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Meyer Optik Görlitz, under its new parent company OPC Optics, is bringing yet another lens back to life — the Primoplan 75mm F1.9 II.

This fully-manual ‘legendary portrait lens’ is a revitalized version based on the original 1936 design by Meyer Optik designer, Paul Schäfter. Meyer Optik Görlitz says this redesigned version has been ‘carefully adapted it to the high standards of digital photography after an intensive development period,’ which included the support of Meyer Optik Görlitz engineer Dr. Wolf-Dieter Prenzel.

Meyer Optik Görlitz says the ‘Primoplan 75 f1.9 II is an enhancement of the Cooke triplet, in which a central dispersion lens is flanked by two groups of lenses, each acting as a converging lens.’ It adds, ‘the rear group consists of a single biconvex converging lens.’

A low-res sample photo, provided by Meyer Optik Görlitz.

The lens features an all-metal construction, is hand-assembled and each unit is calibrated and tested. Other features include an aperture range of F1.9 through F16, has 14-blade aperture diaphragm, has a minimum focusing distance of 75cm (2.45ft) and uses a 52mm front filter thread.

A low-res sample photo, provided by Meyer Optik Görlitz.

The lens is available to pre-order starting today for Canon EF, Fuji X, Leica M, M42, MFT, Nikon F, Pentax K and Sony E mounts for €973.82 (approximately $1,155) on the Meyer Optik Görlitz online store. The first units are expected to start shipping in January 2021.

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As we continue to test Nikon's update of its multimedia full-framer, we've added more of our findings so far on image quality, dynamic range and video quality. Take a look.

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In August, we reported that Canon suffered a ransomware attack that, allegedly, saw more than 10TB of data taken from Canon’s servers. At the time, a Canon representative told us the company was ‘investigating the situation,’ but the company never confirmed the attack took place. Now, three months later, Canon has confirmed in a statement that an attack did take place as well as details on exactly what information was taken from its servers.

The notice, first spotted by Canon Watch, states information of past and current employees ‘who were employed by Canon U.S.A., Inc. and certain subsidiaries, predecessors and affiliates from 2005 to 2020’ was taken. This data, which also includes employees’ beneficiaries and dependents when applicable, includes ‘Social Security number, driver’s license number or government-issued identification number, financial account number provided to Canon for direct deposit, electronic signature, and date of birth.’

A notice originally sent to Canon employees notifying them of the cyberattack.

Canon says it immediately opened an investigation, hired a cybersecurity firm and contacted law enforcement, who helped to support the investigation.

To assist with those whose information was taken in the attack, Canon is offering a free membership to a credit monitoring service to help ‘detect possible misuse of an individual’s information and provides the individual with identity protection services.’

Canon statement:

Canon statement about the ransomware attack:

Notice of Data Security Incident

Canon understands the importance of protecting information. We are informing current and former employees who were employed by Canon U.S.A., Inc. and certain subsidiaries, predecessors, and affiliates¹ from 2005 to 2020 and those employees’ beneficiaries and dependents of an incident that involved some of their information. This notice explains the incident, measures we have taken, and steps you can take in response.

We identified a security incident involving ransomware on August 4, 2020. We immediately began to investigate, a cybersecurity firm was engaged, and measures were taken to address the incident and restore operations. We notified law enforcement and worked to support the investigation. We also implemented additional security measures to further enhance the security of our network.

We determined that there was unauthorized activity on our network between July 20, 2020 and August 6, 2020. During that time, there was unauthorized access to files on our file servers. We completed a careful review of the file servers on November 2, 2020 and determined that there were files that contained information about current and former employees from 2005 to 2020 and their beneficiaries and dependents. The information in the files included the individuals’ names and one or more of the following data elements: Social Security number, driver’s license number or government-issued identification number, financial account number provided to Canon for direct deposit, electronic signature, and date of birth.

We wanted to notify our current and former employees and their beneficiaries and dependents of this incident and to assure them that we take it seriously. As a precaution, we have arranged for them to receive a complimentary membership to Experian’s® IdentityWorks^SM credit monitoring service. This product helps detect possible misuse of an individual’s information and provides the individual with identity protection services. IdentityWorks^SM is completely free to the individual, and enrolling in this program will not hurt the individual’s credit score. If you are a current or former employee, or the beneficiary or dependent of a current or former employee, and would like more information on IdentityWorks^SM, including instructions on how to activate your complimentary membership, please call our dedicated call center for this incident at 1-833-960-3574. For information on additional steps you can take in response, please see the additional information provided below.

We regret that this occurred and apologize for any inconvenience. If you have additional questions, please call 1-833-960-3574, Monday through Friday, between 9:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., Eastern Time.

¹This notice is being provided by or on behalf of Canon U.S.A., Inc. and the following subsidiaries, predecessors, and affiliates: Canon BioMedical, Inc., Canon Business Solutions-Central, Inc., Canon Business Solutions-Mountain West, Inc., Canon Business Solutions-NewCal, Inc., Canon Business Solutions-Tereck, Inc., Canon Business Solutions-West, Inc., Canon Development Americas, Inc., Canon Financial Services, Inc., Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc., Canon Information Technology Systems, Inc., Canon Latin America, Inc., Canon Medical Components U.S.A., Inc., Canon Software America, Inc., Canon Solutions America, Inc., Canon Technology Solutions, Inc., Canon U.S. Life Sciences, Inc., NT-ware USA, Inc., Océ Imaging Supplies, Inc., Océ Imagistics Inc., Océ North America, Inc., Océ Reprographic Technologies Corporation, and Virtual Imaging, Inc.

ADDITIONAL STEPS YOU CAN TAKE

We remind you it is always advisable to be vigilant for incidents of fraud or identity theft by reviewing your account statements and free credit reports for any unauthorized activity. You may obtain a copy of your credit report, free of charge, once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide credit reporting companies. To order your annual free credit report, please visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll free at 1-877-322-8228. Contact information for the three nationwide credit reporting companies is as follows:

• Equifax, PO Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374, www.equifax.com, 1-800-685-1111
• Experian, PO Box 2002, Allen, TX 75013, www.experian.com, 1-888-397-3742
• TransUnion, PO Box 2000, Chester, PA 19016, www.transunion.com, 1-800-916-8800

If you believe you are the victim of identity theft or have reason to believe your personal information has been misused, you should immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission and/or the Attorney General’s office in your state. You can obtain information from these sources about steps an individual can take to avoid identity theft as well as information about fraud alerts and security freezes. You should also contact your local law enforcement authorities and file a police report. Obtain a copy of the police report in case you are asked to provide copies to creditors to correct your records. Contact information for the Federal Trade Commission is as follows:

• Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Response Center, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20580, 1-877-IDTHEFT (438-4338), www.ftc.gov/idtheft

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Todd Dominey has published a video on his Youtube channel that dives into the interesting history of a film stock ‘with an origin story unlike any other,’ Kodak Aerochrome.

The 11-minute video, which is part one of a two-part series, walks through why the infrared film was developed by Kodak and what the United States military had to do with its inception. From there, Dominey talks about the film’s significance in pop culture — most notably in the late 1960s and early 70s — as well as the film’s discontinuation announcement in 2009 and the striking Aerochrome works of photographer Richard Mosse.

One of a few albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s that used images captured on Kodak Aerochrome film.

It’s a fantastic watch for those unfamiliar with the discontinued film and still worth a watch for those familiar with it. Dominey says the second video will focus on digitally recreating the aesthetic of Aerochrome film — something that’s been attempted a few times before in the form of presets.

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Dan Bracaglia

In Part 1 of my Gear of the Year for 2020 I mentioned that the Fujifilm X100V has been in my hands almost all of this year. This article is about a very different piece of photographic equipment in my collection, which has also seen heavy usage this year. And an item which – while much less practical for the kind of day-to-day documentation to which the X100V is so well-suited – is no less enjoyable (in its own way) to use.

The story of how I ended up with a Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 is a bit complicated, and starts with a very different kind of product: the Coolpix P950, which I reviewed earlier this year, at the height of the Washington state quarantine. Those several weeks of shooting with the P950 turned me on to the potential for a proper super-telephoto photography project, once non-essential travel restrictions were lifted.

And I knew exactly where to start - by the sea.

Re-reading WG.S Sebald's book The Rings of Saturn this summer (yes, sorry, this is going to one of those kinds of articles), one line really resonated with me. It's a description of fishermen on the Norfolk coast, in southeast England. Wondering about their motivation at a time when it is 'almost impossible to catch anything from the beach' Sebald concludes that they 'just want to be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness'.

I've always found it calming to look out at the ocean, and amid the seemingly never-ending chaos of this year, I've been bolting down to the Washington coast whenever time and local regulations allow, to put the world at my back for a little while.

The long telephoto project I originally had in mind was to be centered on the fishing boats that ply up and down the Washington coast. Unfortunately, it turned out that even with its excellent image stabilization, accurate framing with the Coolpix P950 was too difficult with such distant, bobbing targets, and the 16MP resolution was too unforgiving when it came to cropping. That's where the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 came in. The vignetting in this shot, and the others in this article, is optical. I don't mind it (and haven't corrected it) in images like these, but it's one more thing that limits the usefulness of long mirror lenses for more conventional work. 1/2000sec|F11|ISO 800

The Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 is a catadioptric lens, which works by 'folding' the light that comes into it using mirrors. This provides a long focal length without the need for a physically long lens barrel. The light travels the same distance inside a mirror lens as it would in a conventional telephoto, it just moves in a zigzag.

The biggest downside to mirror lenses in general is manual focus (in almost all cases - more on that in a minute) and a fixed, slow aperture, usually F8 or F11. This severely reduces the range of conditions in which they can be used. Typically, mirror lenses are also less sharp than conventional lenses, as well as being an absolute pain to focus through an optical viewfinder. They have a tendency to throw off AWB too, and let's not forget the highly distracting 'donut' bokeh, created by the annular mirror.

In a world of high-resolution electronic viewfinders, magnified focus modes and fully electronic shutters, mirror lenses are more practical now than they've ever been

For all that, mirror lenses have a dedicated fanbase (and if you're looking for an inexpensive way to get into lunar photography, look no further). But there are a lot of good reasons why this lens costs $3,200 and this one can be found on the second-hand market for less than $500. And that's an unusually expensive example of the type – most bog-standard 500mm F8 mirror lenses can be picked up used for around $100-200.

This image is a combination of two exposures taken from the same position, moments apart: one exposed for the moon, and one for the wispy clouds. F11| ISO 1600 (multi-exposure)

Catadioptric lens technology hasn't evolved significantly in decades (with the honorable exception of the Minolta AF Reflex 500mm F8, which remains unique among mirror lenses for offering autofocus) but camera technology over those decades has come on in leaps and bounds. And it turns out that in a world of high-resolution electronic viewfinders, magnified focus modes and fully electronic shutters, mirror lenses are more practical now than they've ever been. Which is why when a 'Like New -' condition example of the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 popped up on KEH earlier this year I jumped on it immediately.

The British are famous for our sentimental attachment to the coast, maybe just because of its constant proximity – nowhere in the UK are you more than 70 miles from the sea. In the time it takes for me to get to Long Beach Washington from Seattle, I could drive almost the entire length of England. 1/3000sec|F11|ISO 1000

That last paragraph, by the way, was going to form the basis of an opinion article I was planning over the summer. Provisionally entitled 'Thanks to Mirrorless Technology, There's Still a Place For Slow Telephoto Lenses', the air was taken out of the idea by Canon's surprise release of the RF 600mm and 800mm F11 STM. But hey – I was right. It turns out that there is a market for lenses like that.

Earlier in this article I implied that the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 is 'enjoyable' to use. That needs some qualification: I enjoy using it in the same way as I enjoy hiking up really steep hills. It makes me feel good afterwards, but often, when I'm actually engaged in the task, it's a bloody nightmare. Oh, let me count the ways...

The Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 lets me get a perspective that would be impossible with any of my other lenses

First, the massive 108mm filter thread is non-standard, which means that there's no simple replacement option for the fiddly threaded metal (!) cap, which takes ages to get on and off. Then there's the enormously long focus ring. This is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, depth of field is so shallow at 1000mm you really do need a good, positive manual focus ring with fine-grained control. On the other hand, if you nudge the barrel of the lens (or the massive integral hood, which rotates with the focusing ring) or breath on it, or look at it wrong, you'll throw off critical focus. And because the focusing ring makes up 70% of the length of the entire barrel (even more when the hood is extended) it's almost impossible not to nudge it when handling or repositioning the lens. Finally, although smaller than a conventional 1000mm F11 would be, it's still a big, fat lump of glass and metal that doesn't fit into a camera bag alongside my other gear.

Ultimately though I don't really care about any of those issues, because the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 lets me get a perspective that would be impossible with any of my other lenses and, yes, it's a lot of fun.

From my favorite spot near Long Beach, looking out over the Pacific, the horizon line is roughly 10-12 miles away. Twelve miles is the official limit of territorial and international waters. 1/1000sec|F11|ISO 3200

I shoot my 1000mm F11 lens adapted on a Nikon Z7, with electronic shutter and a cable release, and always clamped to a sturdy tripod with a 10lb weight slung under it. I tried mechanical shutter and electronic first-curtain, but after a lot of experimentation I found that the former can create vibration issues at such a long focal length, and the latter can lead to uneven exposures at 1/4000sec and above.

With the setup I just described, I can get away with shutter speeds of around 1/200sec in still conditions. If it's breezy, I'll increase the ISO and decrease the exposure time accordingly. If the fully-electronic shutter introduces any distortion, I can't tell. The subject matter would render it unnoticeable anyway.

Water spouts, created by whales breaching in the Pacific close to sunset. These little puffs of water were invisibly small to my naked eye. 1/500sec|F11|ISO 4000

The project I'm currently working on with my 1000mm is a little different to the one I'd originally planned, and a lot more abstract. it's shot mostly from a single overlook about 100 feet up over the Pacific coast near Long Beach WA, looking out roughly 10-12 miles to the clouds and patches of light which line the horizon, approximately at the boundary of International waters. Since I started working on this project I've added a Tamron SP 500mm F8 and a second tripod to my collection for those times when 1000mm is just slightly too long.

Maybe I'll look back at the whole effort in a couple of years and think 'well that was a waste of time' (maybe you think so already - and I'm sure you'll let me know) but if nothing else, turning my back on the world and concentrating on 1.3 degrees of distant, hazy somewhere else for a few days here and there has provided a much-needed exercise in creative meditation.

Next year's post-vaccine project: A closeup look at crowds, all shot on a 14mm lens.

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