Meike officially announced that it will bring a number of new lenses to the 31st Beijing International Radio, Film and Television Exhibition (August 21-24). Meike will exhibit new autofocus lenses at this exhibition, including the new Pro series product line, AF55mm F1.8 Pro, AF85mm F1.8 Pro lenses, both full-frame lenses, with Sony E, Nikon Z and Leica L mounts; and the upcoming high-cost-effective SE product line new AF35mm F2.0 full-frame lens, also with Sony E, Nikon Z and Leica L mounts.

via Weibo

The Japanese store Mapcamera shared the top 10 of the best selling mirrorless cameras in July

1. Nikon Z6III
2. FujiFilm X-T50
3. Sony α7C II
4. Nikon Z f
5. Nikon Z8
6. Canon EOS R6 Mark II
7. Sony α7RV
8. Sony α7IV
9. Lumix S9
10. Lumix GH7

Digicameinfo added a bit of context to the results (google translated):

• The much-anticipated model “Z6III”, released on July 12th, took first place on its debut. It made a huge difference in its debut from the second place model. Despite the hectic schedule of the announcement on June 17th and the start of reservations on the 19th, an enormous number of orders were placed as soon as reservations began. There were concerns about a temporary supply shortage, but thanks to the efforts of the manufacturer, there was an abundant supply and sales numbers were able to increase. Nikon’s Z8 and Z f are still very popular. The arrival of the new model has made things even more lively.
• In second place is the “X-T50”, which was ranked first in the previous ranking. Although there was a temporary supply disruption, it recovered quickly. Although it was left behind by the newly released Z6III, it has a strong lead over the third place and below to secure second place.
• Coming in third was the popular “α7C II”. The cashback campaign ended in August, so it remains to be seen whether it will be able to maintain its position or whether it will be overwhelmed by the offensive of other manufacturers.
• Coming in at number 6 was the EOS R6 Mark II. In stark contrast to Nikon, which was on the rise, Canon was in a tough situation. Meanwhile, the EOS R6 Mark II was fighting a lonely battle. The long-awaited new model will finally be released next time. Let’s hope for Canon’s comeback.
• Two Panasonic models were ranked in 9th and 10th place. It is quite rare these days for two Panasonic models to be ranked at the same time.

At the Shanghai show Viltrox shared more detail about three upcoming lenses:

Viltrox 28mm f/4.5 VCM pancake lens

• Full Frame
• Autofocus (VCM  coil motor)
• Minimum shooting distance: 0.32m.
• all-metal built
• no manual focus ring
• has a lever with built-in cap to close the lens
• Price in YEN is 799 (about $100)
• Launch on August 26
• Sony E and Nikon Z

Viltrox: AF56mm F1.7:

• APS-C
• Autofocus
• Price in YEN is 899 (above $100)
• Launch on August 19
• Sony E and Nikon Z

Viltrox AF135mm F1.8 Lab:

• Autofocus
• Full Frame
• Sony E and Nikon Z

Their teaser discloses some specs:

AF 35mm F1.4
APS-C
autofocus
size is 68mm×43mm
Weight: 180g

I guess most mounts will be supported (E/X/Z/L/RF)

The Swedish company Lit System just launched the Lit Duo 1 Light Meter on Kickstarter (Click here). And it already collected over half a million dollars! Check out their description page as it has a ton of features pro’s absolutely need!

This is how it works:

Topaz just released the new Video AI 5.2 version (Click here to see th product page). Press text:

This release includes the new Rhea Enhancement model, Pro seat management, Frame Interpolation for After Effects, Alpha layer support, and many UI and backend fixes.

1. Rhea Enhancement Model

Rhea represents a combination of Proteus and Iris. The model is intended to be more accurate in preserving fine details across a wider range of subjects, while also handling text in a less destructive way.

This model and Rhea internally processes inputs at 4x scale and then downscales to your selected output resolution.

We’re very excited to see your results with Rhea, here are some example frames from this model:

2. Frame Interpolation for After Effects

Today we are also launching Frame Interpolation in Adobe After Effects. This plugin addition includes access to all Frame Interpolation models for up to 16x slow motion conversion.

For more information on using the After Effects Frame Interpolation plugin, see this post in the Video AI Plug-ins forum section. 62

3. Alpha (transparency) layer support

Video AI can now copy alpha layers from inputs and merge them back with AI model output videos. Alpha layer copying is supported in the following codecs:

• QuickTime Animation
• TIFF
• PNG

Pro seat management

After a pre-launch period with several Pro teams around the world, Video AI Pro will be officially launching later this week. This new license tier offers seat management, commercial usage rights, and multi-GPU support for teams working with Video AI.

As part of this transition in licensing, we will be discontinuing the previous implementation of multi-GPU rendering for the standard license. Our team found that less than 2% of users made use of the multi-GPU setting, and further development will be focused on multi-GPU optimization for Pro teams.

If you are affected by this change and would like to discuss further options, please contact enterprise@topazlabs.com

Bug fixes & other improvements:

• Preview set saving functionality restored.
• UI lag greatly reduced, specifically for long operations.
• Ensures colorspace correctness for input videos with a wider list of colorspace related flags.
  – Uses the setparams filter instead of -colorspace, ... flags to explicitly override the input metadata to ensure only the metadata tags are updated without changing the video data itself.
• Timeline width now adjusts correctly between different video inputs.
• Export preferences now save consistently.
• Added pause/resume controls to right-click menu.
• Fixed crop settings auto-populating after first digit.
• Time remaining/elapsed toggle now available for both Previews and Exports.
• Fixed “Open in Explorer/Finder” button for previews and exports.
• Disabled automatic generation of TIFF sequences for Previews. These temporary files are no longer in use and the app now reads preview files in the selected Export format.