Weekend Recap for October 6 - 12, 2013

"This is The-Digital-Picture.com's Weekend Recap for the week ending October 12th, 2013.

In the news...

On Monday, Zeiss introduced the Otus 55mm f/1.4 lens. Zeiss promises that this premium lens was designed without compromise, producing excellently sharp images free of color fringing and distortion. The Otus 55mm f/1.4 will hit the shelves at the end of this month for suggested retail price of $3,999.00.

Also on Monday, Canon announced their plans for a new Customer Support Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The 33,000 square-foot facility will house Support Specialists dedicated to small office and consumer imaging products including digital cameras, camcorders, and printers. The center will also support professional printing and cinema customers once operations begin in April of next year.

Canon also issued a Service Advisory on Monday for their LP-E6 rechargeable battery packs. The product advisory warns that in certain cases, an LP-E6 may fail to charge when inserted into the LC-E6 battery charger. If the LED blinks orange rapidly after inserting your LP-E6 battery, follow the steps on our post to reset the charger.

On Tuesday, Nikon announced an incremental update to their D600 DSLR camera – the D610. Compared to the D600, the D610 features a new shutter mechanism that allows for faster continuous shooting and a new quiet continuous mode. The D610 also features an improved white balance system. Check out our post for more details.

In site news and reviews...

On Monday, Bryan posted his full review of the Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 AT-X Pro FX lens. In short, the lens performs quite well at 16mm – but gets moderately soft at the longer focal lengths. The lens features good build quality, but a somewhat quirky focus ring clutch for manual focusing. See Bryan’s full review for more details.

On Wednesday, Bryan posted his full review of the Tokina 17-35mm f/4 AT-X Pro FX lens. Bryan found the Tokina 17-35mm lens produced image quality slightly worse than its wider aperture cousin, the Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 – but the f/4’s lower price, lower weight, and lower cost will certainly be enough to sway some consumer purchases. Check out Bryan’s full review for all the important details.

And, for our deal of the week…

On Wednesday, we posted a deal from BuyDig.com where you could get a Canon EOS 6D, PIXMA PRO-100 Printer, and Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements 11 for only $1,599.00 after a $400.00 mail-in rebate. That’s almost a $300.00 savings off of the normal 6D – without bundled accessories – price.

This has been the The-Digital-Picture.com’s Weekend Recap. Thanks for listening, and as always, happy shooting!"