Lens Reviews

When I was a cub photographer in high school, I was very proud of my Kodak Signet 40 camera. With the attached flash unit, even if I did not look like a professional, I felt like one. Later, thanks to my obsession with large aperture lenses, I moved up to a Heiland H2 Pentax camera complete with its awesome Auto Takumar 50mm f/2 lens that I carried throughout Europe and later for the local newspaper.

As a lover of all things unsharp, I was eager to get my mitts on a Petzval 85mm portrait lens. When I saw it at Photo Plus Expo here in New York, it was under glass, gleaming like a gilded idol. The fine folks at Lomography were kind enough to loan me a sample. What follows is my report. 

Sometimes an old fashioned recipe and the latest modern technology don’t mix: zap-blasting your grandmother’s vegetable soup ingredients in a 10,000-watt microwave instead of slowly simmering them for six hours, for example. But other times strange bedfellows bring out the best in each other. Such is the case with Lensbaby optics on modern digital cameras.

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) member magazines recently convened for their General Assembly to vote for the best photo and imaging products launched by the industry in the last 12 months. The voting took place during the General Assembly that was held in spring 2015 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

If there’s a more challenging photographic discipline than wildlife photography, I don’t know what it is. It requires heavy and expensive long focal length lenses, a sturdy tripod, and the physical prowess to schlep all this gear through physically demanding environments. If you’re thinking “that’s not you, Joe,” you are correctamundo so I asked a few friends for advice on telephoto lenses and this is what they told me.

Over the past few years an amazing transformation has been taking place in photographic lens design. As a result, scores of innovative new interchangeable lenses have recently been announced by major camera manufacturers, and by optical specialty companies such as Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina.

Sigma has long been a leader in the third-party lens market, producing an astounding array of glass that’s compatible with major DSLR systems from Nikon and Canon (plus their own camera line) as well mirrorless and other camera manufacturers. While the collection of lenses has been staggering, it’s not always been easy to figure out if a Sigma lens is a high-end professional product or a consumer-level piece of optics from name and price alone.