Light and Shade II

According to Zeiss themselves, “ZE” lenses are coming. Now I assume that’s not a reference to Mamiya’s ZE range of 35mm SLRs, nor to the Olympus flavour of Four Turds, but to Canon’s EF mount. If so, it should open up choice a little more for Canon users, particularly for ultrawides.

So the D90 is to have some video capability. I would love to be old-fashioned and scathing about such a facility – except it’s the way the world is going, with multimedia at the heart of newsgathering. Oh, and I would quite like the feature myself, sometimes. I certainly find I shoot more small bursts of video on compacts now than I used to.

According to Amateur Photographer, the organisers of the Beijing (that’s Peking, for us oldies) Olympics have banned “professional” camera gear from the stadia on the highly spurious grounds that such equipment blocks the view of other spectators. Oh yeah? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. I’ve never heard such a load of old bollocks in my life. I suspect what they’re really worried about is that someone might get pics that don’t show the whole thing in the “right” light, or may get some pics of any possible protests.

Now, when do we get an Olympus camera ban? That would make a lot more sense!

So the rumours say – not entirely sure what it would mean for the future of Leica.