Pilgrims of ultrawide excellence down the decades have been conjoined to a certain path. In the 1900s, they sought, coveted or made sacrifices for hallowed primes like the Zeiss 15mm and 21mm Distagons. Some prematurely foreswore mirrors to gain access to Contax Biogons, the shady temptations of Leica and Voigtlander rangefinder glass, and the peerless …
It’s hard to find a title for this article. It’s also not immediately obvious why this lens should have risen above its peers. Historically there’s been a distinct pecking order for lens reputation: in first place, any third party lens made by Leica and Zeiss; in second place, native glass – first Canon, then Nikon; …
White Label Chinese 50mm f1.1 v Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art v Canon 50mm f1.2 L To get straight into the test, jump here >. If you’re interested in a digressive preamble, read on. Digressive Preamble In the beginning, fast lenses were needed to gather light to quicken exposure times, freeing photographers to shoot spontaneously – …
Nikon 28-80mm v Nikon 28-85mm v Nikon 28-105mm v Nikon 35-70mm With photographers abandoning bijou mirrorless systems for full frame SLRs, May 2020 feels like a great time to review the walkabout lenses of another century. Bored by the low-hanging fruit of optically faultless 24-120mm kit lenses, today’s image-makers crave the creativity-testing limits of zooms …
Le Roi est Mort! Yes, Roy is dead. For many years the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 reigned over wide angles. For some months after its launch, the review we wrote back in 2007 was attached to the wall in Nikon’s R&D HQ in which we demonstrated its superiority over the erstwhile wide champion, the Zeiss 21mm …
What can I compare you to? Shall I compare thee to a Samyang 14mm? Thou art more panoramic and more divergent. Shall I compare thee to a fishes eye? Thou art commensurately wide, yet in fashion rectilinear. Like a woman dressed as a man in a forest, I find myself musing “Can one desire too …
Canon 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS Review There is much speculation about how this lens performs compared with the Canon 70-200mm f4 L, and of course everybody still really really wants a Canon 70-200mm f4 L IS, but Canon knows that if such a fantastically useful and high quality lens existed, far fewer of its other (more …
Contax Zeiss 21mm f2.8 Distagon v Canon 17-40mm f4 L [first published 2002] Lens comparison made at 21mm / f11. Exposure 4 seconds on a Canon 1Ds Mark I mounted on a view camera head on Manfrotto 155 legs, locked and braced, on a concrete floor. Multiple frames were shot, with fractionally different focusing – …
Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 DI v Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX v Contax Zeiss 35mm f2.8 [published 2004] The motivation for this test was to establish whether a zoom could replace the 35mm Distagon f2.8 I commonly use for architectural shoots. Trolling about on location, the perfectly convenient lens for shooting exteriors would be a 35-70mm zoom …
Zeiss Contax 35m f2.8 Distagon v Zeiss Contax 35-70mm f3.4 v Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX DG Zeiss Contax 35-70mm f3.4 v Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX DG v Canon 50mm f2.5 Macro [published 2003] The real point of this test is to determine the substance of the claim made by many that the Zeiss 35-70mm zoom …
