Nikon Z70 spec list firms up, Laowa's $1,249 f/2 tilt-shift, and a $49 lens made from disposables

🔥What's hot

🛠New gear

• Laowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift — a manual-focus tilt-shift wide angle that Venus Optics calls the fastest ever made: ±10 degrees of tilt, ±12mm of shift, and distortion dealt with optically rather than by in-camera correction. Shift for straight buildings, tilt for deep landscape focus or the toy-town trick — and at f/2 it stays workable at dusk, which few tilt-shifts manage. It went on sale 5 November at $1,249, in Canon RF, Nikon Z, Sony E, L-mount, Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad XCD; the L version is incompatible with several Lumix bodies. Digital Camera World

• Laowa 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO — picks up two more mounts after the five launched in 2025: the Fujifilm X version autofocuses and carries electronic contacts, while the Nikon F version is manual focus only. A long-working-distance macro that still fits a DSLR is a rarity in 2026, and the X-mount model gives crop shooters autofocus for insects and flowers at the weekend. Autofocus covers 1.5m to infinity, closer work is manual, and holding the lens function button switches on a focus-assist mode inside the macro range. It sells in Japan from 6 November at about ¥105,000. Digital Camera Watch

• 7Artisans LITE 25mm, 35mm and 50mm F1.8 AF — the brand's lightweight APS-C autofocus primes, now sold in a silver metal finish for Fujifilm X, released in Japan on 6 November at ¥29,600 each. Cheap, small and consistent across the set — filters and caps carry between all three, which is the point of buying a trio rather than one lens. Each weighs roughly 175–182g, focuses by stepping motor with subject detection on supported bodies, and takes firmware updates over a USB-C port set into the mount. Digital Camera Watch

• Bold Lens BL-32 — a 32mm manual-focus lens for APS-C bodies built around glass pulled from used Fujifilm QuickSnap disposables, housed in a 3D-printed barrel with six printed curved blades. Most disposable-lens revivals give you one fixed hole; this one can be stopped down, so the softness and grain are something you steer rather than something you are stuck with. It costs $49, opens no wider than f/5.6, and has no electrical contacts — aperture is set on the barrel, and some bodies must be told to fire with nothing mounted. Output runs to roughly fifteen hand-built units a month, spread over six mounts. Digital Camera World

• Wandrd Magnetic Camera Strap — a nylon neck-or-sling strap with round anchors that snap into position magnetically, a plastic clamp doing the actual holding; about $69 / £59 in the 30mm width. Worth knowing if you move one strap between bodies or strip it off for tripod work — Digital Camera World's reviewer rates the swap as quicker than Peak Design's anchors. Rated to 200lbs (90kg) and able to loop back on itself for compacts with a single lug, but the tripod baseplate is not Arca-Swiss, so it has to come off before you mount the camera. Digital Camera World

💬What people are saying

• Sigma FP2 — a long analysis of a body with no stabilisation, no built-in finder and no mechanical shutter, arguing it should be judged on what you can bolt onto it rather than what it ships as. Useful before you fall for the smallest full-frame camera going: it spells out plainly who should not buy one, vloggers included, since there is no front-facing screen. It launched at $2,200, the same as Nikon's ZR — a body 40% larger that is stabilised and syncs flash a third of a stop faster off the same sensor. CIPA battery life is 370 shots. DPReview

  “It’s in situations where your needs haven’t been precisely anticipated by one of the big camera makers that the FP2 becomes an interesting option.”

• Nikon Z5IIC — The Phoblographer has rewritten its review after living with the camera longer: the early warmth faded, and the writer still prefers their own Zf. Second-pass verdicts are worth more than launch-week impressions if this body is on your shortlist, and they rarely get published at all. The reviewer frames it as the camera Nikon made instead of the compact point-and-shoot photographers had been asking for. The Phoblographer

• SG-image AF 55mm f/1.8 — a metal-barrelled budget standard prime made for Nikon Z, Sony E and Fujifilm X, tested on a Nikon Zf by Andrei Dima for Fstoppers. Inexpensive autofocus glass for Z mount has lagged behind what E-mount shooters get, so evidence that a cheap one evens out by f/2.8 is the useful part. Dima found the centre sharp at f/1.8 with corners catching up by f/2.8 on a 24MP sensor, purple fringing gone by then; 365g, 58mm filters, and about five missed shots — he would not point it at fast subjects. Fstoppers

• Sirui Swift 20mm F2.4 — a weather-resistant full-frame autofocus wide for E and L mounts that went on sale on 5 November; The Phoblographer treats it as a landscape lens first. Sealed, autofocusing, light and cheap is exactly the combination you want on a weekend walk, and it is the combination the Japanese makers decline to build at this price. ¥26,400 in Japan, 207g, 58mm filters and 0.2m minimum focus — though the reviewer still spent more time in post-production than they wanted to. The Phoblographer

  “There's something really wonderful about a lens that's lightweight and yet gives you incredible image quality like the Sirui 20mm f2.4.”

📰Industry news

• Sony — Sony's technology segment lifted operating income 3.2% despite a 7.9% sales drop as it shifts upmarket; the A7R VI launched around $600 above its predecessor.

• Nextorage NX-F2AE — SDXC UHS-II cards for video work, V90-rated for a 90 MB/s minimum sustained write, sold in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB.

• Sony LYTIA 720 — A 50-megapixel 1/1.56-type stacked phone sensor due to ship in volume from early November, with 4K60 HDR and about half the LYTIA 700's dark-scene noise.

• Lumix Collective — Panasonic marks 25 years of Lumix with events in seven cities; Manchester is 17 November, tickets £10 with code LUMIX25 taking 25% off.

💡One takeaway