June 12th Photo News: Canon 70-200 updates; Apple Mojave; New Drone Bill; DXO Nik Collection

The new Canon EF 70-200 f2.8L IS III and Canon EF 70-200 f4L IS II are now available for preorder. Starting with the 70-200 f4 II, the majority of the updates involved the image stabilization system. The lens now has five stops of image stabilization (up from four), three modes for IS (up from two), and Canon states the IS system is much quieter now. Canon also decreased the minimum focus distance from 3.9' down to 3.3', gave it new lens coatings, and increased the number of aperture blades to nine (up from eight).

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The 70-200 f2.8 III, on the other hand did not receive any major updates. The 70-200 f2.8 III now has an Air Sphere Coating that, according to Canon, will reduce lens flare and ghosting. Canon also, gave it a new paint job making it a whiter shade of white. Canon says the optical elements are unchanged from the previous version of the lens. 

The Canon EF 70-200 f2.8L IS III is available for preorder and expected to be available in August 2018. The Canon EF 70-200 f4L IS II is also available for preorder and has an expected availability of late June 2018.

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Apple announced at the 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference that starting in macOS 10.14 Mojave, they will start removing support for 32-bit architecture programs. This could potentially have a great effect on photographers because a lot of photography software is still running in 32-bit architecture. Notably, for the sports photographers and journalists, Photo Mechanic is running a 32-bit architecture. Hopefully, the announcement will give developers the opportunity to make updates to the software to allow them to run in future macOS operating systems.  

If you want to find out what programs on your Mac are running in 32-Bit check out the link.

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The Department of Homeland Security is urging the Senate to pass S.2836 which is named "Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018." The bill would be "To assist the Department of Homeland Security in preventing emerging threats from unmanned aircraft and vehicles, and for other purposes." and would allow DHS to detect, identify, monitor, and track the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft. As well as the authority to disrupt control, seize control, confiscate, or use reasonable force to disable, damage, or destroy unmanned aircraft systems or unmanned aircraft.

In a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, the ACLU wrote: "While the potential security threat posed by drones is real and the need to protect certain facilities is legitimate, strong checks and balances to protect property, privacy, and First Amendment rights are vital,” the ACLU writes. “S.2836 lacks such measures. The bill amounts to an enormous unchecked grant of authority to the government to forcefully remove drones from the sky in nebulous security circumstances"

The full text of S.2836 can be read HERE.

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Finally, DXO released Nik Collection 2018. The collection is on sale right now for $49.99 and will eventually cost $69. I did a full video on why I purchased the 2018 DXO Nik Collection which you can watch HERE.