Just announced: New Nik Collection 5

Today DxO announced the new Nik Collection 5 (click here to read all details). The user interface has been rebuilt from ground up and there are a ton of new features:

Here are some video reviews:

There is a software review at PcMag.

I’m happy to see that DxO continues to develop and improve the Nik Collection. For years, I held onto the free version Google released, stashing the installer on various drives and laptops, lest I ever lost track of it and access to my beloved Silver Efex Pro.
With Collection 5, the welcome interface refresh from last year comes to more apps in the suite. Now, all four creative arms—Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and Viveza—offer a consistent user experience. They also all include the ability to rename U-Points and add them to presets, making up for the somewhat inconsistent experience from Collection 4.
We’re also glad to see some level of nondestructive editing in the suite. It’s not quite as convenient as Raw processing and this feature certainly requires a lot of space on your hard drive, but you may find the option to go back and make edits to an image worthwhile. The addition of batch processing can help speed up certain workflows, too.
The suite continues to be a good pick for photographers who enjoy creative editing, and longtime users should appreciate that updates keep it going on newer systems. We’d love to see the developers pay attention to Apple Silicon for the next update, though I admit there were no hiccups with Rosetta 2 emulation when I tested the software on a Mac Studio. Support for Apple chips obviously doesn’t matter if you prefer working in Windows.
We’re also glad to see some level of nondestructive editing in the suite. It’s not quite as convenient as Raw processing and this feature certainly requires a lot of space on your hard drive, but you may find the option to go back and make edits to an image worthwhile. The addition of batch processing can help speed up certain workflows, too.

You can now buy (or try for free) the new Nik Collection 5.

Liquid lens might be the future of photography

In the past years I often found patents for liquid lenses for mirrorless cameras. Patented by Sony, Fuji, Nikon and many others. These lenses would be extremely compact and focus would work near instantly. This isn’t a distant dream or something that will never make it int a real product. The image on top shows you the world first liquid mirror that just has been installed in Humilaya. More about that can be read at Universetoday. One day you will see such lenses on your regular mirrorless camera too!

Sony might announce a new ZV APS-C Blogger camera this summer

This summer Sony is going to announce a new Blogger ZV APS-C camera. It won’t be a high end camera, but “only” a perfect affordable youtuber tool that will nicely go along with the newly announced APS-C lenses. Sony still doesn’t believe in making a A7000 high end APS-C model…pity, Fuji just showed you can do this and make money out of it!

OM Digital will announce a new OM-5 this summer

OM Digital will definitely announce the enow OM-5 this summer. But this is all we know so far. The web out there is going wild with crazy specs but I seriously doubt the E-M5 will be revolutionary. I expect a specked down version of the OM-1 with same 20MP sensor.

Tamron might make another “wow” zoom, and these are the rumored specs

We all love that Tamron 35-150mm f/2.0-2.8 FE lens because it offers a unique aperture range for such a zoom. Well Tamron might announce another one soon. CameraBeta reports that those are next four new Tamron FE lenses:

  • Tamron 35mm f/3.5 Di III OSD Pancake
  • Tamron 45mm f/1.4 Di III USD
  • Tamron 90mm f/1.8 Di III USD
  • Tamron 150-400mm f/2.8-5.6 Di III VC VXD

That 150-400mm sound like a killer with the f/2.8 aperture at the wide end!