by Klaus Schroiff, published November 2020 Introduction Fast standard zoom lenses are incredibly popular in the photographic community – yet the surrounding design challenges in this lens class are about as tough as they get. To date, we haven’t reviewed a single lens of this type that was truly outstanding (on high megapixel cameras). However, that doesn’t mean that they are trying. One of the latest contenders is the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG DN ART. Sigma wasn’t OVERLY successful with their previous attempts so let’s see whether there’s progress in the mirrorless world. The lens is available both in Sony…
Author: Klaus
by Klaus Schroiff, published September 2020 Introduction Super-tele zoom lenses have been around for many years in the DSLR world. Especially Sigma and Tamron have a long history of providing several different and also interesting designs up to xx-600mm. Interestingly, the OEMs never dared to go there to date. However, such lenses were not available for mirrorless systems … that is until the release of the Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS. You may think that such a lens from Sony is pretty much unaffordable – and for many users, it’ll be out of reach indeed – but it’s actually…
by Klaus Schroiff, published September 2020 Introduction Laowa has explored many extreme lens designs ever since they started in 2013. So far they have focused most of their efforts on either ultra-wide or macro lenses. With the inevitable demise of the DSLR segment, many of their latest lenses are now targeting the current sweet spot of the market, thus full-format mirrorless cameras. Just prior to the review, they released a set of 3 quite insane prime lenses – an all manual 9mm f/5.6 FF RL, an 11mm f/4.5 FF RL, and the Laowa 14mm f/4 FF RL Zero-D. The latter…
by Klaus Schroiff, published August 2020 Introduction Laowa has released a couple of very interesting lenses over the last years. Like many other Chinese players, they are focusing on rather extreme designs. Their 24mm f/14 2x Macro Probe is probably the most exotic one and quite famous in the video community by now. And regarding their more conventional macro lenses, we were very impressed by their recent 65mm f2.8 2x APO Ultra-Macro for APS-C mirrorless cameras as well as the 100mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO full-format lens. However, Laowa hasn’t forgotten about the Micro-Four-Thirds (MFT) community. So in this review, we are…
by Klaus Schroiff, published August 2020 Introduction During recent years, mirrorless lenses suffered from a disease – they got bigger and heavier. In fact, many mirrorless lenses are now more obese than their “former” DSLR counterparts despite all the marketing palaver promising the opposite. Of course, this happened for a reason. As a rule of thumbs in optical design, bigger and more complex is usually better – or it’s at least easier to achieve certain goals.While this was all cool for a while because there were simply too few mirrorless lenses available, most consumers are no longer demanding “any” lens…
Introduction Canon wouldn’t be Canon without their extremely fast prime lenses. And why bother with an f/1.4 aperture when you can also develop an f/1.2 lens, right? Meet the Canon RF 85mm f/1.2 USM L. Just from the high-level specs, you may think that it’s a new incarnation of the EF version but it’s actually a brand new design. Besides the “usual” aspherical and UD elements, it also incorporates Canon’s BR (Blue Spectrum Refractive) element for superior chromatic correction. We’ll see the effect of all this goodness later. One of the more unfortunate side effects of choosing f/1.2 over f/1.4…
by Klaus Schroiff, published July 2020 Introduction As of the time of this review, the Micro-Four-Thirds (MFT) world is in a bit of turmoil about the future of Olympus – and some odd YouTubers are questioning whether the system has still a place in the industry at all. It may then be the right time to remind those skeptics – once again – that the system has aspects that no other current system provides. That’s primarily a small package size and low weight. Now you may argue about “equivalency” here but fact remains that the sheer number of compact lenses…
by Klaus Schroiff, published July 2020 Introduction Manufacturers love to explore the extremes because that’s a way of differentiating their offerings from the competition. One end of these extremes is in the ultra-wide segment and the Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 FE is one of the examples here. As of the time of this review, it’s still the widest autofocus prime lens for Sony FE cameras although there are zoom lenses that go even wider.There is another aspect that is distinguishing it – its price tag of just 500USD/EUR. Of course, this raises the question of what degree of performance you…
Introduction Sony has been pushing full-format E-mount lenses during recent years whereas dedicated APS-C lenses have been neglected. However, there have been two interesting releases in late 2019 at least – the E 16-55mm f/2.8 G and the E 70-350mm f/4.5-6.3 G OSS. In this review, we’ll have a look at the latter. You may argue that the Sony E 70-350mm f/4.5-6.3 G OSS is a bit of an odd addition to the lens lineup. After all, APS-C users can also mount the Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS or even the FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS. However, if you don’t plan…
Introduction Sigma seems to have hit a sweet spot with its “DC DN” trinity of fast APS-C/MFT format prime lenses (16mm f/1.4, 30mm f/1.4, 56mm f/1.4). This can’t come as a real surprise because neither Sony E, L-mount nor Canon EOS M are especially blessed with many APS-C format prime lenses. Although to be fair here – Sony/L-mount users can also take advantage of an extensive line of full format lenses albeit these tend to reside in a different price bracket. We reviewed the Sigma 16mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary just a few weeks ago so let’s move on to…