I never once dreamed of having automated blinds until one day, when Smartwings reached out for a review. I was hesitant at first because I live in a rental, but then I thought I'd for sure get my deposit back when we eventually move out after an upgrade like automatic shades, right?
Category: Around The Home, Lifestyle
Tags: Smart windows, Smart Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa
For nearly a century, a strange band of thousands of holes carved into a Peruvian hillside has defied explanation. Stretching for nearly a mile (1.5 km) along the edge of the Pisco Valley, Monte Sierpe – "serpent mountain" appears to be a deliberate, repetitive and almost mathematical feature – but its real purpose has so far eluded scientists.
Category: Environment, Science
Tags: University of Sydney, Market, Agriculture, Mountain, Archeology, Farming, Mathematics
An anhinga spreads its wings in a tree to dry at sunset in Everglades National Park in Florida. Unlike many birds in aquatic environments, anhingas don't have waterproof oil on their feathers, so they spend a lot of time with their wings spread to dry out. (Processed from Raw using DxO Photolab)
Photo: Dale Baskin
If there's one common thread that weaves through my photography this year, it's that I didn't do very much of it – at least not as much as I would have liked.
That may sound odd coming from a DPReview editor. After all, a big part of my job is testing cameras and shooting sample galleries. However, 2025 was an unusual year. Instead of running around with gear, I spent much of my time on infrastructure projects that will help lay the foundation for the site's future, including our new forum system and some other things you'll see in 2026. (Teaser!)
Add some unexpected events in my personal life, and I found precious little time for taking photos. A glance at my Lightroom library for 2025 is like looking at an empty cupboard. But one image that's special to me is the one at the top of this article: an anhinga spreading its wings to dry at sunset, captured during a trip to the opposite corner of the country.
For context, I'm a huge fan of national parks, not just in the US, but everywhere, and I've visited them all over the world. This year, I finally had the chance to visit one that's been on my list for a long time: Everglades National Park in Florida.*
I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from the Everglades. Living in the western US, national parks usually evoke visions of rugged mountains or grand vistas: Yellowstone. Yosemite. Mt. Rainier. In contrast, the highest point in the Everglades is about 3m (10ft) above sea level.
An American alligator lurks in the shallow waters of Everglades National Park. (Processed from Raw using DxO Photolab)
Photo: Dale Baskin
Contrary to popular belief, the Everglades isn't just a giant swamp. It is a slow-moving slough running from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico/America (circle your preference). This unique ecology makes it a fantastic environment for wildlife and wildlife photography. Unlike other regions where you often have to work incredibly hard to get close to subjects, here, the birds and aquatic species often walk right past you.
As with most wildlife photography, however, the hard part is still waiting. Waiting for your subject to be in just the right spot. Or, if shooting from a boat, waiting until you're in just the right spot. You still have to wait for just the right moment when your subject looks in your direction or starts moving in an interesting way.
"As with most wildlife photography, however, the hard part is still waiting."During the time I was in the Everglades, I was testing the Panasonic GH7 for our review, paired with the Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 PRO lens, which provides an 80-300mm equivalent focal length and is one of my favorite lenses for the Micro Four Thirds format.
And that's the gear I used to capture the photo above of the anhinga, spreading its wings against the sky just as the sun was setting. Unlike many birds, Anhingas don't have waterproof oil on their feathers, so they spend a lot of time with their wings spread out to dry.
Hopefully, 2026 will be the year I get back out in the field more often, testing gear and shooting galleries. And I'm definitely planning to go back to the Everglades as soon as I can.
In the gallery below, you'll find a few more of my favorite wildlife shots from my Everglades adventure.
Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Click here to open it in a new browser window / tab.*The photos in this article were actually taken during the last couple of days of 2024, but since I shot them after writing my 2024 photo of the year article, I'm considering them to be 2025 photos.
Boeing subsidiary Wisk Aero's Generation 6 eVTOL aircraft has completed its historic maiden flight. On December 16, 2025 at 12:26 pm PST, the autonomous passenger carrier lifted off from the Wisk flight test facility at Hollister, California.
This week, we released our review of Canon's EOS R6 III. As is usually the case, in the process of testing it for the review, we took hundreds of pictures with a production model in a variety of situations. We've collected the best examples, shot with a variety of lenses and settings, into a sample gallery so you can judge how the camera performs for yourself.
Given that the Canon EOS R6 III is also a very capable video camera, we've also put together a sample reel of clips shot with it. If you want to see longer-form videos shot with it, you can also watch our videos about the Fujifilm X-T30 III, Sony a7 V and the Canon EOS R6 III, as they were filmed using it.
Step aside, Van Gogh. Some spiders are out here making self-portraits for survival. New research shows that several orb-weaving species construct giant web-mounted “doppelgängers” convincing enough to confuse potential predators. It’s an unexpectedly clever form of deception that blurs the line between instinct and ingenuity.
Micro RGB for TVs is a thing now, and it promises to be the next major display tech for home entertainment. We've already seen a couple of models from the likes of Samsung and Hisense, and it looks like more brands are getting in on the action next year. Whether it should feature in your checklist while shopping for a TV in 2026 depends largely on whether you're really an early adopter, and if money is no object.
Category: Home Entertainment, Consumer Tech, Technology
Mitsubishi teased an update of its legendary, small, rugged Delica van a couple months back at the Tokyo Motor Show. Looking at the prototype it showed there, we wouldn't have pegged it as "the strongest ever," but that's how Mitsubishi announced it during the official production introduction this week.
Category: Automotive, Transport
Tags: Van, Mitsubishi, Minivan, mini-campervan, Campervan
Your next favorite true crime podcast might have some new forensics jargon to make sense of. Researchers in Australia have developed a new way to identify humans – similar to how we do with DNA and dental records – that could come in handy while investigating crimes.
Category: Science
Tags: Forensics, Protein, Hair, Edith Cowan University, Crime, DNA, Identification
Tattoos have gained widespread popularity, with nearly one in three Americans having at least one. But beneath the colorful designs lurks a hidden journey. According to a new study, tattoo ink doesn’t stay in the skin; it travels and accumulates in the lymph nodes, potentially causing lifelong changes to the immune system. The findings offer no conclusion as to whether these changes are positive or negative, but suggest that pigment retention in lymph nodes can persistently alter local immunity.
Category: Body and Mind
Tags: Tattoo, The Immune System, Lymphatic system
As we enter the New Year, we're looking back on our predictions for 2025. Were they firecrackers or duds?
Photo: Mitchell Clark
Last year, some of the DPReview editorial staff sat down with a mission: figuring out what we expected camera manufacturers to do in 2025, and to make a list of things we wish they'd do, regardless of plausibility or even feasibility. Now that the year is coming to a close, we thought it'd be entertaining to revisit the list and see how well it's aged.
You'll also get to hear some of our predictions for 2026, as a sort of sneak peek at this year's version of the article. Hopefully, we've done a little better this year, though we wouldn't bet on it. These articles are mainly meant to be a wish list, rather than a report from our crystal ball.
Europe's lofty plan to phase out the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2035 – which was laid out back in 2022 after tense negotiations – now seems all but dead. The European Commission (EC) announced this week that it's dropping the ban on new gas-powered cars and vans a decade from now, owing to pressure from the continent's automotive industry.
Category: Transport
Tags: Car, Europe, Pollution, Emissions Control, Emissions
It's ironic … in order for farmers to know if their fruit is ripe, they regularly have to pick and analyze pieces of that fruit, reducing their yields. Utilizing a new technique, however, they could soon leave all the fruit intact, analyzing the leaves beside it instead.
Category: Science
Tags: Agriculture, Crops, Plants, Fruit, Food technology
Hepatitis C is a tiny virus with a significant impact. It's a small RNA virus that spreads through the blood and infects the liver. Even though today's medicines can cure it, hepatitis C remains a major global health challenge. Around 50 million people worldwide live with this infection, and every year, about 242,000 people die, mostly because long‑term infection can scar the liver or lead to liver cancer.
Category: Infectious Diseases, Illnesses and conditions, Body and Mind
Tags: Diagnostic tools, Diagnostic devices, Hepatitis C, Virus
Bringing a taste of Japanese camping flair and fashion to the United States, the Grayhus tent from Tokyo Crafts is a fantastically geometric wilderness abode that elevates the outdoor experience, whether you're inside or viewing from afar its juxtaposition against the organic flow of its natural surrounds. The tent smartly adapts to the situation at hand, serving as spacious open-air canopy, insect-free screen room, and guyed-out, battened-down four-person glamping shelter tested to 55 mph (85 km/h).
Nobody likes potholes, nor do they like the environmental damage associated with the petroleum utilized in traditional asphalt bitumen. That's why scientists are now looking at replacing the latter with a binder derived from everyone's green friend, algae.
Tags: Arizona State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Algae, Road, Environmentally-friendly
DPReview community, we wanted to provide you with a brief update on various community-focused initiatives over the past year. Spoiler alert - a lot's been happening!
The health of our community means everything to us. Our team has built a bond with many of you through discussions of digital photography and our shared passion for geeking out about the latest camera gear. Our editorial team - Dale Baskin, Richard Butler, Mitchell Clark, Abby Ferguson, and I – all enjoy getting your thoughts on our articles. It's this community interaction that makes DPReview thrive, and one that I personally want to do whatever it takes to keep it healthy and lasting.
Supporting the communityFor the past 25 years, the DPReview forums have operated in parallel to, but largely independently from, our editorial operations. The editors are dedicated to writing engaging articles, but the interest in interacting with you all also takes a significant amount of time. To support and grow our community properly in the long term, it became clear that we urgently needed a dedicated Community Manager. That's why I was brought on, so the team could have a person dedicated to forum moderation, developing engaging content, and ensuring that support requests are responded to promptly (to name just a few parts of my role here).
Being a Community Manager in any capacity is a wonderful experience (and great responsibility), but I especially couldn't pass up the opportunity to help you all out. As soon as I joined DPReview, I began working closely with the team and volunteer moderators to understand the community's interests.
As a Community Manager, one of my central tenets for building a thriving community is to work directly and openly with members to ensure their needs are met. The most important thing we can do is to be more communicative with all of you about what's happening at DPReview, and just as importantly, ensure you are comfortable sharing your thoughts with us about what matters most to you.
Updating the forum systemThe forums serve as a central hub for community discussions, so they must remain accessible at all times. It's a massive system that requires constant attention on both technical and moderation fronts. After more than a quarter-century of the forums in operation, our custom-built, proprietary solution had become too complex and expensive to maintain. If we wanted to keep the forums going, we had to find a solution that DPReview could viably preserve into the future.
In deciding what to do, the team had spent months researching individual software solutions that could address the current challenges. They understood the impact a significant change to the forum would have on the community. This included the viability of continuing to maintain an aging system. Long story short, it was clear that a new platform was the only feasible solution, even if it fell just a few features short of being an agreeable one for all users.
Soon after I was introduced to the volunteer moderators and informed of our forum update plans, I wanted to ensure that the community's voice would be represented through them as much as possible until we could publicly discuss it with you all. We collaborated to announce our migration intentions in all key forum areas. Everything unfolded quickly from that point, with the successful launch of the new platform in early November of this year.
Thankfully, the community showed great patience while we completed the migration, despite having concerns. Post-launch support has included gathering your ideas and suggestions on how we can further improve the forums. With just a few 'bug' type issues remaining, we are now moving on to addressing style improvements. These include the need to make notification indicators and forum index feeds easier to read.
Community initiatives in 2025While the forum improvements continue, there are many other ways we can work together to develop exciting programs that drive interest across the forums. As a first step, I've reached out to several community leaders (volunteer moderators, frequently active posters, etc.) to ask them what they would like to see activated in the community for content and fun initiatives. If you weren't one of them, please feel free to reach out to me at any time as well.
So far, since July of this year, we've implemented the following content and programs:
I've barely scratched the surface of hearing from all of you, so please let me know what you think of the initiatives we've introduced so far.
There's one more significant community initiative we're testing this month on YouTube that hasn't been published yet, but will in just a few days. Be sure to keep watch in the forums for it!
Exciting plans for 2026Our team has some super exciting plans to launch for you all in 2026. We are eager to continue the AMAs as a regular series about digital photography and your favorite camera gear. We'll keep the Question of the Week series going as well. And about that YouTube initiative you'll find out about in just a few more days, well, we hope you enjoy watching it and want more of that, too.
Thank you, community, for everything you've developed for one another. The DPReview team is here to provide support, so please don't hesitate to reach out anytime you need it.
Meanwhile, I hope you all have a safe and happy holidays!
There's been a lot of talk about the Sony a7 V's dynamic range performance since PhotonsToPhotos released its data on it, showing that it, like the Panasonic S1II, combines the readouts of its low and high gain steps when using the mechanical shutter. We've had the opportunity to test the dynamic range for ourselves with the studio scene to see how it performs, and we can confirm: it is very impressive.
Image ComparisonThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Click here to open it in a new browser window / tab.To start, this may be one of the most ISO invariant cameras we've seen to date when shooting with the mechanical shutter. That means you have a lot of room to preserve highlights by shooting at lower ISOs, then brightening the image in post (a workflow that also translates well to shooting with HDR in mind). In our tests, we saw essentially no shadow cost to an image shot at ISO 400, brightened to match an image shot at ISO 6400 with the same exposure settings.
Image ComparisonThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Click here to open it in a new browser window / tab.The a7 V's exposure latitude is also very good, so you can dig quite deep into the shadows when processing your Raws. In mechanical shutter mode, it's a bit better than the a7 IV and peers like the Canon EOS R6 III and Nikon Z6III, and roughly on par with the Panasonic S1II.
As expected, its performance isn't as good in e-shutter mode, where it has less time to read out the sensor and therefore can't do it twice, as it can in its mechanical shutter mode. However, its peers' dynamic range performance also suffers in e-shutter mode, so none of the cameras end up with any particular advantage. Of course, the main reason to shoot in their e-shutter modes is to utilize their highest burst rates, where achieving maximum DR performance is less of a concern anyway.
While the a7 V's dynamic range advantage over its predecessor and peers isn't earth-shattering, it'll be exciting to those hoping to exploit the shadows in their images, such as landscape photographers, or those who often shoot to preserve highlights. Be sure to tune in after the New Year for more coverage on Sony's latest camera, including the rest of our studio scene results.
Note: these images were produced using a beta version of Adobe Camera Raw. While they're consistent with other testing that we've seen so far, we'll check to make sure the results are consistent with those produced by the final version of ACR once it's released.
When you're hiking or camping in the woods, a carabiner's great to have on hand for making your gear more accessible and securing items together. This rugged new one from Hong Kong-based brand Pivot X goes several steps further by cramming in a bunch of useful tools into its sturdy frame – including a knife, a hex wrench, and even a little flashlight.
Category: Knives and Multitools, Gear, Outdoors
Tags: Outdoors and Camping, Knife, EDC, Camping, Kickstarter
When one eye is deprived of vision early in life, it can lead to amblyopia, a condition more commonly known as lazy eye. This happens because a lack of input disrupts synapse formation in the brain's primary visual cortex, weakening vision in that eye.
Category: Body and Mind
