Sony Goes Light
Sony's FE 100-400mm f/5.6-8 OSS offers a wide telephoto range at only 654g — a credible option for wildlife and birding photographers who find the fast-aperture alternatives unmanageable in the field.
Month of August 2026
August was a month of two speeds. On the gear front, Sony produced what might be the most sensible telephoto announcement in years, while a small army of independent lens makers descended on the BIRTV show in Beijing.
In the analogue world, Eastman Kodak pushed its ongoing film relaunch into large-format territory, a Chinese colour film stock began reaching Western buyers for the first time, and the UK finally got a direct route to Eastman's rebranded range.
The photography world's awards season rolled on, with three major prizes decided across three continents, while Camera Raw arrived at the end of the month with a new effects panel that has already prompted quite a bit of re-editing of older work.
Gear, Glass & Light
Sony FE 100-400mm f/5.6-8 OSS
Sony announced the FE 100-400mm F5.6-8 OSS on 4 August, and it became available in most markets by the end of the month, priced at around £800/€900/$1,399. The headline is the weight: 654g for a 100-400mm zoom covering a full-frame sensor. That number sits somewhere between the 600g of a kit telephoto and the 1.4kg of Sony's own 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM, which costs roughly three times as much and is aimed at a different kind of user.
The maximum aperture of f/5.6-8 gives away something at the longer end — at 400mm you're working at f/8 — but Sony's AF system handles slower apertures well enough that this is a reasonable trade for size and price. Built-in OSS (Optical SteadyShot) at least keeps handheld shooting viable. Whether image quality at the long end justifies the price over adapted alternatives will depend on test results, which were still arriving as August closed.
Independent Lenses — BIRTV and Beyond
The BIRTV show in Beijing (19-22 August) produced the usual cluster of announcements from the Chinese independent lens makers. The most notable to reach shipping status during August was the TTArtisan AF 85mm f/1.8 Neo, which arrived on 20 August for Sony E and Nikon Z at $99. The Neo series brings autofocus to TTArtisan's lineup, and the 85mm is full-frame with 12 elements in 8 groups.
An f/1.8 portrait prime with working autofocus at $99 is one of those products where the interesting question is not whether it's any good at the price, but whether it changes the conversation about how much an autofocus portrait prime needs to cost. The answer, depending on who you ask, ranges from "yes, finally" to a polite acknowledgement that the big manufacturers still have some advantages in AF tracking speed and optical consistency.
Also shown or released in August: 7Artisans launched the AF 18mm f/2 for APS-C (109g, STM motor, metal body), a compact wide that fits logically alongside its existing AF range; Laowa's AF 35mm f/2.8 APO 1:1 macro was confirmed for September release; and Viltrox showed updated AF Pro and Air lenses at BIRTV without release dates.
Sigma, meanwhile, announced three new focal lengths in its Aizu Prime large-format cinema line — 21mm, 100mm, and 125mm, all at T1.3 — completing a 12-lens coverage from 18mm to 125mm. At $9,799 each and intended for PL or Sony E mounts, these are cinema tools rather than photographic ones, but they represent Sigma's continuing commitment to a professional lens ecosystem that is neither cheap to enter nor built for the casual end.
One lens that hasn't formally arrived yet but is clearly on its way: the Sigma 85mm f/1.2 DG Art for Sony E and Leica L. Adobe quietly added it to the lens support database in August, which tends to happen shortly before an official announcement. No price or date was given, but if the existing 85mm Art (which exists for Canon and Nikon mounts) is any guide, expect something north of £1,000 and a good deal of bokeh.
Photography awards season runs through the northern hemisphere summer — August produced winners across three continents, from Arles to Albury.
The Photographic Arts
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 Shortlist
The Natural History Museum released the 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year shortlist on 25 August, drawn from more than 65,000 entries across 121 countries. The shortlisted images include a polar bear examining its own reflection through a hole in the ice, a squirrel making what can only be described as an emergency landing, and a range of work spanning the expected categories — animal portraits, underwater, plants and fungi, and human stories within natural environments.
Winners will be announced separately; the exhibition opens at the Natural History Museum in London in October. WPotY has run long enough that its visual grammar is familiar — the compressed telephoto isolating animal behaviour, the wide-angle habitat shot, the moment of interaction — but the standard of the shortlisted work tends to hold up against that familiarity.
European Photography Awards 2026
The 2026 European Photography Awards announced their winners on 16 August, drawing from more than 3,000 entries across 40 countries in a blind evaluation process. Canadian photographer Michelle Valberg won Professional Photographer of the Year for "Edge of the Feast," a humpback whale surging toward the surface in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest — the whale's open jaw and a descending gull caught in a single frame.
Thea Mihu of Germany won Amateur Photographer of the Year for "The White Harvest," a panoramic image of the Hon Khoi salt fields in Vietnam that effectively uses the landscape's scale against a small number of workers. Category winners across architecture, editorial, fine art, and people photography completed the list.
National Photography Prize — Australia
Paul Knight won the 2026 National Photography Prize — awarded by Murray Art Museum Albury and newly renamed the Audray Banfield Award this year in memory of the gallery's founding director, who died in 2024.
The prize was increased from $30,000 to $40,000. Knight's winning series, "Chamber Music," documents domestic life shared with his partner Peter, and explores how intimacy and long-term relationships are shaped in small, daily ways. The Emerging Artist Award ($5,000) went to Morgan Hogg for "Silver Tongues," a work drawing on Pacific mythology and Cook Island dance traditions. The exhibition of all 12 finalists runs at MAMA until 22 November.
Australian Photography Awards and Rencontres d'Arles
The Australian Photography Awards presented their results in early August, with their Guardian gallery published on 2 August. The open category included Poppy Steer's "Homebody" series — portraits of trans and queer people photographed at home — and Tobias Titz's portrait of artist Shoshanna Brott, a compelling study in presence and context.
The student joint winners showed confident work ranging from gelatin silver printing to autobiographical portraiture. In Arles, the Rencontres d'Arles 2026 festival continues through 4 October; September is being marked as "Le septembre des Rencontres," with particular programming emphasis through the festival's closing weeks.
Eastman Kodak's August expansion added large-format sheet films and 100-foot bulk rolls to a product range that began its return to direct distribution less than a year ago.
Film & Analogue
Eastman Kodak Expands into Large Format
Eastman Kodak's ongoing effort to reclaim its own film distribution from Kodak Alaris took its most substantial step yet in August, with the addition of large-format sheet films and 100-foot bulk rolls to the product range. The announcement was made in mid-August, continuing a process that began last September with Kodacolor 100 and 200, moved through Gold 200, Ultramax 400, Ektar, Tri-X, Ektachrome, and Ektacolor in successive months, and has now reached the large-format catalogue.
The films added to the Eastman range this round include Ektapan 100 and 400 (in 4×5 and 100-foot rolls), Ektacolor Pro 160 and 400 (in 4×5 and 8×10), and Tri-X 320 (in 4×5, 5×7, and 8×10), as well as additional Tri-X 400 in bulk rolls.
A brief note on names: Ektacolor is Eastman's equivalent of what photographers know as Portra, and Ektapan uses the same emulsion as T-Max — the familiar names belong to Kodak Alaris, which acquired the sales and marketing division in 2013, so Eastman has had to revert to older brand names.
Whether the market finds this confusing or charming probably depends on how long you've been buying Kodak film. The practical outcome is straightforward: more large-format options are available directly from Eastman Kodak distributors at reportedly competitive prices.
On 26 August, Eastman Kodak and UK-based Dupli announced that Dupli is now the official UK distributor of the Eastman Kodak film range. Dupli already distributes Kodak Alaris films — and will continue to do so — alongside CineStill, Candido, Lucky, and KEKS, and expanded Harman and Ilford lines. The UK has lagged slightly behind the US and Europe in getting Eastman's rebranded products onto shelves; Dupli's involvement should accelerate that.
Lucky C400 — Chinese Colour Film Reaches Western Buyers
Lucky C400 made its international debut in August through Reflx Lab and dubblefilm as official distributors, following its Chinese launch at the Shanghai P&I show. The pricing context deserves clarity: the Chinese domestic price of around ¥69 (approximately €9) is not what Western buyers pay. By 1 September, independent review sites were logging prices from £11.49 (UK, in stock at 21 Studio Photolab) to $15.99 (US, frequently sold out), with stock moving quickly and several retailers running dry.
The film is 35mm only — no 120 format exists as of September, despite some forum speculation. Lucky has been making film in China for decades; this is the first time most European and North American photographers will have had direct access to it, and the initial curiosity is considerable. First independent assessments began appearing in late August and early September.
Fujifilm QuickSnap — Approaching
Fujifilm's QuickSnap Black and White and QuickSnap Active (a waterproof variant), announced in late June as part of the QuickSnap line's 40th anniversary, were confirmed for early September availability in Europe and North America at €24 and €26 respectively. Both are straightforward single-use camera products — the Black and White shoots on an Ilford-manufactured panchromatic emulsion, and the Active adds a waterproof housing for outdoor use — but the timing, alongside the Eastman Kodak relaunch and Lucky C400's debut, makes for an unusually active moment in the analogue supply chain.
Camera Raw 18.6's Glow effect — with its Diffusion, Bloom, and Halation modes — recreates analogue optical effects that photographers have long replicated through filters, post-processing plugins, or careful exposure choices.
The Digital Darkroom
Camera Raw 18.6 — Glow, Trim, and More
The most discussed software development of August arrived late in the month with Camera Raw 18.6. The headline feature is Glow, a new entry in the Effects panel that provides three analogue-inspired looks: Diffusion (a soft, hazy spread of light from highlights), Bloom (a stronger, more pronounced glow with a slightly different character), and Halation (the reddish-orange glow that appears in film photography when bright highlights bleed into adjacent shadow areas, particularly visible with reversal film).
Each mode has controls for amount and radius, and the results are non-destructive and maskable. The official Adobe description is measured; the response from working photographers has been notably warmer, with several noting that they went back to re-edit older portraits specifically to apply the Diffusion or Halation modes.
Halation, in particular, is worth noting: it's a specific film characteristic that previous attempts to replicate digitally have often overcooked, producing an orange-red smear around bright areas rather than the subtle warmth the real effect conveys. Whether 18.6's version lands in the right place is a matter of taste, but the option being built into Camera Raw rather than requiring a third-party plugin — or a DxO FilmPack subscription — is a meaningful change for photographers who want occasional access to the effect without committing to a separate tool.
The same update also adds Trim: a tool in the Crop & Expand panel that reduces the image to the exact cropped area and makes everything outside it transparent, producing a clean transparent cutout rather than retaining hidden pixels behind the crop boundary. This is useful for compositing and for Generative Expand workflows where a specific starting frame matters.
A new Metadata Info Panel completes the feature set, displaying EXIF data directly in the Camera Raw workspace without requiring a separate panel or export. Camera Raw 18.6 applies across Photoshop and Lightroom Classic; Lightroom Desktop received the same update on the same schedule.
DxO PhotoLab 10 — Arriving 1 September
DxO's PhotoLab 10 was press-released on 18 August with an official release date of 1 September 2026, placing it just outside August's news cycle but announced and previewed within it. The headline additions in version 10 include depth-based masking, colour grading tools, and a new integration with Affinity Photo — the last being notable given the Affinity ecosystem's growing appeal among photographers who want perpetual licensing.
Pricing for a new licence is £229.99 (with an upgrade from PhotoLab 8 or 9 at £114.99). At that price, on a perpetual rather than subscription basis, it continues to sit at the more accessible end of the professional RAW processing market. Version 9.6, the most recent update to the previous generation, included significant improvements in DeepPRIME noise-reduction performance and remained available through August.
Looking Ahead
September arrives with a concentrated burst of commitments. OM System confirms a new PEN camera announcement on 9 September — the teaser released on 26 August traced the original PEN's history from its 1959 half-frame origins, suggesting something that leans into that compact, design-forward heritage; rumoured specs point to the existing 20MP sensor in a weather-sealed body with a creative dial at around £1,000.
Fujifilm has Fujikina Paris (4-6 September), which remains the most likely occasion for the X-T6 to finally appear in some official form; Fujikina events are not always launch events, but the X-T6's long gestation and the rumour density suggest that this time there will be something concrete.
Laowa's AF 35mm f/2.8 APO macro and Sirui's Saturn V2 anamorphics are both expected in September, and the WPotY winners announcement and NHM exhibition opening in London will mark the other end of the month.
