BRIEFS: May 30

Leica Mini M – maybe…DCW partnership with Crumpler…Flickr gives free accounts 1 terabyte for storage…Canon reaches another exciting milestone…

Leica Mini M – maybe

First images of what might be the Leica Mini M have been leaked by insider blog Mirrorless Rumors, with Leica also conducting a slow striptease to reveal the camera on the homepage of its website.

The camera is due to be announced on June 12 and will fit between the new Leica M and the X2 in the Leica lineup.

It’s reportedly fitted with an 16-megapixel APS-C sensor camera and a fixed zoom lens. The fully aluminum body has the appearance of a shrunken Leica M rangefinder. Lens is reportedly a Leica Elmar 28-70mm (35mm equivalent) f3.5-6.4 (though this seems a bit pedestrian for what will be an expensive piece of gear.) .

There is no built in viewfinder, but an electronic viewfinder can be attached to the hotshoe mount. The camera also features Full HD video recording, and comes bundled with a copy of Adobe Lightroom. Possibly.

DCW announces ‘new partnership’ with Crumpler

DCW has announced a ‘new partnership’ with Crumpler and is stocking the full range of Crumpler professional camera and photography bags online and in its retail stores.

DCW says it is ‘the largest photographic specialist stocking Crumpler’s pro photo and camera range in the country outside of Crumpler-branded stores’ (which aren’t photo specialists so presumably don’t count.)

Somewhat dissonantly, DCW noted in the same email that it is the official retail partner for The SMH‘s Photos 1440 Challenge, in which registered entrants (at $20 per entrant) will be given a photographic assignment brief which they will have up to five weeks to complete. Among the prizes on offer are Lowepro bags – one of Crumpler’s more venerable and worthy competitors, particularly in the photo channel.

Flickr gives free accounts 1 terabyte for storage

Flickr has had a major facelift with users now also being given a terabyte of free storage space – sufficient for over 500,000 x 6.5 megabyte photos.

The design and feel has also been significantly upgraded.

Free accounts were previously capped at 2 videos and 300MBs worth of photos per month, but with the changes users can now upload as many photos and videos as they’d like to their 1TB of storage, including photos of up to 200MB and videos of up to 1GB (and 3 minutes in length)! Photographs will be stored at full resolution and in their original quality.

For US$50 a year, you’ll be able to access Flickr without any ads, and for US$500 a year, storage space will be doubled to 2 terabytes.

The new Flickr user homepage is now a portal for discovering new content. You’ll be able to see your friends’ latest uploads, as well as photographs from the rest of the Flickr community. The new photostream pages feature a slick design and feature photographs at a much larger size.There’s a new space for a cover photo and a high-res profile picture.

The new site looks magnificent and is now back as far and away the best photo sharing website on the internet but unfortunately, there is still no clear and obvious path to printing photos from Flickr.

Canon reaches another exciting milestone

Canon has announced the production of the company’s 90-millionth EF-series interchangeable lens for EOS cameras. ‘But Keith, what was the 90-millionth lens – what specific model? Do tell us!’ comes the clamour from Photo Counter‘s readership. Fortunately, we have been furnished with this information – it is an an EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM, and it was manufactured on May 23 2013.

Canon’s EF lens series was first introduced together with the EOS SLR camera system in March 1987. It now comprises no less than 84 models.