Welcome to the first iPhoto News of August. High summer is usually the quiet season for camera news, but this fortnight has been anything but quiet — and one story could shape what you pay for lenses for years to come.
I have six stories for you: a takeover bid nobody saw coming, the best excuse of the year to stay up after dark, some remarkably cheap glass, a lens that magnifies ten times over, and a useful lesson in not believing everything you read about discontinued cameras.
Make a cup of tea. This one is worth five minutes.
Sony wants to buy Tamron — and that matters to all of us
On 30 July, Tamron confirmed it had received a non-binding proposal from Sony to buy the company outright and turn it into a wholly owned subsidiary. Sony already holds just over 15% of Tamron, making it the second-largest shareholder behind Singapore-based Effissimo Capital Management on roughly 17%. Tamron is valued at around 200 billion yen, its share price jumped almost 29% on the news, and the board has set up a special committee to weigh the offer up.
Here is why I think this is the story of the fortnight.
Tamron is one of the reasons photography has stayed affordable. Lenses like the 17-70mm F/2.8 and the 28-75mm F/2.8 gave Sony, Nikon Z, Canon RF and Fujifilm X owners a route into fast zooms without paying own-brand prices. If Sony owns Tamron outright, the obvious question is whether those lenses keep appearing for rival mounts, or quietly stop.
Nothing has been agreed, and non-binding means exactly that — there may be no deal at all. So no need to panic-buy. But if a Tamron lens has been sitting on your wishlist at a genuinely good price, I would not leave it there for six months either.
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The best Perseid meteor shower in years peaks this month
The Perseids build through August and peak from late on 12 August into the pre-dawn hours of 13 August. This year the timing is close to perfect: the peak falls on a new moon, so there is no moonlight washing the sky out. Under genuinely dark skies you could see up to 100 meteors an hour, with the best rates between roughly 2am and first light.
You do not need specialist kit for this, which is the lovely part. A camera on a tripod, a wide-angle lens at its widest F/stop, ISO 1600 to 3200, and exposures of around 15 to 20 seconds aimed at a dark patch of sky will do the job. Shoot far more frames than you think you need and accept that most will come back empty — meteors are luck, and luck rewards patience.
Pergear’s $129 50mm F/1.4 shows how good cheap glass has become
On 2 August, Pergear announced a compact full-frame 50mm F/1.4 for $129, in Sony E, Nikon Z, Canon RF and Leica L mounts. It is fully manual — manual focus, all-metal body, vintage styling — and Pergear is pitching it at portraits, street and everyday shooting.
Manual focus puts plenty of people off, and I do understand why. But an aperture this wide at this price is remarkable, and manually focusing a 50mm is one of the fastest ways I know to genuinely understand depth of field. If you have only ever shot with autofocus, a lens like this will teach you more in a weekend than a month of reading about it.
Laowa’s new macro lenses reach 10x — and hold focus while they zoom
Venus Optics announced its Laowa Aksen ultra macro series on 31 July: a 45mm F/2.8 covering 1-5x magnification, and a 17.5mm F/1.7 covering 5-10x, which the company says is the first commercial 5-10x macro zoom. Both are parfocal, so they hold focus as you change magnification, and the barrel stays still while they do it. Prices start at around $749, with mounts for Sony E, Nikon Z and F, Canon RF and EF, Fujifilm X, Leica L and Micro Four Thirds.
This is specialist kit at a specialist price, and most of us have no need for it. What it does show is how far close-up photography has travelled. At 5x, a housefly’s eye fills the frame and depth of field becomes vanishingly shallow, so you are into focus stacking whether you like it or not. If that has whetted your appetite, a set of extension tubes and your kit lens will get you started for the price of a takeaway.
The Fujifilm X-T5 was discontinued — until it wasn’t
At the end of July, Japanese retailers and Fujifilm’s own Japanese store began listing the X-T5 as discontinued, which set off a wave of speculation about an X-T6 arriving in the autumn.
Then Fujifilm in the US said plainly that the X-T5 has not been discontinued. The likeliest explanation is that one regional variant was withdrawn rather than the camera itself.
I mention it because this happens constantly, and it is worth knowing how to read it. A model vanishing from one country’s online store is not the end of the line, and a discontinuation rumour is a poor reason to rush a purchase. Buy the camera you actually want, when you are ready — not because a listing changed on a website on the other side of the world.
Instagram draws a line on smart-glasses videos
In late July, Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed that videos filmed on smart glasses which harass strangers in public will be taken down.
Two accounts, each with more than a million followers, were deactivated after filming women in public without their knowledge. Content that is, in his words, “taking advantage of people and harassing them” now comes off the platform.
I think that is the right call, and it raises something worth sitting with if you photograph in public. Candid photography has a long and honourable history, and it works because it treats people decently. A camera somebody can see is part of that bargain. And if a stranger asks you not to photograph them, the answer is always yes.
Final Thoughts
Quite a fortnight, then. A takeover bid that could reshape the lens market, a meteor shower that asks for nothing more than a tripod and some patience, and a $129 lens that will teach you more than it costs.
If you do go out for the Perseids, I would love to see what you come back with — do share it in the comments below. And if you have thoughts on the Tamron news, I am genuinely curious what you make of it.
Back in two weeks.