News/Views | Cameras and Photography Explained | Thom Hogan

LEDE ONThis week I write about new products, existing (Adobe), announced-but-not-imminent (Ricoh), and upcoming (additional new cameras coming in September). So it seems only appropriate to also say something about Apple, as they have called the press to the big circle for a launch-a-thon soon (on the 9th). The big anticipated camera news from the fruit company is that they’ll finally introduce variable apertures on an iPhone. Probably not more than two settable apertures, but a lot of us are…

I’ve wanted to write about this subject before, but it kept sliding down my to-do list until this article showed up and sort of stated my point without realizing it. Photos aren’t valued. Let’s talk about the case described in that article for a moment and get a couple of things out of the way. A painter is accused of “copying” a photograph to make a work of art. Specifically a photograph of the Gallegher brothers of the rock band Oasis interacting. The usual claim of the painter is that it…

Apple launched two new lineups of Mac models today (mini and Studio). The Macintosh hardware recommendations on this site were already a bit out of date, and today get even further out of date. Instead of rewriting that article for this old site design, I’m completely rewriting and configuring that article for the new byThom site. But the new site design isn’t ready yet, so in the meantime, many of you are wondering about where we stand in the Mac recommendations. Pretty much as we were before:…

LEDE ONWe’re nearing the end of summer (often defined as ending with Labor Day here in the US). Many of you have been vacationing in inflationville, and are getting ready to head back to work. So here’s the question: how many photos did you take? —————————— NewsKumamoto Back OnlineThe earthquake in Japan that shut down the Sony facility that makes image sensors, began a staged restart on August 4th, about a week after the 7.1 magnitude tremor hit nearby. Full production resumed on August 19th,…

From time to time I get whimsical. Okay, scratch that, I get sarcastic. One of the things that triggers this is when I go out somewhere to take photographs and start getting questions. Herewith are my latest answers to those questions: What are you taking a picture of?I’m not really taking a photo of anything, I’m just collecting data for AI. Why are you using such a big, heavy camera?It’s part of my weight training and fitness program. Smartphones, even the big ones, don’t do much for your…

LEDE ONIt’s quarterly earnings report time across the tech world. Fujifilm was the first I’ve seen in the camera biz to specifically call out “increases in semiconductor memory and IT-related component prices” as reason for their negative foreward forecast. But given that there are reports that there are US$1b (yes billion) in Apple Silicon processors sitting at TMSC waiting for RAM to show up and be integrated, you have to think that every camera maker is in the same boat. Instead of waiting…

LEDE ONThe camera makers must hate the photo press. Specifically, the American camera company subsidiaries must really dislike the “any news is worth reporting” rumors sites that will scrape virtually any post anywhere made by anyone if it looks like news. This past week we had another example of the “discontinued/unavailable” saga that isn’t always what it seems. Basically, here’s how it typically goes: a Japanese company in Japan sends out an advisory to Japanese dealers that some product…

LEDE ONThe camera makers are finally waking from their annual and management meetings, and still-greenlit projects are starting to appear as the chips they need get delivered. Word from Godzillaland is that Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, and Sony (again) all have camera announcements that will be made either just prior or just after Labor Day. The talk at the Sushi Bars in Tokyo these days is all about component costs, as in “what are we going to do about those cost increases?” Meanwhile, the yen has…

LEDE ONSometimes a week goes by without any interesting or significant camera product announcements, but in which there turned out to be lots of photography-adjacent news. Last week was one of those weeks. Even Apple is now actively reporting supply chain constraints and pricing impacts for future products. Smaller players—which includes all of the camera makers—will have bigger issues. Without further ado: —————————— CommentarySony Makes Buyout Offer for TamronI was just about to write a…

LEDE ONAlong with news comes rumors, as the camera industry tends to be pretty leaky. I don’t tend to discuss rumors much, as I prefer to deal with information about existing products, not imaginary ones (even if the imaginary is likely to become reality). While it seems like Japan has been sleeping, it’s mostly been a nap caused by supply chain issues coupled with the fact that great camera products already exist, so making even better ones is getting tougher to do. At the moment it appears…

LEDE ONYou probably thought I was done writing about tariffs. Sure, the courts overturned the Section 122 tariffs and companies (but not you) have started getting rebates, but the Trump Administration has since imposed additional tariffs under Section 301. Section 122 tariffs were 10% to all countries with a trade deficit to the US, while Section 301 tariffs are 12.5% to 60 countries using forced labor (many dispute this). However, there’s now a Trump Playbook in effect at retail. The key play:…

My Lightroom comments continue to get a lot of attention, so we’ll continue the conversation one last time. First up, I want to point out that my dilemma isn’t that Lightroom doesn’t have a lot of features or performance. It’s soley my observation that I’m not sure that Adobe is doing enough to both satisfy existing users and attract new ones for me to continue to recommend it as the go-to choice. This centers on something I write about a lot: what user problem is being solved? For Lightroom,…

Chas Glatzer, fellow adventurer in nature photography and someone I’ve been with on trips multiple times over the years, has passed after being involved a three-vehicle collision on Interstate 85 on Thursday, June 25th. While he was extracated from his car and flown by helicopter to the Spartanville Medical Center, he died early Sunday morning from his injuries. Chas was the owner of shootthelight.com, and after a successful career in portrait and event photography, moved into wildlife…

Well, that story woke you up! My comments about Adobe possibly missing a step with Lightroom provoked quite a few of you to send me an email. Indeed, more so than any other article this year, and by a fair margin. As such, it’s worth dipping into your comments and questions and doing a follow up. It seems a lot of you agreed with my basic contention that Adobe isn’t exactly innovating with Lightroom any more (though they do keep adding features to it, but usually after they do it for…

LEDE ONNeed a state-of-the-art semiconductor produced for your camera? Due to the process size race, there are only three companies that can really make super advanced chips for you: TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. Worse news? 70% of those advanced chips are currently being produced by TSMC (source: Taipei Times), and according to sources their fab orders are already full through the end of 2028. If you don’t need super small process size, then SMIC (China), United Microelectronics (Taiwan),…

Adobe’s history with imaging dates far back, and I remember using the original Photoshop alpha version back in the late 1980’s with a Barneyscan (I believe it was Photoshop version 0.65 that was labeled as the Barneyscan application I was using). Photoshop had at its core the mission to compose and edit image data at the pixel level, something that has been expanded on ad finitum ever since. Perhaps Creative Suite diverted Photoshop a bit, as we ended up with features that helped support things…

LEDE ONIt feels a bit like Back to the Future at the moment, as some Web sites are deciding to just talk about future products, such as Sony’s announcement that they’re working on the Rialto 65, a new medium format option for the Venice video camera. But that’s a next-year camera. Or perhaps “Why No Canon R7 II This Year?” Canon’s top crop sensor model is now apparently also a next-year camera. Several sites have even published a bizzare rumor that Viltrox will release a camera with the Z…

I’ve previously written about imitation (e.g. Two Approaches to Photography), but a recent question asked in the Photography section of Reddit caught my interest and is a really good one: “When you look at a photographer you love [and try to imitate them] what are you actually trying to replicate?” We don’t ask ourselves enough questions about the photography side of photography, and that question is a pretty basic one that deserves an answer. For me, trying to replicate something someone else…

Get ready for new controversy. We’ve had several big changes in how lenses are designed in the digital era, and more are coming. The two biggest differences in 21st century lenses have been improvements in computer modeling during the design process coupled with using in-camera “corrections” to “fix” aspects that aren’t addressed by the optical design itself. “Corrections” and “fix” are in quotes in the previous paragraph because the current form for these is simply some brute force simplified…

“[Panasonic L10 is] the most exciting camera of 2026 (so far)” — 43rumors headline Hmm. The L10 was the second camera announced in 2026. At the time the headline appeared, it was the second of only four cameras announced in 2026. So 43rumors has a one in four chance of being right instead of just clickbaiting ;~). The present paucity of products popping up means that everyone covering cameras and lenses on the Internet gets overly excited when awakened from their writing slumber to comment on…

It’s been a tough year so far, with a number of unexpected external issues causing me to fall behind my original schedule, including a family emergency that has me bouncing back and forth across the country. I’ve had far less office time this year than expected, so getting big projects done in a timely fashion has been difficult. Here are my new estimated launch times for projects you know about (I have additional projects you don’t know about, but I’ll let them be a surprise when they appear):…

Once again we have a camera manufacturer (Panasonic with the L10) announcing that orders for a new camera “greatly exceeds our expectations.” The actual truth: orders exceeded what they can deliver initially. Why not just say that? By using the “exceeds our expectations” wording, the Japanese are constantly saying, in essence, that they are producing cameras that that they thought wouldn’t have all that much interest initially. That they could deliver to expectations, and expectations were low.…

LEDE ONIt seems that the camera producers are all claiming that they’ve “secured” memory and some other critical part supplies for the year. I noted that in at least one case they also talked about increased pricing, though. Meanwhile, CaptureOne doesn’t have a parts issue, but they’ve now announced that their pricing will go up 6%. Frankly, in times of inflation I expect everyone pushes their pricing as much as they think they can get away with. The problem I see coming is that all these cost…

One thing that people don’t always expect with the long march of technology is that things go away. We’re nearing the end of USB-A, for instance, with virtually everything now coming only with USB-C due to European regulations. Frankly, the camera makers seem a bit behind the times. With my Insta360 and DJI devices, for example, they only have a USB-C port, but my current cameras have many. Too many. And badly placed ports, on top of that. So let’s start today’s discussion with one about what…

A major family emergency has arisen that requires my attention, plus I’ve got some client obligations this month, so I’ve decided to take May off from posting. I’ll be back in early June with, I’m sure, a lot of thoughts and new information. Maybe even with the redesigned site, though that will depend upon how distracted I get by the family situation. The good news is that things are moving slowly in the photo industry right now, so I doubt I’ll miss any major announcements. As many of you…

LEDE ONWith NAB behind us, we move into the Father’s Day/Graduation buying period still with virtually nothing new to add to the gift list. We’re definitely in a drought state when it comes to anything other than Chinese lenses. Here’s another of my economic-side warnings: the supply chain just took another hit with the Iran conflict. That might not be evident to you yet, but it is to all my buddies still building things. That's because they know the sequence that starts tripping the dominoes,…

When you're on the press list at NAB Show, your email InBox piles up an impressive number of press releases and interview offers (currently over 100, so I’m going to stop counting). This year, by my math, about 70% of that first batch had the abbreviation AI somewhere in the headline or lede paragraph. PR-fluff-wording also abounds ("...turns post-production into a strategic lever..."). In alphabetical order, here are the new offerings that I believe have some implication to my readership. Note…

Let's mix it up a bit, since camera news ain't happening until NAB next week. This week I'll answer a few reader questions that have popped up recently.  "Does the 1/focal length rule still apply to shutter speed in the age of image stabilization?"It wasn’t a “rule.” It was a rule of thumb. What one person could achieve in terms of a good image of a static subject was (and remains) different than what another person could achieve.  As to image stabilization: lens stabilization will ...

LEDE ONIt's tempting to say "nothing happened this week." Everyone in Tokyo is taking a breather after a successful CP+ show, after all. But of course a lot did happen (e.g. war is now ongoing, more tariff gyrations, fear of economic slowdown, yen appreciation against the dollar while falling against the Chinese Yuan Renminbi). For Fujitsu, Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony, their fiscal years end at the end of March, and the last month hasn't quite worked out exactly as each expected. When the full...