To the surprise of no one, the awards are dominated by expensive full-frame gear. I had a quick look to see if I had any experience with any of the products, but nothing on there applies to me, not even the smartphone!
Chris and Jordan seem like good guys, and I quite enjoy their podcast, but I’m finding very little of their content applies to me these days because they are much more focused on the professional end of the market.
Anyone here have any opinions on any of these products?
I downloaded the Affinity App for free which they mention. I use it on rare occassions for some image merging which is beyond darktable’s capabilities. Some nice toys is this list of theirs, but clearly aimed up market.
I have downloaded the latest Affinity too but have yet to try it out. I have an older copy of it, which I bought on sale because I wanted the focus stacking feature. Although I might not even need that now because Shine Stacker could be a good option.
Yeah, I wonder how many listeners/viewers their products apply to, or whether it’s a case of aspirational marketing. There are probably lots of enthusiasts who lust over such gear, and they will lap this kind of content up (including me from time to time). But I’d be curious to know what’s the actual percentage of photographers who are in this segment of buying high-end gear semi-regularly…
Okay, I guess here are my grumpy opinions:
I felt the same way when I read their grading of camera companies for 2025. If I could get a full kit from one company for free, I would pick OM System (C+/B-) or Fujifilm (A-/B+) with a Tamron lens (C-/D+). Cameras and lenses have a long market lifetime, and smaller brands do not release a lot every year.
I would ague that the Sigma 16-300mm zoom lens I bought for my African Camping Safari is the zoom lens of choice. How often we reach for a 600mm lens…twitchers excluded. 
I was a bit surprised by this too. I know it’s the highest MP partially stacked sensor ever made, but it was always going to happen and likely from Sony too, because they make most sensors for most brands. So is it really innovative? Or just an iterative improvement?
I’m a stills photographer, so stacked sensors aren’t a huge deal for me. I feel like there must be another sensor innovation waiting to happen, or perhaps something computational that will revolutionize smaller sensors.
They are not irrelevant for stills. My understanding is that a stacked sensor makes it possible for the OM-1/OM-3 to simulate an ND/GND filter, because they can be exposed multiple times without gaps.
But yes, I guess pro photographers like stacked sensors because of fast bursts with cutting edge AF. Fortunately, my Panasonic GX9 has such an outdated AF that whatever I upgrade to when (if?) it dies will be a huge improvement 
I too have downloaded Affinity and use it for the final finishing. I use DT for the technical accuracy and then using TIFF format to export to Affinity for the precision, styling and polish.
I find it to be the best of the two worlds. Typically DT is 70% of the work and Affinity is 30%
I have a stacked sensor camera, and I actually don’t care TOO much about bursts or fancy AF. (I’m unusual in that regard amongst wildlife photographers though). What’s much more interesting about stacked sensors is the blackout-free shooting AND even more importantly, VERY low readout speed so no weird rolling e-shutter when taking birds in flight at high shutter speeds.
It’s very nice to forget about the manual shutter completely and have something that’s completely silent without any difficulties. I personally don’t like my equipment to make noise at all, and for that, stacked sensors are nice.
I would be more than happy to have a body with a stacked sensor, and probably will one day, but they are generally more expensive and I would rather have a more affordable body.
A gripe I have with the industry in general is that they pack all the best tech together into the high-end bodies and make the smaller/cheaper bodies worse in almost all areas. I would happily forego some of the video and high-end features to get just one or two of the fancy stuff, e.g. I would like the 45/60MP sensor, but I don’t need the blazing fast burst rates, open-gate blah blah, 2 card slots, biggest batteries, highest res EVF, etc.
There are exceptions of course, but as a general trend this seems to hold true.
The problem with all these lists is that some people are never satisfied and they think the latest and greatest is what they MUST have to make great pictures. According to some for example, my recently bought z6iii is junk.
I’m currently having fun with a disk full of 6MP raws from my first year with a dSLR, a low nikon D50.I thought I lost the disk during a move, but it was in a box all along.
Fortunately I was wise enough to shoot raw+jpeg back then, but only started raw development years later. It is amazing what Darktable and Gimp can do with these images and actually how well these, to today’s standards toycams, were performing.
I learned a lot in the last 20y, but something has not changed …my style and vision. Stuff you can’t buy. Lets go out and take pictures.
Nikon has been going against this trend lately. Even though the Z50 II and Z5 II aren’t stacked, they have a LOT of the AF technology and customization available in the Z8. My friend Libor already tested the Z50 II at Photography Life (where I work) and he thought the AF was pretty much as good as the Z9, at least in terms of recognition, though it is a bit slowly theoretically as it has less AF calculations per second.
For my style of photography, I’d be pretty happy with a Z50 II at this point…
Yep, Nikon does seem to be trying a different strategy than Sony and Canon, probably because it’s trying to claw back market share. Their pricing is much more competitive and what you get for the money is arguably much better value than the other two.
At this very moment, I think they would be the brand I would choose if I wanted to go full frame. But their bodies are still big and heavy. The Z50II looks to be a great APS-C camera, but I don’t think it provides much benefit over my existing gear. Still, it’s good to see them putting some effort into their crop sensor line, even though they probably still regard it as a stepping stone to their FF options.
Workstation of the Year: iPad Pro (M5): give me a break, work on an iPad?
Eh, why not? still a better colour management pipeline on Apple’s Darwin than Windows or Linux, tons of great creative software - though unfortunately very little of it is FOSS
And how do you calibrate the screen?
the ‘Reference Mode’ within the iPad’s settings gives you an ICC profile targeted against BT.709 which is significantly more colour-accurate than most professional monitors (say like ProArt series) even after calibration with a colorimeter
as far as I’ve seen, many studios keep a ‘spare iPad’ to view final content on like video colour-grades to make sure that everything looks good, I’ve seen this everywhere from a photography studio in Kurdistan to one of Blackmagicdesign’s studios
the amount that Apple spends on display R&D is insane