Lens News

Bird, wildlife and nature photographers may have found another tool to add to their arsenal. Olympus just announced the Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 300mm f4.0 IS PRO lens for Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras at the CES 2016 show in Las Vegas today. This new 300mm is a compact super telephoto lens offering a high level of image quality in a splashproof and dustproof build.

Sigma has introduced the unique, new Water Repellent (WR) Ceramic Protector, an innovative lens filter that features new Clear Glass Ceramic material and provides enhanced protective qualities.

Filmmaker John P. Hess at Filmmaker IQ brings us this highly informative video that expertly documents the science behind the evolution of photography’s most vital tool—the lens. 

Many, many years ago a coworker at Altman Camera in Chicago showed me that it was possible to screw a Vivitar +10 Macro Adapter into a partially disassembled set of Nikon K-series extension rings and thereby build a soft focus lens that practically exploded with delightfully horrendous aberrations. It was fixed-focus, you had to bob to-and-fro like a drunken sailor to use it, but it was sensationally unsharp and I’ve been hooked on this genre ever since.

The term bokeh refers to a photographic technique that creates soft out of focus areas in an image. The brief video embedded below shows how to use a Russian-made Jupiter 9 85mm F/2 lens and a tilt ring adapter on a mirrorless camera to create stunning videos with a beautiful bokeh background look.

Camera gear is expensive and no matter how careful we are, accidents sometimes happen.