Latest issueSunday 8 November 2026 · Issue 23 · 5 min read
Tamron's OEM orders jump 36% with Sony bid unanswered; a 45mm f/1.4 for GFX; last Pentax DSLRs discounted
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sonyalpharumors · yesterday
Tamron's OEM lens orders jump as Sony bid stays unanswered
Takeaway: OEM lens sales up 35.6%
Tamron reported its quarterly numbers, the first since Sony's buyout proposal, and said nothing at all about the deal. The money story is the lenses it builds for other camera brands: that OEM work swung back hard after a weak first half, while Tamron's own-branded lenses slipped slightly. Its own industry figures show the wider market still contracting, with buyers purchasing fewer but pricier products.
Tamron is where a lot of the affordable fast zooms on your shortlist come from, and it quietly makes glass badged by other brands too. Who owns it, and whether it keeps serving every mount rather than one, decides how much third-party choice you get on your next body. Photographic Products sales reached ¥17.0bn, up 12.4%, with OEM lens sales up 35.6% and units up 17.2%, after a 32% unit fall in the first half; in Tamron's Q3 industry data mirrorless camera units fell 19%.
“Plan to 2029: lens business growth of 5%+ a year, industrial businesses 15%+ a year, and total sales of ¥120bn+.”
New gear
Mitakon Speedmaster 45mm f/1.4 — is a manual-focus fast normal that covers 44×33mm medium format, now listed on ZY Optics' own site in native Fujifilm G and Hasselblad XCD mounts, with 13 elements in 11 groups and a dual floating focus design. Fast glass for GFX usually costs Fujifilm money; a metal-bodied f/1.4 from a Chinese maker is the cheap route to shallow depth of field on the bigger format, provided you accept no electronics in the mount at all. Roughly 750g without the hood, 11 clicked aperture blades, 0.45m minimum focus and a 62mm filter thread, stopping down to f/16. Photo Rumors
GRKit — is an experimental SD-card tool for Ricoh GR III, GR IIIx and GR IV bodies that adds live-preview film looks, imported .cube LUTs or Lightroom presets, extra crops and effects, with no firmware flashing involved. Custom firmware on a GR is a one-way risk; this loads from the card, and pulling the card puts the camera straight back to stock, which makes it the low-stakes way to try an in-camera look pipeline. Framing options include the XPan 65:24 panoramic crop alongside 2.35:1, 16:9 and 1:1, and the controls appear in the ADJ menu as "GRK". Pentax & Ricoh Rumors
Nikon Z5 II bundle — pairs the 24.5MP full-frame body with the compact Z 24-50mm f/4-6.3, a 128GB card, a spare battery and a bag, in a deal Amateur Photographer flags as good value. If you have been waiting for a sensible way into Z-mount full frame for weekend shooting, this is the entry point that already includes the parts you would buy in week one, and the kit zoom is small enough to carry all day. Up to 15fps in raw and 30fps JPEG-only, dual SDXC UHS-II slots, uncropped 4K 30p with 4K 60p cropped, and a five-star review from tester Amy Davies. Amateur Photographer
What people are saying
Sigma FP2 sample gallery — is DPReview's set of real-world frames from the always-HDR Sigma, shot in Standard and Rich colour modes and published with the full high dynamic range versions, so an HDR screen shows highlights glowing brighter than the gallery previews. This is the first proper look at what the camera actually hands you, and it sharpens the complaint already aimed at it: you cannot dial the HDR rendering back when a scene does not need it. Richard Butler found animal and eye detection autofocus very effective, and deliberately shot under various artificial lights to show where banding does and does not appear. DPReview
Canon EOS R8 Mark II — gets a full review from Mobile01, summarised by Japanese site Toruna: a light full-framer that finally gains in-body stabilisation, with the battery, viewfinder and screen resolution listed as the weak spots. It is the cheapest Canon route to stabilised full frame, and in Taiwan the reviewer reckons it undercuts the Nikon Z5 II and Sony a7C II, which is exactly the three-way comparison a buyer makes this winter. Five-axis IBIS rated at up to 7.5 stops in the centre, about 40fps with the electronic shutter, 24.2MP and DIGIC X; it went on sale on 29 October 2026 at ¥275,000 in Canon's own shop. asobinet (とるなら)
Sony a7R VI — is the first a7R with a fully stacked sensor, and portrait photographer Alex Barrera says the practical change is not resolution but latitude and readout: he has stopped underexposing to protect highlights and now exposes normally. It is the clearest argument yet that readout speed, not megapixels, is what a high-resolution body upgrade buys you now — worth knowing before you spend on any big-sensor body. Resolution goes from 61 to 66.8 megapixels at $4,500, and Barrera reckons dynamic range matches or beats digital medium format while shooting 30fps; Sony's new dual gain video mode runs from ISO 800 to 3,200. Fstoppers
Sony FE 400mm F4.5 GM OSS — is the subject of a Phoblographer review that frames the whole question around price: Sony has chased ultra-light super-telephoto primes while rivals argue about zooms. A 400mm you can actually hand-hold on a weekend walk is the kind of lens hobbyists rent before they buy, so the verdict on whether the weight saving justifies the money is the useful part. The lens carries the G Master badge and a $2,700 price. The Phoblographer
Industry news
Pentax K-1 Mark II — is the only Pentax DSLR left in UK stock, now with a £500 discount, while the Kf has vanished from retailers and from Ricoh's EU site.
Sony FX6 firmware 6.02 — addresses a rare fault where an error on one card slot could stop recording on the other during simultaneous dual-slot capture.
OM System price notice — A 23 October notice from OM Digital Solutions covers revised shipping prices on some products and a move to open pricing for them.
OM System PEN — A 21 October notice apologises for delaying the PEN and its accessories, and changes the terms of the launch campaign that went with them.
One takeaway
Decide on an optical finder now, or plan to buy used. If you have ever wanted a full-frame body with a mirror and a pentaprism, the window for buying one new is closing: Pentax was the last brand still arguing DSLRs had a future, and its remaining bodies are clearance goods.
Everything else in this issue points the other way — faster sensors, card-based software tricks, lens makers chasing mirrorless mounts. So treat a DSLR purchase as a deliberate choice, made now and supported by the second-hand market later. Amateur Photographer warns new stock of both bodies and lenses will be limited; Canon and Nikon have launched no new DSLRs for years. Amateur Photographer