The Latest Photo and Video Tech, and What It Means for You
Every autumn the camera and software world has a little growth spurt. New bodies, new features, and a lot of people shouting "AI" at the top of their voices.
Most of it you can happily ignore. But some of it does change what ends up in your gallery, your wedding video or your brand content. Here's the OWV Journal's round-up of the tech worth knowing about right now, and what it actually means for you.
AI editing is finally doing the boring bits
The most useful AI tools this year aren't the flashy ones. They're the ones that take tedious jobs off a photographer's plate.
In June, Adobe made Assisted Culling generally available in Lightroom, according to DPReview. It flags sharp, well-exposed frames, and a new Face View checks each person for open eyes and sharp focus. It also groups near-identical shots and suggests the strongest one. The same update added AI Sharpen (built on Topaz Labs' noise-aware model) and support for the new Sony a7R VI's raw files.
Photoshop got a couple of quietly brilliant tools too. The Remove tool's generative model can now run on the computer itself, offline, rather than sending images off to Adobe's servers. And a new Reflection Removal feature pulls reflections onto their own layer so they can be dialled down. Glasses glare and shop-window reflections, we're looking at you.
Our take: tools like this are great for the admin side of editing. Choosing the moment that actually matters, the laugh, the glance, the slightly wonky first dance, is still a human job.
Eyes open, focus sharp: the kind of check AI culling can now do for you.
Video editing that starts with the words
On the video side, Adobe's September update to Premiere (version 26.5) brought in Paper Edit, which builds a rough cut from sentences you select in a transcript, as Adobe's release notes explain. For anything built around speech, think wedding speeches, vows or client testimonial videos, that's a genuinely handy way to find the good bits fast.
The same release expanded Generative Extend (which adds a few extra frames to a clip) to more footage types, improved object masking, and added a Generative Media Tool that creates video and sound effects from text prompts.
That last one is where we'd tap the brakes. Your wedding video should show your day, as it happened. AI that tidies, trims and speeds up the edit? Lovely. AI that invents moments that never happened? Not for us.
New cameras with video in mind
2026 has been a busy year for full-frame cameras. LensDigest's 2026 tracker lists, among others:
Sony a7R VI (announced May): a 66.8MP stacked sensor and up to 30fps bursts. Serious resolution for portraits and products.
Canon EOS R6 V (May): 7K open gate recording and an internal fan for longer takes.
Canon EOS R8 Mark II (September): a 24.2MP full-frame sensor with 5-axis in-body stabilisation and uncropped 4K/60p video.
Sony FX5 (July): a full-frame Cinema Line camera with internal raw, though Sony Japan announced a shipping delay in August.
The trend worth noticing is open gate. It records the whole sensor, which makes it easier to crop one clip into both a widescreen video and a vertical reel for Instagram or TikTok. For brands that need content in every shape and size, that's a real time-saver.
Fast movement, mixed lighting: where good autofocus earns its keep.
Small cameras, big content
Not everything needs a full camera rig. DJI's Osmo 360 II, launched on 3 September, records 8K 360° video on a 1-inch sensor and lets you choose your framing afterwards. Its pocket gimbal cameras, the Osmo Pocket 4 and 4P, picked up firmware updates in August and September adding features like 10-bit HDR video and cloud uploads, according to Newsshooter.
For small businesses, these are great for everyday behind-the-scenes clips. They won't replace a planned shoot, but they're a lovely way to keep your feed ticking over in between.
"Is this real?" Content Credentials explained
With so many AI images about, there's growing interest in proving a photo is genuine. Content Credentials (built on an open standard called C2PA) attach a signed record to an image at the moment it's taken, and compatible software can log any edits after that.
Digital Camera World lists cameras from Canon, Fujifilm, Leica and Sony that support it, though Canon's version needs paid activation and availability varies. As the article points out, it can't tell you whether a photo is "truthful", but it can help separate camera-captured images from AI-generated ones. Expect to hear a lot more about this, especially for press and brand work.
So, does any of this matter to you?
A little. Better autofocus, cleaner low-light images and faster editing all make for a smoother experience, from a dark winter ceremony to a product shoot on a tight deadline.
But the honest answer is that the biggest difference in your photos and videos still comes from the person behind the camera: knowing where the light is, keeping people relaxed, and noticing the moment just before it happens. Tech helps. It doesn't do the noticing for you.
Planning a wedding, a portrait session or some fresh content for your business? Get in touch and let's talk about what you need.
