Lens News

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: everyone has their favorite lens and in my pack, you will always find one in the 400mm variety. To wit, I have Nikon’s newer Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, the 200-400mm f/4 G ED VR and the standard-bearer of them all: the prime Nikkor 400mm f/2.8 AF-S lens. Before that, I had a few of the pre-set, manual focus 400’s but when the Nikon F4 was introduced, the game really changed, especially when it came to wildlife or other land moving objects. I was hooked.

I got a lot of feedback – mostly positive but with a few spirited rejoiners – to last month’s editorial “Smartphones (Still) Can’t Compete with Great Camera Gear,” that I feel I should “double down.” Again, this isn’t a knock against using smartphones for shooting images. As I mentioned last month, I do it all the time with some pretty decent results. And many serious photographers are constantly turning to that little phone in their pockets and have produced many spectacular photos.

There was a time when I’d avoid a zoom lens as much as I’d avoid a swarm of midges. But in the digital age, the zoom lens has taken on new purpose, at least for me. Midges, however, are still a pest that is best avoided—especially when you’re changing lenses. And if you’re out in a marsh shooting spectacular scenic views, the Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L USM lens gives you the needed range of focal lengths so you can reign supreme over any landscape, as you avoid changing lenses while sidestepping concern that those midges will infiltrate your camera.

I thought that Tamron had outdone itself first with its 70-300mm lens and then with the 24-70mm f/2.8  and 90mm f/2.8 Macro lenses: all bearing the SP (super performance), VC (vibration compensation), Di (digitally integrated primarily for full-frame sensors), and USD (ultrasonic silent drive) monikers. There are of course other noteworthy lenses in the lineup, but these are the ones I tested for Shutterbug. Now comes the impressive Tamron SP15-30mm f/2.8 Di FC USD, which the company first previewed way back at photokina 2014. With this lens Tamron has created a near-flawless masterpiece in optics that simply blew me away!

Canon made some unexpected lens news overnight: the company introduced the lightweight and compact Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM standard lens. This fixed focal length lens is designed for advanced amateur photographers and has an effective focal length of 80mm when paired with an APS-C sensor-based EOS camera such as the Canon Rebel T6i.

The reality is you can make portraits using any lens but most photographers will tell you the ideal portrait lens has a focal length in the range of 85-135mm. The first dedicated portrait lens was the 150mm f/3.3 Petzval developed in 1840, which had a 30-degree angle of view and was considerably faster than lenses of the period. It was so legendary that Lomography recently produced a new version for Canon EF- and Nikon F-mount cameras that costs $599.

Massive, exotic telephoto lenses are always fun to imagine shooting with and here’s one giant piece of glass that’s actually designed to capture rockets launches. According to the seller on eBay, the Jonel 100 2540mm F/8 Mirror Lens was used for capturing Saturn V and other similar rockets as they were launched into space.