Weekly News Roundup
A full lens week, a price warning for GR shooters, and a monochrome exhibition opening in New York next week.
This week in photography: Viltrox's 28mm pancake lands on L-Mount, Brightin Star launches a 14mm manual-focus wide-angle, Ricoh raises GR prices in Japan, 7Artisans pays tribute to Leica's Barnack era, Lightroom Classic 15.4 ships, and the B&W International Photo Awards open in New York.
Viltrox AF 28mm f/4.5 Chip Pancake Confirmed for L-Mount
Viltrox has confirmed that its super-slim AF 28mm f/4.5 Chip pancake lens for full-frame mirrorless cameras is coming to L-Mount. The lens already exists for Sony E and Fujifilm X, so this rounds it out for Panasonic and Sigma shooters who have been waiting for a genuinely pocketable wide option in the system.
This isn't a low light lens at f/4.5. It's a daylight street lens, the kind you mount once in the morning and forget is even there. For L-Mount photographers in the Collective who want a setup small enough to disappear into a jacket pocket, this is worth keeping an eye on as the official release date gets confirmed.
Brightin Star Launches 14mm f/2.8 Manual-Focus Wide-Angle
Brightin Star has officially launched its previously rumored 14mm f/2.8 wide-angle full-frame manual-focus lens for Sony E, Nikon Z, L-Mount, and Canon RF. Pre-orders are open now at an introductory price of $239.99, rising to a regular price of $279.99 once the introductory window closes on June 27.
A 14mm at this price point opens up serious architectural and interior work without the cost of a first-party ultra-wide. Manual focus keeps the build simple and the price low, which makes sense for a focal length where you're usually stopping down for depth of field anyway rather than chasing shallow focus. Worth grabbing during the introductory pricing window if this focal length fills a gap in your kit.
Ricoh Announces 6-11% Price Increase on All GR Cameras in Japan
This one matters directly to a lot of people in the Collective. Ricoh Japan has announced that every current GR camera model, including the GR IIIx, GR III, and the GR IV Monochrome, will see a price increase of 6 to 11 percent in Japan starting July 1. No word yet on whether other markets will follow, but price moves like this in Japan have historically been a leading indicator for adjustments elsewhere within a few months.
If you've been sitting on the fence about a GR IV Monochrome purchase, particularly given it's only recently come back into regular stock, this is a reasonable nudge to stop sitting on the fence.
7Artisans Releases 35mm f/2.8 M Mount Inspired by Leica's Barnack Era
7Artisans has released a 35mm f/2.8 M Mount lens directly inspired by the compact optics used on Leica's early Barnack cameras from the 1930s. It weighs just 88 grams, which is almost nothing once it's mounted, and leans hard into the idea that simplicity and portability are virtues that modern lens design has mostly forgotten.
For Leica M shooters in the Collective who like the idea of a genuinely tiny 35mm that doesn't try to do everything, this is a charming option. It won't out-resolve a modern Summicron, but that was never really the point of lenses built in this spirit. Sometimes the smallest possible setup is the one you actually carry every day.
Lightroom Classic 15.4 Ships With Masking and Catalog Improvements
Lightroom Classic 15.4 is now out, bringing changes to how masking behaves, how catalogs are managed, and how AI denoising performs. If you've been frustrated by sloppy Select Subject masks pulling in background elements they shouldn't, or a catalog that's accumulated duplicate entries over the years, this update addresses both directly.
Worth installing sooner rather than later if either of those issues has been quietly slowing down your editing workflow. Catalog management problems in particular tend to compound the longer they're left alone.
Black & White International Photo Awards Exhibition Opens in New York June 25-28
The B&W IPA 2026 exhibition opens in Manhattan next week, with an opening reception Friday June 26 at 6pm at the One Art Space gallery at 23 Warren Street in the historic district. The exhibition runs through June 28 during regular public hours, with a digital screen component also showing honorable mention work from photographers who weren't selected for the physical wall space.
If you're anywhere near New York next week and have any interest in seeing how monochrome work gets curated and presented at scale in a physical gallery setting, this is worth the trip. There's something genuinely useful about standing in a room full of black and white prints and watching how differently they read compared to looking at the same images on a screen.
