Photo Review Reviews section

Lowepro Clips 120

8.5 Rating

A compact hand/shoulder bag for camcorders, long-zoom digicams or a small DSLR and lens.Designed primarily to hold a video camera, the new Lowepro Clips 120 bag can also accommodate a long-zoom digicam or small DSLR camera with one lens attached. The main compartment of the bag opens outwards via a pivoting flap, which provides fast and easy access to the camera. It contains two sections: a large rectangular pouch for the camera and, behind it, a slot that can be used for carrying instruction manuals, disks or other small, flat items. A reversed zipper closure prevents dust from entering but can be a bit fiddly to close.

Lowepro Flipside 400 AW Camera Backpack

8.5 Rating

A robust backpack for bushwalking professional and enthusiast photographers who require weatherproof protection for their equipment.Announced in August 2008, Lowepro’s Flipside 400 AW joins an extensive range of camera backpacks produced by this enterprising company. The largest in the Flipside series, it’s targeted at professional photographers and serious enthusiasts – particularly outdoors enthusiasts – who want to carry a couple of camera bodies plus lenses and accessories, providing a practical solution that is secure and comfortable to wear and has silent zipper pulls for wildlife photography.

Lowepro Cirrus TLZ 15

8.5 Rating

Available in black or aquamarine blue, Lowepro’s Cirrus TLZ 15 camera pouch is affordable priced and can accommodate a long-zoom digicam or a small DSLR with zoom lens attached. Designed primarily for photographers who want to protect their cameras from dust, moisture and impact shock yet keep it readily accessible, the Cirrus TLZ 15 has a tough outer layer that is water- and abrasion-resistant and a padded, tricot-lined interior pouch that holds the camera.

Lexar Media Professional 133x and Platinum II 60x 1GB Secure Digital Cards

High-speed SD cards for cameras with fast burst speeds and high-capacity buffer memories.Designed for DSLR cameras and devices that record and store video and multimedia files, Lexar Media’s latest premium Secure Digital (SD) cards combine high speed with high storage capacity. The ‘133x’ tag on the Professional 133x SD cards denotes a minimum sustained write speed capability of 20MB/second, which means these cards should be able to write Raw files from a high-resolution DSLR camera in less than one second.

LensPen SensorKlear Loupe

7.5 Rating

A combined magnifier and light source to make sensor cleaning safe and easy.If you’ve purchased a DSLR camera in the last couple of years there’s a good chance you’ve never needed to think about cleaning its sensor. Modern dust removal systems do a pretty good job of keeping sensors dust-free under normal shooting conditions. But owners of cameras without dust removal and photographers who shoot in dusty environments and change lenses frequently need a simple – and affordable – way to keep their camera sensors dust free. LensPen’s SK-1A SensorKlear Loupe could provide a partial solution.

Lensbaby Composer

7 Rating

A specialised lens with high spherical aberration for selective focus photography.Designed for interchangeable-lens SLR cameras, Lensbaby lenses are suite of replacement lenses that combine a simple optical system with an adjustable bellows that allows selective focus photography. Available for all current DSLR cameras, they bring one area of a photo into sharp focus while the rest of the subject is blurred. The effect is achieved by moving the front of the lens off-axis, thereby shifting the focus ‘sweet spot’ (area of sharpest focus) to the sides, top or bottom of the frame.

GiSTEQ Photo Trackr Mini DPL900 GPS Data Logger

8.5 Rating

A pocketable GPS data logger for travelling photographers and those who enjoy sharing photos via social websites.Although we’ve looked at several GPS data loggers in the past few years, we haven’t published reviews of them because they didn’t provide the features or functionality we felt most photographers require. However, the GiSTEQ Photo Trackr Mini comes close to meeting the needs of at least some Photo Review readers and is affordable and very portable.

Gary Fong Lighting Accessories

A range of accessories that make the output from a portable flash gun more flattering to subjects.Gary Fong is a former wedding photographer who developed a suite of highly successful lighting accessories, some of which have become ‘must have’ tools for wedding photographers. So successful was the LightSphere range of products that Fong went on to become an entrepreneur who has made multiple fortunes in business and real estate.

Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* DT 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA Lens

8.8 Rating

A high-quality, general purpose lens for Sony’s Alpha digital cameras.Designed to suit the 23.6 x 15.8mm image sensors on Sony’s Alpha DSLR cameras, the new Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* DT 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA lens covers a focal length range equivalent to 24-120mm in 35mm format. Although described as ‘the first professional-grade 5x zoom lens specifically designed for APS format DSLRs’ it’s probably better seen as a ‘pro-sumer’ lens. It’s an excellent general-purpose lens for the A700 and A350 models, whose high resolutions can capitalise on its performance.