Photo news: Falsified Tamrons and a major Sony update

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Counterfeit products, gray imports, products available before the deadline – Monitoring your own supply chains is not easy for any company. When organized crime is added to the mix, it gets terrible for the company concerned and its customers. This has now happened at Tamron in China. It was not the lenses themselves that were counterfeited, but only the packaging. Apparently, used lenses were also sold as new.

Tamron warns against these counterfeits on its channel on the Chinese social network Weibo. The criminals are said to have deceptively copied the original packaging, right down to the security seals, and then offered all kinds of lenses in it. The counterfeits are said to have ranged from gray imports to used goods including homemade accessories such as lens caps. In short, anyone who bought such a lens in good faith could not have known beforehand what was in the box.

Several batches of repackaged Tamron lenses

Such actions naturally damage trust in a brand, especially when, as Tamron writes, "several batches" are involved. It was probably not a couple of handymen in the cellar who glued the boxes together from printer paper. Professional printing on cardboard and the precisely cut seals require a larger counterfeiting workshop. The only way to protect yourself, as Tamron rightly recommends, is to buy from a specialist dealer named by the company. This applies in China as well as in the rest of the world.

In addition, you should pay particular attention to suspiciously cheap lenses from supposedly private sellers in the near future. Unfortunately, the serial number, if the seller provides it, is not a protective mechanism. You can check it on Tamron's extended warranty page, but this only tells you that there is a lens with this serial number and that it has not yet been registered. Since organized counterfeiters often have access to original goods in the supply chain, they can also collect serial numbers from devices that have not even been sold to the end customer.

Firmware for A7 IV facilitates remote control via app

To avoid trouble, you should perhaps wait a few more days before installing the latest firmware update to version 4.00 for the Sony Alpha 7 IV. Sony has often had problems here, which could even lead to cameras not working ("bricks"). This was most recently the case with the A7R V, for which there is now a corrected version. So, for now, at your own risk: The 4.00 update for the A7 IV can be found on Sony's download page along with instructions.

The update is particularly useful if you want to use a smartphone or tablet with "Monitor & Control" version 2.1.0 or higher to control the camera remotely. This allows you to view the camera's live image and adjust exposure and other settings. And with the "Creators App" from version 2.5.0, which is unfortunately separate, images can also be sent wirelessly to the mobile device directly after being taken to edit and send them there. With the new firmware, this should also be continued if the connection is interrupted, in which case the system should send the missing images – and only these – automatically.

Adobe's Firefly extends video and audio

After our column last week took a critical look at Adobe's licensing policy, it is now time to praise it again. Because what Adobe is really doing with its AI functions in practice is not only technically impressive, but also useful. This can now be seen in beta versions of Premiere Pro under the simple term "generative enhancement". This allows both the image and sound of a video to be extended using the "Firefly" AI. If this sounds too unspectacular, we recommend taking a look at Adobe's sample video.

The function can mean that scenes do not have to be reshot. An actor was walking in the wrong direction? The rhythm isn't right, would a two-second longer shot be good here? No problem, the AI will do it. Experienced editors, as today's editors want to be called, may smile at this, because this AI has no human feeling for the design of a film either, but the results are already useful for pre-production, playing with lengths and settings, for example.

Cutting to music is no longer necessary

Video generation can completely reverse one aspect that requires a lot of experience, namely "cutting to music". If the AI doesn't mess up a known piece of music – you can clearly hear that –, the length of the music no longer dictates the need for video, it can also be the other way around. So far, this has worked quite convincingly with orchestral pieces, i.e. typical movie soundtracks. And because Adobe is aware of its professional target group, it immediately emphasizes that the training data for image and sound should not have consisted of copyrighted material. Consequently, according to the company, the use of the function is also harmless for commercial productions.

A look back at the Nikon 1

Nikon was one of the first manufacturers to venture into a mirrorless format for system cameras 14 years ago. However, the "Nikon 1" series was not a success and was quietly discontinued in 2014, ten years ago. In terms of price and function, the cameras sat between the then even more popular compact cameras and the large DSLR blocks, although they were the technical leaders. Things like phase-change metering directly on the sensor were first offered by the Nikon 1, today one of the prerequisites for most autofocus systems. DPreview explains why this still didn't help, and the article is our recommendation for a long read over the weekend. It comes from a series celebrating the 25th anniversary of the popular camera website, which it almost didn't live to see. And, for this time at the very end: We had already presented the most interesting camera of this week, the Fujifilm X-5M, which is not only designed for vlogging, for under 1000 euros in a kit. Shortly afterward, Fuji also announced two new lenses, making the APS-C market even more exciting.

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