Marc Alhadeff from SonyAlphaBlog tested this rare Petzval 80.5mm f/1.9 Mark II lens:

The Lomography Petzval 80.5mm F1.9 Mark II Bokeh Control (499 euros) is an very nice Art lens and an excellent complement to the Petzval 55mm F1.7 MkII

In general “Art lenses” have a very poor sharpness, a vintage color rendition and some re-edition of vintage lenses are sold for crazy price (Around 1000 euros for Meyer Optik Lenses)

Here Lomography has found a very good alchemy with

A superb soft and creamy background blur
A Swirly bokeh effect you can adjust
Very nice Bokeh Balls
A very good and natural color rendition
A good to excellent sharpness in the centre

Of course the lens is not perfect

It is not available in E mount directly (you need an adapter) whereas the Petzval 55mm F1.7 MkII is available in E mount. Compared to it it is much bigger and heavier
It will very difficult to focus outside of the centre and only 25-35% of the image will be sharp
It is not a generalist lens you can use everyday
The Waterhouse aperture / and Bokeh control are options you will not play often with

Globally for portrait, object details (flowers..) the lens is providing superb and unique results plenty of poetry

Also for video the lens is capable of producing subtle dreamy atmosphere while retaining plenty of details on your main subject

Highly recommended

With the S5 Panasonic released a very intresting enry level camera. The big problem is their autofocus performance when shooting videos. But put that aside and the camera is a worthy competitor of the Sony A7III. Here is the full report from Explora (article here).

For photography:

Pitting the S5 and a7 III against each other results in a very close battle. They seem to trade out features, making a decision based more on the specific things you want and less about which is flat-out better than the other. Panasonic offers advanced features like a High-Res Shot mode for 96MP JPEGs and raw images, Live View Composite, and plenty more. However, I believe the a7 III wins on some regular specs such as autofocus performance and continuous shooting. To be honest, pick whichever one you like best.

For video:

Videographers and filmmakers of all types will appreciate the advantages of the S5 over the a7 III—which is starting to show its age. The S5 offers 10-bit recording, which is incredibly important for high-quality video. It has a crop mode that enables 60p for 4K video. And, the screen is a free-angle design that is ideal for vlogging. The a7 III is still a great pick if you need photo performance as well, but the huge advantages of the S5 for video mean that if you are video first it is well worth it.

Tamron 70-300mm FE lens at BHphoto, Adorama, FocusCamera, Wex UK.

Marc Alhadeff tested the lens and concluded:

The Tamron 70-300 F4.5-56.3 Di III RXD (700 euros) is a very good telephoto lens for a A7c or A7III. On a 24Mpix results it will be excellent at al focal lengths , all that for a light weight (545g) and a small price (700 euros). Performances are better than the Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS in term of background blur, AF and sharpness for half the price and 33% less weight.

Richard Wong also tested the lens:

And this is Matt Grangers test:

Preorder at Adorama. BHphoto. Amazon. FocusCamera. Fotokoch. Calumet DE. WexUK. Park UK.

Jordan from DpreviewTV further tested the A7sIII:

Oh, Matti Haapoja just switched from Canon to Sony:

Recently DxO announced the totally new PhotoLab (Click here to read all info and get the 30% discount). You can also download the free trial (Click here) if you want to test it before to buy it.

Anthony Morganti tested the new software:

Today Sony issued a new firmware update for the Sony A7sIII (download here).

Benefits and Improvements

• Fixes an issue where FTP transfer could fail when used with some USB-LAN conversion adapters
  Note: Not all USB-LAN conversion adaptors are guaranteed to operate properly
• Improves connection stability of USB tethering when using an iPhone
  Notes:
  • Currently, the USB tethering function does not support iOS 14
  • We recommend using a smartphone and USB cable that support USB-PD (USB Power Delivery)
• Improves the overall stability of the camera

At the time of posting this the Sony A7sIII is nearly impossible to find in Stock in US and EU stores like Adorama. BHphoto. Amazon. FocusCamera. Fotokoch. Calumet DE. WexUK. Park UK.

And these are three new reviews from Fstoppers, Dan Watson, Camera Conspiracies:

Anthony Morganti tested the new Luminar AI (preorder here). The software is made for full AI and will be released soon.