Funleader announces the new Caplens 18mm f/8 Pro slim bodycap lens for Sony E and Fuji X mount

I’m loving these weird and wonderful lenses that have been coming out over the last few years. It’s great to see the kinds of things companies are trying out, just to see how they’re received. Laowa’s Probe lens and the just announced AstrHori probe are two such examples of new weird lenses that have popped up. Funleader’s Caplens is another. And now they’ve updated their 18mm f/8 with a new “Pro” version.

The new Funleader Caplens 18mm f/8 Pro is a refresh of the original Caplens 18mm f/8 launched in 2019 via Kickstarter. It offers a minimum focus distance of only 30cm, shaving half a metre off the original lens, all the way out to infinity in several steps.

The slim design of the Caplens 18mm f/8 Pro means that it doesn’t stick out far from your camera at all. In fact, the grip of your camera is likely to stick out further than the lens itself. This means it’s a little less intimidating in public areas for things like street photography. It’s a little wide for street on full-frame, but on an APS-C camera like the Fujis, that 18mm focal length gives a field of view similar to a 35mm lens on a full-frame body, which is ideal for that kind of thing.

It measures only 17mm front-to-back and weighs a mere 71g. The focus range goes from 0.3m to infinity, but it’s not like a typical smooth focus ring on most lenses. It’s stepped. You’ve got focus distances of 0.3m, 0.5m, 0.7m, 1m, 2m and then finally infinity. The aperture is fixed at f/8, so bear this in mind when figuring out your overall depth of field vs focus distance.

Unlike its predecessor, which came in many mount varieties, the new Funleader Caplens 18mm f/8 Pro is currently only listed as being available for Sony E and Fuji X. The product page, though, does list Leica M, Leica L Canon RF and Nikon Z mounts as “applicable camera types”. So, I expect we’ll see other mount options in the future. When that will happen is unknown.

For now, the Funleader Caplens 18mm f/8.0 Pro is available to buy now for $111.20 – this appears to be an introductory price and it will go up to $139 at some point – for Sony E and Fuji X mount cameras.