Leica was sadly missing from the Expert Imaging and Sound Association awards for 2019. Sony, Nikon, Canon and Fujifilm were much in evidence, as was the Huawei P30 Pro smartphone. Nikon’s Z6 took top honours as camera of the year.
Panasonic and Sigma
It wasn’t all bad news, though. Representing the L-Mount Alliance, the Panasonic S1R topped the list as the best advanced full-frame camera. Sigma, also did remarkably well with two of its new lenses. The 70-200mm f/2.8 DG HSM is the best professional telephoto zoom while the 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 was the best general telephoto zoom. Both come in Canon, Nikon and Sigma versions but is it too much to hope that L-mount lenses will follow soon?
From a personal point of view, I was pleased to see the Sony RX100 VI crowned as the
Mike, you must recall this type of nonsense from your motorcycle days. This type of thing does not sell a single camera, not that we really care about that. Typical ‘trade’ awards stuff.
William
I had the S1R for six months as I travelled in Europe. I have to say that I used it when I was around the place I was staying, but not for traveling — for this the CL was always in the bag. I turned it in on returning from six months in Europe in favor of the half weight Nikon Z7 – which surprisingly takes a lot of my M lenses without a problem. Im told this is because of the thin sensor stack – more Leica like than Sony’s. Any way, looking over the images I captured with the S1R, I’m blown away – even with the TL lenses they are far superior to the ones from the CL or TL2. Im taking the Nikon to Northern California next week for its landscape test with the Zeiss Milvus 18/2.8 – but I’m sure that when the SL2 comes around (if ever) I will be tempted to go back to the L mount again. The great thing about the Nikon is the weather sealing, the eve and the ability to use so many older lenses with adapters. We will see……
Awards can be more than a wee bit subjective but I I certainly agree with the S1R as I am loving the S1R camera. It feels much more natural in my hand than the Leica SL. The SL was and remains a tour de force in design, haptics, and an absolutely gorgeous artistic piece of art. If I had the SL in a pub, I often had people including non photographers come over and look at it. I once had a well know professional photographer come across the pub and asked if it was “the Leica”. After a brief chat, he asked if he could touch it. However, I am loving the S1R as a current state of the art technology tour de force. It takes a bit to get past all the function options and set it up for Leica style photography but I have achieved that and the buttons are in the right spots and the focus can be moved to centre at the press of a button – yeah. I also love the lock lever where you can turn off the touch sensitive screen and other buttons that can be set in a menu. The only function it is missing is a phone function….