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!

Yep, someone launched a camera at 1.500 km/h nearly into space !

On Friday, April 22nd, Spinlaunch tested the first optical camera payload in their Suborbital Accelerator. The camera flew at 1.500 km/h speed into suborbital space:

 

Comprised of the key components needed for the Orbital Launch System, the Suborbital Accelerator is a critical steppingstone in SpinLaunch’s path to orbit and providing customers with low-cost, sustainable access to space.

Fuji officially announced the X-H2s and two new lenses (plus new roadmap)

Fuji as usual announced a ton of new gear! A full coverage can be found at Fujirumors.com.

Pre-Order Options

They also unveiled a new roadmap with those new lenses: XF 56mm F1.2II, XF 8mm F3.5 and XF 30mm F2.8 R Macro