Things I Plan on Reviewing
Sony has the 12-24mm f/4 G coming in early July and the FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM coming in late August.
Nikon has the Nikon AF-S 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5E ED and Nikon AF-S 28mm f/1.4E ED coming in late June.
Hasselblad will hopefully provide me an X1D with updated firmware in July so I can revisit the focusing bug I reported and which was confirmed.
I’ll be reviewing the Apple 2017 iMac 5K and the 2017 MacBook Pro (see my existing review of the 2016 MacBook Pro), with an eye towards photographic use. I hope also to review a few new cool Thunderbolt 3 peripherals at the same time. As always, I am available for computer or photographic consulting.
Fujifilm will be releasing the 23mm f/4 and 110mm f/2 lenses next week, so those will be a top priority for early July review coverage to add to my in-depth review of the Fujifilm GFX system. I do worry that Fujifilm has not made any mention of addressing the very serious focusing accuracy and focus stability issues that I reported on back in April.
Sigma has their new 24-70mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art and also the new 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art (I’m much more interested in the 14mm, but if the 24-70 is really really good then it interests me more, so far no 24-70mm really piques my interest). Pre-orders start in two days, but availability is unclear as yet—perhaps July.
The Leica M10 with its new EVF has severe availability constraints (I think I know the reason but it is unconfirmed as yet) that makes it hard to get ahold of, but one arrives for testing June 23. A key question I want to answer is just how it compares to the M240 (form factor aside)—is its image quality better than the Leica M240, or just different—and is different-better in all ways?
I’m disappointed at being stuck at 24 megapixels, even if the extra resolution were only to avoid moiré and color aliasing and other digital artifacts. Leica has made the classic mistake of assuming that its existing user base is the only viewpoint—if Apple had done this we’d all still be using flip phones instead of smart phones. It takes vision and leadership to move a product category forward, and so far Leica’s vision has been a disappointing failure. I see the M10 as a nice improvement over the M240 (an assumption at this point, based on specs), but it offers nothing really new except form factor. It is incrementalism costing $6600 on top of an $8000 investment in the M240. Hard to swallow, for me at least—that Leica does nothing to improve the M240 experience after 3+ years.