Lens News

If you stumbled upon a rare Novoflex 600mm pistol grip “bazooka lens” at a yard sale for $17, we imagine you’d lay down your cash, grab the case, and quickly head for your car. That’s exactly what our weird lens guru Mathieu Stern did recently in Paris.

The first thing many photographers do after investing in a new lens is to screw on a UV or haze filter. The idea is that these filters protect the front element of your lens from dirt and impact damage while improving contrast and eliminating atmospheric haze.

Dirty camera sensors are a common source of degraded image quality, resulting in tedious post-processing work to clean up the photograph. This problem is the bane of those who shoot outdoors in dusty conditions, and is particularly acute when using small aperture settings that tend to exaggerate imperfections.

A homemade paper lens hood may not be an ideal replacement for the plastic hood that came with your lens, but it will definitely improve image quality in a pinch if you lost a hood and you’re waiting for the replacement to arrive in the mail.

To say that the Panasonic Lumix GH5 is versatile is an understatement. The long-awaited follow-up to the GH4, which was beloved by photographers and videographers alike, the GH5 takes the roots of its predecessor and expands on them.

One lens that should be in the arsenal of every photographer is a moderate telephoto zoom like a 70-200mm. Lenses in this category offer a great compromise between power, mobility, and versatility. They enable you to get in tight on nearby subjects, and unlike longer telephoto zooms, moderate telephotos are relatively lightweight, compact, and easy to carry.

It wasn’t so long ago when every camera came with what’s called a normal lens. This, of course, didn’t refer to its mental health, but to the fact that it was the default lens that every photographer would find useful or, in the days before interchangeable lenses, would be stuck with.