Vintage lenses have their quirks, but they also have a certain charm. Many of them are well-built and tack sharp, yet very affordable. Photographer Mathieu Stern is a great fan of vintage glass, so he decided to do a little test. He compared a vintage manual 50mm f/1.2 lens he paid $80 with a modern AF 50mm f/1.2 lens that costs almost $1,500. Are they comparable at all? Let’s take a look.
The original Canon 5D goes up against the 5D Mark IV in this street portrait comparison
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I was just talking yesterday about how interesting it is to see the progression of digital cameras. Well, here we have another. This time a £300 used setup consisting of the original Canon 5D with 50mm f/1.8 lens vs the £5,000 combination of Canon 5D Mark IV & 50mm f/1.2.
Photographer Pablo Strong takes the two systems out on a walk around London shooting street photography. He shoots similar images with the two side-by-side to see how well the 5D holds up against more modern equipment.
Samyang announces 50mm f/1.2 adding to “XPert” lens series for Canon
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Samyang has now officially announced their new XP 50mm f/1.2 lens. It’s the third in the “XPert” series designed specifically for full frame Canon EF users. It adds to the XP 24mm f/2.4 and XP 85mm f/1.2 announced last September. Unlike the 24mm f/2.8 EF lens announced last month, this is a manual focus lens, to match rest of the XP series.
Designed to take advantage of 50MP+ and 8K resolutions, the XP line is built for premium quality. It houses 11 elements in 8 groups, with ultra multi-coatings to minimise distortion, aberration, flare and ghosting. 9 aperture blades help to create pleasing out of focus “bokeh” with that bright, wide, f/1.2 maximum aperture.
How to get a 50mm f/1.2 lens for only $20
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Super fast primes are a handy thing to have. But they’re not cheap. Their price puts them out of reach for many photographers. Even if funds aren’t an issue it can still be difficult to justify spending that much on one prime lens. But what other options are there?
Well, if you’re Mathieu Stern, one option is to breath new life into a $20 Bell & Howell 50mm f/1.2 projector lens. In his latest video, Mathieu shows us just how simple it is to start using one of these with your DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Zenit are rejoining the race with their new 50mm f/0.95, 50mm f/1.2 and 85mm f/1.2 lenses
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Russian manufacturer KMZ has a long history in the photographic world, having produced cameras, lenses and enlargers under the Zenit brand since 1952.
Having been relatively quiet for a number of years, they’re now making a big comeback with the announcement of three very interesting new manual focus lenses; 85mm f/1.2, 50mm f/1.2 and 50mm f/0.95.
