Lens Reviews

If you read my article “Sweet Glass: My 10 Favorite Lenses For Portrait, Boudoir & Wedding Photography” you know I’m fond of the 85mm focal length for portraiture. If you didn't read it, please check it out after reading this review. And Tamron’s SP 85mm f/1.8 Di VC USD lens surely rings this bell. It’s available for Canon, Nikon and Sony mounts and as part of Tamron’s Di family is designed to work with APS-C format and full-frame SLR cameras. I tested the Canon EF version ($749.)

Our Weird Lens Guru Mattieu Stern is at it again; this time with a review of a Jupiter 21M 200mm f/4 “tank lens” that he says has “astonishing contrast and bokeh.” Stern adds that the first time he used this lens he was “blown away by the quality.”

The big news about the Leica M-D (Typ 262) is what it doesn’t have. It does not have autofocus. It does not provide through-the-lens viewing. And it’s not compatible with any zoom lens. 

Our favorite weird lens guru Mathieu Stern has been testing out some unusual Soviet-era Russian lens and the results have been surprisingly impressive. In fact, in the below video, Stern pairs the Jupiter-9 85mm F/2 portrait lens on a Sony A7 II mirrorless camera and some of his still photos and video are actually quite amazing.

Here’s a little something for those of you who can’t afford the new $6000 Leica M–D: Four quirky lenses you can get for under 30 bucks from Weird Lens Guru Mathieu Stern, whose passion is discovering odd optics you can adapt to your mirrorless camera to capture both still images and video. In this video Stern describes a quartet of lenses you can get for less than the cost of two decent cocktails in Paris.

Sometimes you want to capture expansive vistas without resorting to post-capture tricks like stitching multiple frames together; like on my latest excursion to Antarctica when I wanted a wider perspective than I achieved on an earlier visit with a 24mm lens (which transformed into a 38mm on my crop-body camera). The question I asked myself was ”how wide is “wide enough?”

Every company that makes lenses usually designs a few that are ideal for portraiture. The trend these days for studio and boudoir portraits is toward fast prime lenses, while zooms remain popular for location and wedding photography. Wide-angle lenses may get you closer to the subject but perspective distortion exaggerates a subject’s nose and ears.