News / New Cameras & Lenses

Voigtländer has announced the European price and availability of its Apo-Lanthar 90mm F3.5 SL II close focus lens in Canon, Nikon and Pentax mounts. Announced in February 2010, the lens is priced at €549 for all the three mounts. In the UK market it is priced at £487.62 for the Canon EF mount and £464.12 for the Nikon Ai-S and Pentax KA mounts. The lens has been redesigned with a smaller body while maintaining the same optical construction and 50cm minimum focusing distance of the previous, SL version.

Five years after announcing its development, and following a month-long online campaign trailing the launch, Pentax has finally unveiled its much anticipated 645D medium format digital camera. The first digital version of the company's 645 medium format camera system, it features a 40MP, 44 x 33mm CCD sensor, 921k dot 3.0" LCD and is compatible with the existing 645 system lenses. The camera will initially be available only in the Japanese market at a suggested retail price of ¥850,000 (~ US $9,400) from May 2010.

Cosina has announced the Voigtländer-branded Apo-Lanthar 90mm F3.5 SL II close focus lens for Canon, Nikon and Pentax mounts. Maintaining the same 50cm minimum focusing distance and optical construction of the previous, SL version, the lens has been redesigned with a smaller body. Additionally, by mounting the included close up lens, its closest focusing distance can be reduced down to 32cm, giving a magnification ratio of 1:1.8. Priced at ¥58,000 (~ US $645) for the Canon EF mount and ¥55,000 (~ US $610) for the Nikon Ai-S mount and Pentax KA mount, it will be available in Japan from early March 2010.

Cosina has announced a Voigtländer branded Heliar 12mm F5.6 Aspherical II ultra wide angle lens for Leica M mount. Capturing a 121° angle of view, the manual focus lens can be fitted on Micro Four Thirds bodies using an adaptor. Cosina has also released a 12mm External Viewfinder alongside the lens. Priced at 85,000 yen (approx. US $932) and 34,500 yen (approx. US $378) respectively, the lens and viewfinder will start shipping from March 2010.

Adobe has introduced Photoshop.com Mobile as an application for mobile phones running the Android operating system. It enables users to view, edit and apply effects to images. Once edited, images can be uploaded to the user's Photoshop.com account for sharing or back-up purposes. Currently available only in the US and Canada, the application is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Cosina has announced a Voigtländer branded Nokton 50mm F1.1 high speed lens for the Leica M mount, in a launch which marks the 10th anniversary of Cosina's Bessa series of rangefinder cameras. The Nokton becomes the second-fastest lens currently available for the M mount after the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/0.95, yet despite its speed weighs in at a relatively manageable 15 ounces and uses 58mm filters. The lens is constructed with 7 elements in 6 group and has minimum focusing distance of 1m. It will start shipping from the end of this month at a retail price of approximately 130,000 yen.

Nikon has announced the D3X, its latest high-resultion professional DSLR. Sporting an imaging sensor with double the number of photosites of the popular D3, the 24.5 megapixel D3x includes similar features such as a 3.0", 920,000 dot LCD monitor with Live View, 51-point autofocus, EXPEED image processing and HDMI output. To keep up with the demands of stock photography the camera produces 50MB 14-bit RAW files that can be processed to produce 140MB TIFFs. It also supports Nikon’s wireless system and is compatible with Nikon’s new GP-1 GPS unit.

Eye-Fi has added popular websites including Flickr and Twitter to the list that users of its wi-fi memory cards can upload images to. Changes to the Eye-Fi Manager web application also allow the creation of RSS feeds. 'Direct-upload' options have also been expanded to include Apple's MobileMe and AdoramaPix. This follows the partnership the company has recently established with Lexar.

Cosina has announced two Voigtländer-branded lenses which it will be making available for Nikon and Pentax DSLR mounts. The Voigtländer Ultron 40mm F2 SLII Aspherical - to give its full title - is a 'Pancake' type lens protruding a mere 24.5mm from the lens mount. The optical design comprises six elements in five groups including a double-aspheric element and high-refraction glass. The Nokton 58mm F1.4 SLII meanwhile is based on a Topcor design with seven elements in six groups and when mounted on an APS-C camera replicates the angle of view of an 85mm making it an ideal choice for portrait photography. The Nikon-mount examples are Ai-s specification and feature a CPU to allow metering on modern bodies whilst the Pentax mounts are KA compatible. Only Japanese pricing and availability has been announced thus far with both lenses expected to retail for around ¥50,000 when they arrive on shelves over the next two months.