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It’s a strange and wonderful time to buy a digital camera. Since smartphones have gutted the casual photography market, manufacturers are focusing on building technological marvels designed for very specific uses. Mirrorless cameras continue to improve in terms of autofocus, video and more. Action cams provide sharp, fluid video, compact cameras are targeted to both tourists and vloggers, and DSLRs are available at some of the best prices we’ve seen. With so many different types of digital cameras, though, you may need some guidance to find just the right one – and that’s where we come in. Whether you’re a creator looking for just the right vlogging camera, an aspiring wildlife photographer or a sports enthusiast, we’ll help you find the perfect model to match your budget and needs.
Best mirrorless cameras under $2,000
Best mirrorless cameras over $2,000
There are a lot of reasons to choose a camera over a smartphone. The larger image sensors in mirrorless cameras let more light in, and you have a wide choice of lenses, from wide-angle to telephoto lenses, with far superior optics. Where smartphones have one f/stop, cameras have many, which gives you more exposure control. You also get natural and not AI-generated bokeh, quicker shooting, a physical shutter, more professional video results and so on.
With that extra quality comes a lot of extra factors to consider, however. The first thing is sensor size. In general, the larger the sensor size, the better (and usually more expensive) the camera.
Full frame is available on models like Sony's new ZV-E1, the Canon EOS R6 II and Panasonic S5 II. At a size equivalent to 35mm film (36 x 24mm), it offers the best performance in terms of image quality, low-light capability and depth of field. It's also the most expensive and finicky. While bokeh looks incredible at f/1.4, the depth of field is so razor thin that your subject's nose might be in focus but not their eyes. This can also make video shooting difficult.
The next size category is APS-C (around 23.5 x 15.6mm for most models and 22.2 x 14.8mm for Canon), offered on Fujifilm's X Series lineup, Canon’s R10 and R50 and the Nikon Z50. It's cheaper than full frame, both for the camera body and lenses, but still brings most of the advantages like decent bokeh, high ISOs for low-light shooting and relatively high resolution. With a sensor size the same as movie cameras, it's ideal for shooting video, and it’s easier to hold focus than with full-frame cameras.
Micro Four Thirds (17.3 x 13mm), a format shared by Panasonic and Olympus, is the next step down in sensor size. It offers less bokeh and light-gathering capability than APS-C and full frame, but allows for smaller and lighter cameras and lenses. For video, you can still get reasonably tight depth of field with good prime lenses, but focus is easier to control.
The other common sensor size is Type 1 (1 inch), which is actually smaller than one inch at 12.7 x 9.5mm. That's used mostly by compact models like Sony’s ZV-1 vlogging camera. Finally, action cameras like the GoPro Hero 11 and DJI’s Osmo 3 have even smaller sensors (1/1.9 and 1/1.7 size, respectively).
For photographers, another key factor is autofocus (AF) speed and accuracy. Most modern mirrorless cameras have hybrid phase-detect AF systems that allow for rapid focus and fast burst speeds. The majority also feature AI smarts like eye-detect AF for people and animals. However, some models are just a bit faster and more reactive than others.
The electronic viewfinder (EVF) and rear display are also key. The best models have the sharpest and brightest EVFs that let you best judge a shot before taking it. For things like street photography, it’s best to have as bright and sharp a rear display as possible. You may also want a screen that flips out rather than just tilting.
DSLRs and mirrorless cameras let you change lenses, but you're stuck with what's built into a compact camera. While that's great for portability, a single lens means you're going to sacrifice something. Fujifilm's X100V, for instance, has a fast but fixed 35mm-equivalent f/2.0 lens and no zoom. Sony's RX100 V has a 24-70mm zoom, but it's slower at the telephoto end (f/2.8) and less sharp than a prime lens.
When it comes to video, there are other factors to consider. Does your camera do “pixel-binning” for video recording or read out the entire sensor? Better cameras tend to do the latter. Another key factor is sensor speed, as slower sensors tend to have more rolling shutter that can create a “jello” effect that skews video.
In addition, how’s the battery life? How do you like the handling and feel? How long can you shoot video before the camera heats up or stops? Does it support 10-bit HDR video? Is there a microphone and/or a headphone jack? (if you do a lot of interviews, it's preferable to have both.) How's the video autofocus? All of these things play a part in your decision – so now let’s take a look at the best models.
Mirrorless is far and away the biggest category of cameras for these days, so it’s the best way to go if you want the best camera for photography with the most advanced features. Both Canon and Nikon recently announced they’re discontinuing development of new DSLRs, simply because most of the advantages of that category are gone, as I detailed in a recent video. The biggest selling feature of a mirrorless camera is the ability to change lenses depending on the type of shooting you want to do.
The key features are sensor size, resolution, autofocus, shooting speeds and video specs. If you’re primarily focused on sports photography or outdoor photography, you’ll likely want fast shooting speeds and accurate autofocus. Portrait and landscape shooters will likely favor large sensors and high resolution to maximize image quality. And content creators will want to look for things like flip-out displays, high-end video specifications and good in-body stabilization. Price point is, of course, a major factor as well.
My top budget camera pick is Canon’s brand new 24.2-megapixel R50, which is one of the best cameras for photography, and content creators will love it. It can shoot bursts at up to 15 fps in electronic shutter mode, and offers 4K 10-bit at up to 30p with supersampling and no crop. It has a fully articulating display, and unlike other cameras in this price range, an electronic viewfinder. It uses Canon’s Dual Pixel AF with subject recognition mode, and even has a popup flash. The only drawback is the lack of decent quality lens that’s as affordable as the camera itself, and a lack of in-body stabilization.
Autofocus: Dual Pixel CMOS AF II with 651 points
Max shutter speed: 15 fps
WiFi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Full-frame cameras generally used to start at $2,000 and up, but Canon’s brand new EOS R8 is priced at just $1,500. It offers Canon’s excellent Dual Pixel AF with subject recognition AI, and can shoot bursts at up to 40 fps. It's equally strong with video, supporting oversampled 10-bit 4K at up to 60 fps. The R8 also offers a flip-out display, making it great for vloggers. The main drawback is a lack of in-body stabilization.
Content creators should take a hard look at Panasonic’s full-frame S5 II. It’s the company’s first camera with hybrid phase-detect AF designed to make focus "wobble" and other issues a thing of the past. You can shoot sharp 4K 30p video downsampled from the full sensor width, or 4K 60p from an APS-C cropped size, all in 10-bit color. It even offers 5.9K 30p capture, along with RAW 5.9K external output to an Atomos recorder. You also get a flip-out screen for vlogging and updated five-axis in-body stabilization that’s the best in the industry. Photo quality is also good thanks to the dual-gain 24-megapixel sensor. The main drawback is the slowish burst speeds.
Read our full review of the Panasonic Lumix S5 II
Equipped with the same backside-illuminated (BSI) 12-megapixel sensor as the A7S III, Sony’s ZV-E1 offers excellent low-light performance, 4K at up to 120p and a host of new AI features like auto framing, making it one of the best cameras for photography and videography. It also comes with an updated in-body image stabilization system aimed at vloggers that can smooth out even jolting movements like footsteps. The $2,200 price tag makes it enticing for vloggers as it offers features found on the $3,500 A7S III for considerably less money.
Autofocus: 759 points
Max shutter speed: 10 fps
WiFi: No
Bluetooth: Yes
If you’re OK with a smaller APS-C sensor, check out the Fujifilm X-H2S. It has an incredibly fast stacked, backside-illuminated 26.1-megapixel sensor that allows for rapid burst shooting speeds of 40 fps, along with 4K 120p video with minimal rolling shutter. It can capture ProRes 10-bit video internally, has 7 stops of in-body stabilization and a class-leading EVF. Yes, it’s expensive for an APS-C camera, but on the other hand, it’s the cheapest stacked sensor camera overall. The other downside is AF that’s not quite up to Canon and Sony’s level.
Read our full review of the Fujifilm X-H2S
For the ultimate high-resolution camera, check out Sony’s A7R V. With a 61-megapixel sensor, it shoots sharp and beautiful images at a very respectable speed for such a high-resolution model (10 fps). It has an equally fast and reliable autofocus system, the sharpest viewfinder on the market and in-body stabilization that’s much improved over the A7R IV. Video has even improved, with 8K and 10-bit options now on tap, albeit with significant rolling shutter. If you don’t need the video features, however, Sony’s A7R IVa does mostly the same job, photo-wise, and costs a few hundred dollars less.
Read our full review of the Sony A7R V
The most important features to look for in an action cam are image quality, stabilization and battery life. GoPro has easily been beating all rivals over the last few years in all those areas, but DJI made some strides last year with the Osmo Action 3. At the same time, GoPro’s latest models are more expensive than rivals.
GoPro didn’t change the design on its latest model, but it has a larger sensor that enables a couple of cool features – Horizon Lock stabilization and Full Frame mode that makes it easier to shoot for, say, TikTok and YouTube at the same time. It also offers a new wider, though slightly distorted Hyperview field of view.
Otherwise, the Hero 11 Black offers better video quality than ever (up to 5.3K 60p), Hypersmooth stabilization that’s still the best in the business (by far), battery life that’s improved by 40 percent over the last model, and more. It’s easily the best action camera on the market, but you pay for that: it’s $400 with a one year subscription ($500 without it), compared to $329 for the DJI Osmo Action 3 and $300 for the Insta360 RS 4K bundle. If you’re serious about filming extreme sports, though, it’s worth it.
WiFi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Read our full review of the GoPro Hero 11
After experimenting with an oddball modular design on the Action 2, design has gone back to a more classic action cam design on the Osmo Action 3. It also comes with a slick new magnetic quick-release mount that lets you connect the camera directly to a GoPro-style mount with or without the case. Video quality and stabilization are quite good, but fall short of the Hero 11 Black (the Action 3 tops out at 4K 120p resolution compared to 5.3K 60p on the GoPro). While it’s not quite as good as the Hero 11, it’s considerably cheaper.
Read our full review of the DJI Osmo Action 3
This category has fewer cameras than it did even a few years ago and many models are older, as manufacturers focus instead on mirrorless models. However, I’m still a big believer in compact cameras. This type of camera is a big step up from smartphones quality-wise, and a lot of people will take a compact traveling or to events when they’d never bother with the hassle of a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Compacts largely have type 1-inch sensors, but a few offer larger options, particularly Fujifilm’s XF-100V. Another popular model, Sony’s XV-1, is primarily aimed at content creators looking to step up. In any case, desirable qualities include image quality, a fast lens, relatively long zoom, flip-out display, good battery life, a high quality EVF, decent video and good pocketability.
The X100V is the latest in Fujifilm's famous fixed-lens X100 camera series. Like other models in the lineup, it has an APS-C sensor and a 23mm f/2.0 lens, equivalent to 35mm on a full-frame sensor. You also get the same hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder, mechanical dials, film simulations and good looks as before. But the X100V is the most significant advancement in the series' history. It has Fujifilm's latest 26.1-megapixel X-Trans 4 CMOS sensor compared to 24.2-megapixels on the last model and a new, sharper lens to handle that extra resolution.
A new tilting rear display makes "shooting from the hip" street photography much easier, as does the fast 11 fps/20 fps shooting speeds in mechanical/silent shutter modes. You also get a better hybrid phase- and contrast-detect autofocus (AF) system with more AF points along with face and eye detection. Finally, it now has the same 4K video-shooting features as the X-T30. It doesn't come cheap, but the X100V is the ultimate camera if you're into street photography – assuming you can find one.
Max shutter speed: 20 fps
WiFi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Read our full review of the Fujifilm X100V
The ZV-1 is Sony’s first RX100-series camera designed specifically for vlogging. It does that job well thanks to a lightweight body, built-in high-quality microphone, flip-out display, best-in-class autofocus and excellent image quality. The 24-70mm lens is sharp, but it needs to be wider because of the 25 percent crop when using electronic stabilization. It also lacks a true touch display and a headphone port. That nitpicking aside, if you’re looking to step up from a smartphone or just want something simple, it does the job nearly perfectly.
Read our full review of the Sony ZV-1
For a value compact camera, the best option is Panasonic’s 20-megapixel ZS-200. It offers a lot of features for the price, like a 1-inch, 20.1 megapixel sensor, 5-axis stabilization, 4K, 30 fps video and more. Its main claim to fame, though, is the 24-360x lens that offers incredible reach for travel and more. Though it dates back to 2018, it’s actually one of the more recent compact models.
With mirrorless cameras taking over the interchangeable lens market, DSLRs still give you the ability to change lenses at relatively cheap prices. The defining feature is the reflex mirror that lets you look directly through the lens at your subject with no electronics in between. Most also have very fast autofocus thanks to a dedicated phase-detect sensor, and very fast battery life. However, many lack features you’d expect on modern mirrorless cameras like subject tracking, eye-detection and more.
Nikon's full-frame (FX) D850 is the best deal on a high-end camera and arguably the best camera for photography. With a 45.7-megapixel sensor and max 102,400 ISO, it gives you the best quality for the money, whether mirrorless or DSLR. It can also shoot fast, at up to 7fps, which is very good for such a high-res camera. In addition, the battery life (1840 shots on a charge) puts any mirrorless option to shame, and there’s a massive number of FX Nikkor lens options to choose from. Nikon has upped its video game as well with the D850 by introducing 4K internal recording. If you’d still rather have a live optical rather than an electronic view, the D850 is the best option available.
Autofocus: 153 points
Max shutter speed: 7 fps
WiFi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Another one of the best cameras for photography is Canon’s 24-megapixel APS-C EOS Rebel SL3, which has a great blend of features, build quality and value. It offers features like a vari-angle touchscreen, 4K video (albeit with a crop) and Dual Pixel autofocus technology in live mode. You get shooting speeds of up to 5 fps, 1600 shots on a charge and an ISO range up to 51,200 (expanded). It also offers guided screen options for beginners. Best of all, it offers excellent picture quality for the price thanks to Canon’s skin-friendly color science.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-cameras-151524327.html?src=rss
Panasonic S5 II full-frame mirrorless camera review
Panasonic S5 II full-frame mirrorless camera review
A little over a month ago Kansas City welcomed a new stationery store, May Day Paper and Post! While we do have a pen store and the ubiquitous Paper Source, this is an indie stationery store, one that I’m delighted to support. May Day bills itself as a place for all things snail mail.
This past Friday while Ana was at the St. Louis Pen Show, I drove up to check it out! The store is super cute, set in midtown Kansas City. It has a fun, curated collection of greeting cards, notebooks and notecards, journals, stickers, mugs, wrapping paper and other giftables. To be clear, this isn’t a pen store. They did have a fun selection of Gelly Roll pens and a few roller balls and ball points, but it’s primarily about the paper. It’s whimsical, and the owner definitely has a sense of humor.
I was restrained but found a few cute cards on the long wall. My selections were from Black and White and Red All Over and A Zillion Dollars. Both cards are printed nicely, and use recycled content for both the cards and envelopes.
I saw many of the familiar notebooks (Maruman, Kleid, Leuchtturm, and more), plus some from companies I hadn’t heard from. I did pick up one notebook – I’ll share my thoughts on it next week!
Overall it’s a cute shop, and if you’re in the Kansas City area, you won’t be disappointed if you stop by! And if you’re looking for a fun new shop to support, you can also shop online!
P.S. If you stop by, make sure you give shop dog Lucy lots of pets!
The post A new stationery store: May Day Paper & Post appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
Perched on a makeshift stage, a trio dressed in wool ponchos sings pirekuas, the region’s most acclaimed and loved musical genre in a mix of Purépecha and Spanish. Despite their upbeat and soft-sounding melodies, the lyrics of the songs describe a time of fear and destruction when, eighty years ago, the Paricutin, the world’s youngest volcano, emerged from a cornfield and devastated the region. Stallkeepers are busy selling quesadillas, chips, sodas, and beers to the expectant crowd, gathering around a bonfire installed inside a miniature volcano. This contrast between apparently joyful festivities and solemn commemoration marks the evening’s atmosphere in Angahuan, Caltzontzin and San Juan Nuevo in Michoacan, Mexico. Several uniformed and heavily-armed municipality police stand nervously watching the horizon. These days, this is fraught territory, as organized crime groups dispute control over the area. This is also the first time that an event like this is staged on-site at the place known locally as las ruinas [the ruins], a shorthand for the remains of the old San Juan Parangaricutiro church, the only surviving structure of an entire town buried under the thick and rugged lava.
Image 1. Bonfire inside the miniature volcano in Las Ruinas. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
Although this uncanny landscape, a combination of human and non-human architecture, has been an iconic tourist attraction for decades, tonight it shines under the lights of commemoration. Authorities from San Juan Nuevo, the locality where the residents of the devastated town were relocated, installed strings of blue strobing LED lights to illuminate the ruins. Their blinding glare made the silhouette of the volcanic cone barely visible in the distance. At 9 pm, the mountain began emitting incandescent explosions. These were not the product of molten magma emerging powerfully from the earth’s core, as had been the case decades ago, but purpose-made fireworks, spinning loudly, spitting orange and red heart-shaped sparks into the sky. National tourists and local visitors silently admired the spectacle sitting uncomfortably on the sharp rocky surfaces by the ruins; others chose panoramic vistas of this volcanic surrogate from the terrace restaurant and tourist center in the nearby town of Angahuan.
In Mexico, we are fond of anniversaries. Our political culture relies heavily on commemoration, centennials, and bicentennials. The volcano is no exception. Every decade that passes, around the volcano’s birth on February 20th, its anniversary is marked both by locals, who commemorate its eruption and its destructive effects, and by academic institutions and government bodies celebrating its emergence as a milestone for the earth sciences and for Mexican national and regional history.
Image 2. Program flyers for community and state government’s events commemorating the Paricutin’s 80th anniversary posted on the wall of the municipal office in Angahuan. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
But a volcano is not a military victory, nor a conquest, nor a war with friends and foes to be honored or shunned. It is an eruption, a geological emergence, a sudden and unexpected event that physically opens and breaks the earth’s surface, reminding us that we travel on an unwieldy, unknown, and capricious fireball. A volcano might then be imagined as an interstice, a liminal space that for a brief moment in earthly temporalities, brings together history and deep time. It’s an event, but it is also a place where the forces of what we call “nature” and of human historicity and territoriality collide. How, then, do humans memorialize the kinds of disruptions and transformations, even violence, caused by such phenomena? How might those who endure its effects up close mark a volcano’s birth and subsequent destruction of their territory and livelihoods?
Image 3. Fireworks from the crater, February 2023. Photo: Lorena Casillas
One of the stall owners, at Las Ruinas known as “Cachuy,” is the event’s main organizer. Nervously feeding the miniature volcano with gasoline and firewood, he is charismatic and clearly enjoys his role as MC. Just before the fireworks, he gathers a group of children and curious visitors (ourselves included) and leads us down a barely visible pathway in the otherwise ash-covered landscape. Our feet sink into the thick powdery surface. Cachuy stops abruptly and asks for silence. In a solemn voice, he explains that we are standing on what is left of the old town’s main street. As he guides us in the dark, he tells a story: “The night that the town was finally evacuated, in May of 1944, elders say the whole street lit up with a long line of flickering lights. They headed down the street from the cemetery like a row of candles. It was the souls of the dead following the living. Even the dead left this place to join their families before the lava covered it.” Cachuy pulls back the branches of a tree, drawing our attention to a pile of crumbling stone masonry. “This is what is left of the walls of a house,” he tells us. A young man walks cautiously amongst the rubble for a few minutes. Almost in a whisper, he murmurs: “I think this was my family’s home.”
Eighty years ago, in February 1943, the Paricutin famously emerged in these lands in Michoacan, becoming the first volcano to be registered during its entire lifespan. The eruptions lasted for almost a decade, completely transforming the region where entire villages were destroyed by lava or devastated by the immense amounts of ash and toxic gasses that the volcano spewed into the air. During this time of hunger, destruction, and forced migration for local residents, scientists, photographers, filmmakers, and artists flocked to the area to witness, as well as to capture, the spectacular displays of incandescent wonder. The Paricutin became an international sensation. Its images went around the globe, featured in artworks by Mexico’s most renowned artists and portrayed in different views, up close and from afar, in thousands of glass plate negatives, black and white and color photographs, and even 35 mm film.
In February of this year, we set out to find out. Although we had attended previous anniversaries, we were especially interested in how the volcano’s 80th anniversary was commemorated. This time period–80 years–was the equivalent of a human lifespan, and therefore, marked the fading possibility of eyewitness accounts, setting the stage for strategies of commemoration that went beyond human memory.
We attended the commemorations organized by three of the Purépecha communities most affected by the Paricutin’s eruption: Caltzontzin and San Juan Nuevo, the resettlements of the disappeared Combutzio and San Juan Parangaricutiro, relocated to lands on the outskirts of Uruapan, Michoacan; and the neighboring Angahuan, a town that survived the lava flows, becoming the point of access to the extinguished cone and the ruins, elsewhere surrounded by the inhospitable terrain known in Spanish as “malpais,” or badland.
Thinking of commemoration as a reiterating strategy for making memory palpable, during these events, we found constant tensions between an impulse to reenact the spectacularity of the geological event–which is also a way to sustain tourism and its subsequent consumption economy; a collective need to compile and display information and images showing the volcano’s past and its effects in the communities’ present; and a wary discomfort, even reprimand, from some elders angered by the celebratory tones that concealed the painful aftermaths of the Paricutin’s emergence in the histories and lives of current inhabitants.
A recurrent theme in local inhabitants’ efforts to commemorate, often in collaboration with researchers like ourselves and with cultural institutions, has been to repeat the eruption in image form, with film screenings and photographic exhibitions on the volcano, particularly on its destructive effects on local towns. Through these activities, commemoration is also a space to affirm senses of ethnic, linguistic, and territorial belonging in a complex and historically rooted context of land disputes, organized crime, and cultural and economic dispossession. The images we share here, which are part of a work in progress, open a visual dialogue on the tensions, possibilities, and also failings of the eruption’s commemoration.
Image 4. A girl watches an itinerant photo exhibit, co-organized by geologist Pedro Corona and historian Juana Martínez with the authorities of San Juan Nuevo, Caltzontzin and Angahuan. The exhibit was part of the anniversary commemoration activities. Photographs were selected from different scientific archives that Corona and Martínez’ team compiled into an “object-box” as a strategy to return physical archival images and documents to communities affected by the eruption. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
Image 5. Photographic exhibit “Surviving a Volcano”, co-organized by Gabriela Zamorano, Sandra Rozental, Manuel Sosa Lázaro, Lorena Casillas and the community museum Kutsikua Arhakucha. Photo: Lorena Casillas.
Image 6. Stage prepared for the Paricutín Anniversary in Caltzontzin featuring regional dance and music. Photo: Gabriela Zamorano.
Image 7. Kurhaticha dance, presented by youth from Arantepacuain the Central Plaza of Angahuan as part of the commemorative program of the Paricutin Anniversary. (Photo: Lorena Casillas).
Image 8. Purépecha researcher Manuel Sosa interviews María Guadalupe Anguiano Aguilar, a resident of Angahuan, about her childhood memories of the eruption in San Juan Parangaricutiro where she was born and lived until 1944. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
Although commemoration is highlighted in anniversary events, it is also present in everyday forms of interacting with remains, images, and replicas that refer to the eruption and its aftermaths. Catzontzin’s residents, for example, commemorate the volcano every day, as the Saint images rescued from Combutzio and the old bronze bell from the disappeared church were reinstalled in the town’s new church and are now worshiped there.
Image 9. The highly venerated figure of Divino Santiago and the together with a dozen Saint images, were rescued from Combutzio and transported to Caltzonzin where they are venerated in the contemporary town church. Photos: Gabriela Zamorano and Sandra Rozental.
Image 10. Bronze bell rescued from Combutzio and transported to Caltzonzin’s town church. Photos: Gabriela Zamorano and Sandra Rozental.
In San Juan Nuevo, where the residents of San Juan Paranguricutiro were resettled, a small museum next to the rebuilt church houses a collection of ex-votos. In these images, another kind of commemoration and record, the volcano is shown as the cause of great suffering, a source of desperation that people prayed and went on pilgrimages to escape.
Image 11. An ex-voto of a woman thanking the Señor de los Milagros for having found a water well in San Juan Nuevo, the community where people from San Juan Parangaricutiro were resettled. Photo: Sandra Rozental
One of the first attempts at commemoration once the village of Combutzio was resettled in the outskirts of the city of Uruapan was the mural Exodo de la población de la región del Paricutin, painted in 1950 by two of the country’s important muralists, Alfredo Zalce and Pablo O Higgins in the corridor of the newly built school, a building associated with the Mexican welfare state that had organized the town’s relocation. Now in a rather poor condition and walled in when this part of the school was transformed into the headmistress’ office, the mural continues to be a testament to how the volcano and its aftermath endure in the daily lives of the residents of Calzontzin forced to flee from its afflictions.
Image 12. Mural Éxodo de la población de la región del Paricutin by Alfredo Zalce and Pablo O Higgins, now the backdrop of the headmistress’ office. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
Another set of murals was commissioned by town authorities to José Luis Soto, an artist from Morelia, to mark the volcano’s 50th anniversary. The artist used glass shards and pieces of volcanic rock to make a multicolored mosaic showing a battle between good and evil incarnated in the local Saint, el Señor de los Milagros, and the devil. The mural commemorates the eruption as well as local religion and beliefs regarding divine punishment for earthly sins.
Image 13. Mural by José Luis Soto in Angahuan showing the volcano as the result of the battle between good and evil. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
While these murals constitute enduring interpretations of the volcano’s emergence, annual commemorations also reinforce strategies to interpret, remember, and reenact this history, particularly with youth and children. In all the places we visited, community representatives organized a competition where schoolteachers and their pupils were invited to represent the volcano and its effects in drawings and clay models. Hundreds of color drawings lined the buildings that make up the towns’ main squares, featuring human figures and tiny cattle running away from red rivers of lava.
Image 14. Women look at the exhibition of children’s drawings in the Central Plaza of Angahuan. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
Photo 15. Detail of a drawing about the Paricutin eruption in the Central Plaza of Angahuan. Photo: Sandra Rozental.
In Caltzontzin, the award was unanimously given to a model by a 12-year-old that, like the mural made thirty years ago, featured the volcano as well as the Catholic Saint images in the local church protecting town residents from the dangers of geology. Despite the fact that this child’s life is now temporally and geographically distant from the Paricutin, her present, like that of all the children involved in the commemoration activities, is defined by the intersection of geological and human time. This generation’s awareness and intimacy with the Paricutin is reenacted and kept alive through practices that constantly recreate the volcano and recall its aftermaths.
Photo 16. Liczi Gabriela Diaz Trejo from Caltzontzin showing her clay model. Photo: Gabriela Zamorano
*** The authors would like to thank Manuel Sosa, Simón Lázaro, Esperanza Azucena Padilla Anguiano, Jesus Velázquez Gutiérrez (Cachuy), as well as Pedro Corona and Juana Martínez for their welcoming support and guidance during the 80th Paricutin Volcano Anniversary in Angahuan, Caltzontzin, and San Juan Nuevo. We also thank Lorena Casillas and Paula Arroio for their assistance during this visit. Funds for this research were provided by the Imagining Futures project (https://imaginingfutures.world/)
While there is plenty of academics undergarment wadding over AI generative text (and please stop referring to it all as ChatGPT), I was first interested and still in the generation of images (a year ago Craiyon was the leading edge, now it looks like a sad nub of burnt sienna).
Get ready for everything to get upturned with Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill, now in beta. I spotted it and some jaw dropping examples in PetaPixel’s Photoshop’s New ‘Generative Fill’ Uses AI to Expand or Change Photos but was drawn in more by a followup post on So, Who Owns a Photo Expanded by Adobe Generative Fill? This gets into even more muddy, messy, and also interesting (time curse like?) waters.
That latter article has some really fabulous pieces of ?? Extended Album Covers found originally in the twitter stream of Alexander Dobrokotov. I’d post the tweets here for you to see, but twitter broke the capabilty to embed tweets.
The concept is rather DS106-ish a central image of an actual album cover is embedded into a much larger imagined scene (see the Petapixel post for the examples) where all the imagery around was created with this new Adobe Photoshop beta feature.
I have seen this many times with AI, you see these jaw dropping examples that imply someone just typed a phrase in a box, clicked the magic bean button, and it popped out. Most of the time, if you can find where the “making” of is shared, you will find it took hours of prompt bashing and more likely, extra post processing in regular Photoshop.
Hence why my attempts usually look awful (?)
Now I could just share say image (like the Katy Perry cover of her sleeping in soft material that turns out to be a giant cat) and say, this is cool! But I always want to try things myself. So I downloaded (overnight) the beta version of Photoshop.
The way it works is you use the crop tool to create space around a source image. This fills with just white. But then you select all that blank space along with an edge portion of the seed photo, and watch something emerge. In many ways it’s impressive.
I started with my iconic Felix photo, the one I took on his first days with me in 2016, the one I use often as an icon.
In Photoshop Beta, I enlarged the Canvas to the left a lot, and a little above, and let the magic go to work. Perhaps this is not the best example, since my truck in the background is blurred from depth of field effect.
Not quite magic.
That’s a rather awkward vehicle there. And since AI has no concept of a porch rail, it would likely extend those posts Felix is peeking through into the stratosphere.
I decided to try again, and added a prompt to the generative gizmo saying “Red truck towing a camper”
Well, that looks awkwarder too. But it generates something.
I took another stab, thinking how it might take on extending a wide landscape that is well known. This is tricky because if one knows something of Geology, they canyon to either side extends to a broad plateau.
I did one first where I went about 50% wider on each side
It certainly continues the pattern, and is not all that weird. You do get 3 variations, this one is about the same:
It’s odd, but not really too far from pseudo reality. I riffed off of this version, adding again another chunk of empty space on either side. Now its getting the geology pretty messed up and messy.
These are just quick plays, and there are also the other features in the mix to add and remove elements.
This definitely is going to change up a lot things for photographers and digital artist, and what is real and what is generated is getting so inter-tangled that thinking you can separate them is as wise as teetering off that canyon edge.
But getting back to the Petapixel leading headline, “So, Who Owns a Photo Expanded by Adobe Generative Fill?” oh my is ownership, copyright, and licensing going to get mashed up too. So all of those creative album cover expansions? It’s starting with copyrighted material. But the algorithmic extension, is that so far changed to raise a fair use flag? Heck, I have no idea.
At least if you start with an open license image, you stand on slightly less squishy ground.
I’m going back to my shed to tinker (that’s for Martin).
Featured Image: 100% free of AI!
On last week’s episode of the Intentional Teaching podcast, I talked with educators and authors James Lang and Michelle D. Miller about ways we might rethink our assignments and courses in light of new generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Since we situated that conversation in some other technological disruptions to teaching and learning, including the internet and Wikipedia, perhaps it was inevitable that one of us drew a comparison to the advent of handheld calculators in math classes.
Jim pointed out that we don’t just hand kindergartners calculators and expect them to do anything useful. We have to teach kids numeracy skills before they start using calculators so that they know what they’re doing with the calculators. In the same way, Jim argued, we shouldn’t have first-year composition students use ChatGPT to help them outline their essays since those students need to develop their own pre-writing and outlining skills. The chatbot might produce a sensible first draft, but it would also short-circuit the student’s learning. ChatGPT might be more appropriate for use by more experienced writers, who can use the tool to save time, just as a more experienced math student would use a calculator for efficiency.
I generally agree with this analysis, but I had a different kind of experience using calculators in school. When I learned calculus my senior year, we used graphing calculators regularly both in and out of class. My memories are admittedly a little hazy now, but I believe that there was something of a symbiotic relationship between learning the concepts of calculus and learning how to use a calculator to manage the calculations of calculus. For instance, we might try to come up with a polynomial that had certain roots or certain slope properties, then graph our function using the calculator to see if we were correct. The tool provided feedback on our math practice, while we also got better at using the tool.
Here’s another analogy: photography. I’m an amateur photographer. (Actually, I once got paid $75 to photograph an event, so technically I’m a professional photographer.) When I was learning photography, there was a lot of conceptual learning about light and depth of field and composition but also learning how to use my digital camera, what all the knobs and buttons did. As I experimented with taking pictures, my use of the camera helped sharpen my understanding of the relevant concepts of photography. And my better understanding of those concepts in turn informed the ways I used the knobs and buttons on the camera to take better photos.
Might AI tools like ChatGPT serve a similar role, at least for students with a certain level of foundational writing skills? It’s already quite easy to ask ChatGPT (or Bing or one of the other chatbots powered by large language models) to draft a piece of writing for you, and then to give it feedback or corrections to make. For an example, check out this post by John Warner in which he coaches ChatGPT to write a short story and then make it a better story. John is already an accomplished writer, but might a more novice writer use prompt refinement in this way to develop their own writing skills, much like I would use a bunch of different settings on my camera to take the same photo so I could better learn what those settings do?
All metaphors are wrong (to quote my colleague Nancy Chick), and none of the analogies I’ve laid out here are perfect. But I think there is some value in thinking about ChatGPT, etc., as similar to technologies like digital cameras or graphing calculators that we can use to learn skills and sharpen our craft as we learn to manipulate the tools.
Meg and I had an amazing morning yesterday out in Elgin at Austin Wildlife Rescue: we got to spend some time up close with Thurston, a 4-year-old eastern screech owl, just like the Coconuts who live in our back yard.
One thing you might notice is just how tiny Thurston is! The screech owls look larger than life through the spotting scope, but they’re just itty bitty raptors.
Here’s a comparison of our screech owls to the famous Flaco, the eagle owl now loose in Central Park:
What’s funny about this is that one reason I love looking at pictures of the magestic Flaco is that I recognize so many of the postures and behaviors I’ve seen from my little owls:
I don’t know why this pleases me so much, this juxtaposition of the grand Flaco with the more modest but still majestic Coconut. Finding majesty in the mundane is one of my favorite things, I guess. The little behavior the same as the big behavior. (And I think a lot about how photography scales — big and small scale to the same size on the phone screen.)
It’s like Hedda Sterne said: “For the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you don’t have to look far away. You have to know how to see.”
“Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
Not that anyone is keeping score… well I am! For 2023 my double daily habits, the DS106 Daily Create and my Daily Flickr Photo routine have notched another perfect month, bringing both to 90 completions at the end of March, the 90th day of the year.
This follows my streaks for both January and Feburary. Can this blistering pace be maintained? Welcome to March,in like a daily creator and out like a daily photographer, celebrated in the images above of both challenges on the third day of the third month.
For Flickr on March 3, my daily photo….
And my Daily Create response for March 3 covers my new outlet of “AImocking”.
@ds106dc s #dailycreate #tdc4067 #ds106 Prove that you are human… good thing you did not step in it! pic.twitter.com/cfFlYBaFQj
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 3, 2023
Not sure who cares to see what I am doing here, but given the reduction of creativity to what pops out of a black box after entering the 34th version of a prompt… all of these are generated by”CI”– CogDog Irreverence. For this month, maybe just a few more pairs of responses by date.
The Daily Creates this month featured a nifty range of challenges using web generators or randomizers I’ve not seen before. The prescription generator for TDC4075 was one that did on small thing well:
@ds106dc #tdc4075 #ds106 Listen to Dr. Hackenbush, not a hack in the bush at all… pic.twitter.com/WthLPhfhpC
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 11, 2023
My photo for the same day? My favorite prescription for making use of those bananas that have been out a bit too long.
The photo for this day was easy to pick as it was the first day we spotted our local fox dad named Watson standing guard outside the den where we know/hope the pups are coming out soon. Spotted out the window with the telephoto lens.
I can only arm wave a connection to the Daily Create for that day (I posted a day late) to “Write (in blue font) a one-liner, wish, wise-crack, proverb (a.k.a Old Dutch Tiles) on a blank tile” Yes, I did a wisecrack about asking ChatGPT to describe themselves in 4 words (“modest” did not make the cut).
@ds106dc #tdc4082 #ds106 Tegeltje-LeegGPT, empty in, empty out. But why not assert your own intelligence? pic.twitter.com/Gs27DvddFw
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 19, 2023
Here is a secret…Daily Creates are maybe more fun to make than do. I rather like it when I can pull one from a colleague’s online post like today’s to make a “goofy” face in response to a Mastodon post by @ResearchBuzz (showing off a bit by embedding in the Daily Create but not showing off as I still have not coded the site to accept Mastodon responses) (soon?) (maybe?).
I already had a goofy photo of me following the end of a full Open Education Week doing 14 live webcasts but took the next step to graft on to my head my dog and cat.
@ds106dc #ds106 #dailycreate #tdc4088 A goofy face for @ResearchBuzz and her granddaughter.
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 24, 2023
This was me celebrating and energetic after doing 14 live webcasts for #OEweek with my pals Felix and Maggie.
Looking forward to your feedback on the goofiness level. pic.twitter.com/Uw9FLUN1nW
My photo for that same day? Just about as opposite from goofy as on can get- it was a black and white rendering of a foggy morning view of our eastern end of the property, which looks rather spooky.
This habit of monthly recaps is one more self-imposed obligation atop doing these daily acts. They still do as they always have done, gives me a small creative outlet, a chance to see how quickly I can make a response with my own mind, tools, and memory.
I wonder about the DS106 Daily Create, it keeps humming along in its 11the consecutive year but as the leaderboard shows, participating has fallen in 2023 to only 14 participants, of which half have been doing it at like a 90% level.
Is it worth doing?
Hell yeah.
Line me up both daily doubles for April.
Featured Image: Screenshot of my flickr daily photo for March 3, 2023 combined with a screenshot of my tweeted response to the DS106 Daily Create for March 3,2023. Heck I made them, call this licensed CC BY.
Against all common wisdom, I have been running an old operating system (10.14.6 Mojave) on my old MacBookPro (2103) to mainly use the photo management software Apple dropped in 2015 (Aperture).
Yes, newer software is out there, and I have access to Lightroom via my Adobe plan I pay through the month for to get PhotoShop, but the Aperture Strategy I have used since honing it in 2009 has just kept working smoothly for me. Especially for adding metadata to all photos and also the (long gone) Connected Flow Flickr Exporter that until recently deftly posted photos, sending titles, tags, captions, said metadata to my flickr and also writing back to Aperture the flickr url.
I did learn recently, from some stellar Flickr support, that the reason many of my photos have gotten mis mapped to the opposite hemisphere is my old software. I was willing to live with my barn photos being located to the Russian village Botsiy.
But the dying has gotten worse. For about the last two weeks, my uploads have been regularly failing like 20% out of a bach with API errors:
And another plus for the old Flickr Exporter is that it provides tech details in a “problem report” (a log of the comm between Aperture and flickr).
At the same time, I, like many others got a weird email from flickr about impending changes to the Flickr API, they were adding a requirement to include some other data in the transmissions, all played out in a torrid exchange in a flickr forum.
I was invested in this since two of my long running creativity tools (from the days when creativity was not relegated to typing text prompts into an AI box) Pechaflickr and Five Card Flickr Stories depend on the Flickr API to grab random photos based on tags.
I was able to the best of my more hacker than programmer skill set to modify the old phpflickr library that still works. And I managed to make them work in the API change testing window.
All for naught as Flickr announced a day later, in best Emily Litella style– “Never Mind!”
Regardless, I saw other mentions in the forum of others reporting API failures.
The clock is ticking. So I am accepting that its time, 14 years later, to hone a new strategy.
I’m not bothering to try to import my mega Aperture Library into Lightoom. I will leave it as be, but I do have to update my old MacBookPro to some newer mountain named OS (Big Sur I think is as new as I can go). My plan is to leave Aperture running on my even older older MacBookPro, a 2009 dented from a HD killing fall to concrete Just In Case I ever need to re-edit something (not sure when that might ever happen). All my photo originals are on external drives (luckily using Referenced files a long time ago).
This old photo dog needs to learn some new Lightroom tricks.
Thanks Aperture, you’ve been great to me for like 60,000 of my photos (I used the Wayback Machine to find my total in 2009 was about 9000 photos, and look at who I see in the stream there, hiya Scott! BG!).
Onward….
Featured Image: 2015/365/14 What The Lens Sees flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) with superimposed on the lens a screenshot of my flickr/Aperture error and Pixabay image of Cracks by b0red.
Ana and I were chatting last night and we’ve noticed something about a lot of the limited edition, 2023 pens. Let me add a few photos…
Did I miss the green for 2023 memo? There are a few interesting finds that aren’t green. For instance the Limited Edition Carousel from Ferris Wheel Press ($90 via Jenni Bick) is rosy. The new TWSBI Eco is Persian Green ($32.99 via Pen Boutique), but it’s definitely got more blue in it. And Lamy, well, they’ve just decided to reissue previous colors on different bodies.
So what do you think? Is green giving you good vibes for this year? Are there other limited edition pens you’re digging in other colors?
The post It’s not easy being green. appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
Courtesy of Thomas Demand and MACK.
The Review has long been a fan of Thomas Demand’s work; our Spring 2015 issue featured a portfolio of his paper sculptures of cherry blossoms. His series The Dailies recreates quotidian objects and images: a coffee cup, a tray of cigarette butts. Only tiny flaws (pencil markings, tape) reveal them as constructions; otherwise his compositions are stripped of everything but their form. But paper isn’t just a blank canvas; it also carries meaning, even if these associations are subtle: it’s the medium of office workers, receipts, menus, greeting cards, origami, newspapers—and, of course, of The Paris Review. To accompany a selection of images from The Dailies, we talked to Demand about paper, literature, and the home.
INTERVIEWER
What does paper mean in your work?
THOMAS DEMAND
Paper is a formidable, malleable material that everyone touches on a daily basis. We all share this experience—we know its haptic and aesthetic possibilities more than perhaps anything else. We mostly use paper for temporary purposes—napkins, newspaper, coffee cups, the Amazon box, and so on. We make notes on it and throw it away, wrap our gifts in it and rip it to receive them. I find that important to consider, if I look at the more commonplace iconography in my work, like in The Dailies. I’m also interested in paper’s relations to information, model-making, and geometry.
INTERVIEWER
Paper has been disappearing from the real spaces you photograph for quite some time, being replaced by screens, stickers of QR codes, audio recordings. Do you have a sentimental attachment to paper?
DEMAND
I don’t think it has disappeared, actually—think of any sustainable recycled packaging effort, like Amazon’s. The production of paper has increased monumentally. But it might become a more valued material, which is good. People used to drink the worst piss called “coffee”—now it’s a drink prepared by baristas with butterflies in the milk topping. Am I sentimental about the old bitter filter coffee? No. Note, however, that that coffee was made through a paper filter, to be consumed in paper cups. As far as we know, the paper cup was first made by Chinese craftsmen around two thousand years ago. In all its forms, paper has accompanied our civilizations, enabling us not only to drink but to write, to remember. I don’t see this as a metaphorical value but as one which enables the production of other values.
INTERVIEWER
If The Dailies were the work of a particular writer, who would it be?
DEMAND
When it comes to The Dailies, I think of writers who don’t use an overarching narrative—Walter Benjamin, Alexander Kluge, Hans Blumenberg, Botho Strauss.
INTERVIEWER
What do your home and your workspace look like? Do you make frequent “Home Improvements”?
DEMAND
I need to wake up in an environment that is as empty as possible, and I like to live in a sparsely furnished place. I am not afraid of an empty room. I also try to part from things I haven’t needed nor missed for two or three years (apart from art, which mostly is from friends). However, I enjoy when the work spills over the tables I work from and the leftovers of my makings are scattered around the actual piece. But I need to return to a clean space to approach my next work. I hardly ever work on more than one project at once.
Courtesy of Thomas Demand and MACK.
Courtesy of Thomas Demand and MACK.
Courtesy of Thomas Demand and MACK.
Courtesy of Thomas Demand and MACK.
Thomas Demand is a German photographer and sculptor who lives in Los Angeles. His new, expanded edition of The Dailies is out now from MACK.
Ain’t that llama a cutie? What is that smile about?
Ah, it’s how this person (a.k.a..me) can stand the fact that someone is making money off of a photo I took and shared on the internets. Doesn’t a license protect me?
Welcome to my unconventional corner of the Creative Commons tent, already explained in 2016:
So counter to thinking some other flavored Creative Commons license will protect me– I have opted to give my store away. Since I never intended to profit from my photos, how can I lose what Inever “moneytized”? I am fine with people making commercial use of my photos, of taking and using without asking. This has been my ongoing experiment for these seven years, to find out how much I will suffer by putting my 70,000 flickr photos in the public domain.
In fact, I have gotten more in return than money… gratitude and stories.
One perk of the Flickr pro account is access to Pixsy, a service that can locate much more reliably places on the internet my photos have appeared. This service is set up to aid in “going after” stolen images, bu my use is mainly to just enjoy seeing sites where my photos have gone to. Sometimes I have gone through just to add to my album of photos that have been reused (283 so far). You know, a little self-flattery.
But it also does provide something I have had to swallow with my giveaway choice described above:
That was he first time I discovered that there are “people” out there who scoop up public domain photos, upload to a stock photo outfit like Alamy, and earn a gazzilion (or 20) bucks. I should be OUTRAGED. But then so should be the schmuck who pays $60 for a photo they could get for free from my flickr.
Recently, I looked at my pixsy updates which reported finding 33 of my photos floating round on Alamy, like heck my goofy llama. You can get it free from flickr or pay Alamy £29.99 to use it on a web site.
It’s interesting that entity who added my photo kept my original title (the “2010 365” indicates this was one of my daily flickr photos for 2010). Following this, I can play some search gimmicks and find for sale on Alamy:
I could go on… How do I know these are mine? There is no attribution, but it’s easy… I took ’em. But they are easily found in each of my flickr albums for daily photos.
I just have to wonder too about someone how there having to laboriously download my photos and then upload to Alamy, a job of minimal artificial intelligence.
No I am not changing my public domain tune, But in the interest of being curious how this shady game is played, tonight I created my own Alamy account, and uploaded 3 of my own public domain images as they require for “Quality Control”— can I pass muster with my own images?
Here is my pledge- if anyone is goofy enough to pay Alamy for my public domain photos, any proceeds that pile in will be donated to the local Humane Society.
It’s a public domain face a llama mother could love.
Featured Image: Yours for the taking, sans watermark.
Michael Middlebrooks, an invertebrate zoologist, is passionate about sea slugs, specifically photosynthetic kleptoplastic sea slugs. In other words, the ones who can harness solar power.
In his TEDx PSU Talk, Middlebrooks shares that photosynthetic animals are able to convert solar energy into biological energy, just like plants do. — Read the rest
The last few months in the camera world have been tumultuous, to say the least. Since our previous guide, we’ve seen numerous new models from Sony, Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon and Panasonic with better shooting speeds, autofocus and video. That’s exciting if you’re after the latest cameras, but it also means that deals can be found on great older models, as well.
If you’re confused about which models have the best AF capabilities, stabilization or other features, we’re here to clear things up. Our 2023 guide will catch you up on all the latest models and deals, so you can select the best camera whether you’re a vlogger, sports shooter or wildlife photographer.
To learn more about mirrorless tech and why it’s taken over the camera world, check out our previous camera guide for an explanation, or watch our Upscaled video on the subject for an even deeper dive.
Why get a camera when my smartphone takes great photos, you may ask? In a word, physics. The larger sensors in mirrorless cameras let more light in, and you have a wide choice of lenses with far superior optics. Where smartphones have one f/stop, cameras have many, which gives you more exposure control. You also get natural and not AI-generated bokeh, quicker shooting, a physical shutter, more professional video results, and so on. Smartphones do have impressive AI skills that help make photography easier, but that’s about it.
With that settled, mirrorless is the best way to go if you’re shopping for a new camera. Both Canon and Nikon recently announced they’re discontinuing development of new DSLRs, simply because most of the advantages of that category are gone, as I detailed in a recent video. With putting all their R&D in mirrorless, that’s where you’ll find the most up-to-date tech.
Compact cameras still exist as a category, but barely. Panasonic has built a number of good models in the past, but recently said it would focus only on video-centric mirrorless models going forward. And we haven’t seen any new ones from Canon or Nikon lately, either. Only Sony and Fujifilm are still carrying the compact torch, the latter with its $1,400 X100V model, which has become famously hard to find. Most of Sony’s recently compact models, like the ZV-1F, are designed for vloggers.
Now, let’s talk about features you need in a mirrorless camera. The one that affects your photography (and budget) the most is sensor size. The largest is medium format, but that’s only used on niche and expensive cameras from Hasselblad, Fujifilm and Leica, so we’ll skip over those for this article. (See my Fujifilm GFX 100S and Hasselblad X2D reviews for more.)
The most expensive category we’ll be discussing here is full-frame, largely used by pros and serious amateurs. Models are available from all the major brands except Fujifilm, including Sony, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic. That format offers the best image quality, low-light capability and depth of field, with prices starting around $1,000. With the right lenses, you can get beautifully blurred backgrounds, but autofocus is more critical. Lenses are also more expensive.
Down one size are APS-C cameras, offered on Fujifilm, Sony, Nikon and Canon models. Cameras and lenses are cheaper than full-frame, but you still get nice blurred “bokeh,” decent low-light shooting capability and relatively high resolution. With a sensor size equivalent to 35mm movie film, it's ideal for shooting video.
Micro Four Thirds, used by Panasonic and Olympus, is the smallest mainstream sensor size for mirrorless cameras. It offers less dramatic bokeh and light-gathering capability than APS-C, but allows for smaller and lighter cameras and lenses. For video, it’s harder to blur the background to isolate your subject, but focus is easier to control.
The next thing to consider is sensor resolution. High-res cameras like Sony’s 61-megapixel full-frame A7R V or Fujifilm’s 40-megapixel APS-C X-H2 deliver detailed images – but the small pixels mean they’re not ideal for video or low-light shooting. Lower-resolution models like Panasonic’s 10.3-megapixel GH5s or Sony’s 12.1-megapixel A7S III excel at video and high-ISO shooting, but lack detail for photos.
Image quality is subjective, but different cameras do produce slightly different results. Some photographers prefer the skin tones from Canon while others like Fujifilm’s colors, for example. It’s best to check sample photos to see which model best suits your style.
What about handling? The Fujifilm X-T5 has lots of manual dials to access shooting controls, while Sony’s A6600 relies more on menus. The choice often depends on personal preferences, but manual dials and buttons can help you find settings more easily and shoot quicker. For heavy lenses, you need a camera with a big grip.
Video is more important than ever. Most cameras deliver at least 4K at 30 frames per second, but some models now offer 4K at up to 120p, with 6K and even 8K resolution. If you need professional-looking results, choose a camera with 10-bit or even RAW capability, along with log profiles to maximize dynamic range.
In-body stabilization, which keeps the camera steady even if you move, is another important option for video and low-light photography. You’ll also want to consider the electronic viewfinder (EVF) specs. High resolutions and refresh rates make judging shots easier, particularly in sunny environments.
Other important features include displays that flip up or around for vlogging or selfie shots, along with things like battery life, the number and type of memory card slots, the ports and wireless connectivity. Lens selection is also key, as some brands like Sony have more choice than others. For most of our picks, keep in mind that you’ll need to buy at least one lens.
Now, let’s take a look at our top camera picks for 2023. We’ve divided the selection into four budget categories: under $800, under $1,500, under $2,500 and over $2,500. We chose those price categories because many recent cameras slot neatly into them. Manufacturers have largely abandoned the low end of the market, so there are very few mirrorless models under $500.
My top pick in the budget category is Canon’s brand new $680 24.2-megapixel R50, an impressive model considering the price. It can shoot bursts at up to 15 fps in electronic shutter mode, and offers 4K 10-bit at up to 30p with supersampling and no crop. It has a fully articulating display, and unlike other cameras in this category, an electronic viewfinder. It uses Canon’s Dual Pixel AF with subject recognition mode, and even has a popup flash. The only drawback is the lack of decent quality lens that’s as affordable as the camera itself. Pre-orders are open with delivery set for spring.
Your next best option is an older model, the 20.7-megapixel Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV, as it offers the best mix of photography and video features. You get up to 15 fps shooting speeds, 4K 30p or HD 120p video, and it’s one of the few cameras in this price category with built-in five-axis stabilization. It’s portable and lightweight for travel, and the lenses are compact and affordable. The drawbacks are an autofocus system that’s not as fast or accurate as the competition, and a small sensor size.
If you’re a creator, Sony’s 24.2-megapixel ZV-E10 is a strong budget option. It can shoot sharp, downsampled 4K video at up to 30 fps with a 1.23x crop (or 1080p at 120 fps) and uses Sony’s fantastic AI-powered autofocus system with face and eye detection. It also has a few creator-specific features like Product Showcase and a bokeh switch that makes the background as blurry as possible so your subject stands out. Another nice feature is the high-quality microphone that lets you vlog without the need to buy an external mic. The main drawbacks are the lack of an EVF and rolling shutter.
Another good creator option that’s better for photography is Panasonic’s Lumix G100, on sale right now with a 12-32mm lens. As with the ZV-E10, it can shoot 4K video at 30 fps (cropped 1.47x), though 1080p is limited to 60 fps. Unlike its Sony rival, though, the G100 has a 3.68-million dot EVF and 10 fps shooting speeds. Other features include a fully-articulating display, and 5-axis hybrid image stabilization.
Honorable mentions go to two models, starting with Nikon’s 20.9-megapixel APS-C Z30, another mirrorless camera designed for vloggers and creators. It offers 4K using the full width of the sensor, 120fps slow mo at 1080p, a flip-out display and AI powered hybrid phase-detect AF. The drawbacks are the lack of an EVF and autofocus that’s not up to Sony’s standards. And finally, another good budget option is the Canon EOS M50 Mark II, a mildly refreshed version of the M50 with features like a flip-out screen, tap-to-record and focus, plus 4K video with a 1.5x crop.
Your best option overall in this category is Canon’s 32.5-megapixel APS-C EOS R7. It offers very fast shooting speeds up to 30 fps using the electronic shutter, high-resolution images that complement skin tones, and excellent autofocus. It also delivers sharp 4K video with 10 bits of color depth, marred only by excessive rolling shutter. Other features include 5-axis in-body stabilization, dual high-speed card slots, good battery life and more.
Full-frame cameras generally used to start at $2,000 and up, but now there are two new models at $1,500. The best by far is Canon’s brand new EOS R8 – basically an R6-II lite. It has Canon’s excellent Dual Pixel AF with subject recognition AI, and can shoot bursts at up to 40 fps. It's equally strong with video, supporting oversampled 10-bit 4K at up to 60 fps. The R8 also offers a flip-out display, making it great for vloggers. The main drawback is a lack of in-body stabilization. It’s now on pre-order with delivery set for spring.
A better choice for video is Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds GH5 II. It’s one of the least expensive models with 10-bit, high data rate 4K 60p video. It also offers effective image stabilization, pro inputs, dual high-speed card slots and a flip-out screen. Negative points are the small Micro Four Thirds sensor and relatively low 20-megapixel photo resolution.
Several cameras are worthy of honorable mention in this category, including Canon’s 30.3-megapixel EOS R, still a great budget option for 4K video and particularly photography despite being released over four years ago. Other good choices include the fast and pretty Olympus OM-D E-M5 III and Sony’s A6600, which offers very fast shooting speeds and the best autofocus in its class. Finally, Nikon’s 24.3-megapixel Z5 is another good choice for a full-frame camera in this price category, particularly for photography, as it deliver outstanding image quality.
This category currently has the most choices, with the Sony A7 IV leading the charge. Resolution is up considerably from the 24-megapixel A7 III to 33 megapixels, with image quality much improved overall. Video is now up to par with rivals with 4K at up to 60p with 10 bit 4:2:2 quality. Autofocus is incredible for both video and stills, and the in-body stabilization does a good job. The biggest drawbacks are rolling shutter that limits the use of the electronic shutter, plus the relatively high price.
The next best option is the EOS R6 II, Canon’s new mainstream hybrid mirrorless camera that offers a great mix of photography and video features. The 24.2-megapixel sensor delivers more detail than the previous model, and you can now shoot RAW stills at up to 40 fps in electronic shutter mode. Video specs are equally solid, with full sensor 4K supersampled from 6K at up to 60 fps. Autofocus is quick and more versatile than ever thanks to expanded subject detection. It’s still not quite up to Sony’s standards, though, and the microHDMI and lack of a CFexpress slot isn’t ideal.
If you’re OK with a smaller APS-C sensor, check out the Fujifilm X-H2S. It has an incredibly fast stacked, backside-illuminated 26.1-megapixel sensor that allows for rapid burst shooting speeds of 40 fps, along with 4K 120p video with minimal rolling shutter. It can capture ProRes 10-bit video internally, has 7 stops of in-body stabilization and a class-leading EVF. Yes, it’s expensive for an APS-C camera at $2,500, but on the other hand, it’s the cheapest stacked sensor camera out there. The other downside is AF that’s not quite up to Canon and Sony’s level.
Video shooters should look at Panasonic’s full-frame S5 II. It’s the company’s first camera with hybrid phase-detect AF designed to make focus "wobble" and other issues a thing of the past. You can shoot sharp 4K 30p video downsampled from the full sensor width, or 4K 60p from an APS-C cropped size, all in 10-bit color. It even offers 5.9K 30p capture, along with RAW 5.9K external output to an Atomos recorder. You also get a flip-out screen for vlogging and updated five-axis in-body stabilization that’s the best in the industry. Photo quality is also good thanks to the dual-gain 24-megapixel sensor. The main drawback is the slowish burst speeds.
The best value in a new camera is the Fujifilm X-T5. It offers a 40-megapixel APS-C sensor, 6.2K video at 30p/4K 60p 10-bit video, 7-stop image stabilization, and shooting speeds up to 20 fps. It’s full of mechanical dials and buttons with Fujifilm’s traditional layout. The downsides are a tilt-only display and autofocus system that can’t keep up with Sony and Canon systems. If you want better video specs for a bit more money, Fuji’s X-H2 has the same sensor as the X-T5 but offers 8K 30p video and a flip out display.
Honorable mentions in this category go to the $2,000 Nikon Z6 II, which offers excellent image quality, solid video specs and great handling. For budget options, take a look at Sony’s compact full-frame A7C, along with Fujifilm’s older, but still great X-T4.
Finally, here are the best cameras if the sky’s the limit in terms of pricing. At the apex is Sony’s 50-megapixel stacked sensor A1, a stunning camera with a stunning $6,500 price. It rules in performance, with 30 fps shooting speeds and equally quick autofocus that rarely misses a shot. It backs that up with 8K and 4K 120p video shooting, built-in stabilization and the fastest, highest-resolution EVF on the market. The only real drawbacks are the lack of a flip-out screen and, of course, that price.
For a bit less money, the Nikon Z9 packs a 45.7-megapixel stacked sensor that’s so fast, it doesn’t even have a mechanical shutter. It has Nikon’s best autofocus system by far, and delivers outstanding image quality. Video is top notch as well, with 8K 30p internally and 8K 60p RAW via the HDMI port. The main drawbacks are the lack of an articulating display and high price, but it’s a great option if you need speed, resolution and high-end video capabilities.
Tied for the next positions are Sony’s A7S III and A7R V. With a 61-megapixel sensor, the A7R V shoots sharp and beautiful images at a very respectable speed for such a high-resolution model (10 fps). It has equally fast and reliable autofocus, the sharpest viewfinder on the market and in-body stabilization that’s much improved over the A7R IV. Video has even improved, with 8K and 10-bit options now on tap, albeit with significant rolling shutter. If you don’t need the video, however, Sony’s A7R IVa does mostly the same job, photo-wise, and costs a few hundred dollars less.
The 12-megapixel A7S III, meanwhile, is the best dedicated video camera, with outstanding 4K video quality at up to 120 fps, a flip-out display and category leading autofocus. It also offers 5-axis in-body stabilization, a relatively compact size and great handling. While the 12-megapixel sensor doesn’t deliver a lot of photo detail, it’s the best camera for low-light shooting, period.
And if you want a mirrorless sports camera, check out Canon’s 24-megapixel EOS R3. It can shoot bursts at up to 30 fps with autofocus enabled, making it great for any fast-moving action. It’s a very solid option for video too, offering 6K at up to 60 fps in Canon’s RAW LTE mode, or 4K at 120 fps. Canon’s Dual Pixel autofocus is excellent, and it offers 8 stops of shake reduction, a flip-out display and even eye detection autofocus. The biggest drawback for the average buyer is the $6,000 price, so it’s really aimed at professionals as a replacement for the 1DX Mark III DSLR.
Honorable mention goes to Canon’s 45 megapixel EOS R5. For a lot less money, it nearly keeps pace with the A1, thanks to the 20 fps shooting speeds and lightning fast autofocus. It also offers 8K and 4K 120p video, while besting Sony with internal RAW recording. The big drawback is overheating, as you can’t shoot 8K longer than 20 minutes and it takes a while before it cools down enough so that you can start shooting again. Another solid option is Panasonic’s S1H, a Netflix-approved mirrorless camera that can handle 6K video and RAW shooting.
You’re now caught up, new models have been arriving thick and fast, including potential rumored APS-C models from Canon. Another known model coming in May is Panasonic's S5 IIx, which offers the same features of the S5 II plus internal SSD recording and live streaming for just $200 more. We’ll have full coverage of those when they arrive, so stay glued to Engadget.com for the latest updates.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-mirrorless-cameras-133026494.html?src=rss
Sony A7S
The Sony A7S camera sits on a round white patio table outdoors, with its view screen flipped around to point the display forward. In the background is a group of trees at the edge of a backyard at dawn or dusk showing a dramatic sun cutting through the leaves.
“What it will be Questioned When the Sun rises over Amarillo do you not see a series of metal pylons connected to the electrical grid O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host raising their arms in praise and crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
Strap in (or hit eject) for a long blog ride. This has been one of those percolating drafts, meaning it has not progressed far from my head. But time is essencing.
As there are a wave of steps to weave together, I am borrowing in all sense of honoring, not stealing, a section convention from Kate Bowles’ blog.
Once again because almost no one cares for making the case of the power of RSS reading, I keep finding more reasons not to buy into the “twitter does it better” theory. I have a set of photography feeds I sometimes skim through at the title level. I cannot even deduce the reason why I got a nibble of curiosity for “The $10 Camera Photographers Are Snapping Up” (Fstoppers).
Curious clicking that was the opener to this whole run.
The author makes a case for the versatility of the old mid 2000s style pocket digital camera, but in this style I loathe in at least a lot of photography sites, asking me to not read, but watch a video of two photographers doing an outing with their $10 cameras. Loathing is because there’s not much skimming one does from content in a video.
The video is well produced, and obviously the two had fun, but I find it all a but more style over substance.
That’s me.
The thing is the video opened a memory stream, as I do not need to find one of these cameras used on eBay, I just need to rummage through my box of camera STUFF.
Memories flood in.
My cameras are a thing I keep track of– by photos. Though it has been 14 years since I wrote of my lineage of film and digital cameras there is only one more not on that list, my current DSLR Canon 7D…assorted iPhones, a few forays trying some vintage cam— I got off track already.
The thing is in 2005 when I plunged into the first DSLR, the Canon Digital Rebel, I saw no direction going back to small pocket cameras.
Shift to 2007 while I was working for the New Media Consortium. Quite a few in that crowd were avid digital photographers. Two colleagues and fellow camera geeks I respect much kept going on and on to me about their little Canon digital cameras. I will call them Phil and Carl for now… well those are their names. These two made a case for what was then rather high image quality from the little cameras (7 MP), but more the affordances of a pocket camera for street photography, and unobtrusive photographer, in lieu of putting a Big Camera in front of your subject.
I took the plunge and bought that PowerShot 800 SD IS. And that was pretty much my main camera for a few years. On a 2008 trip to Japan I could not resist picking up an updated model (IXY 3000IS) that offered maybe twice the resolution and was not even available in the US.
I knew Carl would smile at those specs.
Back in 2002 I was organizing district-wide technology initiatives at the Maricopa Community Colleges. In collaboration with then IT Vice Chancellor Ron Bleed, we organized a series of collaborative events/workshops called the Ocotillo Technology Visioning Forums.
This has much to say about the heady times I was lucky enough to be part of at Maricopa. The rationale of these activities was preparing for a bond election to fund the system, including instructional technology, which as noted there, from the previous planning in 1994 had not included the impact of the world wide web (as the web then was called).
Under the umbrella of bond planning, Ocotillo and Information Technologies Services (ITS) are sponsoring a series of Technology Visioning Forums that will bring to Maricopa a series of distinguished professionals, who will inspire and challenge our thinking about instructional technology and facilities for learning.
For the next X (3? 5?) years, what is the next “web” we might need to address for the future? What is the learning environment of the future look like? What do models of “hybrid” courses mean for planning? What sorts of technologies are we planning for? What do Learning Objects mean for course developers? How do we provide better physical (and virtual) learning environments?
Each Maricopa college will form a team to participate in the process, leading to a collection of outcomes to be further developed at the year-end Ocotillo Retreat.
Ocotillo Technology Visioning, 2002-2003
One of those “distinguished professionals” was a colleague (and friend) of Ron’s from the University of Michigan named Carl Berger, who spent two days in December leading us through discussions guided in his theme of “Back to the Future: After WYSIWYG, What is the Next Killer App?”
The excitement Carl spoke with was infectious, while at the same time backing his ideas with examples, experience, research, and a focus on pedagogy. Amongst the media I found from my old Maricopa MCLI web server archive (all was wiped out after I left in 2006) I found two 320x240px video excerpts from his talk- I patched together to share:
I also found a copy of Carl’s presentation slides!
Here in 2002 he pointed out emerging technologies (just respect this from looking back 21 years) were wireless networking, these brand new tablet devices, learning objects, integrated administrative systems, open learning platforms, research tools, and a vision of a learning platform he called “the Real Processor” explained through a narrative Maria, a professor using a platform that looked LMS-ish but was richer in complexity.
But these forums were not just slidedecks and cheese sandwiches, there was a whole lot of group discussion, brainstorming, and collaboration between faculty, technology staff, and administrators. And, can see it because I found an archive of photos from these events, assembled in a funky Javascript slideshow thing I built in maybe 2000 called the jClicker (I am shocked it even works!):
When I took a leap from Maricopa in 2006 to work with the New Media Consortium, it was a more than pleasant surprise to be at the conferences and connect again with Carl. Here he is gleefully uploading photos he is taking with one of those small cameras at the 2006 NMC Conference in Cleveland.
As I learned Carl was right there from the birth of NMC and was at it’s first conference in 1995. Later, on a visit to his home, he pulled out and gave me a mint condition T-shirt from tha conference (I still have it).
And always Carl was beaming with his excitement about new Apple technology, the latest photo editing software, and always with some new kind of camera. He was active always in the era of NMC’s Second Life period (look! I even found him in the directory as an avatar named Carl Oxberger).
In more image rummaging, I am so happy to find Carl in a photo listening intently to another fantastic friend colleague, Bryan Alexander, here at a 2009 EDUCAUSE ELI Conference.
The photo becomes even more special to me because of the gracious comment of another influential colleagues/mentor, George Brett, who passed away in 2015.
For no one keeping track of the camera stories here, at this time I was using much that small Canon as well as my first iPhone. But the small camera came back in a big way through an unusual device.
Once again,toward my latter years at NMC, I was the beneficiary of a lucky connection. A new colleague named Keene Haywood knew of my interest in camera, and told me about his Austin friends at an outfit called Charmed Labs were developing beta versions of a thing called a “Gigapan“. I was a robot controlled mount that would move a camera methodically through a grid pattern and worked with a stitching type of software to create potentially a GigaPixel panorama image.
I was curious, and Keene hooked me up, and I bought I believe one of the few beta versions of the metallic box rig.
At the time, it could use only the small cameras, and I did a bunch with that first Canon Elph, seen above. It became an object of curiosity in public spaces when people would watch it go through its robot maneuvers, moving a bit, the robot rm clicking the shutter, tilting a bit, and repeating. See it in action:
I recently came across the box where I had stored the rig; it’s been 10 years maybe since I even used it. I assumed that the software that made the images was long gone and after showing it to Cori I said I did not see a need to keep it. “No way!” she said. “That’s part of your photography history, put it on the shelf with your camera collection.”
Out of curiosity I did the Google thing and found out how wrong I was- the software is still out there and the Gigapan site is alive. I even found my own collection of panorama images, all there. I give em a CogDogBlog howl of praise for keeping a web site going 15 years later.
One scene popped out, a panorama image I made on my last day of my 2008 Month in Iceland adventure, when I drove out to see Þingvellir (that place where they were doing democratic forms of government in 930AD).
Typical of most off the highway places I explored while living in Iceland, I saw no people when I got there. So I set up my Gigapan rig to capture a scene.
Then car pulled up! Three American college age students came out. I was shocked when one guy looked at my rig and asked “Is that a GigaPan?”. As it turns out, he had worked at the Carnegie Mellon University where it was first developed.
Now calculate me the odds of that.
Speaking of long odds, I got an email request in 2011 to use the scene I had made that day for use in a book. They wanted the biggest highest resolution possible, I remember doing some hijinks in PhotoShop to generate the format of a TIFF file.
And here is something I know would make Carl smile, a photo stitched together from that little Canon camera was printed in the largest picture atlas ever, a book that is six feet high! That has to be my biggest (literally) credit ever.
I kept in touch with Carl, and it was rewarding to see he had retired and settled in St George, Utah. The last NMC Conference I was part of was the 2010 one at Disneyland, never a place that was on my list of destinations, but conference location picking was not my department. Since I was living then in Northern Arizona I made a decision to skip the air travel and drive to LA, the way out taking the dull Interstate 40 route.
But this made for a scenic backroad return trip, which I had arranged to pass through St. George, at an invitation to stay with Carl. He was eager to show me his latest Lumix camera, but the big part was an outing he set up for us to do some photography together in Zion National Park, one of his favorite places.
What a glorious and ideal a day! Carl was as usual so xcited to share with me his experimentations with HDR photography, later resulting in my buying at Carl’s suggestion a copy of Photomatix Pro software.
Here is an HDR image I later made using that from a photo, which if you read the flickr comments, credits Carl and the software from rendering a fantastic image from originals that were not so great.
I also steered a trip through St George in 2015, on the end of the longway back from a 5 month stint at Thompson Rivers University, in Kamloops BC. I took an even more back way across Nevada (The Extraterrestrial Highway) before pulling up to Carl’s home in St George.
Again, I got a huge warm welcome from him and Shari, we chatted, he showed me his latest geeky toy, a Cardboard VR Camera. If you look at the table, he has more toys out!
Like previous visits together Carl urged me try another photography software, Intensify. So again, I bought software Carl said I should use– and to this day this is maybe the main photo editing tool I turn to whenI cannot tune the image the way I like with my normal controls. I use Intensify usually on 1 or 2 images of my daily photos.
Thanks, again, Carl!
And again, Carl has no limit on his energy and enthusiasm. He suggested a photo outing to the luscious sandstone scenery of Snow Canyon State Park, where we spent hours poking around, climbing sandstone bluffs, taking photos.
Look at this scene– forget Waldo, can you find Carl?
That was eight years ago I visited Carl. Over time, I’d still “see” him active in his flickr stream and we’d “talk” occasionally in comments. I slacked a bit in emailing after I moved to Canada in 2018, but saw some new flickr photos in December. I commented once or twice, asked if he still used his same mac.com email.
Now if you think all of this is written in eulogy like fashion, you are wrong. Well… I got an Instagram message from a mutual colleague who shared that Carl posted in Facebook that he was in hospice with maybe 3 months left to live. But they said he was posting photos a few have come in flickr usual scenery stuff and his little dog, Thor. As my colleague knew I was not on Facebook, they relayed this message from me to Carl.
Hi Carl, I don’t use Facebook but was excited to see a new Flickr photo today of Thor. There’s nothing like the companionship of a dog! I’d give anything to be now walking with you in a Zion canyon, geeking out on cameras, HDR, and hearing your joyful laughter. I regularly use the Intensify CK software you recommended! No need to respond just keep taking photos. With you in spirit, friendship always, Alan
I cannot say enough (well I tried) about the 21 years I have been lucky enough to know and be friends with Carl. They do not even make these kinds of leaders and visionaries any more; ones like Carl who are not in it for ego or spotlight, but because he cares about and loves his work. Carl has been huge influence on me as a mentor, and moreso as a friend.
From little cameras to big panoramas, I am fortunate to have known to the genuine laugh, love of life’ love of teaching, and the big heart of Carl Berger. Keep on clicking the shutter, Carl!
Featured Image: A collage image made from a photo of my old Canon Digital Elph (that Carl inspired me to buy in 2007) That Little Camera flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0), with on the screen a photo of Carl from our 2015 outing — The Eye of Carl Berger flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license plus a screenshot of the Gigapan.com web site.
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