Buyers’ guide Christmaswinners Buyers’ guide
Whether it’s photo kit ideas for loved ones, or helpful hints to fill your own Christmas stocking, you’ve come to the right place... MAKE SURE YOU pick some Christmas winners this year, with PN ’s guide to the best kit of the season. Over the next few pages you’ll find a selection of our favourite gear, as well as neat gifts that are sure to bring a smile to either you or the photographer in your life. So, whether it’s a camera, lens or filter for your bag, lights, software, accessories, or something inspiring to breathe life into your photography next year, here are some ideas to keep everyone happy.
FujifilmXF23mm f/1.4R LMWR › £819 › fujifilm.com/uk
52Assignments: Black&White Photography › £12.99 › ammonitepress.com › streetsnappers.com
If you’re a Fujifilm X Series user, it’s been a great year for new lenses. Of particular note is the XF23mm f/1.4 R LM WR, an update to the original lens that’s won the hearts of countless photographers. The 23mm focal length equates to a classic 35mm view, and with its big f/1.4 aperture, it’s easy to shoot in low light and get great subject separation. Now weather sealed, it has an updated AF motor for quicker, quieter focusing.
How about a book to stimulate your creativity and get better pictures? Created by Brian Lloyd Duckett, the founder of Streetsnappers – which specialises in street photography workshops in London and across Europe – 52 Assignments: Black & White Photography is filled with a year’s worth of weekly commissions and concepts. It’s all designed to steer you into composing more powerful monochrome images. Spanning 128 pages, there’s bags of technical advice, as well as varied subject matter, including cityscapes, nature, shadows, vehicles, reflections and water – all of which concentrate on using light and shade alone to make compelling images.
There’s no doubting what’s at the top of many Christmas lists. The Fujifilm GFX 50S II makes larger format photography more accessible than ever before, and it is the first-ever, sub-£4k medium format camera to be introduced. The GFX 50S II body retails for £3499, and is available with the GF 35-70mm standard zoom for £3899. Its 51.4-megapixel resolution comes from a sensor that’s 1.7x bigger than a 35mm format full-frame chip, and has a native ISO range that tops FujifilmGFX 50S II › £3499 › fujifilm.com/uk
out at 12,800. This produces superb detail, dynamic range and noise performance, but crucially, all the power comes in a body that’s no bigger than a DSLR. At 900g, the GFX 50S II body is made of magnesium alloy, fully weather sealed and includes a powerful five-axis in-body image stabilisation system – providing up to
Affinity Photo is a pro image editor range of features and performance to rival Photoshop – but it’s less than £50 for a stand-alone product! Affinity Photo has full non-destructive editing, with adjustment layers and masks, as well as functions Serif Affinity Photo › £47.99 › affinity.serif.com
like focus-stacking, HDR processing and all the tools you’d expect to find in other packages. It also has a neat built- in frequency separation mode for improved portraits. There’s Raw conversion and a lens correction filter, too.
6.5 stops of advantage, to date, the best seen in a GFX camera. The Fujifilm GFX 50S II is tested in this issue of Photography News .
Benro InduroHydra2 › £450 › uk.benroeu.com
Canon EOS R6 › £2399 › canon.co.uk
swapped for stainless- steel spikes, which are better suited to mud and sand. Though small and folding down to 42.4cm, it’ll support up to 17kg and has a top height of 153cm, with the centre column raised. For adjustment, it also has an allen key that screws into the centre column – very handy!
As anyone who’s listened to the PN Podcast knows, you can’t have too many tripods. They all have different uses and the Induro Hydra2 is a great example. Its five-section carbon fibre legs are waterproof, so it can be used in all sorts of challenging conditions. Complementing that, its rubber feet can be
Canon’s excellent Dual Pixel AF II handles subject tracking with ease, and if you want video, there’s 4K at 60p, too.
It’s only been a few months since the launch of Canon’s current flagship mirrorless body, the £5899 EOS R3. And, though we’d all be happy with something like that under the tree, if you’re after a more realistic Christmas treat, the EOS R6 certainly won’t disappoint. A real shoot-anything camera, which shows off all the benefits of mirrorless tech, it combines a full-frame 21-megapixel sensor, with a fantastic ISO range of 100- 102,400, expandable from 50-204,800, as well as stunning in-body image stabilisation that offers up to eight stops of advantage.
Issue 94 | Photography News 35
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