This is interesting for our US readers:

Full press release from Sony below.

Sony Opens Up Registration for One-of-a-Kind “Kando Trip” Photography Event

Immersive “Kando Trip” Experience will feature extensive educational workshops, shooting opportunities, camera and lens trials and much more

SAN DIEGO, Jan 25, 2018 – Sony Electronics, a worldwide leader in digital imaging and the world’s largest image sensor manufacturer, has announced today that they are opening up their flagship “Kando Trip” photography experience to public applications.

The event will take place May 9-12th at beautiful oceanfront Asilomar Conference Grounds in Monterrey, CA. The 4 day, 3 night, all-inclusive experience will offer attendees a choice of over 20 interactive classes and workshops covering many different genres of photography, video storytelling, business and social media best practices, software and hardware tutorials from partner sponsors and more. Additionally, there will be shooting sessions at several iconic locations along the Monterey/Big Sur coastline, keynote speakers, product feedback sessions, contests, giveaways and many other fun activities. Throughout the event, attendees will have access to loaners and trials of all of Sony’s most popular cameras, lenses and accessories.

“‘Kando’, a term near and dear to our hearts at Sony, can be translated to ‘the power to stimulate an emotional response’, or ‘to make people say ‘Wow”,” said Neal Manowitz, Vice President of Digital Imaging at Sony Electronics. “We are continually striving to deliver ‘Kando’ with everything that we do – every product, service, activity and campaign. ‘Kando Trip’ is the ultimate representation of this concept. It’s an event exclusively designed for our community – a chance to for us all to interact, learn and grow together, with ‘wow’ experiences waiting around every corner.”

The experience will feature a variety of classes led by many of Sony’s brand evangelists from the Artisans of Imagery and Alpha Imaging Collective programs, with a common goal of allowing attendees to develop both their photography and their careers. Throughout the event, there will also be opportunities to meet, share ideas and give feedback to Sony’s engineering, product planning, marketing, and business teams, all of which will be in attendance.

To apply for this event, please visit www.AlphaUniverse.com/kandotrip. Spaces are limited.

via Sonymirrorlesspro and Alphauniverse

Sony FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS lens review with samples

Sony A7II versus Infrared Cameras for portrait (mathieustern.com).
Automated & Full-Featured: Adobe Photoshop & Premiere Elements 2018 (Explora).
Canon Italy makes harakiri while answering to the stolen Elia Locardi image scandal (Mirrorlessrumors).
Kodak Folding PixPro 3D-VR360 and VR180 4K Camera Prototype (Personal View).

More informal and personal photos from SAR Admin Andrea on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

Michael: “I’ve been an A-mount user since the Minolta days. Been with Sony since Day 1. A350, A700, A77ii, A99ii, RX100iii…  You get the picture.  I’ve decided to start a YouTube channel and thought you might enjoy my first video. It’s about a 1913 Kodak that my Grandfather took to World War I. Check it out at https://youtu.be/-yhSOfDtxgI“

Tyler: “I put together a video with my images all taken on Sony a99 and a99ii with sony and zeiss lenses. I figured some of the community may like seeing what these cameras are
capable of now that E-Mount seems to be all anyone is using. Here is a link to the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IeP8dZTcd0&t=11s“

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 A7rIII group and Sony A7rIII 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.

A short note for our readers. I am out for a three-day hike on the Dolomites. Due the limited Internet connection I will not answer mails or moderate comments as fast (or slow..LOL) as usual. Article posting will go on as usual. In case of leaks (Sigma and Zeiss lenses will be announced soon) I will post them as quick as usual using my phone.

On my tour I will take the Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 lens and the 85mm f/1.8 FE. If you want to see some pics of the tour you can check out my Instagram profile.

NiceyRig Sony A7RIII Cage

Sony A7rIII review at CameraJabber.
PowerVision PowerDolphin Water Drone (Personal View).
Some Gadgets We Might Actually Buy From CES 2018 (Wirecutter).
Five Winter Destinations and the Cameras to Photograph Them (Explora).
From Nikon to Sony…a year after (Jeff Remas)

Pro Shooters: “We made a high ISO comparison between the A7S2 and the A7R3, for the video people curious of how the R3 stacks up to the S2 in terms of video ISO performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyxeGg5Z0Ks“

More informal and personal photos from SAR Admin Andrea on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

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

Hrvoje (http://omeneo.com/)

After more research, testing and learned we found how to get better results with Sony cameras.
Primers are all about getting the most out of a camera, so in parallel to new camera testing, analysis and signal optimization, we went back to cameras we worked on before and we are now updating the whole range with the implementation of everything we have learned so far.
Fellow Creatives who have acquired previous versions get a free update. First are FS7/FS7mk2/FS5 Creatives who get their 3rd generation of Primers under their tree for this holiday season.
Primers EQX Gen3 for FS7/FS5 series bring further improved tonal distribution, more straightforward post workflow and visually referent colorimetry.
Next are compact camera users as soon as time allows it.
Many thanks and happy holidays to all visual Creatives worldwide. The Work on improvement continues.

Samyang 35mm f/2.8 AF Pancake Lens | First Look

Sony FE 85mm f/1.8 – Baby Bokeh! (Edward Noble).
Sigma 16mm/f1.4 Querie? (SonyAlphaForum).
Samyang 24mm F1.4 manual lens (Marc Alhadeff).
digiKam 5.8.0 is released
Camera-Bag Stuffers: Great Gear and Gifts for Photographers (Explora).

More informal and personal photos from SAR Admin Andrea on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

Fred: “I just posted a comparison between the new Sony FE 24-105/4G against some of the best primes currently available for the E-mount like the CV 65/2 APO, Batis 135/2.8 APO, Loxia 50/2 and others… It was done at infinity distance and the results are quite surprising.
The G zoom never surpasses the primes towards the corners but it put up a fight at center and mid-zone. At the wide range, the very corners are excellent from wide open though. It’s quite extraordinary results for such zoom range.
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1498758”

Scott: “Hi I’ve done a low light comparision between the A7sii and the A7riii. The results were interesting. I’d like to share it.
The link is here https://vimeo.com/251986515“

I am up for a 3 days hike in the snow. I can only carry one of these four lenses. Which one would you choose? From left to right: Sony 85mm FE, Sony 12-24mm G, Laowa 15mm FE, Zeiss 55mm f/1.8. P.S.: The Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 is in already in my pocket. – #sony #sonyalpha #sonyalphagear #sonyalpharumors @sonyalphagear

Ein Beitrag geteilt von Andrea Photographer-Explorer (@andrea_pizzini_photographer) am Jan 24, 2018 um 2:20 PST

Well this is quite a story: Well known Photojournalist David Burnett (wikipedia page here) has switched to Sony after 40 years with Canon!

Here is his video where he explains why he did the switch:

CanonToSony 1 from David Burnett on Vimeo.

The folks from FastRawViewer worked on a new special software that supports Sony’s Pixel Shift Multi Shooting. The software name is “SonyPixelShift2DNG” and you can download it here: https://www.fastrawviewer.com/SonyPixelShift2DNG

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A Few Words about Sony Pixel Shift Multi Shooting Mode

The new Sony A7R-III has a new mode in it, the Pixel Shift Multi Shooting, in which the camera takes 4 consecutive shots applying a one-pixel shift between the shots. With ordinary RAW files taken with a regular Bayer sensor, only one of the four RGBG color channels is sampled in each pixel location. To guess the unknown color data, we need to preform demosaicking. However, by performing one-pixel shifts of the sensor during the shoot, we can sample information about all four color channels at each pixel location. Thus, we don’t need to demosaic during the conversion anymore, which decreases moiré, improves resolution and color accuracy, and we have an option to average the green channels for every location, improving the dynamic range in the combined channel by approximately half a stop (obviously, one can only shoot static scenes in such a mode).

The workflow for processing files taken it Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode suggested by the manufacturer (Sony) is as follows: combine four ARW files into one ARQ file using the Sony Imaging Edge Viewer application and process the resulting ARQ file in the Sony Editor.

Aside from Sony programs, ARQ files are supported by beta versions of RawTherapee, RawDigger and FastRawViewer (this list may be incomplete). However, it isn’t supported by some very popular RAW conversion applications like Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom, Capture One,…

Purpose of SonyPixelShift2DNG Application

In order to streamline the workflow with the raw shots taken in the new Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode offered by the new Sony A7R-III camera, and provide a way to use popular RAW converters (Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom, Capture One, and some others) for processing these shots, we’ve developed the SonyPixelShift2DNG application, which converts Sony A7R-III shots taken in Pixel Shift mode to DNG, supported by most (but not all) programs that process RAW files.

SonyPixelShift2DNG performs the two following tasks:

• Combine 4 source ARW files taken in Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode and save the result as a DNG;
• Convert the ARQ files resulting from Sony’s Imaging Edge Viewer software (so, already-combined quartets of ARW files) to DNG
The resulting DNG files can later be processed in familiar applications like Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw, CaptureOne, Iridient Developer, Luminar, and others.

Also, here is the Manual for the application: wetransfer.com

Samples:

The left part is a regular shot, the right part is Pixel Shift result. Click on files to enlarge:

More info and download at fastrawviewer.com/SonyPixelShift2DNG