Gear Update
Our round-up of the latest digital photography must-haves
How will we tempt you away from your money this month? Come and see
3 Legged Thing Ellie 01 Ellie could be a must-have accessory £65/$70
www.3leggedthing.com Ellie is designed to fit a large range of Canons. The base can be precisely adjusted, and the length of the base itself can be altered for better alignment. It all helps make the setup more balanced and less susceptible to snags and knocks.
Bowens XMT500 02 British brand gets a second lease of life £699/$700
www.wexphotovideo.com photographic equipment brand Bowens, which ceased operations in 2017 after 94 years, has been resurrected by Wex Photo Video, which announced the Bowens XMT500 as the first relaunched product. The flash supports manual and TTL shooting, high speed sync up to 1/8000 sec, and features both sync delay (from 0.01 to 30 seconds) and a strobe mode to deliver up to 100 flashes per burst. The XMT500’S recycling time is as low as 0.01 sec, and can produce up to 500 full-power flashes from a battery that’ll fully recharge in four hours.
Camera Canopy 03 Shield your Canon from the rain £60/$80
www.cameracanopy.com camera Canopy attaches to your Canon’s hot shoe to provide a shield that sits over your camera and lens like a roof, protecting it from the elements while not obstructing the controls or rear screen. The two-piece design consists of an upper shield that can extend to cover telephoto lenses up to 500mm.
Datacolor Spyderx 04 Meet Datacolor’s fastest monitor calibrator £159/$170
www.datacolor.com Spyderx uses a brand new lens-based sensor system, giving a claimed increase in calibration accuracy, especially in the lightest and darkest image regions. Datacolor states it takes less than two minutes, but we recorded a staggering one minute 15 seconds, making this the fastest Spyder monitor calibrator ever. Available in Pro and Elite, both offer ambient light monitoring and multi-monitor support, but the Elite spec adds projector profiling, pro-orientated advanced calibration options, and its video colour space targets.
Samyang MF 14mm f/2.8 RF 05
& MF 85mm f/1.4 Samyang is first to offer third-party Rfmount lenses for Canon EOS R/RP cameras £TBA/$TBA
www.samyanglensglobal.com until now only Canon were offering RF lenses for EOS R and RP cameras, but now Samyang’s got two options. The MF 14mm f/2.8 RF is an ultra-wide-angle, manualfocus lens with a 115.7-degree angle of view that makes it ace for landscapes and architecture. The MF 85mm f/1.4 RF is designed for portraiture and is touted as offering the obligatory super-soft background bokeh.
Samyang XP 10mm f/3.5 06 The widest non-fisheye full-frame prime £950/$1200
www.samyanglensglobal.com Fancy a whopping 130-degree angle of view, with no distortion? It’s quite a feat of optical engineering that requires a complex design of 18 elements in 11 groups. The stack includes three aspherical elements, one high-refractive and three extra-low dispersion lens elements. Flare and ghosting are handled by Ultra-multicoating technology, and Samyang says the new lens offers high resolution image quality of “more than 50 megapixels”.
Tamron 35-150mm f/2.8-4 Di 07
VC OSD & SP 35mm f/1.4 Di USD Tamron’s two lenses for full-frame DSLRS £TBA/$TBA
www.tamron.eu the new Tamron 35-150mm f/2.8-4 Di VC OSD is intended as a “fast compact portrait zoom”. It also boasts of a Dual Micro-processing Unit for “optimal AF performance and effective vibration compensation.” The upcoming SP 35mm f/1.4 Di USD should make for an ideal street prime lens, especially in low light. Detailed specs are as yet unknown, but Tamron is claiming top-notch AF speed and reliability, along with unprecedented image quality and beautiful bokeh.