Rotolight launched these new camera lights on Kickstarter (Click here).

Gerald Undone tested them:

Tamron 18 300 for Sony E mount: Incredible Performance!

Funleader 18mm f/8 Body Cap Lens Review | Sample Photos, Full Frame, APS-C, 4K Video, Tips, and Use (David Hancock)
Pergear 60mm f/2.8 Macro 2:1 lens review with samples (Christopher Frost).
Sigma 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports Review by Richard Wong
Fun Lenses You Need to Try (Explora).
Why Family Photo Sessions Aren’t Just About the Kids (42West).

Personal photos and tests from SAR Admin Andrea on Instagram, Facebook, Flickr and 500px.

Join the new Sony Alpha Camera Facebook group.
To get news from our Forum subscribe that RSS feed.
I kindly invite you all to follow our RSS feed, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to not miss news and rumors

We have our own Facebook camera groups and pages you can join to discuss the upcoming new cameras in detail:
Sony A9 group and Sony A9 page.
Sony A7rIV group and Sony A7rIV page
Sony A7sIII group and Sony A7sIII page
Sony A7III group and Sony A7III page
Note: In groups you can post your own stuff like images, news and questions. While on pages you will read the specific camera news from SAR.

Today US and Eu stores started to ship out the Tamron 35-150mm preorders at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. Fotokoch DE. Foto Erhardt DE. Wex UK. Park UK. At the moment of posting this there are a couple of lenses marked as “in Stock” at Amazon US.

This is likely the best smartphone for photographers. And as of today you can finally preorder it at BHphoto, Adorama.

Here is a new first look from BH:

Sony published the full Q2 financial report. In very short this is what you have to know:

1. The company as a whole is doing great
2. Cameras sales went up
3. For the next quarter Sony expects less camera units to be sold because of the shortages in the supply of components.

Sony writes:

Electronics Products & Solutions (EP&S)
Sales are expected to be lower than the August forecast due to an expected decrease in unit sales mainly of digital cameras, primarily due to shortages in the supply of components, especially semiconductors. Operating income is expected to be higher than the August forecast due to the impact of an improvement in the product mix of digital cameras, an increase in unit sales of televisions and a decrease in operating expenses, partially offset by the impact of lower unit sales of digital cameras.

Imaging & Sensing Solutions (I&SS)
Sales are expected to remain unchanged from the August forecast due to higher-than-expected sales of image sensors for digital cameras and for industrial equipment, substantially offset by lower-than-expected sales in businesses other than image sensors. Operating income is expected to be higher than the August forecast primarily due to the impact of the above-mentioned expected increase in sales of image sensors for digital cameras and for industrial equipment.

If you live in the UK you can join one of the A7IV events here: sony.co.uk/alphauniverse/events?locale=en_GB

Sony A7IV preorders (Use those affiliated links to support my work. Thanks!):
In the USA at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. FocusCamera. BuyDig.
In Europe at Fotokoch DE. Calumet DE. Foto Erhardt DE. Park UK. Wex UK. Amazon DE. Amazon UK. Amazon IT. Amazon ES. Amazon NL.
In Australia at Sony.com. CameraPro.
Sony HVL-F46RM Wireless Radio Flash at BHphoto. Adorama.
Sony HVL-F60RM II Wireless Radio Flash at BHphoto. Adorama.

Landingfiled recently got an a7S III damaged from a laser light show. After removing the sensor cover glass they inspected the pixels under a 50x microscope objective:

It turns out this sensor has a 2×2 binning design. This means IMX510 actually has a 48MP native resolution. The RGGB Bayer pattern is spread across a 4×4 grid. After sensor readout, the four pixels in each pf the same color are then combined digitally to give one pixel before sending out on the SLVS-EC interface. This could explain the increase in read noise. From my knowledge, none of Sony DSLR CIS supports charge binning due to limitation in its pixel architecture. By combining four pixels digitally, you would increase the noise variance by four and hence read noise almost doubles (sqrt to RMS). The bright green pixels are phase detection pixel for hybrid AF system.

The 48MP Quad Bayer IMX510 sensor usees the  2×2 digital binning on it to produce a 12 megapixel bayer CFA output. Landingfield writes:

So the final question is why Sony went down this design path. I came up with two possible reasons. 1. Sony already has a BSI pixel design fitting this 4.2um pitch requirement. A 2×2 binning is a lot faster to reach market then starting off a new 8.4um pixel. Since most pixel design layouts are fixed, scaling the area can make multiple sizes of chip. For example, IMX411, IMX461, IMX455, IMX571 and IMX533 are all based on the same 3.76um BSI pixel design but each cover a different imaging circle from medium format to 1-inch. 2. Sony try to emphasis the HDR video capability on a7S III. A single pixel is limited in dynamic range. But you could read out each of the four sub-pixels with a different gain or exposure time. And later weight combining them digitally for the final value. Such method is used on many Sony security sensors. IMX294 and IMX482 also employ 2×2 binning BSI design.
Regardless of imaging quality, the third gen has a huge improvement in readout speed due to its BSI architecture. After all, this camera is mainly aimed for cinematographers. Its all-pixel scan rate has drastically increased from 30FPS to 90FPS. And 1080P60 no longer needs subsampling like in IMX235. Engineering has always been a balancing act. But still, it would be great to see a single large BSI pixel without microlenses achieving sCMOS grade quantum efficiency.

Thanks Landinfield for the great report (check out their website for more images).