Photography - New Product testing day...

New Product testing day...

This morning I was off to the Canon Plaza S Consumer Products Showroom in Shinagawa Tokyo to look at two of the new lenses from Canon... Namely the EF-S10-18mm F4.5-5.6 IS STM and EF16-35mm F4L IS USM. One small setback was that official release date for the EF16-35mm F4L is next week, so while I could handle and test the lens on a showroom camera body, I could not mount the lens on my Canon 5DII... so no pictures :-(

The first lens I looked at was the EF-S10-18mm F4.5-5.6 IS STM and given the quality and ridicules low list price, it's definitely worth consideration. It only works on the Canon crop bodies, so in effect it's a 16-28mm lens. If you're interested in ultra wide/wide zoom on a crop Canon body, take a closer look.

The second lens I played with was the EF16-35mm F4L IS USM... I really wanted to take some test shots on my 5DII, but I have to wait until next week. This lens is very nice and don't be put off by the fact that it's an f/4.0 lens. If I was in the market, I would buy this in a minute. It will be interesting to see if the street price is much different from the initial pricing.

SOOOO, after that positive experience at the Canon Showroom, I was off to Shinjuku to visit the RICOH / Pentax showroom...

It was a beautiful morning in Shinagawa, but when I got off the train in Shinjuku it was pouring down rain.

I wanted to take a look at the new Pentax 645Z which will be available on 27-June here in Japan (not sure about global release dates). I think if I was starting from zero I would consider this camera... I am a big fan of the Pentax 645 film cameras and the new digital offering was fantastic in hand. You can read the statistics online... the Pentax 645Z ($8,499), the Hasselblad H5D-50C camera ($29,000), and the Phase One IQ250 digital back ($37,000) all use the same 43.8 x 32.8mm 50MP Sony CMOS sensor. I was able to try the three DFA lenses that are available (25mm, 55mm, and 90mm MACRO), and I understand that FA lenses are compatible (please confirm with Pentax ??)...

The Pentax 645Z is very nice...

Have a good weekend,
Casey