Most of us use our phones to take photos most of the time, but that's also where the pictures tend to stay: on the phone. Step up the Kodak Step Slim, a battery-powered portable printer designed strictly for printing 2x3-inch sticky-backed photographs directly from a smartphone.

Resembling a smartphone in shape and size, it's a truly pocket-sized device, making it highly portable for parties, weddings, and festivals. The device uses Zero Ink (Zink) technology, which activates embedded color crystals in the paper, removing the risk of messy ink spillages. It connects to iOS and Android smartphones via Bluetooth. And Amazon has a brilliant time-limited deal for Prime Day.

The Kodak Step Slim couldn't be easier to use. Simply select photos from phone galleries or social media accounts in the free companion app, which enables you to make basic image adjustments and add filters, borders, text additions, and digital graphics. The printer takes less than a minute to produce a physical print and delivers around 25 prints on a single charge.

It's affordable, fun, and easy to use, and makes a great gift for kids or as a memento dispenser at social events!

Fujifilm has released the latest firmware update for the X-E3 and X-H1 mirrorless cameras, with both models getting a fix for a somewhat minor but highly frustrating Bluetooth connectivity issue.

Firmware version 1.32 for the X-E3 – a compact rangefinder-style camera – and version 2.15 for the X-H1 – the former flagship APS-C X-mount camera – resolves a bug blocking Bluetooth pairing between these cameras and Android 16 devices with the Fujifilm Camera Remote app installed.

Fujifilm firmware download

Download Firmware version 1.32 (Fujifilm X-E3)

Download Firmware version 2.15 (Fujifilm X-H1)

My advice is always to hold off downloading the latest firmware for a few weeks. This should give enough time for any new issues to arise in community chatter, and for Fujifilm to address them. Keep an eye on Digital Camera World and we'll let you know about any problems.

Camera Remote is the Fujifilm app enabling wireless connection between devices and Fujifilm cameras released up until 2018. The primary benefits include wireless image transfer to social media, remote live-view shooting, and camera setting backups.

The main issue users have reported is getting stuck in a “constant pairing loop” where the app states that the connection already exists and needs to be deleted in order to be re-established, despite the nonexistent connection.

It remains unclear whether Fujifilm created the bug with a previous firmware release or if Android 16 was simply incompatible with Camera Remote until now, however users began reporting issues soon after the release of Android 16 in June 2025.

This isn’t the first issue X-E3 photographers have faced using the Camera Remote app. Previously, the camera could freeze while attempting to connect to the app, although Fujifilm fixed this with firmware version 1.31.

More recently, photographers have faced a similar issue trying to connect their phones to newer Fujifilm models, including the X-T5, via the XApp, Fujifilm’s newer, default app for modern X and GFX series cameras.

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EIZO has announced two new curved ultrawide monitors for professionals, both backed by new, industry-leading warranties:

FlexScan EV3851X

This 37.5-inch display replaces EIZO's existing EV3895 and runs at a UWQHD+ (3840 x 1600) resolution, for a pixel density of 111 ppi. It is based around an IPS LCD panel - unusual for a curved ultrawide display, as these usually use VA panels - with a 2300R curvature. Though aimed primarily at commercial, business and office use, the FlexScan EV3851X can still display a respectable 96% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, despite not being a 10-bit display. Convenient front buttons enable easy switching between color pre-sets that include DCI-P3 and BT.709. A 300-nit max brightness and 2000:1 contrast ratio are respectable, if not particularly special. The FlexScan EV3851X is also a USB-C monitor, enabling a single-cable link to an attached laptop or SFF PC, with the monitor able to supply up to 94 watts of Power Delivery. Other connections include a built-in LAN port for a stable wired connection, and this can be accessed by a laptop via the USB-C link. A 4-port USB hub with an additional USB Type-C port and three USB Type-A ports further enhance the FlexScan EV3851X's versatility.

Expect retail availability of the FlexScan EV3851X in July. We await pricing information.

FlexScan EV3451X

Like the EV3851X, the EV3451X is a curved ultrawide display, just with a slightly smaller 34.1-inch screen size, and a lower UWQHD (3440 x 1440) resolution. Pixel density is almost as high as the EV3851X though, at 109 ppi. Although marketed in the same product family, the two monitors do differ in most of their image quality specs. The EV3451X's curvature is noticeably more subtle at 3800R, and its contrast ratio is only 1000:1. Unlike the EV3851X, there's no mention of DCI-P3 gamut coverage, so it's likely the percentage coverage is considerably lower. The EV3451X can reach a slightly higher 350-nit brightness, however. There's little to separate the two monitors when it comes to connectivity though, as both share the same USB-C and power delivery specs, along with identical LAN and USB hub features.

The EV3451X is scheduled to begin shipping in Autumn 2026. Pricing has yet to be revealed.

7-Year Monitor Warranty

Both new monitors benefit from EIZO's newly-launched 7-year warranty. This supports longer product lifespans, helping reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), while contributing to more sustainable use over the product’s life. For over 20 years EIZO has backed its monitors with a 5-year warranty, so extending its coverage to 7 years marks a further commitment to the quality and dependability of its products. Not only does the 7 year warranty apply to the two newly-launched FlexScan displays, it is also being applied retrospectively to the current FlexScan EV2740S, EV2720S, EV2410R and EV2400R monitors for additional peace of mind.

Have you still got shoeboxes or draws full of old photos that you wish you could view on your computer and phone? You are not alone - lots of us have cherished memories on negatives or slides that we wish were digitized so that they can be seen and shared with family and friends. Some great deals on Kodak scanners in Amazon's October sale could be just what you need.

• See all of today's best cameras deals in the Prime Day sale

There are lots of film scanner options around, but Kodak has made its name in this area with a range of all-in-one scanners, where you don't need a computer to get your images digitized. And what's more, they have built-in screens that are great for helping you find the best frames from your collection.

Check out our guides to the best film scanners and to the best slide viewers

There's a new casualty of the global NAND flash memory shortage: CMF's next phone. The current CMF Phone 2 Pro offers stunning value for money, being one of very few phones to offer a telephoto camera module in a phone priced at less than $300/£250. That phone launched in April 2025, so we were eagerly awaiting the follow-up - the CMF Phone 3 Pro - to drop very soon.

Sadly that won't now happen, as Nothing’s co-founder Akis Evangelidis has confirmed the phone has been scrapped:

“…with memory prices where they are right now, we can't build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF.”

That said, he goes on to say that other new CMF products are still planned, including some “entirely new categories”. Whether that means a new CMF phone at a higher price point is coming remains to be seen, though such a product would be risky, as a higher-priced CMF phone would potentially encroach on Nothing's market segment. So as it stands, don't expect a new sub $300 CMF phone any time soon, as the RAM crisis is showing no sign of abating.

Why is flash memory in such short supply? It's all thanks to the proliferation of AI. AI data processing centers devour high-bandwidth memory and fast SSD storage, causing AI companies to buy up huge stocks of solid state memory. This in turn is having a knock-on effect in other sectors that require DRAM and NAND flash memory, such as the memory card, portable storage, and even phone industries. These sectors have to fight for the remaining memory stock after the AI tech giants have paid top dollar to fuel their data centers. And when demand is high, prices go up. When you then have a budget product like the CMF Phone 3 Pro that must meet a strict price point, the only option is to discontinue the product, as hiking the retail price to cover the increased component cost isn't an option.

According to the most well-known Apple-gossip source, Mark Gurman, the company's incoming CEO, John Ternus, will be trying to bring back the company's sense of cool by focusing on the look and feel of products.

Cameras are set to be a huge part of that new wave of cool, too, apparently. One of the drivers of that cool will be AirPods with cameras in them (see Gurman's pay-walled story for Bloomberg).

Other leakers have nicknamed called these 'AirPods Ultra', including YouTuber Matt Talks Tech, as you can see below:

They're in development now, although they are not expected to arrive until 2027. They are one of three significant new product categories we’re expecting, which are all perceived as relatively new and exciting – and that Apple has, until now, kept out of.

The others are folding phones and smart camera glasses (as opposed to the sophisticated Vision Pro) – both of which are, of course, camera-equipped.

Personally, I do tend to buy Apple products – I'm well into the ecosystem – and I enjoyed trying the Vision Pro, but I didn't find myself reaching into my pocket for the large sum of cash to buy something I wouldn't actually use.

Sure, the equivalently-priced MacBook Pro wasn't revolutionary – but it does a lot more of what I actually need to do, day to day, and I don't see that changing for a while.

But smart glasses like those from Meta are a price that people can comfortably reach and – thanks to piggy-backing on the Ray-Ban brand – are definitely cool. So it's easy to see why Apple would see the need to compete there.

As for the last one of the three, there are already a good number of folding phones on the market – and have been for quite some time.

We were expecting Apple to launch one this September, also rumored to be called the iPhone Ultra, as software developers have found evidence in the next version of iOS.

The Independent has reported, however, that the production line now suggests the phone is more likely to arrive in early 2027 – and cost over $2,000.

That follows news from Apple – discreetly left in the hands of the outgoing CEO – that all iPhone prices will be on the rise, too.

Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that prices would “inevitably” rise with the arrival of the iPhone 18. The company traditionally launches a new phone every September, but what is being called an ‘AI boom’ is pushing up the prices of computer chips.

Now, personally, I wasn't that sure about a folding phone anyway. I really want to be convinced that the screen isn't going to be damaged or full of dust. But now I'm starting to worry about my wallet, too!

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Can't wait until 2027? Check our guides to the best camera glasses and the best folding phones.

AI this, AI that – I can’t scroll through anything on the internet without being inundated with generative AI. As both a photographer and a writer – two art forms that generative AI attempts to imitate – I’m AI-exhausted. But here’s the thing – I’m not the only one, and the latest data seems to suggest around half the population is just as frustrated with AI as I am.

Around half of all adults in the US are wary of AI’s impact, according to a June 2025 PEW survey – a sharp increase from the 37 percent of AI-weary humans in 2021.

A new YouGov survey suggests that British adults share a similar stance, with 42 percent saying that they would get rid of generative AI entirely and 22 percent not even sure if they like the technology.

Only around 18.3 percent of US adults call themselves artists (and only 1.6 percent professional artists), which suggests that the artists whose jobs are most threatened by generative AI are far from being the only humans wary of the technology.

My stance on AI comes as someone who has tried out bits and pieces of the technology. As a journalist, it’s my job to explore the pros and cons of generative AI in order to better inform my readers, so I’ve done everything from asking ChatGPT to generate images that still look like me to testing out Photoshop’s new AI assistant.

Yet, even after all this testing, I’ve turned off Apple Intelligence on my iPhone, I leave generative AI off on most Photoshop tools where possible, and I continue to use the camera and the keyboard to create.

The problem is – and probably why so many adults agree with me – AI feels impossible to turn off. I can’t keep it out of my social media feeds, and Google doesn’t have an off switch for its AI Overviews. I can ignore generative AI, but I can’t ignore the rising prices on memory cards and hard drives that it has created. Artists have just been told to accept that AI is the norm and move on – or get left behind.

To be clear, I don’t think all AI is bad. Eye-detection autofocus is one of my favorite features on modern mirrorless cameras, and, yes, that’s an AI technology. Lightroom’s auto mask features to select skin, teeth, or eyes in a portrait have saved me a lot of time. The ability to search through the photo library on my phone is one of my favorite iPhone updates.

But, while those tools are AI, they are not generative AI. I don’t mind an AI that’s going to help save me from tedious tasks. But I’m a creator because I love creating, and I don’t want a computer to do it for me.

I’m not against AI, I’m wary of generative AI, the type of AI that creates something from nothing. (Or, more accurately, that creates something from a library of work created by real human artists that, in many cases, was stolen without permission.)

Generative AI also tends to have a much larger impact on the environment than non-generative AI. Generative AI is the technology that requires massive data centers, creating noise nuisance in small communities and driving up the cost of any technology that requires digital storage.

But these views are perhaps unsurprising coming from someone who earns a living as a creator. What’s giving me hope is the number of non-artists who are just as frustrated by AI as I am.

Even Gen Z – the generation with the highest adoption of generative AI – is becoming more wary of the technology. A recent Gallup poll has found that the number of Gen Z-ers excited about AI has dropped while the number reporting anger has increased.

All of this is happening at the same time as some Big Tech companies are reporting that the cost of generative AI is higher than having human employees.

At the same time, “AI Slop” was the Word of the Year for 2025, hinting that many would prefer to see human-created content in their social media feeds.

All of the data on the increasing number of people wary of AI technology gives me hope that even non-artists are going to continue to value human-created art. I don’t think AI is going anywhere, but my hope is that the number of people wary of AI will temper its growth – and that even non-artists will continue to appreciate human artwork.

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It's been rumored that Apple could be planning to reduce the size of the iPhone’s dynamic island by around 50% for the iPhone 18 Pro, shrinking its width from 20.76mm down to 13.49mm. This would help enlarge the overall screen area of the iPhone's display, although even at this shrunken size, the island would still considerably wider than the tiny selfie camera punch holes now sported by the vast majority of Android phones. As for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max's other island - the camera island - that's expected to remain the same as on the iPhone 17 Pro, stretching the full width of the rear panel.

We’ve not yet had any compelling tips that suggest changes to the image sensors in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. Instead, there have been persistent rumors that Apple could be planning to fit a variable aperture lens to the iPhone 18 Pro's primary camera. Sounds intriguing, but I remain sceptical that this will have a significant impact on image quality. Several Android phones have previously used variable aperture lenses, but they've yet to really make an impact. With a camera phone, you almost always want as much light as possible to reach the sensor, meaning the aperture will always be set at its widest. Narrowing the aperture does theoretically give you more depth of field, but the small 1/1.28" image sensor in the iPhone 17 Pro's primary camera already produces a large depth of field by virtue of being relatively small. There will be very few scenarios where you'd need to stop down the lens to increase depth of field still further, especially as this would also require longer shutter speeds and/or increased ISO sensitivity, and therefore more image noise.

Another report claims the next iPhone Pro and Pro Max could receive LPTO+ displays. These OLED panels utilize IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) transistors to help lower display power consumption, while also increasing refresh rates. The tech enables granular control over the current sent to each OLED pixel, so the display can better adapt its power consumption to on-screen content. It's also claimed that the iPhone 18 might be one of the first phones to feature Samsung's latest M16 OLED screen technology, which promise better brightness, power efficiency, and more accurate colors.

iOS 27 is expected to bring numerous improvements to Siri, including a new Siri AI mode for the Camera app, while Image Playground may be able to create wallpaper backgrounds based on your prompts.

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are due to launch in September, assuming Apple follows its usual release schedule. Pricing is rumored to rise due to increasing costs in the component supply chain, most notably that of NAND flash memory, but it's also claimed that the cost of a variable aperture camera lens could be much as 50% higher than the fixed aperture glass used in current iPhones.

Story credit: Phone Arena

There's a hot new acronym in the world of camera sensors: LOFIC. Standing for ‘Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor’, the tech is said to increase dynamic range by enabling a sensor to store extra charge from intense highlight saturation when a scene is being exposed. This can then be rendered in the captured image, where otherwise the data would have been clipped, thereby over-exposing the corresponding areas in the image. The result is what's being called ‘ultra-high dynamic range’, achieved without traditional multi-exposure techniques, which have the potential to introduce artefacts when shooting moving subjects.

Until now LOFIC has only been connected to Samsung image sensors, specifically the ISOCELL HP6, which has previously been rumored to appear in the forthcoming Galaxy S27 Ultra. But while that's still just a rumor, Sony has now revealed a new LOFIC-enabled sensor of its own: LYTIA L910. This is a 50 megapixel 1/1.28 stacked CMOS chip capable of high-quality video recording at 4K 60 fps, even when shooting in HDR.

In addition to its LOFIC ability, the L910 also employs Triple Conversion Gain-HDR (TCG-HDR) technology, which is said to read out the charge obtained from a single exposure at three different conversion gains. This further reduces highlight over exposure in bright areas of a scene, along with noise in shadows and mid-tones. Furthermore, Sony's Ultra High Conversion Gain (UHCG) circuits technology is claimed to reduce random noise by approximately 30% compared to Sony's more conventional LYTIA 828 image sensor.

With all these technologies combined, Sony states that the LYTIA 910 can achieve 100 dB high dynamic range images with a single exposure - that equates to 16.6 stops - and with it the ability to easily preview images in HDR quality on a phone screen. Power consumption is also said to be reduced thanks to a reduction in the time required for analog-to-digital signal conversion, which should result in lower battery consumption for phones.

Sony says the LYTIA L910 will be available to camera phone manufacturers in summer 2026, which presumably means its arrival must be imminent. However, we’ll likely have to wait several more months before those first phones actually materialize.

There seems to be two constants in the tech world at the moment: anything requiring NAND flash (memory cards, SSDs, etc.) is getting more expensive, and Samsung seems to be doing its very best not to give us significant camera hardware upgrades in each new Galaxy S-series generation.

There has been precious little camera hardware innovation in recent S Ultra phones. I've recently written a lengthy critique of this, suggesting that it may not be unreasonable to propose that if Samsung's flagship phones continue to stagnate, it could potentially lead to the downfall of high-end Samsung camera phones. Well, now rumors are claiming that the base Galaxy S27, due early next year, may also not get any significant camera upgrades.

In a tip from Lanzuk on Naver Blog, it's claimed that the vanilla S27 is unlikely to receive camera or display upgrades due to there being no notable development activity in the component supply chain. Component cost increases could also be a factor here, as phones also rely on NAND flash, which as we know is now considerably more costly than around a year ago. In order to bring the S27 in at an acceptable price point, it's possible screen and hardware upgrades have been omitted in order to compensate for the increased cost of flash memory.

If we do get the same camera set-up as in the current S26, then expect a 50 MP 1/1.56" primary camera fronted by a 24mm f/1.8 lens, teamed with a 10 MP 1/3.94" telephoto module giving 3x optical zoom, and a 12 MP 1/2.55" 13mm-equivalent ultrawide camera.

Obviously please take this very early speculation with a generous helping of salt. We don't expect to see the Galaxy S27 launch until February or March next year, so there's still plenty of time for Samsung to change course on this, and I for one hope it does, although I won't be betting on it.

Think about the last great photograph you took. It might be a landscape you stood in for 20 minutes waiting for the light, a street scene that captured a split second of urban choreography, or a portrait where everything (expression, light, background) just clicked into place. 

Now imagine being able to step inside it: to move your head and sense the depth that was there when you pressed the shutter. To experience the image not as a flat rectangle on a screen, but as something you can look around inside.

That's the promise of one of the Samsung Galaxy XR's less-trumpeted features. The mixed-reality headset, which has been available in the US since October for $1,799.99, and launches in the UK on July 8 at £1,699, can automatically convert your existing photos and videos into 3D, using AI to work out depth information from flat source material. 

Samsung is careful not to over-promise on quality: results vary depending on the subject and how the original was shot. But the idea raises questions about photography that go beyond whether any headset is worth the asking price.

The Galaxy XR is primarily aimed at entertainment and productivity, with dual 4K Micro-OLED panels delivering 27 million pixels in view and a 109-degree horizontal field of view. Reviewers have broadly agreed it's a genuine rival to the Apple Vision Pro. But personally, it's what it does with photographs that I think is worth thinking about most.

What it can do

Converting a 2D image into a 3D space isn't new, of course. Photogrammetry software has done it for years, using multiple overlapping shots from different angles.

What the Galaxy XR attempts, though, is different, because it's working from a single image and using AI to estimate depth where none was explicitly captured. For images that already have strong spatial qualities, clear foreground-background separation, distinct planes of focus, a real sense of depth, the effect could be impressive.

This raises an interesting question for photographers. If you know your images might be viewed this way, does it change how you shoot? Do you think more deliberately about depth when composing, or reach for lenses and apertures that give a stronger sense of space? 

It's a similar shift to what happened when photographers started shooting for social media and had to think about how their images would read as small squares on a phone screen. How you expect an image to be seen tends to shape how you make it.

Adapting your archive

There's another angle worth considering. Most photographers who've been shooting for any length of time have built up a substantial archive: years of RAW files, thousands of images sitting in Lightroom or on external drives. The Galaxy XR's conversion feature, at least in principle, makes that entire archive a candidate for a new kind of viewing experience.

Your travel photography from a decade ago, your portrait work, your landscape series... All of it is potentially viewable, in a form that brings back something of the depth and atmosphere of the original scene.

That's still somewhat speculative: how well AI-inferred 3D actually works on older, single-image sources is an open question. But the potential is clear. As the AI improves and the hardware gets lighter and cheaper, the gap between a photograph and a fully immersive record of a moment gets smaller.

Where it's all heading

The Galaxy XR is best understood as an early step rather than the finished article. Samsung has already announced AI smart glasses developed with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, which points toward a future where these experiences move off a bulky headset and into something you can wear all day. 

The hardware will, in all likelihood, get lighter and cheaper before we know it. Samsung has already announced AI smart glasses with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. It's also been out in force at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California this week, showcasing display panels designed for glasses-style AR that would make current headset screens look dim. 

All of which means that in future, the gap between a photograph and a fully immersive record of a moment will get smaller. And the craft of making images that work in three dimensions could start to matter in ways it never has before.

You'd be forgiven for dismissing jumping spiders as pests, or at best the subject of an amusing macro shot. But it turns out that these tiny arachnids, with brains no bigger than a poppy seed, have been quietly solving one of the trickiest problems in imaging for millions of years: how to judge depth accurately and efficiently. Now, engineers at Northwestern University in Illinois have taken note.

The resulting device, called SpiderCam, is a 3D depth-sensing camera that produces real-time depth maps while consuming less than a watt of power. That's less energy than the nightlight on your landing. For photographers and camera engineers accustomed to thinking about power budgets in terms of battery life per shoot or drone flight time, that number is pretty striking.

What makes the achievement really interesting, though, is the elegance of the underlying idea. Rather than reverse-engineering some exotic biological mechanism and spending years trying to replicate it in silicon, the Northwestern team spotted a principle that was hiding in plain sight, in the optics of a creature most of us have been swatting away since childhood.

How spiders see

Jumping spiders have a problem any photographer will recognise. They need sharp, precise depth information to make accurate leaps, either to catch prey or to avoid becoming it. But they're running this entire visual pipeline on what amounts to almost zero processing power.

Their solution is built into the structure of their eyes. Where a human eye has a single retina, jumping spiders have multiple retinal layers in each eye, each focused at a slightly different distance. One layer captures an object sharply; another captures the same object with slight blur. The brain compares those two images, and the difference in sharpness tells the spider exactly how far away the object is.

It's basically the same principle as the defocus cues photographers know well (a shallow depth of field tells you a lot about the spatial relationship between subject and background). Jumping spiders have simply evolved to exploit this systematically, in both eyes, all the time.

How it works

SpiderCam mimics this approach directly. A custom camera simultaneously captures two images of the same scene with slightly different focus settings. A custom algorithm then analyses how sharpness changes between those two images, particularly around edges and textures, and converts those differences into depth measurements in real time.

Rather than running that algorithm on a conventional processor, the team embedded it directly into a low-power FPGA; a type of customisable computer chip optimised for efficient processing. The resulting prototype generates depth maps at 32.5 frames per second while drawing just 624 milliwatts. The researchers say it's the first passive FPGA-based 3D camera to operate below one watt.

Conventional depth cameras typically work in one of two ways: either by projecting structured light or infrared patterns onto a scene and measuring the return, or by comparing images from two spatially separated viewpoints. Both approaches work well, but they come with power costs, hardware costs and bulk that rule them out for the smallest and most battery-constrained applications.

Practical uses

The obvious applications for this breakthrough are drones, small robots and wearables, devices where every milliwatt counts and where conventional depth sensors are simply too hungry. But Emma Alexander, the assistant professor of computer science who led the research, has another idea. "I think it's particularly exciting for applications like augmented reality," she says, 'where you're interfacing with the physical world and need to know the locations of objects around you."

She's right, of course: precise, real-time depth sensing is fundamental to AR overlays that actually sit convincingly in a scene, rather than floating oddly in front of it. Current AR headsets wrestle constantly with the power demands of their depth sensors. A system that could deliver similar results at a fraction of the power would be a great achievement.

Right now, the team plans to improve the optics of the SpiderCam, broaden the field of view, and eventually replace the FPGA with a custom chip that could cut power consumption further still. Not bad for a spider with a brain the size of a poppy seed.

Camera glasses have long been something we've been interested in at Digital Camera World, as our name might suggest. These wearable smart devices have become particularly popular in the last year or so thanks to Meta and Ray-Ban – but yesterday's announcement from Snap has moved the technology on in a big way.

Since the parent company for Snapchat first launched its Spectacles back in 2016, the market for wearable eyewear cameras has started to build, with Ray-Ban's Meta Headliner Gen 2 glasses currently the ones to beat.

But Snap's new Specs, announced yesterday at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California, represent a genuine step forward. Because what we're talking about is not just a camera on your face, but a full-blown heads-up display, built into a pair of glasses you could actually wear in public.

This all comes at a price, though: at $2,195 / £1,995, these are not an impulse buy. For context, that's more than a Sony A7C II body, more than a DJI Mavic 3 Pro, and more than double the price of Ray-Ban Meta Display (which is the closest rival with a heads-up display available in the market at the moment).

Still, it's pretty darned incredible what Snap has managed to squeeze into something that's at least recognisably spectacle-shaped. The Specs are fully standalone – no tether to a phone and no external battery puck – which puts them in a different class from competitors such as Xreal's Project Aura.

They weigh between 132g and 136g depending on which of the two frame sizes you choose, which is roughly twice the weight of the Ray-Ban Meta Display glasses but considerably lighter than any AR headset. First-person impressions from the show floor described them as pretty chunky, but not unreasonably so for what's packed inside.

What the display actually does

The display system is where things get interesting for anyone who thinks seriously about optics. Snap uses its own proprietary liquid crystal on silicon technology, delivering a 51-degree field of view and 16 million colours. To put that in terms photographers will recognise, the company claims it's equivalent to a 24-inch desktop monitor when you're working, or a 115-inch screen placed 10 feet away when you're watching video. That's not a floating thumbnail: it's a practical, usable display.

The waveguide (the optical component that carries light from the display to your eye) uses billions of nanostructures so small that more than 10,000 of them fit on the tip of a human hair. Snap has also borrowed electrochromic lens tech from Boeing 787 Dreamliner windows, allowing the lenses to shift from clear to tinted in around 10 seconds. Which is either a neat party trick or a useful privacy feature. Or possibly both.

Motion-to-photon latency, meanwhile, is claimed at 7 milliseconds, verified through robotic measurement systems. That's fast enough that digital overlays should feel anchored to the real world rather than swimming around it, which has historically been the case with AR systems.

What's the camera like?

When it comes to photography, there's a world-facing camera with an LED indicator that lights up when recording is active. That's a direct response to privacy criticisms that have followed smart glasses from Google Glass onwards. Users retain control over what gets stored, synced, shared or deleted.

Snap hasn't published a camera sensor spec sheet like you'd get from a dedicated camera manufacturer, which is a small frustration. But what I can tell you is that the glasses are powered by two Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, one dedicated to computer vision and one to running apps, so the processing grunt is clearly there. Battery life is around four hours of mixed use, with the included charging case providing four additional full charges. That should add up, in theory at least, to 20 hours of total use.

Most people are still not ready for AR glasses, and while I haven't tried Specs myself, my guess is that this won't change overnight. In fact, I question whether the average person has any interest at all in strapping a camera to their face. Then again, serious people are investing serious money into this tech, so maybe they know something I don't.

Either way, if you're an enthusiastic early adopter, the immediate point of comparison is the Ray-Ban Meta Display glasses, which offer a similar concept at less than half the price, yet without the full AR display functionality. Your choice of device will also depend where you are in the world. Meta's product is currently US-only, while Snap's Specs will ship to the US, the UK and France this autumn.

Pre-orders for Specs are open now at specs.com with a refundable deposit. Whether these represent the future of wearable camera glasses or another tech firm pouring billions of VC capital down the drain, we'll have a clearer view once we've had a proper hands-on. Watch this space.

See our guide to the best camera glasses

According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro could get “the biggest leap in camera hardware” in some time. We're unable to see if there's any detail behind that claim as the article is paywalled, but at this stage the iPhone 18's exact hardware details will still be closely guarded anyway. The most widely rumored upgrade has been the addition of a variable aperture lens for the primary camera. While potentially useful in a few scenarios - being able to increase depth of field in macro shots, for instance - it's hard to argue that this would constitute a "big leap" in camera hardware. I've gone into much more detail about why a variable aperture lens really isn't a big deal in camera phones here. A physically larger, higher resolution sensor for the primary camera would be much more noteworthy, but I wonder whether Apple would want to move away from using 48MP sensors across all three modules just yet.

It's also been speculated that the iPhone 18 Pro's telephoto camera could receive a larger aperture lens. The 48MP 1/2.55" sensor was new for the iPhone 17 Pro, so that may well be carried over for the '18 Pro, but replacing the current f/2.8 lens with something faster would result in quicker shutter speeds, which is always a good thing when shooting at long focal lengths. However, what will likely be a small increase in aperture is also nothing like a leap in camera hardware. A more impressive hardware change for the telephoto camera would be to increase its zoom. Due to switching to the larger 48MP sensor for the iPhone 17 Pro's telephoto module, zoom was reduced to 4x (down from 5x in the '16 Pro). For context, the Oppo Find X9 Ultra (which is almost the same price as an equivalent iPhone 17 Pro Max) sports a 10x telephoto camera, with a sensor only marginally smaller than that in the iPhone's 4x telephoto module.

Other rumors point to the iPhone 18 Pro potentially having exclusive, pro-focussed camera software features. Quite what these could be is unknown - Apple already reserves its ProRAW image capture for iPhone Pro models. The speculation suggests that Apple "is looking to give the built-in camera app on its smartphone an upgrade...the existing iPhone camera app contains mostly basic controls."

A big leap in camera hardware for the iPhone 18 Pro would be very welcome though. Recent iPhone generations have offered incremental improvements where rival Android flagships, most notably those from Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo, have pushed camera hardware forward at a far more rapid pace. It's about time the iPhone started being revolutionary again, not merely evolutionary.

Story credit: 9 to 5 Mac

Last week, Panasonic refreshed the popular compact mirrorless Lumix S9 with fresh firmware for more mobile app controls and expanded custom LUT options – but the smartphone app is to blame for the firmware getting temporarily pulled.

Panasonic has suspended the Lumix S9 firmware 2.0 via the Lumix Labs app after identifying a bug with the update. But, Panasonic is only pulling the firmware from being updated wirelessly through the Lumix Lab app; users can still update the camera using the more-traditional computer method.

“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” Panasonic Japan wrote in the notice.

Panasonic says that creators who have already updated and have experienced no bugs do not need to take any further action.

Firmware 2.0 expands the S9’s capabilities with the Lumix Lab app with faster and more stable transfers, as well as wired support with the app.

A key part of the update is to Real Time LUTs, Panasonic’s systems for saving custom looks to the camera to essentially apply edits as a photo is being taken. The update added the ability to intentionally add grain and color noise for creators looking to emulate film.

Panasonic did not specify what glitch was identified with the firmware update, but the traditional method of updating using a computer is still available. That seems to hint that there was an issue with updating the firmware using the mobile app – one of the faster ways to update a camera’s firmware on models that support the feature.

The temporarily halted app support for the firmware isn’t the first time a camera company has suspended a firmware update for a bug shortly after launch. Digital Camera World recommends waiting a week or two after a new firmware is launched in order to allow enough time for any potential bugs to be spotted and remedied.

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Listen to the Bokeh Face podcast where we chat about the risks of updating your cameras firmware. Or, browse the best cameras for travel.

You may not have heard of Core Image RAW – but if you've shot or opened a RAW photo on an iPhone, you've already used it. Now, the software that Apple uses to process RAW photos is getting a key upgrade to reduce noise.

Apple has announced the latest updates to Core Image RAW, the software that processes RAW images taken on iPhones and handles RAW processing in Apple image editing tools. This software is used everywhere from the native Photos app to some third-party apps like Pixelmator Pro.

Core Image RAW 9 was announced in a YouTube video released earlier this week, and is slated for rollout as part of macOS 27 and iOS 27 across Apple devices and image editing apps in September of this year.

The major upgrade is the software’s ability to de-noise RAW images, now heavily driven by machine learning (ML).

By infusing ML, an artificial intelligence (AI) model, into demosaicing – the process of ensuring all image pixels contain the colors red, green, and blue – RAW files appear drastically less grainy, and unwanted color artifacts are reduced.

Above: Apple imaging engineer explains the updates coming with Core Image RAW 9

In the video, Apple imaging engineer David Hayward presents several examples demonstrating the denoising power of Core Image RAW 9, but it’s the close-up image of crayons that most impresses me.

First we see the image rendered with the previous Core Image RAW 8 model, which relies on traditional, hand-tuned algorithms for demosaicing. Then we see the same image processed by the latest software version.

To my eye, the results are significantly better, with fine details becoming much clearer and grain drastically reduced, albeit with some slight softening.

Above: swipe to see Apple Core Image RAW Version 8 vs Version 9

Core Image RAW 9 is the eighth upgrade Apple has made to its RAW processing engine, with the stack of programs currently able to process RAW files captured on 846 cameras across all the major brands.

While version 9 of the processing engine is more resource-intensive for devices, iPhone photographers and people who edit RAW files in Apple applications can expect much crisper images.

In the video, which came out as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2026 kicked off, Hayward also mentions that activating Core Image RAW 9 requires making some slight adjustments to the underlying code of some image editing apps.

However, he doesn’t state whether this will be the case once the latest iOS and macOS versions are released later this year.

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Discover our expert pick of the best photo editing software. We've put all of these platforms through rigorous testing so you know which one best matches your workflow.

At WWDC Apple announced Spatial Refeaming, one of two new imaging tools for its iOS 27 operating system used on iPhones and iPads.

The other significant AI update was AI generative improvements to the photo editing, but the idea of being able to move the camera after taking the picture.

Rather than just AI reframing that extends the image – such as many of us have become used to in Photoshop – what Apple showed was a feature that allowed the camera to be re-positioned around the subject, with the AI re-shaping the subject using AI, and generating a suitable background generated using AI.

You can see the effect working in this example from Apple. For an example of the extend that AI is involved, look closely at the boy’s legs, and you’ll see that it has clearly created a 3D model and adjusted the image according to the spatial position that the camera would be in.

However, current iPhone users will have experienced a feature a little like this before – I know I have. Above, my wife is holding her phone with one of our wedding pictures as the background. When she chose it iOS 26 automatically added layers of depth unprompted.

The effect is more subtle, but it's effective; the AI correctly picked her and I out from the elements of the background that are further behind (the door) and kept us more or less at the same apparent distance as the flower arch, and the effect is shown whenever you tilt the phone.

So everyone is getting rightly excited about the progression – but I woudlnt' call it 'new'.

Apple also mentioned in passing that AI generation will be used to turn panoramas into Spatial Scenes for the Vision Pro, but presumably, given the product’s relatively low sales this clever bit of AI didn’t warrant a lot of discussion at the WWDC announcement!

iPhone users will likely be a lot more excited by the news that photos will load “up to” 70% faster and AirDrop will be 80% faster, with work on the CPU scheduler that should make even older phones (as far back as the iPhone 11) faster.

Check our guide to the best iPhone for photography and the best camera phones.

Just weeks after releasing one of the most feature-packed firmware updates for the Canon EOS R5 Mark II, Canon has issued another update to fix a problem introduced by the previous firmware.

The fix arrives for the hybrid flagship camera that we described in our review as "still the best damn camera you can buy."

Firmware Ver. 1.3.0 added a range of new capabilities, including an American Football Action Priority mode, improved people detection and tracking, DPRAW support, expanded video monitoring tools, and the ability to transfer AF (autofocus) settings between cameras.

However, the update also introduced an issue that could cause the camera to stop functioning properly when Touch & Drag AF was used with Whole Area AF.

The new Firmware Ver. 1.3.1 specifically fixes the AF problem – but also adds the features introduced in the previous update – good news for users who chose to wait and see whether the firmware would introduce any unexpected issues.

New firmware

Firmware Ver. 1.3.1
US: Download link for Microsoft and Mac
UK: Download link for Microsoft and Mac

This firmware includes fixes for the following issues identified in Version 1.3.0: Fixes an issue in which the camera may stop functioning properly when Touch & drag AF is used with the [AF area] set to "Whole Area AF".

This firmware also incorporates the changes that were introduced in Firmware Version 1.3.0 – so if you have not updated your R5 Mark II yet, Version 1.3.1 gets you all the benefits of the last firmware too.

Please perform the firmware update with only the firmware file to be updated stored on the memory card.

Pro Advice

If you caught Episode 4 of Bokeh Face: Digital Camera World podcast, above, we discussed the best time to install firmware updates, why they matter, and what issues they can cause. It's a helpful listen if you're unsure when – or whenever – you should update.

It's smart to wait a week or two after release to see if any users hit snags. In the past, brands have had a few hiccups with major updates – for instance, introducing memory-setting bugs or minor interface glitches before being reissued.

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Panasonic's compact full-frame camera – the Lumix S9 – has received a fresh free firmware update designed to push it further into a faster, more in-camera creative workflow. The update strengthens its role as a creator-focused tool built for instant shooting and sharing.

Firmware Ver. 2.0 introduces deeper smartphone integration, enabling faster and more stable transfers between camera and phone. With wired connection support via the Lumix Lab app, the S9 moves further into a connected mobile editing ecosystem.

The update also expands Panasonic's Real Time LUT system, adding more granular creative controls and pushing the S9 closer to a "shoot-in-style" approach that reduces the need for post-production. Users also gain improved control over My Photo style, allowing more personalized in-camera looks and faster creative output.

Firmware Update

Firmware Ver. 2.0
Download link for Microsoft and Mac

Support for LUMIX Smartphone App, LUMIX Lab Ver.3.0.0 (or higher)
- Wired connection is now supported
- LUTs created with additional parameters such as grain, color noise, sharpness, and noise reduction can be applied using REAL TIME LUT
* Grain and color noise are only supported for photos
- My Photo Style can now be edited within the app for greater customization

More details: Operating Instructions for the Change of Specifications

After updating the firmware
Make sure to use the latest version of the application for your smartphone or the software for your PC of:
- Lumix Lab
- Lumix Sync
- Lumix Tether

Pro Advice

If you caught Episode 4 of Bokeh Face: Digital Camera World podcast, we discussed the best time to install firmware updates, why they matter, and what issues they can cause. It's a helpful listen if you're unsure when – or whenever – you should update.

It's smart to wait a week or two after release to see if any users hit snags. In the past, brands have had a few hiccups with major updates – for instance, introducing memory-setting bugs or minor interface glitches before being reissued.

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Browse the best lenses for the Panasonic Lumix S9.

The Nikon Z 70‑200mm f/2.8 VR S II is the latest generation of Nikon's professional telephoto zoom, designed for high-performance stills and video work – it's one of Nikon's most advanced telephotos to date.

While the lens is widely regarded as a strong option in its class for sports, wildlife, and event photography, photographers noticed that the autofocus (AF) response slowed down when the telephoto was used with the Nikon Z Teleconverter TC-2.0x.

The new firmware version 1.10 resolves the issue, ensuring consistent AF performance with or without a teleconverter.

Firmware update

Nikon Z 70‑200mm f/2.8 VR S II

Firmware Ver. 1.10
Download link for Windows and Mac OS

Updates:
- Fixed an issue where autofocus was slow to respond when used with the Z teleconverter TC-2.0x

How to update this lens firmware

1. Download the following firmware file to your computer.
Please make sure you have the downloaded firmware file on your computer.
• MLZ70_200F28VRSII_0110.bin (the lens firmware)

2. Using a card slot or card reader, copy “MLZ70_200F28VRSII_0110.bin” to a memory card that has been formatted in the camera.
Note: Be sure to copy the firmware to the root (top-most) directory of the memory card. The camera will not recognize the new firmware if it is placed in a folder under the root directory.

3. Insert the memory card into the camera and turn the camera on.

4. Select [SETUP MENU] > [Firmware version] and follow the on-screen instructions to perform the firmware update.

5. When a message is displayed stating that the update is complete, turn the camera off and remove the memory card.

6. Turn the camera on and confirm that the firmware has been updated to the new version.

Pro Advice

If you caught Episode 4 of Bokeh Face: Digital Camera World podcast, we discussed the best time to install firmware updates, why they matter, but also what issues they can cause. It's a helpful listen if you're unsure when – or whenever – you should update.

It's smart to wait a week or two after release to see if any users hit snags. In the past, brands have had a few hiccups with major updates – for instance, introducing memory-setting bugs or minor interface glitches before being reissued.

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Browse the best 70-200mm lenses, the best telephoto lenses, and the best Nikon Z lenses.

The launch of the new iPhone 18 is likely only a 3-4 months away, and the rumor mill is spinning up with chatter about what camera hardware it may ship with. The latest tip reiterates previous speculation that the iPhone 18 could feature a variable aperture lens for its primary camera module. The rumor comes from respected industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, though it has also been reported by a separate source in Apple's supply chain.

In the current climate where phone manufacturers often prefer AI image processing improvements over camera hardware upgrades, the news that Apple could be developing a new lens for its next iPhone seems welcome. However, I remain to be convinced that such a feature will have a noticeable improvement to camera usability or image quality.

A variable lens aperture is essential in a lens designed for a conventional, large-sensor camera like a full-frame DSLR or mirrorless body. This is because the larger the sensor, the shallower the depth of field at a given aperture. With a full-frame camera, if you want a subject close to the camera and a more distant background to both be in focus, you'll need to significantly reduce the lens aperture. But shrink the sensor down to 1/1.28" - the size of the sensor in the iPhone 17 Pro's primary camera - and, even at the module's native f/1.8 aperture, there'll still be a huge depth of field.

As background detail is almost always clearly visible behind a subject snapped by a camera phone, we've seen the implementation of portrait modes which use software processing to artificially blur background. The aim here is to emulate the shallow depth of field effect you 'naturally' get from a large-sensor camera/wide-aperture lens combination.

So if a camera phone is inherently good at producing a deep depth of field, there's little reason for having a lens with a variable lens aperture. You may as well fix the aperture to be as large as possible to get the maximum amount of light through to the sensor, thereby keeping shutter speeds high and ISO sensitivity low - the ideal recipe for sharp, low-noise shots. Having a variable aperture lens sounds impressive, but the benefits are few and far between when it comes to real world use in a camera phone.

What's more, a variable aperture lens could actually be a bad thing for iPhone 18 buyers. Kuo's tip also states that a variable aperture lens could costs as much as 50% more than the current fixed aperture glass used in current iPhones. At a time when flagship phones are likely to increase in price on account of continual rises in the cost of flash memory, paying even more for an iPhone in order to get a new camera lens with limited practical benefit is a bitter pill to swallow.

Story credit: 9 to 5 Mac

Fujifilm is known for both its mirrorless cameras and its line of instant film cameras – but thanks to a free firmware update, two of Fujifilm’s most affordable mirrorless cameras can now print directly to Instax printers. The Fujifilm X-M5 and X-T30 III have gained a handful of new Instax features in a firmware update launched on June 4, while new X-E5 firmware doesn’t add features but fixes minor bugs.

The Fujifilm X-M5 and X-T30 III could already print images to an Instax printer, but the process required using apps to transfer photos from the camera to the printer. With the firmware update, however, the mirrorless cameras have gained the ability to print directly from the camera’s playback menu without messing with apps.

The feature supports Instax Link models such as the Link 3 and the Link+, as well as the Instax Evo and LiPlay hybrid cameras; the older Instax SP-1, SP-2, and SP-3 are not supported. While many portable photo printers use dye-sub tech, Instax printers transfer the images onto real instant film.

The camera first needs to be paired with the printer in the camera’s Bluetooth settings, but once connected, Fujifilm says the printer will automatically connect.

Photos can then be printed by selecting the “Instax Printer Print option” in the playback menu, then finding the right picture and pressing the menu or OK button. The camera will then even allow photographers to adjust how the image is cropped into the Instax frame, and a final press of the OK button sends the image to the printer.

The firmware update will also allow users to customize the button and dial settings to allow the record button to double as a shortcut to print images while in playback mode.

The direct printing for the X-M5 and X-T30 III is not the first time that Fujifilm has supported direct printing from its mirrorless cameras to Instax without an app. However, earlier firmware updates removed the direct print feature from several mirrorless cameras last year. A firmware update removed support for Fujifilm’s older SP series of printers, requiring an app instead.

The new firmware restores direct print functionality, supporting newer Instax printers as well as hybrid cameras. Interestingly, Fujifilm is bringing the direct print feature to more affordable cameras first. The X-E5 had already previously gained the feature, but the direct print to newer Instax models remains available on a short list, including the X-E5, X-T30 III, X-M5, and X Half.

The Fujifilm X-E5, which previously gained the direct print feature, also received a small firmware update on June 4 to correct bugs.

The firmware updates are available directly from Fujifilm for the X-M5, the X-T30 III, and the X-E5.

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Last week, the Tribeca Film Festival announced that, at this year’s edition of the event, it will screen a documentary film about the struggles of Iranians living under the oppressive regime in their country.

But this isn't just another feature about struggle and survival amid political turmoil. The documentary is the first feature-length production entirely created using AI to be showcased at a major film festival.

Dreams of Violets is a 75-minute docudrama inspired by real events that happened earlier this year in protests in Tehran. Thanks to AI, was generated on a budget of just $2,000 (approximately £1,500 / AU$2,800), involving no actors or a single set being built.

Above: Dreams of Violets trailer

In a statement, director Ash Koosha admitted that he would have preferred to make the film with more traditional methods. But, as an Iranian in exile, the director said that AI was the only way that he could tell the story.

"The film exists because the dead deserve to be witnessed and because the families inside Iran, who cannot speak, deserve someone outside who refuses to forget," the director wrote. "I am not certain that this is the right form for this story. I am certain that this story needed a form, and this is the form that was available to me."

AI technology is making it possible to create works based in regions where travel is dangerous. But, the project's inclusion in the film festival is a controversial one.

The inclusion of a fully AI-generated film at a major film festival could mark a monumental turning point in filmmaking: one that sets off a steady slide toward widespread public acceptance of fully AI-generated movies and, subsequently, the vast majority of production companies cashing in on the budget-saving benefits of using the technology instead of real people and locations.

If you watch the Dreams of Violets trailer, you can clearly tell that the movie is an AI creation, with some characteristic jerky movements and the sometimes jarring stares of people who were conjured up by an algorithm.

However, to my eye, it isn't far off from passing for real live action, which is frightening to think about, considering that the gold rush to develop AI film generation platforms capable of creating realistic footage only began a couple of years ago, spearheaded by the release of tools such as OpenAI’s Sora in 2024 – which was recently shut down.

If, after just two or so years, AI is now advanced enough to create a documentary deemed worthy of screening at a major film festival, are we just a few years away from completely AI-generated films hitting the big screens in our local cinemas too?

Perhaps so. Only recently, Disney laid off some 1,000 staff members in what it claimed was a move toward a “culture of efficiency."

And, even more recently, esteemed director Martin Scorsese publicly embraced AI, becoming an advisor to an AI movie-generation tool startup.

Will we ever reach a point where mainstream cinema completely does away with real humans and locations appearing on screen? I don't think so.

For that to happen, AI tools still need a lot more refinement, and I think there will always be an audience and production companies that will only ever want to immerse themselves in human cinematography, regardless of whether AI films become the norm in a not-so-distant dystopian future.

But with Dreams of Violets already proving just how close AI tools are to replacing even the most skilled camera operators, actors, and editors, and the Tribeca Film Festival redefining what is accepted as cinematography, I’m absolutely certain that, as a 30-year-old writing this, fully generated AI movies could become the norm within my lifetime, more likely within the next couple of decades.

The 25th Tribeca Film Festival is set to run 03-14 June in New York City, with Dreams of Violets premiering on June 10.

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An excellent article by PetaPixel highlights how Samsung produces some of the world's most advanced image sensors, yet opts to equip its latest phones like the S26 Ultra with ageing sensor hardware. Not only that, it's also happy to provide rival phone manufacturers with newer sensors than it uses in its own products, thereby giving the competition a hardware advantage. It seems like a baffling business decision - to voluntarily hamstring your own products while simultaneously supplying your rivals with more modern tech - but this is exactly the position Samsung has chosen.

PetaPixel's interview with a Samsung Senior Executive reveals several reasons for the brand's reluctance to use its own cutting-edge image sensors in its flagship phones, but none are particularly convincing. The gist is that Samsung has stuck with the same 200 megapixel ISOCELL HP2 sensor since the S23 Ultra as it is tried and tested hardware that provides a stable, known baseline for Samsung to develop its AI image enhancement. According to Samsung, the physical sensor is only one piece in a much bigger picture: “What ultimately matters are the results. Our approach is focused on delivering consistent, high-quality performance for real-world use cases, and we’re confident our customers will be very happy.”

There is something to be said for this approach. In conventional cameras the image sensor is a major component that has a huge influence on image quality, but equipping a new camera phone with the latest and greatest image sensor isn't quite so important. This is due to a phone's immensely powerful image processing, which has the power to turn an old or mediocre sensor into an imaging powerhouse. Google proved this in past generations of Pixel phones: the Pixel 2, 3, 4 and 5 all used the same 1/2.55" 12.2MP sensor, yet image quality consistently improved with each phone generation, mostly thanks to better processing. Samsung has also followed this model, leaning heavily on AI to boost the image quality of the last few generations of S Ultra phones. There can be no doubt that this approach has yielded positive results, even in spite of Samsung's negligible improvements to camera hardware over the same time period. But the question is: is Samsung doing enough? The S26 Ultra is undoubtedly an excellent camera phone, but the competition is fierce, and like Samsung, they're bringing AI and advanced image processing to the fight. What’s more, those rivals are also embracing cutting-edge camera hardware.

It could be argued that Samsung phones don't need to be at the forefront of camera hardware any more. After all, iPhones rarely blaze a trail in this respect, and that doesn't seem to hurt sales. Google also follows a similarly conservative approach with Pixel camera hardware, again with positive results. However, Samsung isn't in quite such a privileged position as those brands. Apple's carefully curated iOS ecosystem and its steadfastly loyal consumers place the iPhone outside of Samsung's - or indeed any Android phone brand's - competitive reach. Pixel isn't quite so untouchable, but Google has managed to carve a slightly Apple-esque niche, positioning Pixel as the 'pure Android' experience. Granted, there will also be a large number of users loyal to Samsung's One UI interface, but I'd wager there's a greater percentage of Samsung users who'd be willing to jump ship to an alternative Android phone brand than there are iPhone or Pixel users ready to defect.

And when you consider the quality of phones which are ready to tempt Samsung users away from the brand, things start to look decidedly shaky for the Korean giant. I've recently been using the new Oppo Find X9 Ultra, which in 12GB/512GB guise costs the same as the equivalent Galaxy S26 Ultra. But when it comes to camera hardware, it’s clear which phone is superior. Sure, both have a 200MP sensor for their primary cameras, but where Samsung is still using its dated ISOCELL HP2 chip, Oppo has implemented a bang-up-to-date Sony LYT-901 sensor, which is also usefully larger in size. The Find X9 Ultra also packs a bigger sensor for its ultrawide module, but its telephoto hardware where Oppo really blows Samsung into the weeds. Where the S26 Ultra has to make do with a tiny 1/3.94" 10MP sensor for its 3x telephoto camera, the Find X9 Ultra boasts a huge 200MP, 1/1.28" chip behind its 3x lens. For context, that's physically larger than the sensor in the S26 Ultra's main camera. Both phones use a 50MP sensor for their long-range telephoto modules, and here the S26 Ultra's sensor is marginally larger than Oppo's. However, that's only because Samsung's optical zoom tops out at just 5x, whereas the Find X9 Ultra can achieve a 10x, 230mm-equivalent reach.

Then there's Oppo's close collaboration with Hasselblad, which results in Hasselblad Master Mode: a whole suite of film-style pre-sets, extensive manual control options, and a more natural photo aesthetic that convincingly emulates the image quality from the brand's medium format cameras.

What's more, it's not just the internal camera hardware where brands like Oppo are showing a clean pair of heels to Samsung. Where you could be forgiven for mistaking the S26 Ultra for one of Samsung's mainstream A-series phones, the Find X9 Ultra is a bespoke design that adopts numerous Hasselblad design cues and consequently looks like nothing else on the market - it feels like a truly special device in the hand. And if you want to stand out from the crowd even more, there's the Find X9 Ultra Hasselblad Earth Explorer Kit. This includes a Hasselblad-inspired case and grip with integrated 2-stage camera shutter button and a physical zoom rocker. The case can then be fitted with a gorgeous Hasselblad telephoto lens to give 300mm of optical zoom, increasing to 690mm when using a combination of optical zoom and on-sensor cropping.

Obviously the S26 Ultra does still have a lot going for it, but when it comes down to camera hardware and camera innovation, Oppo, along with other Chinese brands like Vivo and Xiaomi, are producing flagship phones with significantly more wow factor than the S26 Ultra offers. Right now this doesn't seem to be hurting Samsung - its decades of global phone dominance, along with the huge power of the wider Samsung empire - means it hardly needs to alter the S Ultra recipe for a new generation to be a sales hit. But seemingly invincible phone brands have been toppled before. Nokia's demise can largely be attributed to the disruptive market influence of the iPhone, along with cornering itself into a reliance on the doomed Symbian OS. Its death wasn't due to the kind of stagnating design innovation that we're seeing from Samsung, but the Nokia case study does at least serve as a warning that even an industry giant can fall. A more pertinent comparison to Samsung's current position is that of HTC. Once a major player in the Android phone sector, with flagships like the HTC One M7 and M8 being widely considered to be the best camera phones of their period, the HTC brand seemed to disappear almost overnight. There were multiple reasons for this, but one major factor was lacklustre design and innovation: HTC appeared to rest on its laurels after the One M8, with subsequent flagships offering little in the way of meaningful improvements. Sound familiar?

Now, I'm not suggesting Samsung is on the brink of collapse due to its last few generations of S Ultra being mildly underwhelming. But there is only so long it can keep recycling the same camera hardware and tired design language when the Chinese brands are innovating in these areas so relentlessly, while also bringing their flagship phones to market for the same or less money than Samsung charges. If Samsung continues to play it safe like this, it’s only a matter of time before customers of its flagship phones are tempted away to more enticing options, at which point the brand may find it very difficult to win them back.

Despite making some of the best camera phones over the last several years, Vivo still might not be a name familiar to many in the Western hemisphere. Vivo’s previous top-end phones have rarely made it outside of Asia, with the brand focusing on more budget devices in Europe. However, that is on its way to improving with the Vivo X300 Ultra, which will be launching in select European markets.

And the X300 Ultra arrives as another serious best camera phone contender. It brings a top-end 35mm main camera, a 14mm ultrawide, an 85mm telephoto, 8K video, 4K up to 120p, 10-bit Log recording, Dolby Vision, powerful stabilization, and optional 200mm and 400mm telephoto adapters that make the whole setup feel closer to a camera system.

That does not mean it is an easy recommendation. The price is high, and the full setup only gets more expensive once the optional accessories are added. But in stills, it is one of the most enjoyable camera phones I have used this year, and when it comes to video, it might be the first Android phone I have tested that feels like a genuinely convincing iPhone rival.

Specifications

Price & Availability

Despite this being the widest release yet for a Vivo Ultra phone, that still doesn't include the US or the UK; however, European buyers can get their hands on the phone. The kicker is that it is almost certainly too expensive to really recommend. The phone is launching for €1,999, which is a huge premium over devices like the excellent Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Oppo Find X9 Ultra.

It’s not like the price is completely unjustified. The 35mm main camera, 85mm telephoto, and 14mm ultrawide are all serious modules that produce fantastic photos and the best video I have seen from a phone.

But as good a phone as the Vivo X300 Ultra is, I am just not sure I can justify paying the same as a decent camera system, which, try as it might, the X300 Ultra does not outcompete. Optional accessories like the photography case and telephoto lenses that make this phone a truly great alternative to cameras push the full creator setup considerably higher.

Design

The Vivo X300 Ultra is a good-looking, if very minimalist, phone. I tested the black version, and while it is clean and understated, it is also a little too simple for a flagship Ultra phone. Other colors and finishes, particularly the green and white options, look more interesting, but even then, I am not convinced the X300 Ultra has the kind of design identity that immediately screams “top-tier camera phone.”

Overall, the design feels a little uninspired. But that is not to say it feels uninteresting – it does not. The phone has a very premium finish, feels really nice and solid in the hand, it has IP68 and IP69 dust and water resistance, and a large 6.82-inch flat display, but visually it does not feel as special as its camera hardware deserves.

The camera bump is very large, around the same diameter as the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, but it is noticeably deeper. The phone is slightly top-heavy with that big camera bump, but it is still relatively well balanced. A minor complaint, but the hard edge and overall size of the camera island also meant it caught slightly on my jeans pocket. A more tapered edge would help it slide in and out more easily.

Vivo has not added a dedicated camera button, which I don’t mind at all, as I rarely, if ever, use them. I think they often exist more for chasing Apple than for practical shooting. You can double-tap volume down to open the camera, which is enough for me. I would, however, have liked a separate action button for a quick setting such as alerts, translate, or flashlight, as we have seen on Apple, Oppo, and Honor phones recently.

The display is a beautiful display; it’s a 6.82-inch 2K Zeiss Master Color Display that sports a 144Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, SGS Low Blue Light certification, and TÜV Rheinland flicker-free certification. It is a large, sharp, smooth screen, and Vivo’s eye comfort features are welcome for long editing or shooting sessions.

Accessories

The real design interest comes from the optional camera kit. I am really not a fan of the shiny silver finish. It is certainly eye-catching, but I would much rather it were more discreet while I am shooting. The disappointment is that the case itself feels a bit plastic and cheap, especially compared with Oppo’s new Find X9 Ultra camera case. There was also some minor wobble on the case’s ring mounts and handgrip, which adds to the slightly less premium feeling. At this kind of level, I would like a little more polish.

So Oppo and Xiaomi’s cases might look and feel better, but I think Vivo’s is the most functional. The diamond-pattern grip is nice and grippy, and the deep handle makes the phone feel far more like a real camera. The manual controls are also genuinely useful, with zoom, flash, exposure compensation, record, and a two-stage shutter button all available.

I tested both the second-generation 200mm and new 400 lenses; both the teleconverter lenses themselves feel much more premium than the case they slot into, with solid metal bodies and mounts. I do wish, like the case, they came in black option as well as the silver. They are large, especially the 400mm equivalent lens, but still nowhere near the size of a real 400mm camera lens and smaller than Oppo’s new 300mm accessory.

The 67mm filter attachment is a major plus; it makes the X300 Ultra much easier to take seriously as a video phone, because ND filters are essential for controlling shutter speed in bright conditions with camera lenses fixed apertures. Vivo has also partnered with SmallRig to produce a Pro Video Rig Kit with control buttons, a grip handle, a back plate, a cooling fan, cold shoe mounts, and 1/4-inch mounting – although I unfortunately don't have this to test out.

Camera Performance

The Vivo X300 Ultra’s camera system is unusual because it does not follow the standard phone camera formula. Instead of a very wide main camera around 23mm or 24mm, Vivo has gone for a 35mm main camera. I actually like 35mm as a native focal length. It can be a little harder to work with in tight spaces, and it is a big jump from the 14mm ultrawide, but it gives photos a more natural and pleasing perspective.

The 35mm lens is dubbed by the marketing department as the “Zeiss Documentary Camera”. With 1-inch sensors in phones seemingly falling out of fashion again, it uses a 200MP Sony LYTIA 901 sensor, with a still pretty large 1/1.12-inch format paired with an f/1.85 aperture. The lens also gets a Zeiss T* coating to reduce ghosting and flare.

In practice, the main camera quality is very good. Sharpness is strong, there is lots of detail, and the 50mm and 70mm equivalent crop options hold up really well, with no perceptible loss in quality to my eye anyway. I like the look of Vivo’s images in the Zeiss natural color mode; lighting is well balanced with colors looking true-to-life. If you are looking for a little more pop, then there is also a vivid mode (which is actually the default camera style), as well as numerous other styles to stylise images or attempt to mimic film with some mixed results.

However, Vivo’s processing is still a little too sharp and HDR for my taste. Vivo does include a Raw Lighting setting, which, when switched on, should reduce some of the sharpening, HDR, and other processing that makes phone images look, well, processed. Raw lighting does make a welcome difference; I do prefer the overall feel of images with this setting on, although it doesn’t magically make images look any less like they are shot on a phone. I think Xiaomi's Leica Authentic profile or Oppo's Hasselblad Master Mode both do a better job of making photos look a little more camera-like.

Night photos are very good. The X300 Ultra retains lots of detail and rarely needs to kick into long exposure mode to produce a usable result. That said, night images can show slight oversharpening, and Vivo’s processing tries a little too hard to brighten the scene rather than allowing natural depth in the shadows. I often found myself dragging exposure compensation down to make my photos a little more atmospheric.

I am never really a fan of an ultrawide camera, but the 14mm ultrawide is one of the best I have used on any phone. This is made all the more important as the jump from 14mm to 35mm is significant, and on a weaker ultrawide, that would leave a real gap. Here, the 50MP sensor gives enough quality that you can crop into ultrawide images somewhat without losing too much detail – although don’t expect miracles.

The lens also controls aberrations and color casts really well, which is also not usually a strength of most ultrawides, and it is one of the cleanest I have seen on a phone. Vivo says the ultrawide uses Zeiss T* coating, Multi-ALD low-reflection coating, and Super Blue Glass.

The 85mm telephoto lens is outstanding, and despite the 35mm giving it a very good run, it's the standout stills camera for me. It features a 200MP sensor, with a 1/1.4-inch size, APO optics, and what Vivo says (and I’m inclined to agree with) is gimbal-grade stabilization. All this translates into images that are sharp and detailed, with great lighting and color.

Macro is excellent too. Vivo uses the 3x lens for macro rather than the ultrawide, which gives the right perspective for close-up work. The blur looks pretty genuine, more like a proper camera than the distorted ultrawide macro modes used by some rivals.

Portrait mode is one of the best on any phone right now; it did really well cutting out subjects, although it still had some minor issues with flyaway hair. The results looked natural, and what I liked most was that Vivo softened the edges in a way that made the transition to the background look more like natural falloff rather than a computational cutout that can make the subject look composited onto the background.

Zooming in, the 170mm crops are excellent and look optically close to lossless. Beyond 170mm, the X300 Ultra relies on in-sensor cropping and then generative AI to boost longer-range images. Vivo’s SuperZoom is among the best in the business; up to around 600mm images without too much complication are sharp and natural-looking, although lots of detail does start to look squiggly. After this, you can see the effects of AI kicking in with a more smoothened texture and loss of fine detail. It is very good, although it is still outclassed by the optical power of the Oppo Find X9 Ultra’s 10x lens.

Where the Vivo fights back is with its teleconverter accessories; it's not the only brand to be pushing these add-on lenses, but as one of the first to really go hard on these accessories, it has the most developed system. Oppo’s new telephoto lenses is good, but the brand has yet to settle on a mount that works across phone models, and in the camera, the telephoto can’t be used in all modes, which are two frustrating limitations that thankfully the Vivo doesn’t share.

The 200mm (2.35x) and 400mm (4.7x) equivalent lenses are excellent. The optics from both are outstanding, and they make the X300 Ultra feel much more like a modular camera system than a normal phone. You can go to 800mm using in-sensor cropping, and the results are still impressive, although there is some minor sharpening detail visible in textures such as fur and hair. Stabilization with the telephoto adapters is excellent. I do not have the steadiest hands, but even at 800mm, I was getting sharp and shake-free photos.

The camera app is one of my favorites, although it might be a little overwhelming to some. There are a lot of modes, and some of them have varying levels of usefulness, but most are tucked away in the “more” menu (or can at least be moved there to clean up the clutter).

I really like how many shortcuts Vivo lets you keep on the screen, with four icons at the top and three on the side for quick settings. You can also have none if you prefer a clean viewfinder screen. The AI will occasionally pop up with suggestions to change modes, which can be useful, though it also adds to the sense that there are perhaps too many options.

Video

Video performance is where the X300 Ultra really comes into its own. This is the best Android phone I have used for video, and it is finally a real challenger to the iPhone’s dominance. Video is clean and crisp, dynamic range is excellent, and footage from the sensors looks genuinely professional. You do not get the same depth as a larger-sensor camera, of course, but results can still look cinematic.

The Pro Video mode is packed with useful tools, including LUTs, full manual controls, audio levels, waveforms, and histograms. You can even use Pro Video mode with the telephoto adapters. The X300 Ultra is capable of 4K 120p 10-bit Log video across the rear cameras, as well as APV 422 encoding, ACES workflow support, and custom 3D LUT monitoring. The one caveat from my use is that LUTs are preview only in-camera, with no option to burn them directly into final footage, so this needs to be done in post.

Stabilization for video is outstanding. The X300 Ultra has additional modes with horizon lock and an ultra-steady mode, and both are very effective. It gets closer to gimbal-level stabilization and is on par with a lot of action camera stabilization I have used for heavy action. Panning is smooth, without the jerkiness you get from systems trying too hard to fight the movement, and static handheld shots are rock steady.

There are also a couple of minor modes and options I want to shout out. The built-in teleprompter is a great addition, and I wish more phones did this. I also really like how easy it is to see and swap which microphone you are using to record; not every brand makes this clear, and it can be a huge annoyance.

Phone Performance

The X300 Ultra uses the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, supported by Vivo’s Pro Imaging Chip VS1+. The VS1+ imaging chip is designed to handle image pre-processing, raw processing, noise, sharpness, dynamic range, and faster image output.

In my own testing, the X300 Ultra scored 3632 single-core and 10619 multi-core in Geekbench, with 3DMark scores of 6620–4299, which puts it among the best Android flagships right now.

More importantly, it feels extremely fast in real use. The Snapdragon processor flies through day-to-day tasks, but more relevant is that it is excellent for video editing and photo editing. I noticed no meaningful slowdowns when scrubbing through video or exporting 4K footage.

OriginOS 6 is slick, enjoyable to use, and easy to navigate – and a bonus for MacBook owners who use Android; it is also now compatible with AirDrop. OriginOS still has a bit of its own identity, but the big negative, though, is bloatware. There was a lot installed out of the box, and while I can forgive that on budget phones, it cheapens the experience on something this premium.

The AI Suite is very comprehensive, with AI retouch, expand, re-color, eraser, and UHD tools. Most do a good job. The eraser is particularly good at recognizing people, and for quick edits, it is genuinely useful. There are still some obviously AI-looking artifacts, especially when using Gen Expand, where the generated content does not quite match the resolution of the cameras. In a way, it’s a compliment to the imaging hardware that the cameras are so good that the AI fill has a hard time keeping up.

Battery life is excellent. The 6600mAh BlueVolt battery got me through around a day and a half with normal use, although heavy video shooting cut into that quite a lot. Vivo says the battery supports 100W wired FlashCharge and 40W wireless charging, and that the phone includes bypass charging with smart temperature control for intensive use. In my charging test, the phone reached 37% in 15 minutes and 61% in 60 minutes using PD charging.

Final Verdict

The Vivo X300 Ultra is not the most ultra-looking phone, but it is one of the most compelling ultra phones I have used. Vivo has built something that ticks nearly every box on my wishlist. The main camera is excellent, the ultrawide is one of the best around, the 85mm telephoto is outstanding, and the teleconverter system gives it a practical reach that most phones cannot touch.

What really separates it, though, is video. The X300 Ultra is not just good “for an Android phone”; it is a genuine contender for best video on any phone full stop. The stabilization, Pro Video mode, LUT support, 4K 120p options, teleprompter mode, and accessory compatibility make it a phone designed for pro video workflows. As a video-first phone, the X300 Ultra is exceptional and the strongest contender to an iPhone for serious video creators.

There are still a few frustrations. I think Vivo’s image processing still leans slightly too sharp and bright, the design is generic, the camera bump is huge, the bloatware is unwelcome, and the shiny silver camera kit isn’t to my tastes – but mostly the lack of availability and exceptionally high price make it so difficult to recommend when options like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra are so so good.

Alternatives

There was a time when buying a camera felt simple. You handed over your money, opened the box, charged the battery, put in a memory card and went out to shoot. Nine times out of ten, the thing just worked.

Yes, firmware updates existed, but they were usually reserved for odd problems that appeared after a camera had spent some real time in the hands of working photographers.

Maybe a strange card compatibility issue. Maybe a rare autofocus glitch. Maybe a small bug that only appeared in a very specific shooting situation. That was fair enough. No camera is perfect, and no manufacturer can predict every single real-world scenario.

But in 2026, firmware no longer feels like an occasional fix. It feels like part of the ownership experience – and frankly, it is bloody exhausting. Buy a new camera today and you are not just buying the product in the box; you are buying into a promise. This feature is coming later.

That video mode will arrive in a future update. This autofocus issue will be improved. This recording option will be unlocked. This sharpness problem will be fixed. This bug will go away if you download version 2.1, unless, of course, version 2.1 creates another issue, in which case version 2.2 will be along shortly to rescue you from the rescue.

The most frustrating part is that camera manufacturers have managed to dress this up as generosity. We are told that firmware updates are exciting, that they add value, that they show a brand is listening. Sometimes that is true. There are genuinely useful updates that extend the life of a camera and reward loyal customers.

But there is a very big difference between improving a product and finishing it after the customer has already paid for it. Too often now, firmware feels less like a bonus and more like a quiet admission that the camera was rushed to market before it was properly complete.

The Nikon Z9 is a perfect example. It was, and still is, a hugely impressive professional camera. But when it launched, one of its headline video promises – internal 8K RAW recording up to 60p – was not actually there in full on day one. Buyers were told it would come later through a firmware update.

That is a remarkable thing when you stop and think about it. This was not a cheap enthusiast model. This was Nikon’s flagship mirrorless camera, aimed at professionals, with a flagship price to match. Yet part of the headline capability was effectively sold as a future promise rather than a finished feature.

And before anyone screams that Nikon eventually delivered it, yes, it did. Firmware 2.0 brought major upgrades, including 8K 60p RAW capture, and many Z9 owners were rightly pleased. But that does not change the wider point. Customers should not be expected to celebrate receiving a feature months later that helped sell the camera in the first place.

When a manufacturer uses a feature to generate launch excitement, build pre-orders, and justify a premium price, that feature should be ready when the camera ships. Otherwise, what are we really buying? A camera or a roadmap?

This is not just a Nikon problem, either. That would be too easy. The entire camera industry has become far too comfortable with the idea of shipping first and finishing later. Firmware has become the safety net, the marketing tool, the apology letter, and the upgrade path all rolled into one.

It enables manufacturers to rush a camera out into the market, keep pace with rivals, grab headlines, and then tidy up the mess after real photographers have become unpaid testers. The modern buyer is expected to spend thousands of dollars and then patiently wait while the camera becomes the product it should have been from the beginning.

What makes it worse is the language around it. We are constantly told that firmware “unlocks” new features, as if the manufacturer is handing us a gift. But if the hardware was already capable of doing it, and the feature was part of the sales pitch, was it really a gift? Or was it something deliberately held back, unfinished, or not ready?

There is a fine line between innovation and manipulation, and right now the camera industry is dancing all over it.

For working photographers and filmmakers, this is not just annoying. It can directly affect trust. If you rely on a camera for paid work, you need to know what it can do today – not what it might do after three updates, two bug fixes, and a revised manual.

A future firmware promise does not help you on a job tomorrow. A promised recording mode does not help if you have already planned a shoot around it, and the update has not arrived. Better autofocus “coming soon” does not help when the camera misses focus on the assignment you are being paid to deliver.

There is also a growing mental load that comes with modern camera ownership. Keeping up with firmware has become another job.

You have to check which version you are on, read what has changed, see whether anyone online is reporting new bugs, decide whether to update now or wait, download the file, charge the battery, format the card, install the update, and then hope nothing breaks.

This is not the romantic side of photography. This is the software admin. And it is being pushed onto photographers who simply want to get out and make pictures.

I am not against firmware. Done properly, it is brilliant. It can fix genuine issues, improve performance and breathe new life into older cameras. But it should not be used as a crutch for unfinished products, and it should not be used to normalize the idea that expensive professional cameras can launch with major promised features missing.

If a camera is not ready, delay it. If a feature is not finished, do not make it central to the marketing. And if customers are paying full price on day one, they deserve a full product on day one.

The camera industry needs to remember that trust matters. Photographers are not asking for perfection, but they are asking for honesty.

We can accept the occasional bug. We can accept genuine improvements. What is harder to accept is being asked to pay premium money for a camera that arrives with a list of “coming soon” promises attached to it. Firmware should be there to support a camera, not complete it.

Because right now, too many photographers are being held to ransom by updates. Buy the camera now, get the full feature set later. Buy the body today, wait for the fix tomorrow. Spend the money upfront, then hope the manufacturer delivers what it promised.

That is not progress. That is not customer care. That is the software industry’s worst habit creeping into photography, and we should not pretend it is acceptable just because it arrives with a version number and a download link.

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Sadly, we all have to jump through firmware hoopes. Here's how to update your Nikon camera's firmware and how to update your Canon EOS firmware.

Aftershoot has just delivered a huge update and it’s clear that the only time it wants you to leave is when you head out on another photo shoot. Instead of marketing itself as an addition to all the other photo editing software that’s installed on your computer, the AI-infused photo organizing software has been relaunched as an all-in-one solution that allows you to cull, edit, retouch and manually tweak RAW files within the app.

But that’s not all. The Delaware-based outfit has also launched Aftershoot Galleries, meaning that this one-stop shop now provides you with a delivery solution beyond merely exporting your images, via albums or galleries that are designed to be easier and more enjoyable for clients to digest.

Aftershoot: What's new?

Aftershoot launched in 2019 as a photo culling app and AI-assisted culling is still a core feature. But professionals such as wedding photographers are protective of their work, so you can choose to allow the AI to automate the culling for you or simply assist your culling without removing your creative agency. And now, the software has improved its UI by telling you just that within the software, ensuring that you always know the difference between AI Automated Cull and AI Assisted Cull.

Culling is also smarter when selecting duplicates. Burst sequences and minor differences in expressions are now grouped together, while the AI chooses the best shot from each group. It’s also said to be smarter at understanding intentional variations, so two identical images that feature different crops will be grouped separately. Aftershoot has calculated that this results in culls that are 20% tighter.

The Edit tab has been upgraded with improved white balance consistency as well as improved crop and straighten modes via Aggressive Cropping. This mode is designed to result in tighter crops that really focus on the subject. The Retouch tab has received similar treatment, with upgrades to Acne, Freckle and Blemish, and Stray Hair sliders. A Background Replacement beta also allows you to quickly replace backgrounds in single-person images, and comes with a variety of background presets while allowing you to also upload your own.

But perhaps the most exciting addition to the software is the all-new Raw Editing tool. This is the meat of Aftershoot’s desire to provide an all-in-one solution, providing a familiar selection of sliders to apply manual tonal edits to individual images or batches à la Adobe Lightroom. You’re also editing the RAW file itself for maximum pliability.

During the software company’s virtual premiere, wedding photographer Esteban Gil said: “And we’re only getting started, we’ve now got a ton of powerful editing tools already in the pipeline, there’s histogram support, tone curves, grid sliders, a much deeper masking workflow and a lot more coming soon.” So, judging by that, the Raw Editing tab is just the beginning.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for existing users is the launch of Aftershoot Galleries. Aftershoot’s culling roots have made it popular with wedding photographers dealing with huge numbers of images per shoot. But part of the wedding package is delivering large collections of images to customers.

As photographer Anna Roussos put it during the launch: “Nobody is emotionally invested in the user experience of Google Drive. You send the link, they download the photos and everyone moves on with their lives. So quite early in your career you realise something important, the photos are not the final product, the gallery experience is.”

Aftershoot Galleries is all about enhancing that experience. Photos are displayed in a more attractive and intuitive manner, while also containing built-in print stores that link to WHCC, Bay Photo, and Atkins Pro Labs, allowing clients to order prints via their gallery. As it stands, Galleries is free to access and users are treated to 100GB of free storage to boot.

Aftershoot is also particularly keen to shout about its AI policy, with CEO and founder, Harshit Dwivedi, explaining that the company made an early decision to commit to on-device AI as opposed to cloud-based AI, stating: “We understood that as a creator, you care about your work, you care about the privacy and the ownership of the work that you produce and we wanted you to be the complete custodian of your work.”

This latest version of Aftershoot is available now, with the option to purchase a ‘Complete’ $45 per month plan, or pay for just the tools you need, starting from $10 per month for AI culling.

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Looking for an Aftershoot alternative? See what you think of Excire Foto and Evoto AI. If it's hardware you're looking for, these are the best MacBooks for photo editing.

"[Equipment] doesn’t matter at all. People say what’s the best camera, I always say the one in my pocket or the one round my neck. It’s not the camera that takes the picture, it’s the person."

Those were the words of David Bailey, speaking in a radio interview over a decade ago. It's a spin on the well-worn photography cliché, 'the best camera is the one you have with you' – but clichés exist for a reason.

Case in point, the photographs on this page. I want to make clear, first of all, that I'm not saying these are works of art. They're not. But photographing lightning strikes can be tricky – and the point I'm making is that I wouldn't have been able to take these pictures if I didn't have my iPhone in my pocket.

My iPhone 13 Mini, at that – a phone that's 5 years old at this point, with an ultra-wide camera that only has a tiny 1/3.4-inch sensor and a measly 12MP resolution.

Could I have taken better pictures with my Canon EOS R5 or Hasselblad X2D II? Absolutely. And I could have taken the best pictures of all with my OM System OM-3, which has a Live Composite feature that is perfect for photographing lightning strikes.

But I didn't have those cameras with me when I was driving home through this storm. (Okay, the OM-3 was in the trunk. But I'll be honest; pulling into a layby surrounded by trees, while the gods hurled thunderbolts that lit up the entire sky, getting out of the car wasn't my top priority.)

So I pulled the phone out of my pocket and spammed that little white button until I got my shots. Low resolution. Crappy quality. Fully automatic. But I got the shots – and under the circumstances, I wouldn't have got them any other way.

As if there was any doubt, Bailey was right: the best camera really was the one in my pocket. Because the one in the trunk and all the others sitting at home did me no good whatsoever!

So buy all the gear you want. But at the end of the day, if you don't have it with you, that creaky old phone with a crappy camera that you turn your nose up at might just be the one that snaps the decisive moment.

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Want to make sure you have the best camera in your pocket? Take a look at the best camera phones and the best compact cameras.

James Bond has used a lot of different cameras in the movies, usually modified by Q Branch to be wielded as a weapon. But now a weaponized Leica camera has debuted in the new Bond videogame, 007 First Light.

The British superspy is no stranger to cameras modified for field use. The Man with the Golden Gun featured a rocket-firing Nikon F2, while Licence to Kill saw a Polaroid Spectra that shoots lasers and a Hasselblad 500C that turns into a sniper rifle.

However, the last time he used a Leica was in the original 1959 Goldfinger novel (he didn't pick one up in the 1964 movie adaptation). Back then it was a Leica M3, but today it's a modified version of the Leica Q3.

This continues a longstanding collaboration between the 007 and Leica brands, with numerous cameras like the Leica D-Lux 7 007 Edition (which came with a holster) and the Leica Q2 007 Edition.

In the 007 First Light videogame, developed by IO Interactive (best known for the Hitman franchise), Q Branch can outfit Bond with a (sadly fictional) Shockwave Camera. The inventory gives the following description:

"This inconspicuous looking camera triggers a small, directed propagating disturbance that staggers opponents on impact and causes medium damage to body armour. Perfect for buying time or gaining the upper hand in a fight."

It isn't just enemies that are affected by the camera, however. It appears that the Q3's 61MP full frame sensor is so powerful that it can also blow up environmental elements:

"Use shockwave to push enemies away and provide an escape route. Environmental objects, breakable covers and some locked doors can be destroyed or pushed by the shockwave."

Which is cool and all. But I must admit, it would've been cool if this more espionage-oriented Bond game gave you ability to use a Leica camera to actually take pictures. After all, per Golfinger, 007 knows how to take a proper photo:

"Bond took the elevator up to his suite. He went to his suitcase and extracted an M3 Leica, an MC exposure meter, a K2 filter and a flash-holder. He put a bulb in the holder and checked the camera. He went to his balcony, glanced at the sun to estimate where it would be at about three-thirty and went back to the sitting room, leaving the door to the balcony open. He stood at the balcony door and aimed the exposure meter.

"The exposure was one-hundredth of a second. He set this on the Leica, put the shutter at f11, and the distance at twelve feet. He clipped on a lens hood and took one picture to see that all was working. Then he wound on the film, slipped in the flash-holder and put the camera aside."

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Curious about which other cameras Bond used? Take a look at the (00)7 real cameras used by James Bond. And if you want a red dot camera of your own, check out the best Leica cameras (which sadly don't fire rockets or lasers).

My current day-to-day smartphone is an iPhone 17, which has a 2x (52mm equivalent) optical zoom. My previous iPhone - the 16 Pro - had a 5x (120mm) optical zoom, and I really miss that extra reach when it comes to street photography. With my older iPhone 16 Pro’s 5x zoom, I could enjoy capturing candid street photos without distracting the subject or photographing distant architectural details. Thanks to the Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit, I can finally enjoy the versatility of a powerful optical zoom on my iPhone 17 without blowing my budget by purchasing a pro iPhone 17 model.

Founded in 2011, Apexel is a China-based company that specialises in smartphone lenses, and I’ve tested and reviewed a few of their products for Digital Camera World, such as the impressive Apexel 36x Telephoto that uses a powerful optical zoom to capture wildlife at a distance.

At the other end of the zoom spectrum is their smartphone microscope, which enables you to photograph far more detail than your smartphone’s built-in macro lens can see.

As the product’s name indicates, the Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit provides a 10x optical zoom when aligned with your smartphone’s main 1x camera. The Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit also ships with a 10x macro lens that screws onto the end of the lens’s metal barrel, enabling you to capture beautiful close-ups of flora and fauna with a very narrow depth of field, producing an attractive abstract bokeh in the foreground and background.

Specifications

Price

The Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit is reasonably priced at £68.99/$89.98, especially if you want to expand a non-pro iPhone’s telephoto and macro capabilities without forking out hundreds more £/$ for an iPhone Pro model. I tested the version of the kit that ships with a universal clip mount and as you’ll see from this review, I’m not a fan of the universal clip mount as it took a while to align with my iPhone’s lens. Fortunately you can order an iPhone-specific Apexel case alongside the TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit and surprisingly, it won’t cost you anything extra!). Then you can simply screw the lens onto the thread that’s nicely aligned with your iPhone’s main camera. You should only buy the universal clip mount version of the kit if you don’t own an iPhone.

Design & Handling

With its long (5.51-inch) metal barrel and clip-mount, you’d expect the Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x lens to cause your lightweight smartphone to sag a bit, but thankfully that’s not the case. The barrel is constructed of aircraft-grade aluminium, so it only weighs a manageable 145g.

The cold metal lens certainly feels nice and solid, and gives off a sense of being well built. A small rubber lens cap and a rubber protector at the other end of the lens keep the glass component safe when in transit. Talking of glass, the lens itself consists of 12 elements and is coated with a multi-coating designed to reduce glare and reflections.

Midway up the lens is a focus ring, which is easy to rotate thanks to a series of fine grooves that make it easy to get a good grip. The focus distance for the telephoto lens is between 1m and infinity. At the tip of the lens is a thread where you can attach the supplied 10x macro lens.

This small add-on enables you to capture macro images between a focus distance of 20 and 24 cm. The thread also fits the kit’s supplied screw-on adapter ring, enabling you to attach 37mm filters to the lens.

The Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit and all its accessories ship in a resilient yet compact carry case, which has a cut foam interior that holds everything in place. The case also has a webbed section, which is really handy to hold its small fiddly items, such as the detachable rubber eyepiece that transforms the telephoto lens into a monocular (or mini telescope!). The case is about a handspan in width and length, so it will fit easily into a small camera kitbag.

One thing that the kit is missing is a mini tripod, such as the one that ships with the Apexel 36x telephoto kit. Without a tripod, it’s impossible to shoot steady video using a 10x telephoto lens, as I discovered on my test shoot…

Performance

To test the Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit, I headed to London’s sunny Southbank district. Jumping off the train at Blackfriars station, I was treated to a stunning panoramic view of various London landmarks, so I immediately decided to start shooting. Because I was using the kit’s supplied universal clip mount (instead of a dedicated Apexel iPhone case), it took me about five minutes to align the clip with my iPhone 17’s main camera.

Once the clip looks aligned, you need to screw the lens into its thread. Invariably, the lens wasn’t perfectly aligned with the iPhone’s camera, so I had to unscrew the plastic screw that keeps the grip attached to the iPhone and fine-tune the lens’s alignment. The effort was worth it, though, as I immediately had a new perspective on a familiar view.

When viewing through the Apexel telephoto lens using my iPhone’s 1x camera, I could see my subject inset into a circular window surrounded by a black vignette. At 10x magnification, distant subjects looked very close, so I could just about fit the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral into the circular field of view.

However, to lose the black circle around the edge of my subject, I needed to tap my iPhone Camera app’s 2x camera icon. This cropped into the frame, losing the circular black vignette but zooming even tighter into the subject. So I could no longer fit the entire Cathedral dome into the shot.

This extreme cropping can limit your compositional choices, but it also enables you to capture familiar scenes in new ways. I was able to compose a shot that juxtaposed the Millennium Bridge in the bottom of the frame with the far older Tower Bridge in the background.

Due to the powerful 10x zoom, the 1.6 miles between these two bridges was dramatically compressed, so they looked much closer together. This compression of distance gives you a more cinematic look than you’d get using a smartphone’s built-in lenses.

I regretted not bringing a mini tripod to my test shoot, as I would have been able to capture some cinematic-looking video clips. If you plan to shoot video with this lens, then a tripod is essential, as at 10x zoom, every small hand movement is dramatically magnified.

Indeed, although I was only shooting photos, the excessive camera shake made it a challenge to compose shots. Fortunately, it was a sunny day, so the iPhone defaulted to using a super-fast shutter speed. This enabled me to capture great shots of moving subjects, such as a passing police helicopter.

The fast shutter speed meant that these shots were free from motion blur. For a lens under $100, the quality was pretty good, though I did notice a little chromatic aberration towards the edge of the frame in high-contrast subjects.

It took a while to get used to focusing with the Apexel 10x telephoto. I noticed that the iPhone was trying to use auto-focus, which caused it to hunt between foreground and background objects. I solved this issue by locking the iPhone’s focus on the most distant subject and then tweaking the Apexel lens’s focus ring until the subject looked sharp. The iPhone 17’s large and bright display enabled me to adjust focus accurately and effectively for the most part.

I then headed to the busy Borough Market to meet a photographer friend - Shaughn - for lunch. I’d recently been on a street photography shoot with Shaughn in Borough Market using my iPhone 17. Due to its limited telephoto reach, I wasn’t able to capture many candid street photography pictures on that earlier shoot, and I was a bit shy about getting close to my subjects. Thanks to the Apexel 10x telephoto, I was able to camp at the edge of the market and capture documentary-style shots of people from a great distance, without intruding on their lunch break.

My next job was to test the Macro component of the Apexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit. When you get close to a subject using the iPhone 17, it automatically switches to Macro mode, using the .5x (13mm) camera. By being close to a subject, you often find that the iPhone’s shadow is obscuring it. The Apexel macro lens has a very narrow focal range of 20 - 24 cm, but it means that you don’t need to be so close to your subject, and the shadow is avoided.

After attaching the Macro lens to the thread at the end of the barrel, I popped into my garden to try and photograph bees pollinating flowers. With fast-moving subjects such as insects, it’s almost impossible to keep them in focus for long, especially if they are sitting on a wind-blown flower.

There’s no time to pull focus, so you need to move a few centimetres closer or further away from the insect until it is sharp. The trick to capturing a macro image of an insect is to shoot HD slow-motion video at 240 fps. Then, a bee that was only in sharp focus for a second or so is now on screen for much longer, so you can export a sharp frame as a still. Check out my supporting video to see this technique in action.

Verdict

If you’re a smartphone street photographer or a budding member of the paparazzi, then thepexel TeleMacro Pro 10x Kit will give you a close-up candid photo from a great distance. It also compresses distance, enabling you to capture cinematic shots where the foreground subject and the background appear much closer together. I also enjoyed the option to screw on the macro lens and capture small subjects such as bees, flattered by a strong bokeh.

The downside to using this third-party lens accessory was having to fiddle around with aligning the telephoto lens’s universal clip with my iPhone’s camera, but this won’t be an issue if you include an iPhone-specific Apexel case in your order. All in all, I found that the powerful Apexel telephoto’s 10x optical zoom opened up a new world of photography subjects in locations that I’ve been visiting for years, and I had fun shooting superior macro pictures too.

Alternatives

A big two-in-one laptop like this is just asking to be folded back into tablet mode and used with a stylus as some kind of digital sketchbook. Windows 11 still has some drawbacks as a touchscreen operating system compared to iPadOS or Android, but a canvas of this size has advantages for all kinds of photo work, from editing your images to displaying to clients.

The form factor also makes it a versatile machine for all kinds of other uses, from office work to video calls to watching movies in bed, and while the 16in screen here has its drawbacks in terms of colour accuracy, it’s a well made example of what a two-in-one laptop can do.

Specifications

Price

One look at the price of the OmniBook X Flip 16 and you’ll know it has a lot of competition. Most major manufacturers will sell you something for the kind of money HP is asking, and in the case of something like the MacBook Air or gaming laptops from Asus or Acer you’ll get an excellent machine. It’s the screen size and two-in-one functionality that make this laptop stand out, however, and you won’t find that combo in too many other places.

Design & Handling

The HP Omnibook X Flip 16 is built around flexibility, and that shows throughout its design and feature set. At first glance, it looks understated and businesslike. The aluminium chassis and minimal HP branding give it the appearance of an enterprise laptop rather than a flashy creative machine, but that restraint has an upside: the build feels solid and dependable, with no flex in either the body or the screen, whether you’re using it as a laptop or tablet, making it reassuring to carry in a camera bag alongside other gear.

The defining design feature is the Flip’s hinge that can fold all the way back into a tent or full tablet mode. This flexibility is particularly useful for photographers who need to review images with clients, sketch lighting setups using the (optional, rechargeable, pressure-sensitive) stylus, or make quick brush-based edits. In tablet or tent mode, the keyboard automatically disables, so you don’t have to worry about accidental key presses. Despite its large 16‑inch display, the laptop weighs less than 2kg, making it surprisingly manageable for extended sessions away from a desk. It also makes it into a much larger tablet than you’ll get from the usual suspects, the screen providing plenty of real estate for your stylus to roam across.

The 16‑inch 1920x1200 IPS touchscreen uses a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is well suited to photo grids and tool-heavy editing interfaces. While its colour display is limited (managing only 62.5% of the sRGB gamut), it’s bright at 400 nits and highly responsive, making it comfortable for image selection, rough edits, and stylus-based adjustments. Other laptops in the Omnibook range get OLED panels that can display most of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, making this IPS a bit of a disappointment.

Port selection has been well thought through. The Omnibook X Flip 16 features Thunderbolt 4, plus enough extra ports to make it easy to connect external drives, card readers, or a monitor without adapters. Both USB‑C ports support charging, and HP’s usual excellent 65W USB-C charger is in the box.

Performance

This HP Omnibook X Flip 16 combines an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor (with eight cores, and capable of processing eight threads simultaneously), plus 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics, and an Intel AI Boost NPU that contributes to its Copilot+ status. In testing, that CPU/NPU package sits around the lower‑middle of its price class: Geekbench and Cinebench results place it slightly ahead of some thin-and-light laptops but behind heavy hitters like the MacBooks.

For stills work, the most relevant datapoint is that Photoshop runs pretty well, helped by fast SSD storage and the now-baseline 16GB memory for demanding creative use. Where the OmniBook can feel snappier than its CPU class suggests is in AI operations: these tools get a nice boost from the NPU, but you’re not going to get the kind of performance you’d get from something with a larger GPU. If you find yourself upscaling for prints or tight crops, that acceleration can be genuinely useful.

The biggest performance constraint is the graphics performance for heavier workloads like video effects. Even if you primarily edit photos, this matters because many modern enhancement tools (denoise, super‑resolution, complex effects) increasingly lean on GPU acceleration, so the heaviest steps in your pipeline may take longer.

Display performance also affects editing speed, because colour confidence reduces second‑guessing. The touchscreen is bright enough and very responsive, but its limited colour coverage will be a compromise for colour‑critical work. Practically, that means you may want a calibrated external monitor for exporting files for print or anything that requires accurate colour, while using the built-in panel for selects, rough grades, and preview delivery.

Mobility is a genuine strength of the OmniBook. Battery life reached nearly 15 hours in our tests, opening up the possibility of long editing sessions on location or away from plug sockets. Connectivity helps a photo desk setup too: Thunderbolt 4 with DisplayPort plus HDMI makes it easy to run an external display, and the USB-A/USB-C mix supports fast external SSDs (charging uses up one USB‑C port, and a Thunderbolt dock is a useful thing to have here).

Verdict

Devices like this with 16-inch screens often get lumped into the ‘desktop replacement’ category - a machine that’s a little too large to slip into your bag but easy enough to tidy away when someone comes to visit. The OmniBook X Flip 16 changes this perception by creating a large two-in-one laptop with a touchscreen that can be folded back to make it a kind of pseudo-tablet, with stylus compatibility. The model we have here uses an IPS screen that’s not ideal for perfect colour reproduction, but shows how good a screen this big can be for photo editing and digital painting.

Last year's Vivo X200 FE left me wanting more. It wasn't a bad phone, and it could take great photos, but it didn't feel like a proper flagship, despite being on the higher end of the pricing scale.

Now, the Vivo X300 FE has arrived, and it's looking much more tempting. This model gets a healthy upgrade to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, adds fast wireless charging support, and even supports Vivo's excellent external teleconverter lens.

It's a smaller handset, similar in size to the Galaxy S26 and iPhone 17 base models, but it doesn't skimp on the specs, with a bright display and a massive battery inside. If you're not keen on carrying a mammoth Ultra flagship, but you still want some of that Vivo magic, this could be a good bet.

Specifications

Price & Availability

The Vivo X300 FE came as a bit of a surprise, launching alongside the X300 Ultra in global markets. As usual, European availability is a little limited, and this one isn't coming to the UK or the US.

Vivo tells us it will be available soon in Spain, Austria, Hungary, and Poland. As well as Asian markets, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, and Pakistan.

At the time of writing, Vivo hasn't been able to share the European pricing, but some sources say it'll be equivalent to around $730 when it finally lands on shelves next month.

Design

The design of the Vivo X300 FE reminds me of the iPhone Air, with its elongated camera bar shoved all the way to the top of the frame. However, don't be fooled, this isn't a particularly slim phone. At 8.2mm thick, it's decidedly average.

What is impressively slim is the camera bump. It only protrudes from the rear panel by a few millimetres, and since it's up at the top, it's well out of the way when you're holding it. It also feels surprisingly well-balanced, despite this configuration. I can imagine this setup working well with a MagSafe-compatible case.

I have the Mist Purple version in for testing, which has a very pale lilac rear panel and silver siderails. There's also a white model, complete with a shimmering finish, and darker black and green versions, if you'd prefer something a little more professional-looking.

The phone comes with a basic silicon case in the box, with an opaque matte finish that's color-matched to the phone. I also got a charger and a charging cable with my sample, although I'd imagine that will vary from region to region.

The phone has the usual volume rocker and power button combo on the right-hand side, and there are no additional buttons. Vivo has been a little inconsistent in its approach. The X200 Ultra had a Camera Control-clone, the X300 Pro had an Action Button-clone, while the latest Ultra and FE have neither.

The phone benefits from IP68 and IP69 water and dust resistance. This means it's protected against full submersion, as well as blasts from jets of hot water. So, if you drop your X300 FE at a car wash, it just might live to tell the tale.

One of the defining features of this phone is its size. If you prefer a smaller handset, you're sure to enjoy this. It has a 6.3-inch screen, basically the same size as the base model Galaxy S26, iPhone 17, and Xiaomi 17. It feels much more comfortable in your pocket, and it's much easier to reach the top of the display if you have smaller hands.

Speaking of the display, it's quite impressive. It can reach up to 5000 nits of brightness output in certain conditions, and I never had trouble seeing when out in the spring sunshine. It also has a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, and it's an LTPO panel, which means it can dip down to 1Hz to conserve battery when displaying a static image.

The colours look vivid and accurate, and fairly slim, symmetrical bezels complete the flagship screen experience. I can't help but wish the selfie camera cutout was a little smaller, but hey, it's a lot less intrusive than Apple's pill-shaped void.

Camera Performance

The camera stack on the Vivo X300 FE is largely unchanged from last year. There's still a 50MP main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor, a 50MP 3x telephoto camera (1/1.95-inch), and a rather disappointing 8MP ultrawide with a tiny 1/4-inch sensor.

The only real upgrade is that the main camera now has a slightly wider aperture; it's f/1.57, up from f/1.9, which might help slightly in low light conditions.

Of course, another big change is that the phone is compatible with Vivo's 200mm external teleconverter lens, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to test that. I did have a look through the options in the camera app, and just like its bigger siblings, the teleconverter works across all modes. So, you'll be able to shoot RAW, high-res, or even use portrait mode filters with the external optics.

If you're not so keen on carrying external lenses, the video shooting upgrades might get you more excited. You can now capture up to 8K 30 fps or 4K 120 fps on the main lens. Meanwhile, the telephoto and selfie cameras max out at 4K 60 fps, and the ultrawide is stuck at 1080p 30 fps. I love to see 4K120 becoming more prevalent on affordable devices; it makes such a huge difference for slow motion.

The camera app is largely the same as it is on Vivo's pricier handsets. This means you get the same awesome filters and picture styles, including Zeiss-approved color tuning and bokeh simulations. You can really elevate your photos by playing around with these options. I have become particularly fond of the "Humanistic" street photography mode, which makes the UI look more like a vintage camera, and lets you adjust the film simulations and save them as presets.

You also get a lot of professional settings, including the ability to manually control things like ISO and shutter speed, as well as the option to shoot in RAW. One big difference between this phone and the rest of the X300 lineup, though, is that there's no Log option in video, which I found very disappointing. Vivo has a really good Log profile, and I can't think of a reason why it would be excluded here.

Photo performance is very good on the whole, but this phone has the same limitations as its predecessor. The ultrawide just isn't very good; it really falls apart at night, and it doesn't have autofocus, so it's not very versatile.

The telephoto looks great, but the design of the optics means it doesn't have great macro capabilities. Of course, that's not a massive issue in itself, but with the rest of the X300 lineup excelling in telemacro shooting, this one stands out as a weak performer.

The selfie camera, on the other hand, is a highlight. It has autofocus, so shots always look super sharp, and the ample 50MP resolution means you can take very high-quality images when the light is on your side.

The main camera also offers very strong performance in all lighting conditions. The relatively large sensor and wide aperture mean it's by far the best lens in low light, and Vivo's excellent image processing makes portraits look stunning.

The Vivo X200 FE featured the Aura-light bi-color ring flash that's present on most Vivo V-series phones, but with this model, you get a more traditional single color LED flash. It might not be as flattering for videos, but it works really well for photography. The flash adapts to the focal length you're shooting at, so you'll get a more concentrated flash when using the telephoto, and a wider, more diffused flash for main camera close-ups.

Phone Performance

The Vivo X300 FE is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, which is not to be confused with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 found in the X300 Ultra. It's a powerful chip, and a healthy upgrade over last year's Dimensity 9300+, but it's not on the same level as the top flagship devices. It's paired with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage.

In use, the phone feels flagship-level. It's super speedy, and no matter what I was trying to do, the phone kept up and remained snappy throughout. It's only in benchmark scores, and while playing demanding games, the performance discrepancy becomes apparent. Hardcore gamers may want to look elsewhere, but for everyone else, this handset is more than capable.

The chipset is helped along by Origin OS 6, Vivo's customised version of Android 16. It has a focus on smoothness and efficiency, and it shows. The animations are always smooth and speedy, which makes for a delightful day-to-day experience.

It's also super customisable and has tonnes of gorgeous-looking themes to choose from. There's definitely an Apple influence on the aesthetics, which is very obvious when you see the lock screens with super-sized clocks and Vivo's Dynamic Island impersonation. But they look great, and they're functionally quite useful, so I'm not complaining.

Vivo has extended the software support terms; it's now offering 5 years of major Android OS updates and 7 years of security patches for this model. They're not industry-leading figures, but they're respectable and mean that the X300 FE will remain useful until at least 2033.

The X300 FE has a 6500 mAh battery, which is the same capacity as last year's model, and oddly, larger than the X300 Pro and Ultra (at least in Europe). I would have loved to see an upgrade in capacity, but honestly, the FE doesn't really need it, because the battery life has been excellent throughout my testing.

Despite plenty of screen-on time and camera use, the X300 FE easily lasts me around a day and a half per charge. If I'm more careful, two days on a charge is a possibility, too.

To make matters even better, the X300 FE charges very rapidly. It supports up to 90W speeds with a wire, which will take the phone from dead to 100% charged in just over half an hour. It also adds wireless charging for the first time and boasts up to 40W speeds using Vivo's official wireless pad.

Final Verdict

The Vivo X300 FE is a compact handset with a charming design that's sure to appeal to anyone looking for a smaller phone with quality snappers. I have really enjoyed using it, and while the cameras aren't quite on par with the rest of the X300 lineup, they're still impressive - and I often preferred shots from the X300 FE over similar snaps from the S26 base model.

As for whether it's worth buying, it all depends on the pricing. The cost of Vivo's global models often varies significantly between regions, and my opinion rests on how big the price gap is between this and the standard X300.

The X300 is almost exactly the same size as the FE, but the cameras are much more versatile, and the video capabilities are a big step-up, too. If it won't cost you much more, then it's the obvious choice. However, if the X300 FE is significantly cheaper, then it's a great option, just don't expect too much of the ultrawide camera.

Alternatives

There are countless impressive phones at almost every price point, but in 2025, the Xiaomi 15T Pro managed to stand out from the pack. It offered features that were almost unheard of in the sub-flagship/upper mid-range category, like an excellent 5x telephoto camera, 4K120 recording, and Log at up to 4K60.

Now, after only about 8 months, its successor has landed. I had such a good time with the previous model, I had my hopes up, but at least on the surface, the Xiaomi 17T Pro doesn't look much different.

However, dig a little deeper and you'll find that this phone has a much bigger battery, faster charging, and a newer, quicker processor - as well as some new software features. Is that enough to remain one of the best camera phones in 2026? I've been using it for the past week to find out.

Specifications

Price

The Xiaomi 17T Pro is launching in Europe and the UK, at the time of writing I only have the Euro price, which will be €899 for the 12GB RAM and 512GB storage configuration. Which is €100 more than last year, but with global supply chain shortages, it is hardly a surprise. I'd expect similar price rises in the UK.

That said, the Xiaomi 17T Pro still manages to undercut many flagship rivals, with near enough flagship specs that most people won't even notice what you're missing out on on top end devices.

Design & Handling

As I hinted at earlier, the Xiaomi 17T Pro looks very similar to the 15T Pro. It's the same size and shape, and the only major difference is the lack of a bevelled edge around the camera island. This time around, though, we get some slightly flashier colours.

The phone is available in Black, Deep Violet, and Deep Blue options, and I have the latter in for review. It's a really nice shade of navy blue that looks almost metallic. It's very similar to the finish on the blue Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, and I was a big fan of that one, too.

The 17T Pro looks and feels like a top-tier flagship, with colour-matched aluminium sides and a matte glass-fibre back that doesn't attract fingerprints and smudges. It's weighty and dense, and the boxy corners give off an iPhone-like vibe.

It's a pretty big phone, not too dissimilar to the iPhone 17 Pro Max or Google Pixel 10 Pro XL. It's nothing unusual if you're used to carrying a flagship handset, but if you have smaller hands, it could feel a bit unwieldy.

The Xiaomi 17T Pro comes with a basic matte-black TPU case in the box, so you can keep it protected from the get-go, and it also has a plastic screen protector installed as standard. It's also IP68 certified, so it'll handle a heavy rain shower or a dunk in fresh water without issue.

The screen is completely flat, and it has slim symmetrical bezels on all sides. The specs are identical to last year's model, but that was already an impressive screen, so I have no real complaints about it.

It's an OLED panel with a zippy 144Hz refresh rate, but it's not LTPO, so it'll only dip down to 30Hz to conserve battery life rather than 1Hz. On the other hand, I was impressed that it can dim as low as 1 nit, which makes a big difference when you need to check your phone in the middle of the night.

If you're concerned about eye health, you're going to love this display. It supports DC dimming and carries TUV Rheinland certifications for Low Blue Light, Flicker Free, Circadian Friendliness, and Intelligent Eye Care. In theory, it'll keep your eyes feeling fresh for longer, but I'm not particularly sensitive to such things, so I can't say I noticed a massive difference.

Camera Performance

The camera hardware on the Xiaomi 17T Pro matches that of the 15T Pro. This means you get a 50MP f/1.67 main camera with a 1/1.3-inch sensor, a 50MP f/3.0 5x telephoto, and a slightly less impressive 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide. Around the front, there's a 32MP punch-hole selfie camera.

It's a very impressive camera system overall, but it shares the same shortcomings as the previous generation, so I'll get those out of the way first. The ultrawide lacks autofocus, so it's no use for close-up shots, and the smaller low-resolution sensor isn't very good when the light gets low. The selfie camera also lacks autofocus, and while it's decent, it's not likely to wow you.

When it comes to the main and telephoto cameras, though, it's a different story. The 1/1.3-inch main sensor is the largest you'll find in this price category, and it even matches the base model flagship, the Xiaomi 17. It's excellent in all lighting conditions, and it can produce some lovely natural bokeh when you get a little closer.

The 5x telephoto is also a rarity, with most rivals opting for a 3x lens. This longer focal length helps with long-range zoom and creates a lot of compression, which looks stunning in close-up shots.

I wouldn't say it has macro capabilities, but it can get a lot closer than you might expect; it's able to focus just 30 cm away from the lens. And if you combine that with some digital zoom, you can get in pretty tight. If you want to do this, though, you'll need to turn off the automatic lens switching in the camera settings, as Xiaomi is a little over-enthusiastic about switching back to the main lens.

This phone benefits from Xiaomi's partnership with Leica, which means you get a lot of the same awesome picture profiles as the 17 Ultra. As ever, the film simulations and bokeh styles in portrait mode make taking Instagrammable pics as easy as can be.

What's new with this model is a feature called Leica Live Moment, which basically works like Apple's Live Photos. The difference is that it supports all the picture styles, you can use it in portrait mode, and there are some exclusive Leica watermarks to go along with it.

I'm not a massive fan of this shooting style; I prefer my photos to be photos and my videos to be videos. However, I do see the appeal. The best part is that you can go through the short video clip and choose a different frame if you didn't click at the opportune time, but you also get the ability to share short looping or boomerang-style clips.

Honestly, there's not much new stuff to get excited about here, but regardless, the Xiaomi 17T Pro still stands out as having one of the most impressive camera systems in its class. I was impressed with the results in almost every situation.

Arguably, it's the video features that really set this phone apart. It can shoot in Log at up to 4K60 on the main and telephoto cameras, or 4K30 on the ultrawide. You can even import and apply your own LUTs.

It can also shoot 8K30 and 4K120, but only on the main lens, and not in Log. This is an impressive array of pro video features for a phone of this class, and it easily outshines similarly priced rivals like the Honor 600 Pro and Vivo X300 FE.

Phone Performance

The Xiaomi 17T Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, the same flagship chip that's found in phones like the Oppo Find X9 Pro. It comes with 12GB of RAM and either 512GB or 1TB of storage. The 9500 doesn't quite match Qualcomm's latest in raw gaming performance, but it's still super powerful, and likely more than most people will ever need.

I played a few hours of NTE, a beautiful-looking open-world title that makes even the most powerful phones struggle. I wasn't able to max out the settings, but on the balanced preset, I got a solid 60 fps throughout.

The frame of the phone gets quite warm after a while, but that's not a bad thing, as it means the cooling system is doing its job effectively. If you use the included case or a grip-style controller, it'll keep the heat away from your palms. But even without that, it never gets too uncomfortable.

Of course, outside of gaming, the performance is top-notch, and the phone feels quick even under heavy multitasking.

The software is Hyper OS 3, Xiaomi's custom version of Android 16. There aren't too many surprises here; it has essentially the same look and features as Xiaomi's flagship phones and most Poco phones, too.

There's an obvious Apple influence with some of the styling choices. For example, Xiaomi has its own version of Dynamic Island, some lock screen themes have oversized clocks and depth effects, and the quick settings shade looks very familiar, too. Personally, I'm alright with that; it looks good, and all the features work as they should.

There's also plenty of AI features to play about with, and Google's Gemini and Circle to Search are enabled as standard.

Overall, I had a good time with Hyper OS 3. The only thing that detracts from the experience is that there's a bit of bloatware to clean up when you first set up the phone. It's not a crazy amount, it'll only take a few minutes to uninstall the unwanted apps, but it's a hassle that you might not have to endure on similarly priced mobiles.

The super-sized battery is one of the defining features of the Xiaomi 17T Pro. It has a 7000 mAh pack, the largest in any Xiaomi phone to date, and as you'd expect, the battery life is very impressive. With my typical use, the phone would easily get me through the day, and usually a second morning before I was reaching for the charger.

It's not a bad showing, but the Honor 600 Pro has a significantly smaller battery, and it lasted me longer than this. Perhaps Xiaomi needs to do some more software optimisation. In all fairness, most of my testing was done well ahead of the launch, so there's plenty of opportunity for it to improve further.

As it stands, it's very easy to live with, and part of the reason for that is the extremely quick charging. You get a 100W wall adapter included in the box, and it takes the phone from completely dead to well over 50% charged in half an hour. It also supports wireless charging at up to 50W, but you'll need a suitably powerful official Xiaomi charger to reach that speed.

Verdict

The Xiaomi 17T Pro is a great all-rounder. The cameras are excellent, it's powerful, it looks and feels premium, and it comes at a lower cost than most flagship devices. The only problem is that it's very similar to last year's 15T Pro.

If you own the older model, there's not really any reason to upgrade, unless your battery keeps dying prematurely. And if you're a savvy shopper, opting for the older model, or the frequently discounted base model Xiaomi 17, might make more sense.

That said, if you're looking for a phone in this price range, the Xiaomi 17T Pro still stands out as one of the best options. It has a more versatile camera system and better video features than its closest competitors, the Honor 600 Pro or Vivo X300 FE, and it rivals them in performance, too.

So, while it might not be the most exciting update, the Xiaomi 17T Pro remains competitive in 2026. I had a great time using it, especially the 5x telephoto, which continues to surprise me with its excellent results.

Alternatives

3D scanners have, until recently, been easy to categorize, with a definite split between those aimed at smaller target objects and those aimed at capturing larger subjects. Then there’s the choice of scanning method. Do you opt for IR or laser scanning?

Well, that choice is less of a problem now, with some developers producing tools that encompass all of the above. The Creality Sermoon P1 is just such a device, and it could be the answer for those looking to capture a wide range of objects. The form factor is similar to others on the market, like the Revopoint Miraco, with an all-in-one, portable design that has lenses up front and a big touchscreen behind, and not dissimilar features.

Creality is best known for its range of 3D printers, so it isn’t entirely surprising to see it add to its line of scanners in this way, but is it up to the competition? I spent some time with it to see how it handles scanning a variety of objects and how easily it does so.

Creality Sermoon P1: Specifications

Creality Sermoon P1: Price

The Sermoon P1 comes in at a rather hefty $3,299 / £2,799 / AU$5,499. That is a significant investment, but if you consider that it covers a wide range of scanning jobs, can be used tethered or wirelessly, and has overall excellent performance, it is a reasonable cost. Revopoint’s Miraco costs less but doesn’t quite match the fidelity, frame rate, or arguably the user experience of the Sermoon.

Creality Sermoon P1: Design & Handling

The P1 ships in a semi-rigid case, with shaped inserts to hold everything in place. A nice grab handle is there, but there’s also a shoulder strap inside the case, should you prefer to use that. A couple of pockets in the lid house paperwork, some tracking markers, and a calibration board, and the main compartment contains the main unit, cables, and a spare battery.

The extra battery is a good addition, but I found the release mechanism particularly annoying. Maybe it’s my large hands, but pinching the two release knobs was tricky. They are stiff, and the recesses that allow purchase are really too small. That said, I’d rather have the convenience of swappable batteries with a small struggle than having to recharge and wait to continue a job.

The P1 itself is a really nicely built device, with a mix of material finishes. There’s a harder plastic for the most part, but a soft-touch variation where you interact with it most, making it comfortable to hold while reducing slip risks, which you really don’t want while scanning.

You won’t find many buttons on the P1, as it is mostly controlled by the touchscreen, but there is a power button on the top and a ‘play’ button on the right-hand side. Elsewhere, you’ll find a cooling vent on the underside, next to a ¼"-20 tripod mount.

All the lenses sit on the upper section of the front side, above another vent. Finally, on the top side, there’s a small speaker, used mostly for playback of the built-in video tutorials.

I found the size and weight of the P1 to be just right. Small enough to handle for long scanning sessions but with enough heft to keep the scanning process smooth. If it had been lighter, there would be the possibility of micro jitters, just like with a film camera, and that could cause issues with capture.

Then there is the screen. It’s a six-inch touchscreen, and while I couldn’t find any specifications for it, it is high enough resolution to work with and bright enough (just) for outdoor use. The surface is glossy, so bright skies can be a problem, but it’s all workable.

The touch aspect of the screen is about as good as it gets. I haven’t found myself poking repeatedly, like some devices, and it registers input very well indeed. It feels smooth, accurate, and responsive.

Lastly, if you’re working tethered, there is often anxiety about catching the cable and pulling it out mid-scan. The P1 has a locking USB-C cable, which is great news for a little extra security.

Creality Sermoon P1: Performance

Let’s start by talking about the setup process, which is very well guided, as the P1 has a number of built-in video tutorials. They are well worth watching and will help get you up and running in no time. Having used many 3D scanners, I did consider skipping these, but I'm glad I didn’t, as each device works slightly differently.

Once you’ve watched those and set up the language and Wi-Fi options, you need to calibrate the scanner, which is done by binding it to the calibration board. This is done by using it to capture the QR code on the rear, then running through the calibration process. Again, this is very well guided and is essentially a case of matching the P1 to a virtual version on screen, keeping a target in place. Now, I struggled with this the first time, but that was purely user error, as I hadn’t noticed the orientation of the markers, and they aren’t symmetrical. Once I’d realized my mistake, I flew through the process and was scanning in no time.

The layout of the screen and menus isn’t all that different from other similar devices, but I have to say it’s the clearest I’ve used. The design choices and color schemes make it very easy on the eye, and everything is laid out very nicely, so navigating is a breeze.

To get going, you’ll first need to decide on which scanning method to use, depending on your target. For engineering-type projects, the laser option tends to work best, but you will need to place markers on the object first. For more organic shapes, I find IR is better. There are further options for the laser, and they work best for slightly different applications. The 22 and 7 line modes are good for larger surfaces, without too many recesses to capture. The single-line laser is much better for the finer details and deep recesses.

Luckily, the P1 can utilize all three modes while scanning one object and does a very good job of aligning the separate passes into one cohesive piece of geometry.

Although you can manually adjust the exposure, I found that automatic exposures worked very well, at least in well-lit environments. In darker spaces, manual works better, as boosting the exposure seems to give better results.

While scanning, you can have the P1 automatically remove the base plane, ideal for when you work on a table and don’t want to trim away the unwanted geometry yourself. You can, of course, keep that and deal with it afterwards, and sometimes this might be better, but that will depend on the materials in question and the light in the scene.

Down the right-hand side of the 3D view is a distance scale, color-coded, so it’s easy to see when you are at the optimal distance from your object. It’s a very clear visual that really helps to get the best results, especially if your spatial awareness isn’t great.

Both laser and IR modes feel responsive and smooth when scanning, and if you move a bit too fast around the target, all is not lost. The P1 pops up a message asking you to reorient towards an already-tracked section. At that point, you can continue the scan just a little slower while keeping an eye on the distance.

Results using either method are very good, with excellent resolution, and the resulting meshes are very usable, although for production tasks, you will most likely want to reduce the polygon count, using decimation tools in your 3D software, but that is normal upon importing any scan.

One interesting aspect of the P1 is the three modes it has to work in. Like older scanners, you can run it tethered to your computer via a cable. This does give the highest frame rate of 100fps, but has the obvious disadvantages of a wired connection, mainly the limited working distance from the computer and potential trip hazard from the cable.

Secondly, there's wireless tethering, which still offers an excellent 80fps but reduces the anxiety of pulling a cord. Although the P1 has a locking USB-C port, your computer will likely not. Then there’s the standalone mode, my favorite. This negates all the above worries, meaning you can scan on location, while the lower 60fps frame rate is still very good.

Better yet is the battery life. One battery lasts around an hour of continuous use, which may sound underwhelming, but considering the fact that there’s an 8-core chip running alongside the lasers and sensors, I think that’s more than acceptable. Plus, you get a second battery in the kit, and they are hot swappable, so there’s no downtime while changing to a fresh one. The batteries charge in an hour, too, so you should be able to keep scanning without breaks, so long as you have a charging solution with you.

The P1 will take all of your scan passes and align them into one mesh, which can be saved onboard or offloaded to your computer. As I mentioned, you will want to refine and reduce the geometry, partly for density but also to reduce file sizes. I scanned some objects that were nearly 4GB on the P1 but managed to get them down to a much more manageable 300MB, while retaining fidelity.

Much of the post-processing can be done using Creality’s scan software, but I’d recommend quickly moving the mesh over to your preferred 3D app, which will be where you are most comfortable and will have far more tools for integrating into projects. That said, if all you want to do is create a digital archive or 3D print a copy, the Creality software will work just fine.

If UV unwrapping and painting textures isn’t your thing, don’t worry, as the P1 will also capture color information, which will be automatically applied, so you can export an .obj file with colors applied. Color is captured alongside the 3D scan, and for the most part works fine. I did hit a few issues, with some odd seams, but that’s less a fault of the scanner and more to do with lighting. The P1 can’t account for changes in light conditions, and creating an environment with consistent lighting from all angles is near impossible for the uses the P1 is intended for. That means where one part of the color map is captured next to another section, you may see seams where the brightness changes. It’s fixable in post, so all is not lost, and in a lot of cases, it won’t be too noticeable.

Creality Sermoon P1 Verdict

I don't imagine many casual hobbyists would spend this amount on a 3D scanner, but if you are more of an enthusiast, archivist, or engineering type, then it could be just the ticket. The multiple scanning modes make it ideal for a wide variety of applications and target sizes, and the fact that it has hot-swappable batteries and works standalone means it can be taken anywhere.

Fidelity is excellent too, in all modes, as are both frame rates and tracking stability, so long as you use markers where needed. It's a hefty but fair price tag and, if you're in the market for such a device, it should be on your shortlist.

Alternatives

Sometimes, an event feels so outrageous or unlikely, it's difficult as a journalist to resist the well-worn cliches we're trained to avoid: "You couldn't make it up!"; "It's like something out of Black Mirror!" and so on. Well, such an event has just taken place, and I have to be honest: I'm lost for words. So I'm just going to skip the formalities, and simply tell you what took place.

One of the most famous photographs ever taken, taken by a man who spent his life fighting for photography to be taken seriously as fine art, has now been AI-colorised, printed in editions of ten, and offered for sale at a prestigious New York gallery. Without anyone bothering to ask if that was okay.

As reported by Art News the Danziger Gallery, a well-regarded photography dealer in Manhattan, exhibited what it described as an "A.I. Generated" color version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico at the Association of International Photography Art Dealers' annual show, The Photography Show, at the Park Avenue Armory last month. The show ran from April 22-26 2026. Works at this event have previously sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

The image was created from the prompt "Make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams' iconic 'Moonrise Over Hernandez'" and was then, according to its own description, "proofed, regenerated, and photoshopped" over several months before being printed by master printer Esteban Mauchi in three sizes.

There's just one problem: nobody thought to tell the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust it existed.

Why his legacy matters

Here's some context for the uninitiated. Ansel Adams (1902–1984) was a photographer and environmentalist whose large-format black-and-white landscapes, particularly of the American West, are among the most recognised images in photographic history. He pioneered the Zone System, a technical framework for controlling exposure and development to achieve a full tonal range, and co-founded the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

More than perhaps any other photographer of his era, he dedicated his career to the argument that the camera was as legitimate an artistic tool as a brush or a chisel. Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, shot in 1941, is his most famous single image, and originals have sold at auction for over half a million dollars.

Interestingly, the Trust's public statement, published on Instagram over the weekend, isn't quite the AI-bashing screed you might expect. They were at pains to point out that Adams himself would have been fascinated by AI tools. "Ansel was an innovator who expanded the expressive and technical possibilities of his medium," the statement reads. "He was remarkably prescient about, and excited by, the potential of computers to transform photography."

Their issue, then, isn't the use of AI itself. It's the use of creative content without permission. That's something I obviously feel strongly about myself as a writer, and I'm pretty sure most photographers do too. However James Danziger, the owner of the gallery, doesn't believe he's done anything wrong. “As the image is in the public domain I had every right to create a new and transformative work,” he wrote in a public statement.

Legally speaking, he may well be right. But morally, I'm not so sure. The Trust's statement noted that "few figures fought harder than Ansel to secure photography's place as fine art, or contributed more to the cultural conditions that gave rise to today's photography market." James Danziger talked of his "love of the iconic image"; it's a shame that love didn't extend to a courtesy call.

Back in June 2025 we reported on the Trump T1: the first cell phone to be launched by The Trump Organization; the company behind Donald Trump's business portfolio. At the time the phone was only available to pre-order, with deliveries said to be starting in September 2025. However, that delivery date came and went, and we've still yet to see a T1 actually materialize.

Well, after a long period of silence regarding T1 availability, Trump Mobile has now posted on its Facebook page that:

“Those who pre-ordered the T1 Phone will be receiving an update email. Phones start shipping this week!!!”

If you're wondering why it's taken so long for the T1 to make it to market, company CEO Pat O’Brien told CNN in a statement:

“The technology business is more difficult than some may realize as parts must be tested for quality assurances. With demand being incredibly high, orders are being fulfilled as quickly as possible, and we anticipate all will be completed within the next several weeks.”

It's a pity Trump Mobile didn't anticipate this timescale difficulty before it made its September 2025 retail estimate. But even if you may now actually receive a Trump T1, it might not be the phone you originally signed up for. At the time of its announcement, the most compelling feature of the T1 was that it would be "made in the USA". That sounded great, but right from the off there were major doubts about this actually being possible. With very few domestic manufacturing facilities equipped to produce cell phones, it would have made it tough - if not impossible - to manufacture the T1 on American soil for anything close to the advertised $499 retail price. For context, one of the few existing manufacturers of US-made phones - Purism - produces a handset called the Liberty Phone, but this will set you back a cool $1,999.

Cynical commentators speculated that Trump T1 might actually just be a Chinese phone assembled in the USA. Well, turns out the "Made in USA" claim was soon dropped completely, being instead replaced by “designed with American values in mind”.

As for the tech in the T1, that's also changed since the initial June 2025 announcement. It’s now said to include a triple-camera array consisting of a 50MP primary camera, 8MP ultra-wide module and a 2x telephoto camera. A 50MP front-facing selfie camera sits within the 6.78-inch, 120HZ AMOLED screen, while the phone is powered by a 5000mAh battery capable of 30W fast charging. Other advertised features include a fingerprint sensor and AI Face Unlock. However it’s worth noting that the T1 webpage does state that exact phone specifications, along with the final product appearance, may be subject to change.

Alongside the T1 handset, The Trump Organization will also launch a new wireless service plan. Named The 47 Plan, it costs $47.45 per month, in reference to Donald Trump being the 47th and 45th US president.

Earlier this year at MWC, Honor announced its 200MP AI-powered robot cinema phone. While on the face of it, the Robot Phone resembles almost any other flagship phone designed in recent memory. It’s super thin, has gorgeous rounded corners, and boasts incredibly thin bezels for an edge-to-edge display experience. But it’s none of this that sets the Robot Phone apart from the competition.

It’s actually the strange gimbal camera which protrudes from the top of the phone which is guaranteed to turn heads, but not necessarily for the right reasons. This four-degrees-of-freedom (4DoF) gimbal system is driven by a highly miniaturized internal micro-motor and folks away into the rear panel.

To fit the machinery into a tight 7mm internal chassis, Honor has engineered a micro-motor that is 70% smaller than standard industry components. The mechanical arm is constructed using high-performance titanium and steel alloys, utilizing the same simulation tools and structural materials developed for the company’s Magic V6 foldable hinge.

While the phone effectively addresses the consumer demand for stabilized, high-quality social video, the industry is not so sure this is the answer. As strong as the mechanical arm is, it’s always going to be vulnerable to getting knocked and damaged. It's also unlikely to ever outperform the best smartphone gimbals. And would you ever want this thing in your pocket?

Could the ARRI partnership be the difference?

As well as a feat of engineering, the Robot Phone marks the debut of a collaboration between Honor and ARRI, the Academy Award-winning industry leader in professional cinematography equipment. For the first time, core elements of ARRI’s renowned image science are integrated directly into a consumer smartphone, aiming to deliver natural color reproduction and cinema-grade highlight roll-off.

This partnership will undoubtedly turn heads. ARRI has a proven track record, and the thought of being able to harness their technology within a smartphone gimbal means it won't be discounted out of hand. Users will love the natural reproduction of skin tones as well as the gentle highlight roll-off for bright areas. This will all be made possible by the 200MP sensor, which is tuned to preserve a natural sense of dimension and depth of field.

When is it coming?

Honor has officially confirmed that the Robot Phone will launch in Q3 of 2026, which means anytime between July and September. Like many of Honor's high-concept tech devices, it will launch in China first. After its initial Chinese release, Honor will decide whether there's market demand to go for a global release.

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Here's something you don't see very often: a double-sided monitor! The new Philips 24B2D5300 is equipped with two 23.8” IPS LCD panels (placed back-to-back), each displaying at Full HD resolution with a 120 Hz refresh rate.

Though positioned as a business monitor, with obvious use cases being point of sale or front desk applications, the display could also work well for professional photographers shooting tethered, allowing clients to easily review images from their position on set, without needing to physically move to the photographer's location.

The 24B2D5300 allows you to display two separate video feeds on each screen in SmartView mode, or alternatively the display can be configured in DualView mode, whereby the rear screen can mirror or extend the primary display. Applications and sensitive information can be set to only be visible on one side of the monitor, with the other side reserved for customer-facing information. It's also possible for two people to work simultaneously on either screen, while the 180-degree swivel base makes it easy to collaborate between two users.

The monitor is also USB-C compatible, ensuring stress-free connectivity with compatible computers. Two USB-C ports are provided so each display can function as an independent monitor, enabling the 24B2D5300 to be used in place of two standalone monitors. Each USB-C connection can output up to 65W to power a connected laptop, plus there are dual HDMI ports if you want to simultaneously connect two computers that don't support USB-C.

The Philips 24B2D5300 dual-sided monitor will be available to buy in June 2026, priced at £359.99. Pricing in other regions has yet to be announced.

Adobe’s Agentic AI – the AI that runs tasks for you – has only just arrived on scene, but Adobe is already bringing the ability to use apps like Photoshop and Premiere into Google’s AI. During Google I/O, the two companies announced that Adobe apps will soon connect to Gemini.

The move will allow Gemini users to describe what they want while the agentic AI moves through the steps inside Adobe apps, including photo, video, and design software. Adobe says that users will also be able to continue working on the project inside the Adobe app itself or with Adobe Firefly.

The Gemini-Adobe integration will arrive “in the coming weeks” and Adobe hasn’t spelled out details on exactly what the agentic AI can and cannot do yet. But a few examples of how the integration has been used in existing agentic options offers hints that using Gemini will allow photographers to edit images without the back-and-forth between Lightroom and Photoshop.

Photographers can already use Firefly AI Assistant to edit photos across both Lightroom and Photoshop without the constant switch between the apps. As Adobe explains, one photographer using Firefly AI Assistant “let the assistant work through it step by step, connecting the right Adobe tools, checking in for feedback, and moving forward only when he approved.”

The example of getting feedback at every step is an important one. I’ve tested the agentic AI inside the beta version of Photoshop Web, and it felt a bit like an overenthusiastic photo intern – I didn’t always get the results I had asked for.

I’ve also tried ChatGPT’s Photoshop integration and was surprised at how the chatbot leaned towards a learning experience rather than an easy fix – and I’m hopeful that the ucpming Adobe-Gemini could similarly be used to learn the steps of more complex edits.

Another important distinction is that while Agentic AI is built on generative AI, Agentic AI can be used without generating a new image. The AI assistant in the beta Photoshop Web, for example, walks through the same steps in Photoshop that I would manually adjust – it doesn’t generate new pixels unless using a generative tool like Generative Fill.

Gemini will soon join Adobe’s own Firefly AI Assistant and Claude as AIs that are capable of carrying out steps inside Adobe apps, including Premiere, Illustrator and Express as well as Photoshop.

Adobe says that “we’re just getting started" with agentic AI. “There’s tremendous momentum around agentic creativity and we have a great roadmap that we’re bringing creators,” Adobe’s Forest Key, Vice President for Agentic AI for Creativity & Productivity Business, wrote in a blog post. “But what excites us most is what creators are already doing with these tools. The workflows you’re inventing. The ideas you’re bringing to life that simply weren't feasible before.”

Adobe hasn’t yet shared the cost of the tool. However, it’s based on the existing connector that works with Claude, which includes around 40 tools free, with additional tools for creators with Adobe subscriptions.

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Google’s Nano Banana brought an AI photo generator that could create images that resembled real people – and now Google is giving the same treatment to generated video. During Google I/O, the tech giant announced Gemini Omni, a new AI that allows users to generate video from existing videos, photos, or text.

Like Gemini 2.5 Flash Image – better known by its viral code name Nano Banana – Gemini Omni aims to keep the likeness of the person in the inspiration photo or video intact, a task that generative AI has historically had difficulty with.

Gemini Omni – a name that’s just as much of a mouthful as Nano Banana – can generate ten-second video clips, including audio, using existing photos, videos, text prompts, or a combination of those three. Google calls it “Like Nano Banana, but for video.”

The ability to generate videos from existing videos allows users to reimagine footage. Google says that Gemini Omni can transform a character, an object, or the environment “without ever losing the thread of your original scene." That even includes changing the camera angle, as well as the style of the video.

The launch notably comes after OpenAI shuttered its video generator Sora. Google says that Omni will replace its earlier video generator, Veo, inside the Gemini app.

One of the reasons that Google says that Omni is the video version of Nano Banana is that the new AI tool uses avatars. Like with Nano Banana, Google says that digital avatars allow creators to generate videos that still look like themselves.

I tried generating images of myself using Nano Banana when it first came out, and the experiment was both impressive and a bit terrifying. I still haven’t forgotten the images that resulted from that experiment.

The ability to generate videos that look like real people – and have a realistic look to them, as Google says – likely come with some risks. The launch is already raising questions, introducing more “AI slop” in an era where many social media users already complain about AI-generated content.

In a Reddit forum, one user said that making four videos took up an entire Pro Plan usage window. Another commented that “censorship is crazy tight,” suggesting there’s at least some guardrails in place to prevent AI misuse like generating fake political news or graphic content.

But, the slew of AI-related announcements coming out of Google I/O also includes more ways for users to detect if something is AI-generated. The Gemini app already has the ability to detect AI-generated images and videos that use the SynthID watermark, and Google is now rolling out the feature to Search. It will also be added to Chrome “in the coming weeks.”

The Omini-generated videos will come with a SynthID watermark, which means that a check in the Gemini App, Gemini inside Google Chrome, or a check using Google Search will indicate that the video is AI-generated.

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I was fortunate enough to see The Rolling Stones in 2018 and I can tell you that they didn’t need ‘deepfaking’ then. It would seem that 82 is just a number for Mick, in particular, who is known for being incredibly dedicated to maintaining his fitness so he can strut his stuff when the band goes on the road. So, when The Stones released the music video for their latest track In The Stars, I was somewhat surprised to find that they’d been digitally de-aged.

As a bit of a music nerd, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what period the music video is set. Ronnie Wood joined the band in 1975 to replace the outgoing Mick Taylor, so I think the mid ‘70s is a safe bet. So, let’s get the not-so-controversial bit out of the way first. In The Stars is an absolute banger. It really does sound like a forgotten deep cut from the band’s heyday.

I was invested right from the opening piano riff and falsetto chorus of “oohs”, but when the video cuts to Keith picking up his famous butterscotch Telecaster ‘Micawber’, and Mick pouts “One, two, free, and…” I knew I was in for a treat. The punchy riff that kicks in afterwards, guitars right on the edge of breakup, transports you right back to the ‘70s. And you know what else does? The youthfulness of Mick’s face.

In the video, Mick, Keith and Ronnie have all been transported back in time via the power of deepfake technology from Deep Voodoo, founded by none other than Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. This is the same technology that was used on Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 The Heart Part 5 music video, transforming the rapper’s face into various likenesses including OJ Simpson, Kanye West, and Kobe Bryant.

It was also used to de-age Billy Joel in his music video for his first song release in over 15 years, 2024’s Turn the Lights Back On. I'm not an animation expert, I don't know how these deepfakes were created, but Deep Voodoo describes itself as an "artificial intelligence entertainment startup" and AI is heavily used in deepfake technology.

Anything AI related is going to cause heated discussions and I’ve repeatedly stated that I’m no fan of many generative-AI uses. As much as I like Kendrick Lamar, superimposing other likenesses onto another person’s face just doesn’t sit right with me. However, in the case of both Billy Joel and The Rolling Stones, I find the usage to be less offensive.

Retaining the human element

Firstly, the deepfakes are depicting the artists themselves. They’re fully aware of what’s being done to their likenesses. And that’s important, because a huge ethical question mark hanging over genAI is the scraping of other artists’ works. However, these deepfakes aren’t sampling creative works to form a rival creative work, they’re reproducing the likeness of a person who already exists. To me, that hits differently than, say for example, if the videos depicted a stylized, animated cartoon.

Cartoons have art styles, they require concept artists, animators, etc, so I’d question where that deepfake is getting its artstyle from. As an aside, I couldn’t help but notice that the likeness of The Stones’ late-great drummer, Charlie Watt, has not been reproduced for the music video. Now, I didn’t know Charlie personally and I don’t know The Stones, so this is pure conjecture, but I can only assume this was intended as a mark of respect.

Another big reason why I’m less annoyed by this usage of genAI is that all three videos have one thing in common. They are all real. They weren’t simply created using a prompt. Judging by the long list of contributors including DPs, directors, makeup artists, actors, etc, there is a strong human element to these videos.

The deepfakery was applied to real footage of real people and captured in a setup designed and produced by real people. I’ll leave you to watch the video and decide for yourself: A time-travelling celebration of The Stones, a creative faux pas or simply a step too far into the uncanny valley?

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Thought the article was over? When you start me up, I'll never stop, so here are a few more article recommendations for you. On the subject of AI: Even Marvel artists aren't immune to being replaced by AI – and I believe Disney is on the cusp of another ‘Dark Age'. Why the AI ick means retro-style photos, videos and cameras are here to stay. Plus, an owl photo was dethroned from wildlife comp amid backlash: GenAI paranoia is ruining photography contests.

Canon has expanded its major firmware rollout, with updates for the PowerShot V1 and EOS R50 V alongside seven other EOS R-series cameras already covered in our earlier report.

These two creator-focused cameras are part of the same broader update cycle, bringing new features to Canon's flagship compact camera and its first V Series interchangeable lens model. The updates go beyond routine fixes, adding meaningful video and workflow improvements aimed at content creators.

Both cameras gain expanded support for Canon's "AF for close-up demos" mode during manual movie shooting, while the EOS R50 V also receives advanced filmmaking tools like False Color exposure assist and grid display during recording.

PowerShot V1

Canon PowerShot V1 – Version 1.2.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds the ability to set [AF for close-up demos] during movie recording in [Movie manual exp.], [Movie auto exposure], and other Creative Zone modes to allow for its use in combination with exposure and AF area settings
2. Adds support for the Wireless Remote Controller BR-E2
3. Adds [Live Switcher Mobile Streaming] to Communication Settings
4. Fixes an issue that may impact the camera's ability to operate properly when shooting with the touch shutter in an extremely dark environment
5. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB
6. Improves other system stability

EOS R50 V

Canon EOS R50 V – Version 1.2.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

1. Adds the ability to set [AF for close-up demos] during movie recording in [Movie manual exp.], [Movie auto exposure], and other Creative Zone modes to allow for its use in combination with exposure and AF area settings
2. Adds [Wi-Fi freq. band] to [Communication Settings], allowing the user to select the 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz band when transferring from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi
3. Adds the ability to set [False Color Settings] to [On] when [HDR/C.Log View Assist] is selected
4. Adds the option for grid display during movie recording
5. Adds support for the Wireless Remote Controller BR-E2
6. Improves display settings when using the RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens and adds [3:2] and [1:1] as new selectable options for [Still img. aspect ratio]
7. Adds support for the Software Development Assistance Kit (EDSDK/CCAPI)
8. Fixes an issue that may impact the camera's ability to operate properly when shooting with the touch shutter in an extremely dark environment
9. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB
10. Improves other system stability

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A few months ago, photographers and filmmakers were mourning the closure of a little-known color-grading program called Color.io. And now, its development company Patchflyer GmbH has been bought by Apple. News of the acquisition, which took place with little to no fanfare, was broken by MacRumors and follows the company’s Founder and CEO, Jonathan Ochmann, announcing that he was moving to an undisclosed company, as reported on at the time by CineD. Well, now we know that undisclosed company was Cupertino’s most famous resident.

What was Color.io?

While Patchflyer GmbH is over a decade old, Color.io was only released in 2023. It was billed as a browser-based all-in-one RAW-image processor, 3D LUT creator and film emulator, with the latter proving a particularly big hit with its user base. The software was coveted for its realistic-looking film presets and halation effects, allowing filmmakers to turn out cinematic colors and photographers to give their digital imagery an authentic analog-era look.

What is Apple planning?

It’s not hard to ponder why Apple moved to acquire Color.io. And indeed, MacRumors has already theorized that the software could be integrated into existing Apple software such as Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro. The move comes at a time when Apple seems to be shoring up its creative software offering. At the beginning of the year, Cupertino announced a subscription bundle, Creator Studio, which includes Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, and various other apps. And back in March, MacRumors also reported on the company's acquisition of video-editing plugin company, MotionVFX.

Despite Apple’s status as an absolute titan of consumer tech, its creative software offerings face fierce competition in what has become a crowded and highly competitive sphere. Not only do you have established big hitters like Adobe’s Creative Cloud and Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve, but Canva’s decision to make Affinity free has certainly made waves within the industry, and that’s before you consider the raft of AI-editing programs that are popping up. Anything that could potentially make Apple’s established creative software suite stand out seems like a good idea to me.

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Sony has released firmware version 2.0 for the Sony A7 V, introducing a suite of new features – most notably support for 32-bit float audio recording and expanded filmmaking tools, further positioning the camera as a professional hybrid production rig.

The update adds 32-bit float and 96kHz audio recording support when the camera is paired with Sony’s XLR-A4 audio adapter.

If you're unfamiliar, 32-bit float is widely used in professional filmmaking as it enables significantly greater dynamic audio range and reduces the risk of clipped recordings – especially when filming in unpredictable environments such as live events or while running and gunning.

Firmware version 2.0 highlights Sony’s increasing focus on hybrid creators demanding advanced stills, video and audio capabilities in a single camera.

Competition in the mirrorless market has shifted towards creator-oriented features, with manufacturers increasingly focusing on improving professional video capabilities without requiring users to buy a dedicated cinema camera.

Sony has also expanded “Preset Focus” functionality to support zoom lenses without power zoom capability. The feature enables users to save and instantly recall focus positions, making repeatable cinematic focus transitions and interview setups easier when using standard zoom lenses.

Additional changes include decimal-point focal length display for more precise framing, as well as a fix for a recording issue affecting the Sony ECM-M1 microphone. Sony also said that the update includes broader operational stability improvements but, as usual, didn’t expand on what this line means.

Firmware version 2.0 doesn’t fundamentally affect the A7 V’s hardware capabilities. It does, however, bolster Sony’s broader strategy of turning its Alpha lineup into ever-more capable hybrid production tools for creators wanting compact alternatives to larger and more expensive cinema-focused cameras.

The firmware update is available to download directly from Sony.

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Canon has released a broad range of firmware updates for seven EOS R-series mirrorless cameras, including significant feature updates for two flagship models.

Firmware updates overview
Canon EOS R3 – Version 2.1.0
Canon EOS R10 – Version 1.8.0
Canon EOS R6 Mark II – Version 1.7.0
Canon EOS R8 – Version 1.6.0
Canon EOS R100 – Version 1.3.0
Canon EOS R5 Mark II – Version 1.3.0
Canon EOS R1 – Version 1.3.0

While cameras like the EOS R100 and EOS R8 mainly receive smaller fixes and system stability improvements, the EOS R5 Mark II and EOS R1 gain more substantial upgrades. These include the first major update to Canon's Action Priority mode, alongside additional features and performance enhancements.

R3

Canon EOS R3 – Version 2.1.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds [Wi-Fi freq. band] to [Communication Settings], allowing the user to select the 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz band when transferring from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi
2. Adds the ability to switch the group settings of a receiver camera from the sender camera when using the EOS Multi Remote app
3. Fixes an issue that may cause Err49 to be displayed repeatedly during communication with an SFTP server
4. Improves other system stability

R10

Canon EOS R10 – Version 1.8.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds support for the Software Development Assistance Kit (EDSDK)
2. Fixes an issue that may cause Err70 to be displayed during Bluetooth communication due to interference from other Bluetooth devices
3. Fixes an issue that may cause Err70 to be displayed when repeatedly shooting in the "High-speed continuous shooting +" mode
4. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB
5. Improves other system stability

R6 II

Canon EOS R6 Mark II – Version 1.7.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds [Wi-Fi freq. band] to [Communication Settings], allowing the user to select the 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz band when transferring from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi
2. Adds support for the Software Development Assistance Kit (CCAPI)
3. Fixes an issue that may cause image transfers to an FTP server to fail and for Err41 to be displayed
4. Fixes an issue that may cause Err49 to be displayed repeatedly during communication with an SFTP server
5. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB
6. Fixes an issue that may cause a horizontal line to appear momentarily in the viewfinder
7. Improves other system stability

R8

Canon EOS R8 – Version 1.6.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Improved operational stability
2. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB

R100

Canon EOS R100 – Version 1.3.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds support for the Software Development Assistance Kit (EDSDK)
2. Improves other system stability

R5 II

Canon EOS R5 Mark II – Version 1.3.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds [American Football] in [Action Priority] to optimize human subject detection for individuals wearing helmets and shoulder pads
*For an overview and instructions on using [Action Priority], please refer to the Instruction Manual or the AF Settings Guide
2. Improves tracking and detection performance for [Register people priority] in challenging conditions-including profile views, blurred or partially obscured faces, small subjects in the frame, and children-even when the feature is set to [Off]
*Performing a firmware update will delete registered data stored in the camera. If necessary, save the data in advance using [Save/load registered data on card], and reload it after the firmware update. For details, please refer to the Instruction Manual
3. Adds the ability to set [AF for close-up demos] during movie recording in [Movie manual exp.], [Movie auto exposure], and other Creative Zone modes to allow for its use in combination with exposure and AF area settings
4. Adds [Wi-Fi freq. band] to [Communication Settings], allowing the user to select the 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz band when transferring from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi
5. Adds [No. of connections] to [FTP transfer settings], allowing the user to select the number of transfer threads for [FTP transfer]
6. Adds the ability to store up to four [Color temp] values in [White balance setting] and to assign [Switch color temperature] to [Customize buttons for shooting]
7. Adds the ability to set [False Color Settings] to [On] when [HDR/C.Log View Assist] is selected
8. Adds the ability to assign [Pre-continuous Shooting] to [Customize buttons for shooting]
9. Adds the ability to transfer AF-related settings between cameras of the same model by adding [Save to card] and [Load from card] to [Register/recall AF-related settings]
10. Adds the ability to display the electronic level during movie recording
11. Adds the option for grid display during movie recording
12. Adds the ability to display playback screens and menu screens when outputting to two screens via [HDMI Display During Connection]
13. Adds the ability to switch the group settings of a receiver camera from the sender camera when using the EOS Multi Remote app
14. Adds support for DPRAW shooting
15. Adds support for the Software Development Assistance Kit (EDSDK/CCAPI).
16. Fixes an issue that may cause Err49 to be displayed repeatedly during communication with an SFTP server
17. Fixes an issue that may impact the camera's shooting ability if the auto power-off function is activated during interval timer shooting
18. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to restart when the shutter button is pressed while deleting images
19. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB
20. Improves other system stability

R1

Canon EOS R1 – Version 1.3.0
UK: More information & download link
US: More information & download link

Improvements
1. Adds [American Football] in [Action Priority] to optimize human subject detection for individuals wearing helmets and shoulder pads
*For an overview and instructions on using [Action Priority], please refer to the Instruction Manual or the AF Settings Guide
2. Improves tracking and detection performance for [Register people priority] in challenging conditions-including profile views, blurred or partially obscured faces, small subjects in the frame, and children-even when the feature is set to [Off]
*Performing a firmware update will delete registered data stored in the camera. If necessary, save the data in advance using [Save/load registered data on card], and reload it after the firmware update. For details, please refer to the Instruction Manual
3. Adds [Wi-Fi freq. band] to [Communication Settings], allowing the user to select the 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz band when transferring from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi
4. Adds [No. of connections] to [FTP transfer settings], allowing the user to select the number of transfer threads for [FTP transfer]
5. Adds the ability to store up to four [Color temp] values in [White balance setting] and to assign [Switch color temperature] to [Customize buttons for shooting]
6. Adds the ability to set [False Color Settings] to [On] when [HDR/C.Log View Assist] is selected
7. Adds the ability to assign [Pre-continuous Shooting] to [Customize buttons for shooting]
8. Adds the ability to transfer AF-related settings between cameras of the same model by adding [Save to card] and [Load from card] to [Register/recall AF-related settings]
9. Adds the ability to display the electronic level during movie recording
10. Adds the option for grid display during movie recording
11. Adds the ability to display playback screens and menu screens when outputting to two screens via [HDMI Display During Connection]
12. Adds the ability to switch the group settings of a receiver camera from the sender camera when using the EOS Multi-Remote app
13. Adds the [Night Display Mode] menu option
14. Fixes an issue that may cause Err70 to be displayed in live view when the user captured a multiple-exposure shot in a dark environment
15. Fixes an issue that may cause Err49 to be displayed repeatedly during communication with an SFTP server
16. Fixes an issue that may impact the camera's shooting ability if the auto power-off function is activated during interval timer shooting
17. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to restart when the shutter button is pressed while deleting images
18. Fixes an issue that may cause the camera to not be recognized when connected to a smartphone via USB
19. Improves other system stability

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Fresh off earning an iF Design Award for delivering "superior performance, including advanced shooting functions from higher-end models," the Nikon Z5 II is now getting a firmware refresh.

While the release doesn't add major new features, Nikon has quietly refined the camera's lens and aperture behavior during standby operation – a subtle improvement for the camera's shooting performance.

If you use the Nikon Z5 II, this is one update worth knowing about. Here are the notes from Nikon:

New firmware: Nikon Z5 II

Firmware Ver.1.11

Update
The firmware update Ver.1.10 to Ver.1.11 incorporates: Changed the way the aperture was adjusted on a lens when the standby timer expired.

Caution: Updating the Firmware
Do not update the camera firmware with lenses other than Z-mount Nikkor lenses or mount adapters other than FTZ II / FTZ attached; failure to observe this precaution could result in camera malfunction.

Pairing the SnapBridge App with Your Camera (Bluetooth)
A camera previously registered to SnapBridge may not automatically reconnect after the camera "C" firmware was updated from version 1.00. This does not indicate a malfunction as it is due to the change in camera display name following the "C" firmware update to version 1.01. Select [Forget camera] on the SnapBridge app and pair your camera with the app again.

Pro Advice

If you caught Episode 4 of Bokeh Face: The Digital Camera World podcast, we discussed the best time to install firmware updates, why they matter, but also what issues they can cause. It's a helpful listen if you're unsure when – or if – you should update.

It's smart to wait a week or two after release to see if any users hit snags. In the past, brands have had a few hiccups with major updates – for instance, introducing memory-setting bugs or minor interface glitches before being reissued.

Such problems are less likely this time, as Ver. 1.11 is a very minor update, but it always pays to be safe!

You can check out the episode for more insights, potential risks, and expert advice on our YouTube channel,Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all your favorite podcast services.

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Read more about what firmware updates are, and if you really need to install them.

"The world’s first slim laptop power bank with a replaceable battery" has launched on Kickstarter. At just 12mm thick, Edge by British brand Krafted is designed to sit "neatly" under your laptop, geared toward portability while also being more environmentally friendly than alternatives.

The replaceable battery and recycled materials certainly gain sustainability points. But the Edge also promises to "extend your laptop power by 4x and your phone by 5x" despite its ultra-thin footprint that's designed to sit neatly beneath your laptop – with silicone bars providing airflow and ventilation.

The ultra-slim design is, of course, the big attention-grabber. And, while not pocket-sized (being 12.88mm at its thickest, 270mm long, and 190mm wide), the device will fit into practically any backpack and certainly the laptop sleeve of a camera backpack.

With two USB-C and two USB-A outputs, you can charge multiple devices at once, with Krafted claiming the 65W output is powerful enough to charge a MacBook or Dell XPS at "full speed". (Which is a strong feature on paper, but “full speed” does sound a little vague for my liking – so concrete stats wouldn’t go amiss.)

According to the company, most standard power banks are sealed units that normally end up in landfill within "three to five years". Krafted, however, is vying for more sustainable electronics.

The Edge's 20,000mAh battery features a modular cassette design – which means when the internal cells eventually wear out, you only replace those while keeping the hardware in use.

The construction also looks to bolster the Edge’s sustainable credentials, with an aluminum alloy 7075 body and an OBP-certified ocean-bound plastic top panel. Finally, a braided fabric cable featuring a magnetic metal connector at one end and a plant-based faux-leather tag at the other is built into the device.

The Edge is now available for backing on Kickstarter, where it has already smashed its goal by over 440% ahead of the June 10 campaign end date.

It carries an Early Bird price of $139 (around £103 / AU$192), with the regular retail price being $159 (£118 / AU$220). Shipping is expected to begin in July.

Editor's note: As with all crowdfunding projects, there is no guarantee that the final product will match the early depictions in the campaign – or that the final product will be completed or delivered at all. DCW does not endorse this or any other crowdfunding campaign.

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VSCO has launched a new brand campaign in what it says reaffirms the company’s commitment to photographers amid claims that "photography is dying" as social media platforms push trends and AI-generated imagery proliferates.

Launched May 12, the campaign aims to inspire photographers to remain dedicated to the craft at a time when VSCO says photography has “never mattered more.” Along with staving off fears of an AI takeover, VSCO also hopes to shine a “rare spotlight” on the creative process and rigor that goes into crafting photos and videos.

The in-house campaign revolves around the work of two New York-based photographers, Jared Thomas Tapy and Ivana Cajina, both VSCO users who were chosen for their "distinct visual perspective,” with a combination of digital, 35mm, and medium format film cameras employed for the project.

Spearheading the campaign messaging is a letter from company CEO, Eric Wittman who says: “Your eyes, the way you see the world, can't be generated. It can't be prompted. It's irreplaceable,” with Cajina reflecting the sentiment in an interview: “I truly don't believe AI can replace us.”

These words, and the campaign as a whole, take flight as the industry sees huge shifts, with photographers, including myself, lamenting the use of AI to generate images, but increasingly using the technology to make lighter work of the more repetitive, less-creative tasks in post-production.

In fact, VSCO recently published the results of a survey it conducted that highlighted 83% of photographers now use AI in their workflows in some capacity. The VSCO mobile app includes several AI tools, but in a letter to photographers, Whittman reaffirmed the company's commitment to "workflows that get out of your way."

Now, just to be clear, something tells me VSCO did not launch this new initiative purely out of goodwill, as speckled throughout the campaign webpages is a healthy number of opportunities to sign up to one of the platform’s subscriptions.

However, from my perspective, the company seemingly strikes a balance between championing photographers and pushing commercial aims.

The new VSCO campaign rolls out in May across TV, social, and digital out-of-home placements in major U.S. cities, including Austin, TX, New York, NY, and San Francisco, CA.

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EIZO is set to reveal its first OLED monitor in its ColorEdge series of premium displays designed with photo and video editors firmly in mind. Until now the respected monitor brand has focussed on high quality IPS LCD panels, but with the increased contrast, vibrancy and color space coverage that OLED is capable of, it makes sense for EIZO to exploit this next-generation monitor technology.

As yet we've only got a teaser for the new display, but we know it'll be a 31.5-inch, 4K (3840 x 2160) panel featuring an anti-glare, low-reflection coating. It's also an HDR display, thanks to a healthy 1,500,000:1 contrast ratio, and what will also presumably be a high maximum screen brightness. This level of OLED contrast can result in color fringing around high-contrast details like black text on a white background, but EIZO says it has developed its own circuitry which is able to minimize such aberrations.

There are currently no statistics available for the monitor's exact color space coverage, but EIZO is keen to promote its custom ABL (Auto Brightness Limiter) system. The purpose of ABL is to lower overall screen brightness in order to protect an OLED panel during bright scenes. However, an unwanted side effect is often the altering of tonal balance and color perception. EIZO says it has engineered a more refined approach that maintains tonal accuracy and color stability, as well as preserving brightness across a greater proportion of the image.

EIZO's OLED display will also allow you to choose between Highlight Dimming and Uniform dimming, so can opt to preserve mid- and low-tones as the screen will intelligently dim only highlight areas. The Uniform Dimming option reduces brightness evenly across the entire image for a consistent balance between light and dark areas.

In keeping with recent high-end EIZO monitors, the new OLED display will also feature hardware calibration, along with a built-in colorimeter for totally automated self calibration: a handy feature which ensures consistent color accuracy with zero inconvenience to your workflow.

If you can't wait for the full launch of EIZO's first OLED ColorEdge display and you're in the UK, you can preview it in person right now at the 2026 MPTS show in London, stand M60.

Sony has announced the Xperia 1 VIII, its latest flagship smartphone, and once again, the emphasis is firmly on photography with hardware upgrades for the cameras and an interesting, perhaps controversial, new AI Camera Assistant feature that thinks it can make you a better, or at least, less involved, photographer.

Let's start with that new AI Camera Assistant, powered by Sony’s Xperia Intelligence. When you open the camera, it can analyze a scene and suggest one-click creative options, including color tones, lens choices, and bokeh effects. Sony says the recommendations are based on its Creative Look system, drawing on imaging ideas developed through its Alpha camera line, with the aim of helping you get more creative results without having to actually manually do any settings or editing.

I get that some people just want photos without the photography – and this is perfect for that, but firstly, I’m just not sure those people are buying an Xperia phone, which are generally renowned for their often quite geeky cameras. But also, it is a strange move from the world’s largest photography company to want to encourage people to do less actual photography. I know no one is forcing you to use these AI features, but it just feels like another little step in AI devaluing the skills of photographers.

But onto the phone hardware, and the telephoto camera has had a significant update, dropping the interesting, but expansive, 85-170mm mechanically zooming lens for a fixed 70mm equivalent focal length. The Xperia 1 VIII telephoto uses a new 1/1.56-inch sensor, which Sony says is around four times larger than the sensor used in the Xperia 1 VII – although not quite as large as many rival Ultra phones. But it should be a step forward for better long-range shooting in lower light, where telephoto cameras on phones often struggle most.

Sony says all three rear cameras, covering 16mm, 24mm, and 70mm focal lengths, deliver low-light performance comparable to a full-frame sensor in terms of noise reduction and dynamic range – on which I eagerly await our review (coming soon). The phone also applies RAW multi-frame processing across all lenses, combining HDR expansion with noise reduction to preserve detail in both highlights and shadows.

Style-wise, the Xperia 1 VIII also has had a significant redesign – introducing a new “ORE” design, inspired by natural textures and gemstones. It will be available in Graphite Black, Iolite Silver, Garnet Red, and a limited Native Gold, with tactile surface textures intended to improve grip. Sony’s dedicated camera shutter button remains, as does the 3.5mm headphone jack – a rarity on modern flagship phones.

Otherwise, the phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform, with Sony claiming a 20% performance boost over the previous model. Sony rates battery life at up to two days and four years of battery health. There is also a Bravia-branded screen and Sony Walkman audio.

The Xperia 1 VIII is available to pre-order now, priced at £1,399 / €1,499 for the 256GB model, and during the pre-order period, Sony is bundling its WH-1000XM6 headphones.

A 1TB Native Gold version will be sold exclusively through Sony online stores in select countries for £1,849 / €1,999.