Gear of the Month | October 2023

Welcome to our quickfire round-up of all the essential photo and video gear releases from October. It may be spooky season, but DJI finally bringing out a successor to its Pocket 2 gimbal camera has us feeling more like Christmas has come early. The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 sports a brand new 1-inch sensor, among plenty of other upgrades – see below for the full lowdown.

Elsewhere, October has pretty much been the month of the lens. Whether you use APS-C or full-frame mirrorless cameras, you’ll likely have a new lens to tempt you this month, with releases for Canon RF, Nikon Z, Fujifilm X, Sony E and Leica L-mount. We’ve got everything you need to know right here – so let’s get into it.

We had to wait a good long while for an update to DJI’s clever Pocket 2 gimbal camera, but boy does it look to have been worth it. The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is fundamentally the same proposition – an action camera built around a stabilising gimbal, allowing for super-smooth camera movements in video. However, it adds a significant raft of upgrades that are sure to make it a more potent filmmaking tool than ever.

Probably the most significant upgrade is the 1-inch CMOS sensor, compared to a 1/1.7-inch chip in the Pocket 2. This should greatly improve the quality and dynamic range of footage captured on the Osmo Pocket 3, which runs up to a maximum resolution and frame rate of 4K 120p, allowing for super-slow motion.

Once again we have a 3-axis mechanical gimbal powering the camera’s headline feature – its stabilisation system. The ActiveTrack 6.0 system provides intelligent follow modes that allow the camera to keep track of subjects, and there are also smart modes like Dynamic Framing and Face Auto-Detect. On the audio side of things meanwhile, DJI’s built-in three-mic array records omnidirectional stereo sound, ensuring your videos sound as good as they look. 

Sigma is introducing a new wide zoom for APS-C mirrorless systems – the 10-18mm f2.8 AF DC DN Contemporary. It’s available for Fujifilm X, Sony E and L-mount cameras, and blends a compact form factor with high-end performance. According to Sigma, this is the smallest and lightest f/2.8 zoom for APS-C systems, weighing in at just 255g and measuring 72.2mm by 64mm.

The lens delivers an equivalent zoom range of 15-27mm when mounted to APS-C cameras, making it a great choice for landscapes and documentary photography, as well as video. It uses a complex optical structure of 13 elements in 10 groups, with low-dispersion and aspherical elements to minimise distortion and aberrations. There’s also the Super Multi-Layer Coating that minimises flare and ghosting, making for superior light transmission and high contrast.

Tamron’s 150-500mm superzoom has been a popular third-party lens choice among Sony E and Fujifilm X users for a few years – and now it’s coming to Nikon Z-mount. This is an APS-C lens, meaning it’s designed for the more affordable Nikon Z cameras like the Nikon Z50, Z30 and Z fc, where it delivers an equivalent zoom range of 225-750mm.

Tamron has made something of a speciality in making big zooms like this into credible choices for enthusiast photographers, and the 150-500mm f5-6.7 Di III VC VXD delivers excellent corner-to-corner sharpness throughout its zoom range. The VXD linear motor focus mechanism ensures reliably fast focusing, and the moisture-resistant exterior construction makes the lens ideal for outdoor shooting. If you’re a wildlife photographer using APS-C Nikon Z cameras, this is a lens to strongly consider.

While Tamron’s superzoom is pitched more towards wildlife enthusiasts, Nikon’s Z 600mm f6.3 VR S is definitely aimed squarely at professionals. A full-frame telephoto prime, this is the “lightest 600mm prime in its class” according to Nikon, and is designed to balance perfectly on full-frame Z cameras like the Z8 and Z9. This lens is part of Nikon’s prestigious “S-Line”, meaning it boasts pin-sharp optics for absolutely uncompromising performance. The Vibration Reduction image stabilisation system provides up to 6 stops of effective compensation, and the lens has also been comprehensively weather-sealed for outdoor work.

For users of Canon RF full-frame cameras, this beautiful wide zoom should have plenty of shooting applications. It’s an “L” lens, meaning it's built to exacting standards of quality both inside and out, and its 10-20mm focal range makes it ideal for capturing landscapes and architecture. The lens features a 5-stop optical stabilisation system, and this is upped to 6 stops when it’s paired with a Canon RF camera that has its own IBIS system built in.

With a constant aperture of f4, the lens is highly versatile, and its high-end optical construction ensures tack-sharp images at all focal lengths. The path includes a Super UD element as well as three conventional UD elements and three aspherical elements, meaning that distortion and aberration are exceptionally well controlled.

Designed for L-mount, this is Leica’s first APO lens to come in the 21mm focal length, “APO”, for those who don’t know, is a shorthand term for “apochromatically corrected”, and it means a lens with a special optical design that means all colour wavelengths of light converge at the same point of focus. In most lens designs, blue and green wavelengths converge on one focal plane, while the longer red wavelength is refracted to a slightly different one. This causes the optical phenomenon you may have heard referred to as “colour fringing”. 

By using a specialist optical design of lens elements including low-dispersion glass, APO lenses like the Leica 21mm f2 Super-APO-Summicron-SL ASPH allow all colours to converge at the same point, resulting in absolutely exceptional sharpness, colour and contrast.

This dynamic wide zoom for L-mount will likely be snapped up by landscape photographers. With premium optics featuring 18 elements in 13 groups, as well as a constant f2.8 aperture, it’s a premium lens that enthusiasts and professionals alike will adore. It’s also been optimised for outdoor use, with Hydrophobe Aqua-Dura coating on the external lens elements to keep water off. The angle of view is 114 degrees, allowing shooters to absolutely fill the frame with sumptuous vistas and spectacular landscapes.