Industry News: Legendary Leica dealer Ken Hansen is gravely ill

Over the last few months, legendary Leica dealer Ken Hansen has been battling some medical issues. Steve Huff is now reporting that Ken is, unfortunately, getting worse, and may not make it through the latest setbacks.
From Ken’s granddaughter:
Hello,
This is Ken’s granddaughter, Summer. Unfortunately, my grandfather is too ill to continue working. We’ve received some unfortunate news from doctors that all which could be done has been. He won’t be available for business any longer as he is quickly deteriorating and struggling. Thank you for being a customer of my grandfather and supportive friend.
All the best,
Summer
This will bring an end to a unique and heralded dealer of all things Leica. A man whose reputation within the industry is unmatched. Ken was unique in how he did business, there was no storefront, no web site outside of some sales on eBay. You simply emailed him directly and...

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Sony Launches RX0 II, the World’s Smallest and Lightest Premium Ultra-compact Camera

SAN DIEGO, March 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Sony Electronics Inc. today introduced an exciting new addition to its highly popular compact camera line-up with the launch of the world’s smallest and lightestvi premium compact camera, the RX0 II (model DSC-RX0M2). Building upon the waterproof/dustproofii, shockproof,vii crushproofviii and ultra-compact qualities of the original RX0, the new model now offers internal 4K recording, an adjustable LCD screen that tilts upward 180 degrees and downward 90 degrees and that even works underwaterix,ii and new image stabilization solutions for video recording.


At the heart of the RX0 II sits a 1.0-type stacked 15.3-megapixeli Exmor RS™ CMOS image sensor and an advanced BIONZ X™ image processing engine that offer enhancedx color reproduction, including beautiful skin tones. This power packed combination has been optimized to deliver lightning fast performance and exquisite image quality for both stills and movie shooting across a wide...

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Just MTF Charts: Canon Prime Lenses

Lensrentals.com has posted their first in a series of MTF charts for Canon lenses, I imagine they’ll post other brand MTF charts as well. The first release is for Canon prime lenses, excluding tilt-shift lenses, those will be done in a separate article.
Roger explains the methodology of the testing:
This is the first post of a series of posts publishing all of our MTF results so that methodology is consistent, easy to find, and up-to-date. (For some of the older lenses there are graphs done with older software floating around. For a couple of lenses, there are incorrect graphs done before we worked out all of the details for sensor glass in the testing pathway. These are all current.)
Otherwise, there are no comparisons, no commentary, just the test results for you to use and abuse as you see fit. The major purpose is just to get these MTF charts organized and in one place where you can find them.
Just to avoid 4,200 comments: these are all average MTFs from multiple copies...

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Live file backup through WiFi

There are many Canon cameras with only one card slot, but also have WiFi. My question is: can you back up your images to a phone or tablet at the same time as you are shooting? Yes, you can stop shooting and connect to the camera through the Canon Connect AP, select pictures manually, and transfer them over..... but is it possible to set things up so that when you take a picture it is automatically sent to your device? If you can, what camera and software do you use?

Thanks in advance for the replies.

Patent: Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

Another patent for the already announced Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM has been spotted. This should further confirm that the lens is telescopic and isn’t an internal zoom. This is a slightly different than the RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS patent posted back in January.
Japan Patent Application 2019-045555

Focal length: 72.00mm~ 134.99mm ~ 194.94mm
F number: 2.91 ~ 2.91 ~ 2.98
Angle of view: 16.73° ~ 9.11° ~ 6.33°
Image height: 21.64mm
Lens length: 172.73mm ~ 219.96mm ~ 231.71mm
Back focus: 14.37mm ~ 18.40mm ~ 28.12mm

When looking at the length of a lens in a patent, you need to remove the flange distance from the equation. In the case of the RF mount, that is 20mm. This makes the RF 70-200mm...

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Went back to using a 5D MkIV after 6 months of the EOS R... It feels antiquated

I've been using the EOS R almost exclusively since it came out. Once I saw how much better the AF was in low light compared to the 5D, that was enough for me, and I made the switch. Initially, I struggled with how detached the EVF made taking photos feel. There are also a few controls that still really miss from the 5D. (joystick!!?)

Recently I needed a second camera for a shoot, so I got my 5D MkIV out for the first time in a while. And wow, I cannot believe how much I've gotten used to the R, and how out of date it makes the 5D feel to go back to. Yes in certain situations the OVF is nice, but in very low light I didn't realize how much easier the nice bright EVF of the R makes composing and taking photos. The 5D just feels dim and antiquated to look through, and part of me feels like the viewfinder itself is smaller than the R (???). The black outlines of the AF points in the 5D are easy to lose sight of, not to mention how restrictive it feels to go back to having one defined grid of AF points, all in the middle of the frame, when you've gotten used to moving the AF point seamlessly around the entire frame. Yes, the EVF is not quite the same as using an OVF, but I've found that that initial weird, detached feeling of using an EVF has pretty much fallen by the wayside after months of using the R.

And again, the autofocus. In poor light, while the 5D can function in most of the conditions the EOS R does, the 5D hunts around before it achieves focus when the lighting gets poor, and from past experience it's not 100% accurate when things get dark. Going back to this after using the R's quick, snappy autofocus that works under pretty much any condition you throw at it felt like going back in time. The R's autofocus feels advanced and assured. The 5D just feels like old technology. Not to mention I still can't trust the 5D's servo AF to work well at very wide apertures. Meanwhile, the R seems to just nail focus even in servo mode with a moving target at f1.2.

Right now I have two 5D MkIVs, and initially thought the R would be an interesting camera to play with, but I still thought that the 5D would be my main go-to camera. But after realizing how much I've grown to like the R, I'm seriously considering dumping one of those 5Ds in favor of having two Rs and just having one 5D around for those certain situations where I still want a DSLR.

**Disclaimer: I still recognize that there are a lot of cases where the DSLR will reign supreme... For very fast action, birds in flight, sports, etc, the DSLR is still probably the way to go. But for my uses, the R seems to exceed the performance of the 5D overall. There are still a lot of things that bug me about the R... Again, give me my joystick back, and I admit that the lack of smooth performance of the EVF during burst shooting is a little hard to deal with. But I'm confident that Canon will get these issues ironed out on future cameras, and I think the RF line of cameras has a really bright future ahead.

Edit: All of these impressions are with using adapted EF lenses only. I'd like to get the RF 50mm, but I'm waiting until they are a little cheaper on the used market.
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EOS RP and EOS R promotions in Germany

Hi everybody!

It's GAS time again here in Germany.

There is an EOS RP promotion with up to 200,- € cashback, if you buy it with some dedicated lenses.
The promotion lasts until June, 30th. For further details look here.

The EOS R has been included into the spring cashback, mentioned by me in another thread some weeks ago.
Here you won't get cashback but 250,- € deposit for another purchase of a Canon product (e.g. an RF lens ;) )
That promotion lasts until April, 30th.

Both, EOS R/RP bodies or RF lenses are not included in the EOS plus X lens promo, that has no end date.

To all that decide on new gear enjoy your GAS ;)

Patent: Quad Pixel autofocus image sensor

Canon News has uncovered a patent application for a quad pixel autofocus image sensor.
Canon News explains Japan Patent Application 2019041178:
This patent application from Canon deals with a quad pixel autofocus sensor.  Right now Canon is using dual pixel autofocus sensors, but if you ever tried to use an EOS R or an EOS M in landscape orientation to focus on a horizontal line you’ll quickly realize that the phase detect sensors just go in one direction, and have little sensitivity in the other 90 degrees offset direction.
This patent application indicates that Canon has split the pixel into 4 pieces, and also offsets the microlenses as you go further out from the center.
The sensor they are describing in this document seems to be a 20.7MP sensor, with 83 million focus detection points!  The pixel size seems to be 4 micrometers, which would make that approximately 22mm on the width...

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Review: Sigma 28mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art

The-Digital-Picture has completed their review of the brand new Sigma 28mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art, another great lens in the Sigma Art series.
28mm has always been my favourite travel and walkaround focal length, it’s probably why I love the Leica Q (and now Q2) so much. I’ve always wanted Canon to make an EF 28mm f/1.4L, but I’m likely in the minority.
From the review:
The most notable differentiator among the Art series prime lenses is the focal length. When 24mm is too wide and 35mm too long, the Sigma 28mm f/1.4 Art Lens is the right answer. With its superior image quality, the 28mm option will often be the best choice over the other two and over the competitor brands as well. This focal length avails general purpose use and the ultra-wide f/1.4 aperture, unsurpassed by any 28mm DSLR or MILC lens currently produced, extends that use to seemingly any light conditions while providing the...

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No new EOS R body shipping in 2019 [CR2]

There have been mentions of a new EOS R body coming in Q4 of 2019 or Q1 of 2020. The new body has been rumored to be the high megapixel body, and not an EOS-1D X style mirrorless camera.
We’re now being told that no new EOS R body will begin shipping in 2019, and it will fall into early 2020. There is still an off chance that an announcement could come in late 2019, but we think Canon will hold off until the CP+ show next February.
I don’t think this should come as much of a surprise, as Canon needs to get those 6 new RF lenses to market before another EOS R series body hits the marketplace.
Once the new lenses begin shipping, it’s likely there will be another boost in sales for the EOS R and EOS RP bodies.
The same source said that a “higher-end” DSLR will be coming in...

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Opinion: Canon EOS R with the Atomos Ninja V = Baby Canon C200!

One of the more positive YouTubers out there Armando Ferreira has posted a video about his impressions of the Canon EOS R with the Atomos Ninja V as a second camera to the Canon Cinema EOS C200.
He touches on one of the biggest issues a lot of the internet world seems to have with the camera, and that’s the nearly 1.7x crop when shooting 4K. However, when compared to the Super35 sensor of the Cinema EOS C200, the crop isn’t all that different.
Using a 24mm lens, the FOV of the two cameras are pretty close to one another.

Canon Cinema EOS C200 w/24mm lens: 36mm
Canon EOS R w/24mm lens: 41mm

Armando does stress this is only his opinion, and obviously, other shooters may feel differently.
He’s also quite impressed about how closely the footage between the Cinema EOS C200 and EOS R match up. He only seems to have to tweak saturation and...

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FoCal AFMA for Nikon Z6 / Z7 Mirrorless coming

In a email this morning, I saw a announcement for FoCal that supported the new Nikon Mirrorless cameras Z6 and Z7. Then I noticed a reference to this article which explored inaccuracy in the Nikon autofocus with their mirrorless cameras, and it tells us why they put AFMA in them, because AF can be off enough to show up.

I have not yet seen any similar analysis of the Canon AF for the R, but have observed that I definitely can visually see a improvement with very careful manual focusing done at 10X on my 24 inch monitor.

Since The Canon cameras do not offer AFMA, I wonder if anyone has seen a careful analysis of AF accuracy with the R? I'm not sure if It could be done with FoCal in the manual mode or not.

Tethering to laptop to record video longer than 30min

I'm working on a project that will require me to record a video much much longer than the 30min limit imposed on DSLRs. I'll be using a 5D MkIV, so using Magic Lantern to bypass the limit is not possible.

I initially thought about getting an external Atmos monitor/recorder. However, for someone that doesn't do video often, I can't justify the cost. And it's my understanding that the codecs used in the Atmos only allow for fairly high quality/uncompressed videos. The event I'm going to be recording will run for 14hrs. While I don't think the entire 14hrs will need to be recorded, it's going to end up being hours and hours of footage. Even at 1080 resolution, it's my understanding that recording this on an Atmos would probably result in hundreds of GBs of footage.

The idea I came up with is to use Camera Live (https://github.com/v002/v002-Camera-Live ) and OBS (https://obsproject.com/ ) to tether the camera to a laptop, and record the video stream from the camera in OBS. Has anyone done this before? My main concern is making sure all of the connections and programs will be stable for a long period of time. I hate to introduce all of this complexity into the recording workflow, but it's the best workaround that I see.

I noticed that even when tethered to a laptop with Camera Live, the camera can still record within itself, albeit with the 30min time limit. So, as an extra redundancy, I might record the whole thing in the camera in 30min chunks that I could splice back together if need be. The event will be composed of a number of various speakers, each of which is probably unlikely to exceed 30mins. So, there is a potential of recording each one independently. But, I like the idea of also doing it on a laptop through OBS with no recording time constraint.

Canon will make their NAB announcements on April 3, 2019 [CR2]

We’re told that Canon will make their announcements for NAB on or around April 3, 2019 (depending on your location). NAB begins on April 6, 2019, and runs through April 11, 2019.
We’ve heard a few subtly conflicting reports on what Canon is going to announce, but here is the latest.
The long-rumoured CN-E PL mount prime lenses will be called “Sumire” we’re told.

Two new camcorders will be announced. A “professional” version of the VIXIA G50 along with an XA version of the XF405 that will be limited to 4K @ 30fps.
What we have seen conflicting reports on is what new Cinema EOS cameras may be coming. The latest we’re told is that we may see some kind of development announcement for “key customers”, but we’re not sure what that...

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EOS RP silent mode question

I have an event to go to and need a silent shutter and a travel camera. I've been through the whole range of mirrorless cameras from point and shoot to interchangable lens cameras. I got down to a decision between the Sony RX10 IV and the Panasonic FZ1000 II. Both would do the job but the Sony is ultra expensive for what you get and the Panasonic, I'm told isn't the most durable camera and their customer service not the best. Besides both cameras are quite large with small sensors. I decided to take another look at the Canon lineup since I have a lot of EF glass and the customer service and reliability are the best IMO. Since I will be traveling, I was trying to stay away from interchangable lenses but with the size of the cameras I was looking at this may be moot point. So, I am seriously considering the EOS RP with a 24 -105, I already have and possibly a 2x TC that I already own for outside nature shots. Still small but versatile kit. Don't want to spend the cash for the R just for this occasion and I have a 5D4. Plus I am anxiously waiting to throw cash at the rumored high MP MLC we were told about. Would rather spend the money there.

Finally, the question. Canon did a weird thing in putting silent mode in auto only. Have people tried it and is it working for them? Can you still set limits for ISO in this mode, I never really like to go above 1600 if I can help it. I read the manual but didn't see it. Thoughts?

DXOMark tests the Canon EOS R image sensor, scores it at 89

DXOMark has released their review of the Canon EOS R image sensor. I’ve never really put much stock in the testing at DXOMark, but there are a lot of people that do. The EOS R, which has a nearly identical image sensor, but different DIGIC version (DIGIC 8 vs DIGIC 6+) to the EOS 5D Mark IV actually scored 2 points lower at 89. The EOS 5D Mark IV scored a 91.
From DXOMark:
Although we’ve not directly compared the two Canon 30MP full-frame CMOS sensors side-by-side in this review, it’s not surprising that the results for the EOS R are very close to that of the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. Both appear to use a similar sensor, with some of the differences likely attributable to the increased number of AF points available in the EOS R.
While not possessing the low noise levels of the Nikon Z 6 and...

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Canon EOS Rebel SL2/200D replacement next from Canon?

Nokishita is reporting that the next body from Canon could be a replacement for the EOS Rebel SL2/200D, which was announced in June of 2017.
DS 126761

Digital camera (single lens reflex or RF mounting machine)
Made in Taiwan or Made in Japan (Oita Plant)
Wi-Fi · Bluetooth equipped (WM 600)
SKU: 3454C001AA, 3454C002AA, 3454C003AA, 3458C001AA, 3461C001AA
Battery: 7.2 V 1040 mAh (LP – E 17)

We’ve been told that an all-new 24mp sensor is ready to go,  and it’s possible we’ll see it in the next APS-C DSLR.

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Focus issue: 300/4.0L (non-IS)

All my lenses work great on my R (and 5D series bodies too), except I finally took out the 300/4L, the old non-IS version, and it won't give me good focus on the R.

I did some testing, and here's what I found:

Autofocus - no matter the spot, one shot of course, and its pretty much off. I think I said backfocus issue on another web forum, but its actually front focus.
Manual focus with peaking - off like AF
Manual focus with triangles - off like AF

Manual focus with 10x - spot on, as good as with my 5d series cameras. The 300/4L doesn't need "correction" with any of those bodies, btw.

Should also add that its the same with the old "regular" 1.4x as well, except more pronounced.

So... I contacted CUSA, and we'll wait and see what they say.

Canon USA lays off 60 employees from the camera division

We were told last week that Canon USA laid off 60 employees from the camera division shortly after WPPI this month. We were unable to confirm the information at that time, but it appears other sources have reached out to other media outlets to confirm the layoffs.
According to Newsday, a Canon spokeswoman said that the company “is constantly reviewing business needs and organizational structures to help ensure that we are best positioned for future growth and development. At this time, we are confident that with our new organizational structure, we are well positioned for future growth and success.”

Canon USA had 1569 employees in Melville, New York according to state records. Canon USA is required to disclose local employment yearly to the state of New York and Suffolk County, as Canon received aid in building their $500mil USA headquarters.
Canon moved from Lake Success, New York to Melville, New...

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Firmware: Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro v2.0.0

Canon has released new firmware for the RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro.
Firmware Version 2.0.0 incorporates the following enhancement:

Support for the “panning” scene mode with the EOS RP has been added. The “panning” scene mode reduces subject blurring and blurs the background when the lens is mounted to the EOS RP.

This firmware update is for lenses equipped with firmware version older than 2.0.0. If the lens firmware is already Version 2.0.0, it is not necessary to update the firmware.
The version of the lens firmware can be checked on the camera menu.
Download firmware v2.0.0 for the RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro

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