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Leica Also Announces V-Lux 40 and X2 Compacts

In addition to the entirely newsworthy M Monochrom, Leica has also now updated its two digital compacts, with the current generation now being dubbed the X2 on the high end, and the V-Lux 40 on the more consumer end.

The X2 is the high end here, with a 16 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor and a 24mm f2.8 aspherical lens mounted up front. It’s that retro M-style body going on, which Leica will proudly tell you is hand-assembled in Germany. There’s an integrated flash, physical knobs for aperture and shutter (from 1-1/2000), and…. hold on, let me load their specs PDF. Seriously, who still makes those a pdf instead of a webpage? OK, you got 11 AF points, ISO up to 12,500, 5 frames per second, a sadly dated looking 2.7″ 230,000 pixel LCD, HDMI out, and video modes are for chumps. This camera is for people who want to take pictures. And, other than Leica’s head-scratching resistance to upgrading to a high-resolution LCD that’d actually do their famous image quality anything resembling justice when you review it, this camera is indeed specced quite competently for people wanting to focus on the craft of photo making. It can shoot to Adobe’s DNG raw format, and you get a free download license for Lightroom with the camera. No, seriously, you do. You can get it in “retro” silver or “Jody’s favorite” matte black.

Bring up the “low end” of things for Leica is the V-Lux 40, a more traditional point-and-shoot with a compact body and integrated zoom lens. The V-Lux 40′s page doesn’t bother with a technical PDF, so, details are a bit thin from Leica, but it seems to have a 24-480mm f3.3-6.4 aspherical zoom, a burst mode than can handle up to 60fps, a 3″ touchscreen of indeterminate resolution, and GPS. And, let’s not forget that iconic red dot on the front. This one only comes in black, sorry folks who aren’t Jody.

Looking to make the leap to Leica and think one of these sounds like your ticket? We’ve got our preorders page up for both over here: http://robertscamera.com/photo/point-and-shoots?manufact_new=787



Leica Takes Retro To Inevitable Conclusion With Black-And-White Only M Monochrom

Whatever side of the love/hate/what the heck Leica fence you’re on, you have to give it to them, they know their market and cater perfectly to it. Their digital bodies have stood staunch against the march of change and have stuck true to their legendary rangefinder roots with only minimal concessions to the digital age. The manual focus lenses, rangefinder, knurled knobs, brass body, heck, even the act of removing the bottom plate to change your recording medium has stayed the same. And now, in their continued quest for both the maximum quality and their continued cognizance of the attitudes held by their loyal shooters, Leica has released the most interesting niche camera I’ve seen: a completely black-and-white digital rangefinder. Yup, you read that right. The M Monochrom is a variant of the M9 pedigree with a new 18 megapixel sensor with no color filter at all. Each pixel records the raw light it caught in terms of luminosity only. This means you don’t need any demosaicing to average out the colors for each pixel, and gives you the true maximum resolution and sharpness of the sensor. And all it’ll cost you is the ability to ever snap a color photograph.

Again, love or hate it, you have to admit the idea is genius. There has been a real strong movement since the unofficial victory of digital to return to the conscientious, simpler world of film and its glory. And, what better encapsulates that then a camera whose design has remained largely unchanged since before digital was even a twinkle in a lab, and is brave enough to eschew something like color in order to deliver a sharper, more detailed image? It’s brilliant.

It’s also otherwise pretty much an M9, with the sapphire glass cover. You even get the retro Tri-X ISO speeds on the low end (pull 160, 320). Top ISO hits up to 10,000 now. As you might expect, Leica hasn’t actually mentioned a price yet, but, if you have to ask it’s probably not for you anyway. If you don’t have to ask, we’ve got our preorder page up and waiting for you, and when Leica starts getting them out to dealers sometime in July we’ll do everything we can to get them into your waiting hands, just so long as you send us a killer landscape shot so we can rub our peepers on the results, OK?

http://robertscamera.com/m-monochrom.html



Rich Clarkson and Associates Aurora Multimedia and Filmmaking Workshop

There’s still space available at the Rich Clarkson and Associates Aurora Multimedia and Filmmaking workshop and you can attend for $1100 tuition (not inclusive of your travel and rooming). Attendance has the advantage of a superlative instruction in many technical aspects of DSLR filmmaking. You’ll also get some overview of where multi-media content production is going in our tablet, smartphone, and continuously connected world.

The workshop will be held at the ATLAS facility at the University of Colorado in Boulder Colorado and will run from May 29th to June 1st.

Roberts will be there in spirit, embodied by our own Jody Grober with gear from manufacturer sponsors Manfrotto (Manfrotto, Avenger, Gitzo, and more) and the MAC Group (Mamiya, PocketWizard, Sekonic, Tenba, Induro, Cinevate and more) – most of which will be at special show pricing.

Follow the source link for a list of presenters and more complete information about the event and registration.

 



Canon Discontinues 580 EX II

Canon 580 Ex II

Canon has now today discontinued the venerable 580 EX II, leaving you looking at only the 600EX-RT going forward for your flagship flashgun needs. But, if you’re looking at the notably higher price tag of the 600EX-RT and not feeling it, fear not! If you act quickly, you can still get some 580EX IIs as we have some left in stock. As an added bonus, there’s a $30 instant savings on them, meaning you can pick one up for a cool $130 less than its successor (although the 600EX-RT is also now live stock on our website if that is a thing you want now).

Oh, and the original EF 24-70 L USM is also now officially discontinued, leaving you with only the mark II, but, I think we all guessed that back when stock on that one dried up and never came back, right?



Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS Skimps On Readable Name, Not On Features

 

So, you like the idea of an underwater camera, but just feel that all the current ones make you compromise too much on other features to get that. We feel you. Limited zoom ranges, mushy high ISO, and second-rate sensors have plagued various historic models of underwater point-and-shoots, usually to help keep the cost of making these tough beasts down to something realistic. But, lucky you, now Olympus has come out with the monster pictured above, with the totally say-it-out-loud friendly name of “Tough TG-1 iHS.” But, if you can get past the name, you might be impressed by the spec sheet: a 12mp back-side illuminated sensor being piped through a PEN-ready TruePic VI processor (and promising “DSLR-quality” with it), a 4x 25-100mm f2.0-4.9 lens (yup, f2.0), a 3″ 610,000 dot OLED screen, dual image stabilization, an LED illuminator, GPS, e-compass, manometer, 1/2000 second maximum shutter speed, 1080p video, HDMI output, and oh yeah, it’s also waterproof to 40 feet, shockproof to 6.6 feet, crushproof to 220 pounds, and freeze proof to 14 degree F. Not enough? Fine, Olympus was ready for that. There’s also going to be an available underwater housing  that’ll let you take it down to 135 feet, and there’s a conversion ring mount that’ll let you mount either an available fisheye or telephoto adapter to it. Both of which are also ready for a dive with no problems.

Basically, the bar for what a tough camera should be has been raised significantly, and if the image quality matches what we’re promised (and what Olympus has been coming out with in its PEN line lately), this is going to be one beastly all-purpose shooter.

Availability will be in June for the camera itself, which I’m already affectionately nicknaming “John McClane.” The camera will run $399.99. The two converters should be available at the same time. You’ll need a $20 adapter to use them, and then the fisheye will be $119.99, and the 1.7x telephoto converter will set you back $109.99.

The underwater housing won’t be available until July, when it’ll set you back $309.99.

Want to put your name down for one right now? Well, our preorder page lets you do exactly that: http://robertscamera.com/tough-tg-1-ihs.html

More pictures and a press release after ze jump.

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Canon Concludes Investigation Into 5D Mark III Light Leak

Once again, if you’re one of those lucky chaps to get ahold of a Canon EOS 5D Mark III already, you’re probably waiting with bated breath to hear their resolution on the now well-known “light leak” issue some users were experiencing in which light from the top deck LCD could affect low-light exposure metering by up to a third of a stop. And if that’s the case, then we’re just going to point you right now to Canon’s official response so you can read it straight from them: http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/professional/professional_cameras?pageKeyCode=prdAdvDetail&docId=0901e02480538fc7



Canon EOS 5D Mark III Firmware Hits 1.12, Fixes Things

One of the lucky few to get your hands on Canon’s new beast, the 5D mark III? Well then, you’ll be happy to know Canon today has launched a new firmware, 1.12, which fixes some things you may or may not have encountered:

  1. Supports a new accessory, GPS receiver GP-E2.
  2. Fixes a phenomenon where a pink cast may develop over the image when the shutter is completely pressed with the camera’s power turned off (by the auto power off setting).
  3. Fixes a phenomenon where the camera operation stops after one shot when shooting in High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode.
  4. Fixes a phenomenon where the Shooting Date/Time in the EXIF data of the image shows a later time than the actual shooting time.
  5. Fixes the time zone for the Samoa Islands.
  6. Corrects errors in the Finnish menu screen.

Wouldn’t you love to have been the engineer who had to figure out #2? Anyway, you can download it now from Canon USA’s page, just select your OS and version. Except you OSX Lion people, in Canon’s infinite wisdom they’ve only listed the firmware under Snow Leopard, so look there instead.



Nikon Announces Service Advisory For Certain EN-EL15 Batteries

Just a friendly notice here, but Nikon is doing a recall for certain EN-EL15 battery packs. In rare cases (only 7 reported world-wide), the batteries may do the whole typical overheat and rupture thing that plagues batteries from time to time (ask Sony and Dell). The EN-EL15 is, of course, the battery pack for the D800, D800E, D7000, and Nikon 1 V1, so, if you have any of those models, you should pull out your battery and check the serial number on it. About halfway through, you should see a letter representing the lot. If that letter is E or F, you should see about following Nikon’s instructions on what to do next.

More information, a diagram illustrating how to determine if your battery is affected, and more over on Nikon USA’s site.



Nikon Announces New Entry Level DSLR: D3200

Another day, another entry in the nonstop march of device obsolescence. Today we have the D3200 from Nikon, which displaces their D3100 as the go-to entry-level DSLR. Unlike the D3100, however, this new entry isn’t just a minor spec update to keep things fresh for another year. oh no. This time we see a massive 71% increase in resolution, jumping from 14.2 megapixels all the way up to 24.2 megapixels. And, despite that bump in resolution, it also milks out an extra frame a second, pushing the number up to four. Sure, the rest of the spec sheet looks pretty similar: ISO 100-6400 native, 1080p HD recording, a 3″ LCD with 921,000 dots, a DX-crop sensor, a guide mode for those of you just starting out, manual controls plus a plethora of scene modes, a lack of built-in autofocus motor (you’ll need to use lenses marked “AF-S” if you want to autofocus with this camera), and optional connectivity for a wifi transmitter and GPS. But, can’t we agree that the jump in megapixels is somewhat notable for a camera that comes in at $699.95, including an 18-5mm VR lens? You bet.

And, the D3200 will be available in both black and red, and you can get yourself in on some preorder action here: http://robertscamera.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=d3200



Nikon Announces New FX AF-S 28mm f1.8G Wide-Angle Prime

 

Today Nikon has also announced a new entry to it’s seemingly ever-expanding Nikkor lens line-up. This time it’s a refresh for their 28mm prime, keeping the f1.8 but bumping it up to the modern G (no aperture ring) spec, along with all the other modern Nikon techs you’d expect at this point (nano coating, integrated silent-wave AF-S motor, M/A switch, etc). As always, the name says most of it (“AF-S 28mm f1.8G”), but there’re a few things we can mention for the curious. It’s an FX lens, which means it’ll mount on both FX full-frame systems, and on DX ones (with a field-of-view equivalent to about 42mm in old terms, which is somewhat less exciting a focal length.) It sports a minimum aperture of 16, giving it a 71/3 stop range. It’s got a 67mm filter thread, which should make most people happy, what wit that being a very common size these days. There’s a rounded 7-blade aperture diaphragm in there to round out your bokeh. And otherwise, that’s about all you need to know. You can check out the MTF chart and construction diagrams below, or you can just hop over to our site and get your name in line to get one when they come out:

http://robertscamera.com/photo/lenses/for-slrs-dslrs/primes/wide-angle/af-s-nikkor-28-1-8-g.html




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