Digital Photographer
Your guide to the best, most exciting and most innovative photographic kit of 2023
What’s old is new – and this has never been more true than in summing up photography in 2023. Last year saw the launch, not just of a new DSLR, but also a film camera, a mirrorless camera that looks like a film camera and two cameras that only shoot in black and white. At the same time, what’s new is new. In 2023, we saw a camera with a full-frame global shutter sensor, a 24-105mm f/2.8 lens, two cameras with AI-busting protocols to certify your images, a $600 fully manual instant camera and a camera the size of a cigarette packet that works like a phone.
It has been a year of genuine innovation, with exciting announcements coming thick and fast. And, as the global production problems began abating (for everyone except Fujifilm, it seemed), supply started to meet demand again – so when a new camera was launched, you could actually buy one. What a novel concept!
We hope you enjoy this roundup of the year’s many highlights, but spare a thought: with the bar raised so high, how is 2024 going to compete? Stay tuned...
CAMERA OF THE YEAR
Jurassic Park reopens, as the global shutter opens fire in a crazy 12 months
Once upon a time, we only had SLR cameras, and they were only able to shoot black-and-white photographs. It took decades of development to create cameras that shoot in colour and don’t need a mirror – so the most fascinating thing about 2023 is that not only do we have a new digital SLR, but one that only shoots black-and-white photographs.
Every year, we hear that DSLRs are dead and that Pentax is a dinosaur taunting an incoming asteroid for thumbing its nose at mirrorless. Yet here we are, with one of the year’s best cameras being a DSLR from Pentax, which is going even more Jurassic in 2024, as it resurrects its line of film cameras.
At the other end of the spectrum, Sony is that asteroid trying to eradicate the SLR era. Its latest flagship camera doesn’t have a mirror, a mechanical shutter, or even a rolling shutter sensor – which means it doesn’t have flash sync speed limits, either. The global shutter era is here and it is about to transform the photographic landscape in ways we can’t even comprehend yet.
Innovation doesn’t only happen at technology’s top end, though. Canon is continuing its commitment to beginner photographers, a category that both Fujifilm and Nikon have said is no longer a primary concern to them. Entry-level cameras need to be more capable and usable than ever, to give people a reason to put down their smartphones, and today’s ‘basic’ EOS is pretty much a powerhouse.
From top to bottom, the camera industry has never been more vivid or exciting.
