleeves and build something special, we'd love to talk.

How to Apply:

Please send your CV/resume, LinkedIn profile link, and cover letter to the Managing Editor, Dale Baskin (dbaskin@dpreview.com), with the subject heading: “Community Manager.”

• A brief introduction of yourself that includes an overview of why you believe you are a good fit for the Community Manager Position.
• In your message, please include examples of past work managing and growing communities that you believe are most related to this role.

Only those candidates considered for an interview will be contacted. Please regard your resume as having been received unless your email bounced back.

The salary range and final title for this position is $70,000 to $90,000, depending on the candidate's experience. Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; the associated discipline; market considerations, budgetary considerations, geographical considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee's/applicant's background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

DPReview strives to be a diverse and inclusive company. We firmly believe that different voices, experiences and points of view are an essential component of our current and future success. We do not discriminate on the basis of an individual’s gender, age, race, religion, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, genetics or any other personal characteristics protected by law.

We've arrived at an important anniversary for a tool that many photographers use: Google Photos turns ten this week. When it was launched in 2015, Google pitched it as a "standalone product that gives you a home for all your photos and videos, helps you organize and bring your moments to life, and lets you share and save what matters."

It still essentially does that, but now with a heaping helping of AI assistance for finding the photos you're thinking of and making edits. As part of its look back, Google is also announcing a few new features. We'll take a look at those and then look back at the last decade to see how things have changed.

Image: Google

The first is a redesign for its photo editing experience, which the company says will bring together all its editing tools and provide suggestions on what changes to make to your photos. The editor will – of course – include traditional editing controls for cropping, etc., but also brings together a lot of the disparate AI features that Google's introduced over the years such as photo unblur, auto-framing and more.

You'll also be able to tap on certain parts of the photo, such as a person who's acting as the subject or the background, and get suggestions on what specific edits to make. The company says the update will start rolling out in Photos for Android next month and for the iOS version later this year.

It's also getting easier to share Google Photo albums, with the company adding a share via QR code option. You can then show people the QR code or even print it out, and people will be able to interact with the album, seeing the pictures with it, or even adding their own if you've given them permission. It should be a much easier way to share pictures with people, even if you don't know their email address or don't want to go through and manually add everyone in a group.

Google Photos launched into a world that's quite different from the one we live in today

Despite 2015 still feeling very much like the modern age, complete with near-ubiquitous smartphones and widespread social media adoption, Google Photos launched into a world that's quite different from the one we live in today. It and its main competitor, iCloud, were part of a series of apps and services that represented a shift in how many people share photos. They made it way easier for people to share their collections with friends and family without needing a ton of technical know-how or the willingness to pay for photo hosting sites like Flickr.

While photographers may have had plenty of ways to distribute their work beforehand, Google Photos helped bring that ability to the masses. Anecdotally, these services have made it way more likely that I'll get to see the photos taken by people other than myself. It's rare that I'll go on a trip with friends without receiving a link to Google Photos shortly after we get home or that family vacations don't result in a shared iCloud Photo album or two.

While not everyone will have use for these tools, it's good to see that they're still going strong after all this time. In its 10 year video, Google says it's storing over 9 trillion(!!!) photos and videos, and that the app has over 1.5 billion monthly users. It probably helps that it's the default photo viewer on many Android phones, but that's still a staggering number of people for a service that's still relatively new in the grand scheme of things.

Image: Fujifilm

Fujifilm will be holding its next X Summit event on June 12th at 5AM ET (2AM PT), where the company says it has "exciting news." The event will be held in Shanghai.

It currently hasn't released any teasers for what it plans to cover at the event, but in the X half announcement video from last week, Yuji Igarashi, Divisional Manager of Professional Imaging Group said the theme for the event is "Classic" and that it will be "showcasing exciting updates inspired by the concept of classic photography."

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A post shared by FUJIFILM X/GFX USA (@fujifilmx_us)

The company has historically used the events to launch new cameras: the GFX100RF was announced at the company's X Summit in Prague, and last October, it used the event to announce the X-M5 alongside new lenses. The company did just launch a new camera last week, so it'll be interesting to see what it has in store for this upcoming event.

When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.

Updated May 29, 2025

It's sad to say, but the golden age of compact cameras is pretty much over, thanks to the rise of smartphone cameras that are, in many cases, good enough for most people. Manufacturers seem to realize this, too; the major players have only released a small handful of compact zooms in the past few years, and most were very minor updates on old designs. The ones that remain can be difficult to find in stock, even when the companies that make them promise they're still a part of their lineups.

However, that doesn't mean the category is completely dead. Even today, there are several types of compact cameras, and some have capabilities that pretty much no phone can match. This list calls out the few that are still available and looks at what they're good for – because there are still cases where a compact camera is a great option.

Our recommendations:

• Enthusiast camera
  • Best enthusiast compact: Canon PowerShot G7X III
  • Best do-it-all compact: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 VII
  • Best interface: Leica D-Lux 8

• Waterproof cameras
  • Best waterproof compact: OM System Tough TG-7

• Long zoom camera
  • Best long-zoom camera: Sony RX10 IV
  • Best ultra-zoom camera: Nikon Coolpix P1100

• Vlogging cameras
  • Best vlogging compact Sony ZV-1 Mark II

Enthusiast compacts

The final niche in which it's difficult for a smartphone to compete is for enthusiast photography. No matter how good smartphone image quality gets, it's difficult for a phone to provide the feeling of connection to the process of taking photos that an enthusiast compact with lots of direct controls can offer.

We've picked cameras with large sensors that deliver good image quality, zoom lenses and direct controls. Some have built-in electronic viewfinders for shooting when it's bright outside, again giving a more pleasant experience than a smartphone.

Best enthusiast compact: Canon PowerShot G7 X III

20MP Type 1 Stacked CMOS sensor | 24-100mm equiv. F1.8-2.8 lens | 4K/30p video capture

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

Buy now:

Buy at Amazon.comBuy at B&H PhotoBuy at MPB What we like:

• Nice grip and well-placed controls
• 4K/30p recording with live streaming to YouTube
• Fast burst shooting

What we don't:

• Lens is soft at wide-angle
• Limited battery life
• Contrast-detect only autofocus

The Canon PowerShot G7 X III is an enthusiast compact built around a 20MP Type-1 (13.2 x 8.8 mm) Stacked CMOS sensor with a bright 24-100mm equivalent F1.8-2.8 zoom.

The large sensor, and zoom that covers a really useful range help set it apart from a smartphone but it's clicking control dial around the lens and the dedicated exposure compensation dial that really help you feel you're in the driving seat of the photo-taking process that makes us enjoy it so much.

This camera is frequently out of stock, but Canon has told investors it was ramping up production of its compacts, citing the popularity of the G7 X III, and has assured us it's still in production.

"If you're after a pocketable high-quality compact, the Canon G7 X Mark III is well worth a look" Though it's jacket-pocketable, the G7 X Mark III has a decent-sized grip and feels secure in the hand. The 'clicky' control rings around the lens and on the rear of the camera give good control over aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and the exposure compensation dial on the top plate is a nice touch. The touchscreen interface on its tilting 3" LCD is polished and responsive. Overall, we're impressed by the upgrades on this model. The Mark III brings improved video and continuous shooting performance while maintaining excellent controls and a competitive price point. If you do a lot of wide-angle shooting, there are options with better lenses, but if you're after a pocketable high-quality compact, the Canon G7 X Mark III is well worth a look.

Read our Canon Powershot G7X III review

See the Canon Powershot G7X III studio scene

Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Please open this article's permalink in a browser to view this content. What about the PowerShot V1?

Canon recently released the PowerShot V1, which may tempt photographers hungry for a new compact thanks to its large Type 1.4 (18.4 x 12.3mm) sensor. However, it's clearly designed for vlogging; its cooling fan makes it relatively thick, which, paired with its shallow grip, makes it a bit hard to handle. Its controls – especially the free-rotating lens dial – also aren't optimized for stills, and it lacks the G7 X III's dedicated exposure compensation dial. For photography, we'd recommend sticking with Canon's older compact if you can find one, though we're still evaluating the PowerShot V1's vlogging capabilities.

Best do-it-all compact: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 VII

20MP Type 1 Stacked CMOS sensor | 24-200mm equiv. F2.8-4.5 lens | Hybrid AF system

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

Buy now:

Buy at Amazon.comBuy at B&H PhotoBuy at MPB What we like:

• Industry-leading autofocus
• Excellent image quality
• Oversampled 4K video

What we don't:

• User interface can be overwhelming
• Low light performance limited by slow lens
• Slippery grip
• Expensive

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 VII is built around a 20MP Stacked CMOS sensor and a long, flexible 24-200mm equivalent lens. It's not as bright at the long end as the zooms on the now-discontinued Mark VA or the Canon G7 X III, but it provides a lot more reach, still in a compact package.

Like the Canon, the RX100 VII can be difficult to find, but Sony tells us it's still making it. It also uses micro USB to charge instead of the near-ubiquitous and, in the EU, legally-mandated USB-C. US buyers should also be conscious of price; the camera launched at $1200, but when it's available, it now seems to be selling for around $1700, though Sony hasn't said if this is the result of tariffs or other factors.

"The RX100 VII is the most capable pocketable camera ever made" The RX100 VII has a limited number of direct controls, but offers extensive customization for making the most of them. A touchscreen can be used for choosing a focus point or initiating AF tracking in video. The camera also includes the single-press pop-up viewfinder we liked so much on its predecessor. The RX100 VII is easily the most-capable compact camera on the market thanks to its great image and video quality, fast shooting, versatile lens and a highly-capable, easy-to-use AF system, though all of that comes with a high price tag.

Read our Sony RX100 VII review

See the Sony DSC-RX100 VII studio scene

Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Please open this article's permalink in a browser to view this content. Best interface: Leica D-Lux 8

17MP crop of Four Thirds sensor | 24-75mm equiv F1.7-2.8 | 4K video

Photo: Richard Butler

Buy now:

Buy at AdoramaBuy at B&H PhotoBuy at Leica What we like:

• Photo-focused interface
• Large sensor
• Bright lens

What we don't:

• Zoom is laggy and slow
• Lens not always sharpest

The Leica D-Lux 8 is an enthusiast compact with one of the largest sensors with a fixed zoom lens.

The D-Lux 8 combines an enjoyable shooting experience with a large sensor and bright lens. It's expensive, for sure – a situation made even worse for US buyers thanks to tariffs – but it is one of the few enthusiast compacts to receive a refresh in recent years, so we felt we should include it.

"The D-Lux 8 is a lovely camera to shoot with and offers a lot of image quality in a compact package" The D-Lux 8 has an elegant and photo-focused interface, with dedicated dials for shutter speed and aperture, and a couple of buttons that are easy to customize. It's engaging and enjoyable to shoot with. The D-Lux 8 is a lovely camera to shoot with and offers a lot of image quality in a compact package. But, for us, its image quality doesn't live up to its promise, or its price tag.

Read our Leica D-Lux 8 review

See the Leica D-Lux 8 studio scene

Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Please open this article's permalink in a browser to view this content. Waterproof cameras

Waterproof cameras are another specialty that smartphones can't necessarily displace. Many flagship phones are waterproof to a decent degree but you shouldn't try to submerge them to any appreciable depth. Waterproof cameras also tend to be pretty rugged, designed to withstand a lot more mistreatment than a phone will withstand, meaning you can carry them with you at all times, without ever having to worry about it. Great for bikers, climbers and custodians of small, inquisitive but not necessarily careful children.

Best waterproof camera: OM System Tough TG-7

25-100mm equiv. F2.0-4.9 lens | 12MP Type 1/2.3 sensor | Waterproof to 15m (50ft)

Buy now:

$550 at B&H $550 at Adorama $532 at Amazon What we like:

• Bright, wideangle lens
• Built-in GPS, compass and manometer
• Raw image capture allowing creating edits
• Range of accessories

What we don't:

• 12MP is fairly low
• Lens isn't very bright at long end
• Limited battery life
• Relatively expensive

The OM System Tough TG-7 is a rugged, waterproof compact with a 25-100mm equivalent zoom lens. It is fully waterproof down to a depth of 15m (50 ft).

The OM System isn't the only rugged waterproof still on the market, nor the cheapest, but it has several major factors in its favor. The first is that it lets you shoot Raw images, which gives you the ability to correct the white balance, which even the best cameras tend to get wrong when shooting underwater. Another factor is that there is a range of accessories for the TG-7, including a light guide that directs light from the built-in flash into a circle around the lens, letting you illuminate close-up objects.

"The TG-7 is relatively expensive but packs in a host of useful features that help it stand out"

Beyond this there are a few details that different users may find handy: it has an unusually wide-angle lens with a bright maximum aperture, helping the performance underwater and in low light. It also has a built-in GPS, compass and pressure sensor that lets you log your adventures. These all add up to a camera that's worth the added expense, we feel.

Read our hands-on with the OM System TG-7 article

Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Please open this article's permalink in a browser to view this content. Long zoom cameras

Perhaps the greatest weakness of smartphones is their lack of zoom capabilities. Many of the best phones have a camera with a slightly longer focal length and then try to crop into their images and use AI algorithms to try to approximate the fine detail to give the impression of zooming, but this has its limits.

Dedicated cameras aren't constrained by the need to slip into your pocket, which can afford them the space to have an optical zoom lens to gain you more reach than your smartphone can deliver. There can be a trade-off: the small sensors required to put lots of zoom in a relatively small camera will be outshone by the computational cleverness that smartphones bring to bear on their images. But superzoom cameras can gain you the kind of reach that no current smartphone can get near.

Best long-zoom camera: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX10 IV

20MP Type 1 Stacked CMOS sensor | 24-600mm equiv. F2.4-4 lens | 4K video

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

Buy now:

Buy at Amazon.comBuy at B&H PhotoBuy at MPB What we like:

• Long, very sharp lens
• Very good image quality
• Impressive subject tracking
• Excellent video quality and features

What we don't:

• Very expensive
• Large and heavy
• Some camera features locked while buffer clears

The Sony RX10 IV is a superzoom cameras with a large Type-1 (13.2 x 8.8mm) Stacked CMOS sensor and a 24-600mm equivalent F2.8-4.0 zoom lens. The large sensor gives it image quality up there with the best smartphones while the lens delivers a 24x zoom that smartphones can't come close to matching.

The RX10 IV has been on the market for a while, so its autofocus isn't as good as Sony's newer cameras, but its fast Stacked CMOS sensor and excellent face detection system means it'll track action very well. This combines with its ability to shoot at 24 frames per second to stretch its capabilities even further beyond those of a smartphone.

Like Sony's other compacts, availability is a big issue; it's only occasionally in stock at some stores, so getting one may require some patience.

The RX10 IV offers a reasonable degree of direct control and customization, including a dedicated aperture ring, exposure comp dial and controls that can be kept silent for video shooting. It has a hefty, weather-sealed body along with a tilting touchscreen display and high-res OLED viewfinder. "The RX10 IV offers a high level of competence across an impressively broad range of shooting situations" The F2.4-4.0 lens means you can get a decent amount of light to the sensor at any focal length, which helps get the most out of the camera's Type 1 (13.2x 8.8mm) sensor. The JPEGs' color isn't our favorite but the sophisticated sharpening and noise reduction mean they remain detailed even in fairly low light. The camera's oversampled 4K is some of the most detailed available and exhibits little in the way of rolling shutter. Mic and headphone sockets, along with a selection of tools to help judge exposure make the RX10 IV a very flexible all-in-one package. The RX10 IV is an expensive camera but it's also unique in its combination of zoom range, image quality, autofocus and excellent video with a lot of detail. It's not the best possible solution to any one question but it offers a high level of competence across an impressively broad range of shooting situations.

Read our Sony RX10 IV review

See the Sony DSC-RX10 IV studio scene

Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Please open this article's permalink in a browser to view this content. Best ultra-zoom camera: Nikon Coolpix P1100

16MP 1/2.3" BSI-CMOS sensor | 24-3000mm equiv. F2.8-8 lens | 4K video capture

Photo: Barney Britton

Buy now:

$1097 at Adorama$1097 at B&H Photo What we like:

• Focal range cannot be matched by any camera
• Respectable image quality, given camera's purpose
• Raw support
• Well-built, with logical control layout

What we don't:

• Large and unbalanced when zoom is extended
• Lens is slow at long end, reducing sharpness
• No touchscreen
• Poor battery life

The Nikon Coolpix P1100 is a very slightly refreshed version of the P1000, with the biggest difference being the adoption of a USB connector. Its Type 1/2.3 (6.17 x 4.55mm) sensor will be out-performed by a good smartphone's clever merging of multiple images but the Nikon's gargantuan 24-3000mm equiv. lens is its selling point.

The small sensor means image quality isn't the camera's strength, but its frankly ludicrous zoom reach means it can photograph distant subjects in a way no other device (smartphone or dedicated camera) can.

The P1100 is a large camera that weighs a substantial 1.4kg (3.2lbs). We found it can be difficult to compose a photo at 3000mm equiv since the stabilization can't fully correct hand movement. A 'snapback' function quickly zooms out so you can locate your subject. The P1100's fully articulating LCD, is not touch-enabled. Connectivity to smartphones works well. "When it comes to zoom power, there's no camera that comes close to Nikon's Coolpix P1100" The P1100's image quality depends greatly on the focal length. Photos are generally on par with other small-sensored cameras, with pleasant colors and a bit too much noise reduction. It offers Raw, though, so you can choose your noise/detail balance and modestly brighten shadows. Heat haze, coupled with the lens's slow maximum aperture limit image quality at the longest focal lengths. The P1100 has very good video quality for a camera with point-and-shoot roots. It can capture 4K video at 30p (with no crop) as well as 1080/60p and time-lapse/super-lapse clips. There's a manual exposure mode, a zoom microphone and a socket for addition an external mic. Electronic Vibration Reduction is available at 1080p and below. When it comes to zoom power, nothing comes close to Nikon's Coolpix P1100. Whether it's taking a portrait from 2 blocks away or getting up close and personal with a bird in the distance, this lens can do it. That said, while other cameras can't match that lens, many will offer better image and video quality for the same money, especially those with larger sensors.

Read our review of the existing P1000 model

See the Nikon Coolpix P1000 studio scene

Vlogging cameras

Smartphones are great for vlogging, but a dedicated vlogging camera can shoot better quality video, have more sophisticated microphones (and provide options for connecting better mics), and can autofocus very reliably, dependably delivering YouTube-ready footage.

Best vlogging camera: Sony ZV-1 Mark II

20MP Stacked CMOS sensor | 24fps burst shooting | 4K/30p, 1080/120p video

Photo: Shaminder Dulai

Buy now:

$898 at B&H $898 at Adorama $898 at Amazon What we like:

• Low rolling shutter
• 3-way mic array
• Touchscreen interface for vlogging

What we don't:

• Limited body buttons/dials
• No stabilization for stills
• 8-bit color not ideal for grading

The Sony ZV-1 Mark II is one of three ZV-1 models and is by far the best. Its wide-angle 18-50mm equivalent F2.8-4.0 lens is ideally suited to self-shot video. Its excellent autofocus includes options such as 'Product Showcase' that focuses on the presenter unless an object is held up to the camera.

"A vlogging beast for smartphone users wanting to upgrade to a dedicated device for more control over exposures, file workflow, sound and optical zoom without a large learning curve" The ZV-1 Mark II is primarily touchscreen-controlled to allow control while vlogging or shooting selfies. It's lightweight and easy to hold but has limited control points if you want to take more manual control. The ZV-1 Mark II is a big improvement on the original thanks to a more selfie-video-friendly zoom range. Video footage and autofocus are both very good. It is a camera that thrives in auto modes, making it best suited for users seeking a simple-to-use camera.

Read our Sony ZV-1 Mark II Review

See the Sony ZV-1 Mark II studio scene

Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Please open this article's permalink in a browser to view this content. Why you should trust us

This buying guide is based on cameras used and tested by DPReview's editorial team. We don't select a camera until we've used it enough to be confident in recommending it, usually after our extensive review process. The selections are purely a reflection of which cameras we believe to be best: there are no financial incentives for us to select one model or brand over another.