Lens News

The Goods spotlights the hottest premium photo gear out there. If you have a product you’d like considered for The Goods, e-mail images and info to editorial@shutterbug.com.

In the third in our series of video show reports from PhotoPlus Expo, Shutterbug sat down with Sigma USA’s Jack Howard who showed us the new 85m f/1.4 DG HSM Art lens, which has been getting tons of buzz from wedding, portrait, documentary and other photographers.

If photography is your pastime, you can afford to indulge in toys. If it is your occupation you tend to be more selective about what you spend your money on; toys are an extravagance--you couldn't afford 'em when you were struggling, and you don't need 'em now that you have a client base which likes your style.

But what if a toy is also...

Travel photographer Pierre T. Lambert has been traveling the world for the past year so, naturally, he needs to keep his gear choices minimal to not get weighed down. In terms of lenses, he’s narrowed it down to two main choices: the Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 G Master lens and the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master lens.

If a picture is really brilliant, you don't have to worry about grain or sharpness or anything else: to quote Mike Gristwood, late of Ilford, "How much good would it do you to know the technical details of any one of Henri Cartier-Bresson's pictures?"

By the same token, if a picture is really bad, no amount of technical brilliance is going...

Have you ever noticed a yellow tint to the glass in a vintage lens? That may be because certain lenses in the 60s and 70s used a Thorium coating that yellows over time. Thorium has a high refractive index that improves light transmission, but it also turns out to be slightly radioactive.

As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to try the f/2 28mm Zeiss ZF lens; ZF, for those unfamiliar with the current Zeiss line-up, is their superb line of Nikon F compatible manual focus lenses, as distinct from ZM (Leica M compatible) and ZV (classic Hasselblad compatible).

All of the ZF series are also available in ZK (Pentax K bayonet compatible) and a few, though apparently not...