Have Camera Will Travel Update: May 14, 2025
Camera gear price increases incoming; new Viltrox and TTArtisan lenses; photos from Mandalay, Myanmar.
About today’s photos . . . I’ve been trying to clear out my backlog of photos that I’ve never gotten around to processing. These are from Zegyo Market in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma). It’s Mandalay's oldest and largest traditional marketplace, established during the British colonial period following their annexation of Upper Burma in 1885. And it’s a market strictly for the locals, not tourists. I took these several years ago, before the most recent round of political instability. I’d dearly love to head back to Myanmar — it’s a stunning and fascinating part of the world — but in the current political environment there, that wouldn’t be the wisest choice.
Gear & Stuff
Price increases on camera gear are coming. Canon has confirmed that price increases on camera gear are coming. And if you have gear on backorder, you might never get it--they might ship it to other regions that don't have tariffs. Sigma America has also confirmed that price increases will be effective on June 2. There are also rumors of price increases coming in June from other camera manufacturers like Nikon. [Canon / Sigma]
Fujifilm is suspending shipping some cameras to the US until they work out what's going on with tariffs and trade instability. It affects cameras like the Fujifilm X100VI and the new GFX100RF. [PetaPixel]
Viltrox is a Chinese third-party manufacturer of lenses that has caught my eye recently. There are several competitors making inexpensive lenses, but most of them are still focusing on manual-focus lenses for their mirrorless offerings. Viltrox is prioritizing autofocus lenses. I've been testing out the Viltrox AF 25 f1.7 Z recently and have posted [my hands-on review] and some [sample images].
TTArtisan has announced a new 35mm ƒ/1.4 Tilt lens (APS-C / manual focus). Versions for Nikon Z, Sony E, Canon RF, Fuji X, and M43 mounts. Priced at $169.
Insta360 has released a new 360-degree camera: the X5. It shoots 8K video, but what I'm most interested in is using it for unconventional stills photography, and at 72MP images, this has a slightly higher resolution than the Ricoh Theta X. Insta360 has a very polished video showcasing it. [YouTube]
Sony has announced a new fast high-end zoom for E-mount, the FE 50-150mm ƒ/2 GM. It looks impressive.
Canon has increasingly been using robots to build their cameras and lenses. From their 2024 annual report: " Following toner cartridges, we have rolled out automated production lines for cameras and interchangeable lenses to further enhance productivity." [Canon Addict]
Canon seems to be working on an ultra-fast wide-angle lens that's also small and light: an RF 24mm ƒ/ 0.7. Who knows whether it will ever make it into stores, though. [Canon Rumors]
We're learning more and more about the ways that the information we take for granted on the internet isn't actually forever. Now, a company is taking that to an extreme with PrepperDisk, a combination local archive, wifi hub, and backup device for when the internet is switched off or deleted. [404 Media]
GoPro’s camera sales are down, and they’re still losing money, but they’re leaning harder into subscriptions and updating their gear and apps. It’s a rough patch, but they’re working on a comeback with new features and lower costs. The past few models they’ve released have been mostly incremental upgrades, and it seems like they really need a new idea to catch fire. [GoPro]
The new Panasonic LUMIX S1II has a 24.1MP partially-stacked CMOS sensor supporting both photography and video. It records 5.1K 60p, C4K/4K 120p video, and offers burst shooting up to 70 fps with AI-based autofocus. It also has 8-stop image stabilization, which is impressive. The more affordable S1IIe model maintains core features but with reduced burst rates (30 fps). [B&H Photo has a good overview]
Pulitzer Prizes for Photography
Congratulations to NY Times photographer Doug Mills, who won for Breaking News Photography. You can see the series of photos highlighted by the committee here.
And also to New Yorker contributor Moises Saman won for Feature Photography “For his haunting black and white images of Sednaya prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad’s torture chambers.” You can see the series of photos here.
Photographers at Work
Some stunning photos from space from astronaut/photographer Don Pettit. [NY Times]
While it’s a discouraging story of Australia’s ancient Ningaloo Reef being threatened by warming seas, it’s also accompanied by some wonderful photos by Nush Freedman. [CNN]
It’s a hard shoot to make much of—Uber drivers waiting around for hours in an airport parking lot—but Mark Abramson made lemonade and pulled it off. Some great shots. [NY Times]
Other Stuff
There's a new documentary on Edwin Land, who invented the Polaroid camera and gave us the idea that cameras could be small and portable and carried anywhere. Titled Mr. Polaroid; airs May 19 on PBS. Here's the trailer.
With Vietnam War anniversaries upon us, the NY Times has an excellent piece on how photojournalism impacted the public's undertanding of the war. Includes many of the iconic images of the war, and more. [NY Times]
And, speaking of . . . A recent documentary called The Stringer disputed who took the famous "Napalm Girl" photo during the Vietnam War, saying that credit shouldn't go to AP photographer Nick Ut but to local stringer Nguyen Than Nghe. After a year-long investigation and 97-page report, the AP says it's sticking with its original credit. It's not exactly a full-throated endorsement, though. Negatives have been lost, and many key witnesses are dead. "However, the detailed analysis by the AP investigators, interviews with the remaining witnesses, and the written historic accounts by the key witnesses who have died, all compel the AP conclusion that there is no basis to disturb Nick Ut’s credit for the famous picture." Interestingly, they also concluded after forensic examination that it was probably shot with a Pentax (or maybe a Nikon), not the Leica M3 it was long believed to be taken with. [Washington Post]
The head of the US Copyright Office was fired two days after the office had released a pre-publication version of its opinion that training AI systems on copyrighted data might not, in fact, be fair use. [Ars Technica]
It turns out that the more sophisticated AI large language models get, the more they're hallucinating. And there's currently no solution. [NY Times]
Want to discourage AI from training on your images? There's a PLUS "Data Mining" field available in IPTC. The catch is that it only works if the AI companies actually respect it (given how many ignore robots.txt, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath). [Photo Mechanic]
If you have a WordPress site where you share images, there's a new image optimization and compression (and WebP conversion) plugin worth a look: Squeeze. It has a lot of competition, but this one does things in some really interesting new ways that have me intrigued. [Squeeze]
Firmware Updates
Leica has rolled out a slew of firmware updates for several of their models. [Digital Camera World]
A couple of minor updates from Nikon:
It’s National Photography Month!
Apparently it’s National Photography Month. Who knew? I’m not sure what practical effect that has beyond a marketing opportunity, but there you have it. Maybe you can find some good deals on photography gear and services before price increases kick in.