Nikon's tariff refunds vs memory costs; GR and X-T5 firmware; a $99 85mm; two cashback windows open 13 Nov

🔥What's hot

🛠New gear

• Mitakon Speedmaster 45mm f/1.4 — has moved from listed to buyable for Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad XCD, with two AliExpress listings at $622.99 and $685.99. A manual-focus f/1.4 standard lens for 44x33mm sensors costs a fraction of native GF glass, which makes it the cheapest route to genuinely shallow depth of field on a big sensor if you are happy focusing by hand. It uses an 11-blade diaphragm, takes 62mm filters and weighs 701–800g depending on version; Zhongyi glass is also carried by B&H and Amazon. Photo Rumors

• Vistilen AF 35mm f/1.8 Pro EFR — is a full-frame autofocus 35mm from a new Chinese brand, built for Canon RF and listed as coming soon with no price or date attached yet. RF is still the mount where third-party autofocus is thinnest on the ground, so each outside maker that actually ships one widens what a Canon body can be fed without an adapter. The optical formula is 12 elements in 10 groups with a nine-blade aperture, 58mm filter thread, 0.35m minimum focus and a weight of 405g; Vistilen sells through AliExpress. Photo Rumors

• WANDRD Magnetic Camera Straps — are a modular system in which magnets guide a fibreglass-reinforced nylon Torus Link into a mechanical CoreLock clamp, letting you swap neck strap for wrist strap with one hand; general pre-orders are open and shipping is due to begin 19 November 2026. Worth knowing if you pull the strap off whenever the body goes on a tripod and then fumble it back on in the cold. Kickstarter prices were $69 for the 30mm neck strap, $49 for the 15mm Lite, $39 for the wrist strap and $29 for the DIY conversion kit; Fstoppers' hands-on found the magnet only aligns the link while the lock does the holding. Camera Jabber

💬What people are saying

• Canon EOS R6 Mark III — comes out of a long Fstoppers test across fashion, events and motorsport as a 32.5MP body whose electronic shutter runs to 40 frames per second and whose 7K Open Gate raw leaves a 4K-resolution vertical crop. This is the rare review written after months rather than a weekend, and it flags the two things a spec sheet hides: subject detection that grabs the wrong face until you switch to Flexible Zone, and heat. The reviewer never hit a thermal shutdown, but shooting NASCAR in Las Vegas heat pushed the temperature indicator close to maximum; files at ISO 4,000–6,000 stayed usable without AI denoising. Fstoppers

• Sony a7R VI — was taken to the Singapore Grand Prix by Bobby Tonelli on an accredited pass to see whether its slower sensor readout and 60 autofocus calculations per second, against 120 on the a1 II and a9 III, actually show up in frames. It is the question that decides whether a 67MP stacked body can be your only camera instead of a resolution specialist parked next to a speed body. Cars at close to 300 km/h showed no warping; banding appeared only against LED panels at a Janet Jackson concert and went away at lower shutter speeds, and after about 3,000 frames the battery still read 87%. Fstoppers

• TTartisan 85mm f/1.8 — now has its first L-mount reviews gathered in one place by L-rumors, which describes it as the most affordable full-frame autofocus 85mm on the market at $99. For an L-mount owner a short portrait tele is usually the expensive gap in the kit, so a double-figure autofocus option is worth reading up on before Black Friday tempts you into something four times the price. It is listed at that price through Amazon, Amazon EU, TTartisan's own store, B&H Photo and Pergear. L-rumors

• Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.2 S — gets a double write-up in Japanese on Toru Nara, summarising OpticalLimits and Dustin Abbott: extremely sharp in the centre from wide open, lovely bokeh, but 1,160g and a launch price of ¥364,319 from March 2023. Useful if the Nikon rebate season has you eyeing the f/1.2 instead of the f/1.8 — both reviewers land on the same conclusion, that most people are better served one stop slower. OpticalLimits flags obvious longitudinal chromatic aberration between f/1.2 and f/1.6 and some flare; Abbott notes autofocus is slower and noisier than Sigma's 85mm F1.2 ART and there is no optical stabilisation. Toru Nara (asobinet)

  “F1.2が必要なら強く推奨するレンズ。”

📰Industry news

• The Washington Post — Cut all eight staff photographers and eight of its fourteen photo editors on 4 February 2026, and now fills pages from wires and one-off freelance commissions.

• Fujifilm X-T5, X-H2 and X-H2S firmware — Versions 4.32, 5.33 and 7.31 fix LCD banding during electronic-shutter bursts at 1/8000 or faster, 6.2K playback freezes and manual focus with the XF30mm Macro.

• Ricoh GR IV and GR III firmware — GR IV and HDF move to v1.21 for stability only, while GR III and GR IIIx gain a full factory reset and a GR 30th-anniversary shutdown screen, downloadable until 31 December.

• Adobe Camera Raw 19 — Adds motion and streak glow effects, LUT stacking up to three at adjustable strength, noise reduction on JPEG, HEIF, PNG and WebP, and automatic stacks of burst frames.

• Nikon Creators Winter Campaign 2026 — Runs in Japan from 13 November to 12 January, with up to ¥100,000 back on the Z7II body and ¥50,000 on the D850 and D780 DSLRs.

• OM System Winter Cashback — From 13 November to 17 January in Japan, buyers get Visa gift cards worth up to ¥100,000 on the 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x PRO, with the 50-200mm F2.8 PRO newly added.

• Sony WW491229 — California's energy regulator listed the code on 31 October with the NP-SA100 battery used only by the FX5 and a7R VI; SonyAlphaRumors' guesses of an a7S IV or FX6 successor are unconfirmed.

💡One takeaway