Lens Reviews

This lens has me going in circles. I spent weeks looking for a well-rounded person to photograph. Every image I captured was pointless. Okay—enough of the circle jokes. Time to get a round to the review.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Tamron’s SP (Superior Performance) lens series. They elected to commemorate this special occasion by introducing what they have labeled “the ultimate Tamron lens” in the form of the new SP Tamron 35mm F/1.4 Di USD (Model F045) prime lens in Canon EF and Nikon F mounts. 

Sony just launched its latest prime lens for its mirrorless cameras: the new Sony FE 35mm F1.8 lens. We got our hands on this new Sony FE lens prior to this morning's launch and had a chance to shoot with it for a few hours. Included in this story are eight of our full resolution test images captured with the Sony FE 35mm F1.8 lens.

In the late 1980s Canon introduced a 135mm f/2.8 autofocus lens that featured selectable softfocus. In addition to delivering dreamy out-of-focus images on demand, it’s also tack-sharp and extrapolates up to the equivalent of a 216mm f/2.8 when used on a crop-frame Canon.

Laowa’s newly introduced 100mm macro lens offers 2:1 reproduction ratio and a fast f/2.8 aperture. The specifications for this manual focus lens are impressive—but does it deliver, and does it deserve its $449 price tag? We put a sample (in Nikon mount) through the paces and made a couple interesting discoveries.

The Sony FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM and Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD lenses share a similar focal length, and both can be used with Sony's full frame mirrorless E-mount cameras. But they differ dramatically in price.

It’s Macro SmackDown! If the cost were the same, which Olympus macro lens would you buy for your Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera, the 60mm f/2.8 or the 30mm f/3.5? We shot with both and came to a conclusion that might surprise you.