There seems to be a lot of mixed feelings about Adobe Lightroom CC Cloud and Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, as well as the long standing and polarizing subscription based model for most of Adobe’s software.

We’re not here to give our opinion on all of this, we’re going to see how things play out with Macphun’s future software.

Macphun had this to say:

After the recent Adobe news about Lightroom updates, we received a lot of questions about our plans for creating a photo manager, so we’d like to shed some light on this.

At the moment we’re working on the digital asset manager (“DAM”) which will work with both hard drives and cloud storage platforms. It’s going to be the perfect tool for organizing and managing images. Users will be able to run our DAM alongside their LR library and choose which one fits them best.

The new DAM will be added to Luminar in 2018, and will be a free update to everyone who owns Luminar 2018 after it is release. We’ll be sharing more details soon, so keep an eye out for them!

Macphun is asking: What do you plan on doing after the Adobe announcement?

Canon U.S.A. Launches Bold New Expedited Service at PhotoPlus EXPO 2017

MELVILLE, N.Y., October 19, 2017 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, continues its mission to deliver industry-leading speed and quality of service offered through Canon Professional Services (CPS), its award-winning service and support program for professional photographers. CPS Platinum members will now enjoy next-day service, with equipment serviced and shipped the business day after an estimate is approved. For repairs that will take longer, Canon will offer next-day loaner equipment. In addition, CPS Gold members’ benefits will now be enhanced with two-day service turnaround.¹

“For professional photographers, sending equipment in for service can mean lost income while their gear is being repaired, and we are committed to do everything in our power to minimize their downtime,” noted Yuichi Ishizuka, president and COO, Canon U.S.A., Inc. “Canon has long been delivering fast, high-quality service and customer satisfaction, and this bold new level of performance sends a clear message to photographers that we remain dedicated to providing professional-level service and support.”

Read more…

We’re told that the long rumored IS version of the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L is still in testing but has not yet been given an announcement date. There are apparently still two versions of the lens being developed, with only one coming to market.

Canon’s goal is to make the new IS version of the lens noticeably better optically than the current EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II and just adding IS to the 6 year old optical formula. The second goal of the lens has been weight, adding image stabilization adds weight and bulk to a lens. Nikon’s non-VR and VR versions of their 24-70mm f/2.8 has a weight difference of about 170 grams, which you can feel when shooting all day, the VR version is also noticeably bigger in size.

We were told back in 2012 that Canon had worked on an EF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS & EF 24-70mm f/4L IS alongside the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II development, and as we know, chose to release the EF 24-70mm f/4L IS a few months after the current f/2.8 lens. Now keep in mind that L zooms take years to develop from start to finish and various prototypes will obviously exist.

Every other lens manufacturer seems to have an IS version of their 24-70mm f/2.8 version and Canon seems to pride itself on being the market leader in lens technology, so I think it’s only a matter of time until we see an EF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS.

More to come…

A patent from Canon Japan showing new rear screen designs has appeared, and it looks very interesting. I think a lot of us have always assumed eventually the entire back of a camera would be an LCD/OLED. Beyond just the size of the screen, the patent also covers a new way pivot mecanism for the LCD, you can see the images below.

What’s also interesting is the mode dial appearing from behind the screen when you move it.

A lot of us have called on Canon to put vari-angle LCD’s on professional cameras such as the EOS-1D X series, EOS 5D series and the EOS 7D series, and we’re still waiting. This would definitely be a big leap in a new direction for rear camera screens, but I suspect too big of a leap to see first in a flagship professional camera such as the EOS-1D X Mark III, but it could be introduced in a lower end camera such as the EOS 7D Mark III or a new videoc focused DSLR.

Canon has released new versions of Digital Photo Professional and Picture Style Editor.

Changes for Digital Photo Professional 4.7.20:

• Supports PowerShot G1 X Mark III, PowerShot G12, PowerShot G11, PowerShot G10, PowerShot G9, PowerShot S95, PowerShot S90, PowerShot SX50 HS, PowerShot SX1 IS.
• Supports EF85mm f/1.4L IS USM, EF-S35mm f/2.8 Macro IS STM.
• Supports Chromatic aberration correction, Peripheral illumination correction, Distortion correction, and Digital Lens Optimizer for images captures with a combination of EOS 6D Mark II and TS-E50mm f/2.8L Macro, TS-E90mm f/2.8L Macro, TS-E135mm f/4L Macro, TS-E17mm f/4L, or TS-E24mm f/3.5L II.
• Enhances operability of the Filter/Sort function.
• Supports customization on the Preview Properties Display.

Changes for Picture Style Editor 1.19.10:

• Supports PowerShot G1 X Mark III

You can download the new versions at Canon USA.