With Germany’s Photokina no longer taking place, CP+ in Japan is now the world’s biggest camera and video show. Here’s everything that happened in Yokohama last week.
You will have already read a large amount of CP+ news last week, even if you didn’t know actually you were doing so. Announcements regarding the Canon PowerShot V1, the Sigma BF, the Panasonic Lumix S1R II; the Sony 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS lens, and a whole lot more were all timed around the show.
All in all it was a busy week news-wise. To be honest, the sheer amount of news surrounding the show surprised us and reports from Yokohama suggest there is a renewed buzz around the camera industry. With sales apparently on the up too, we’ll take that as a positive sign. So, here’s a quick round-up featuring all the camera-related stuff we didn’t quite get to as it happened.
We start with ZEISS’s announcement of a new Otus ML family. The Otus ML is available in two focal lengths: a 1.4/50mm lens suitable for versatile photography and a 1.4/85mm lens optimized for portrait work.
The ZEISS Otus ML 1.4/50mm will be out in Spring, 2025 at $2500, with the 1.4/85mm later in 2025 at $2999, and given that these are the prestigious company’s first new glass in — what? — a decade, expectations are going to be high.
Viltrox announced four brand-new lenses, the AF 35mm F1.2 LAB FE, AF 85mm F1.4 Pro FE, AF 50mm F2.0 Air, and the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z. Hard info — pricing, release dates — was in short supply, but there was plenty of softer marketing positioning, the company saying that the AF 35mm F1.2 LAB FE (the second lens in Viltrox’s LAB series), is “revolutionizing the 35mm category,” and that the AF 85mm F1.4 Pro FE “redefines portrait photography with its sharp details and creamy bokeh.”
Sigma made plenty of headlines on the lens front as well with the announcement of a super-telephoto zoom, the Sigma 300-600mm F4 DG OS | Sports.
This is a 3985g / 140.6oz monster that delivers 5.5 stops of optical stabilization at 600mm and is available for L-mount and Sony E-mount cameras. Also announced was the 16-300mm f/3.5-6.7 DC OS for APS-C, which has an impressive 18.8x zoom, claimed as the biggest optical zoom range of any mirrorless lens on the market.
There was a flood of new glass from third party lens manufacturers, with 7Artisans, Laowa, and Samyang all unveiling their own clutches of new lenses. On the whole, details followed the usual trade show protocols of being short on too much information, though there was a bit more heft to the 7Artisans Spectrum 120mm T2.9 Macro 2x cine lens for full-frame cameras.
Definitely more unusual was the debut of the 203T, a retro-styled folding instant film camera from a company more usually linked to lenses, TTArtisan. This is a frankly lovely looking camera that shoots on Fujifilm’s Instax film and takes that retro design to the max with the inclusion of a Cooke lens design.
In many respects it is right at the opposite end of the design spectrum to the Sigma BF, even down to the fact that it is completely manual and doesn’t even have a compartment for a single battery. Pricing is officially TBA and unofficially around $300, and it will be available this fall.