Dan Havlik

During a Canon event today before the start of the photokina show in Cologne, Germany tomorrow, we got some hands-on time with the long awaited Canon EOS 7D Mark II. Even though our time with the 7D II was brief — we were pretty much loaned the camera and allowed to shoot for a few minutes — we got a pretty good sense of how this APS-C-based digital SLR performs. In short, it’s feels like a mini machine gun.

Canon unveiled a premium portable camera at photokina this morning: the 20MP PowerShot G7 X, which uses a large (for a compact model) 1-inch CMOS image sensor and features a multi-angle (up to 180°), flip-up, 3-inch touch capacitive, rear LCD panel with 1,040K dots of resolution.

Samsung debuted a brand new flagship mirrorless, compact system camera at photokina this morning, the NX1 Smart Camera. The NX1 uses a Samsung-developed 28-megapixel BSI (Backside Illuminated), APS-C-sized, CMOS sensor, which the company says is the biggest BSI chip to date. (BSI chips are designed to produce cleaner images in low light.)

n lens development news, Tamron said it’s creating a new ultra wide-angle zoom lens for full-frame DSLRs with a fast F/2.8 aperture and VC (Vibration Compensation), which the company claims would be the world’s first in this category.