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Ewen Bell

22 stories

Ewen BellReviewsCloser Than Ever / The Photography Blog Compassion, wisdom and a big month of progress for the Tashi Project. An overdue update on taking big steps to get closer to completion.

Ewen BellReviewsNikon ZR Custom Setup for Stills Photography / The Photography Blog This camera might have been built for cinema, but it's packed with credentials for stills photography as well.

Ewen BellReviewsWhy Competitions Suck / The Photography Blog This post is an extract from my book, because it's an idea that keeps popping up and I am happy to share as much of my thoughts on "photography competitions" as possible.

Ewen BellReviewsLaowa 6mm F2 MFT with Rolfie / The Photography Blog I spent a day with Ian Rolfe to review his latest lens purchase, the Laowa 6mm F2 manual focus ultra-wide lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras.

Ewen BellReviewsNeewer LT-39 Travel Tripod Review / The Photography Blog This tripod borrows a lot of design cues from the classic Peak Design Travel Tripod, but at a budget price. The quality of build is surprisingly good and far exceeded anything I expected from Neewer.

Ewen BellReviewsShellie's Cookbook / The Photography Blog It's been hard keeping this one a secret all year. We didn't even tell Shellie's mum! But at last we get to share a little of the joy from Shellie's Winter Cabin Cookbook.

Ewen BellReviewsPergear 50mm F1.4 MF Full Frame / The Photography Blog This lens made me a little bit sentimental for my old Minolta camera and Rokkor lenses. It's a great lens for any one wanting to experiment with fast primes on a budget.

Ewen BellReviewsViltrox 28mm F4.5 CHIP for L-Mount / The Photography Blog The fascinating and quirky Viltrox 28mm F2.5 CHIP has now been released for L-mount. This is a super small lens that pairs well with super small camera bodies such as the Lumix S9 and Sigma BF.

Ewen BellReviewsPhotography Is Not About Cameras / The Photography Blog I made a video this month especially for beginners who are looking for guidance as they find their way onto a path to learning photography. We're not talking cameras, and that's kind of the point.

Ewen BellReviewsTamron 12-20mm F2.8 for Sony and Nikon / The Photography Blog I love this lens. Full frame and fully wide, this lens is sharp and straight and bright and just a wonderful bit of design. Tamron are doing really good things in the zoom space these days.

Ewen BellReviewsViltrox AF 50mm Air F2 L / The Photography Blog Another great lightweight and affordable 50mm lens for mirrorless cameras. This review is for the L-mount version, but it's also available for Sony and Nikon mirrorless as well.

Ewen BellReviewsAF 50mm F1.8 Neo from TT Artisan / The Photography Blog TT Artisan have made an amazingly affordable lens for mirrorless full frame cameras that opens the door to experimenting with fast primes on a budget.

Ewen BellReviewsDxO PhotoLab Discount Code / The Photography Blog I posted a video about getting away from subscription pricing with Adobe and Capture One, so the folks at DxO reached out to offer a discount code to my readers :)

Ewen BellReviewsEwen's Bell Curve / The Photography Blog My simple secrets to editing RAW photos that can help any photographer improve their skills. In my new video I walk through examples of how I do my processing, editing and grading, and help guide you…

Ewen BellReviewsSony A7 IV Custom Setup / The Photography Blog My guide to custom settings on the Sony A7IV, including a free download of my own CamSet to configure your Sony.

Ewen BellReviewsTT Artisan 35mm F1.8 / The Photography Blog Food photography lens for smaller mirrorless cameras. Excellent quality images and a fast aperture make this lens the ideal companion to your APS-C sized sensor such as the Nikon Z50 and Canon R50.

Ewen BellReviewsTamron 35-150mm F/2-2.8 Di III VXD / The Photography Blog I travelled in the Himalayas for a few months with this lovely lens. If you're interested in more than just tech specs, and what it's like to work with this lens for an extended time then you've come…

Ewen BellReviewsViltrox E-Z Autofocus Adapter / The Photography Blog Tested with a handful of full-frame E-mount lenses on the Nikon ZR. My unit failed after a few weeks of use. Was great while it lasted.

Ewen BellReviewsZV-E1 Still My Favourite Sony / The Photography Blog Two years on and this affordable and compact full-frame camera still delivers great results, and still makes us smile. Definitely one of those times when less is more.

Ewen BellReviewsSamyang Rokinon Remaster Slim / The Photography Blog Modular lens kit the offers a choice of wide lenses on E-mount. Not a zoom, but replaceable inserts to swap from 21mm, 28mm and 32mm focal lengths.

Ewen BellReviewsWinds of The Mustang / Photo Essay Nepal / Himalayas / Mustang This essay is inspired by my last sunset in the Lower Mustang. The geology of this region is shaped by wind and water, turning stone into dust.

Ewen BellReviewsGolden Bhaktapur / Photo Essay Nepal / Bhaktapur In the early light of a winters morning the Durbar Square in Bhaktapur is usually pretty quiet, but filled with long shadows.

On the calendar

· Trade shows and launch events, this week's stories from each corner of the industry, and what its press is covering.

On view

This week, from that corner the newest stories from the corner of the industry you picked

The wire their own posts, translated

How pictures get made in 2026 from the industry's own reports

Sources

Fetched every six hours, linked to the original

About

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo