Lens News

Bird, wildlife and nature photographers may have found another tool to add to their arsenal. Olympus just announced the Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 300mm f4.0 IS PRO lens for Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras at the CES 2016 show in Las Vegas today. This new 300mm is a compact super telephoto lens offering a high level of image quality in a splashproof and dustproof build.

We’ve been featuring the highly educational photography videos of Filmmaker IQ this past month and here’s another fascinating clip to kick off 2016. Titled “The Properties of Camera Lenses,” the video is narrated, once again, by John P. Hess, and gives you the scoop on everything you ever wanted to know about how lenses work.

Filmmaker John P. Hess at Filmmaker IQ brings us this highly informative video that expertly documents the science behind the evolution of photography’s most vital tool—the lens. 

The Goods is a new feature in Shutterbug that spotlights the hottest premium photo gear out there.

Many, many years ago a coworker at Altman Camera in Chicago showed me that it was possible to screw a Vivitar +10 Macro Adapter into a partially disassembled set of Nikon K-series extension rings and thereby build a soft focus lens that practically exploded with delightfully horrendous aberrations. It was fixed-focus, you had to bob to-and-fro like a drunken sailor to use it, but it was sensationally unsharp and I’ve been hooked on this genre ever since.

NASA posts some pretty cool photos from space on its Flickr feed for the International Space Station but gear junkies should go ga-ga over the above shot shot.

Chances are if you take a poll of what photographers picked for their first telephoto lens, it would be the 300mm. For one thing, it’s a good choice for those starting out in wildlife or sports photography and, given the nature of millimeters, it’s relatively inexpensive as compared to the big guns like the 400, 500 or 600mm lenses.