Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Pergear has been going a bit nuts lately on the low-budget lenses. It was only in March that they released their 35mm f/1.6 and 50mm f/1.8 lenses with the 7.5mm f/2.8 fisheye just last month. Now, they’ve sent one fo their existing focal lengths into overdrive and announced the new Pergear 35mm f/1.2 manual focus lens.
Designed for Micro Four Thirds and APS-C mirrorless cameras, it’s available in MFT, Nikon Z, Canon EF-M, Fuji X and Sony E mounts. The best bit? It’s only $109.
Those fast f/1.0 Fuji lenses have been rumoured for a long time. Fuji Rumors posted about an XF 33mm f/1.0 lens that would offer a similar field of view on Fuji X cameras to a 50mm lens on full-frame way back in 2015. Then it was added to the Fuji roadmap in 2018, with price leaks last year before the lens was cancelled completely.
Fuji might have given up on the XF33mm f/1.0, but it hasn’t given up on f/1.0 lenses entirely. The XF50mm f/1.0 was announced just a couple of months ago and is expected to come in at a relatively inexpensive $1,500. But those weren’t the only f/1.0 lenses Fuji’s been working on. Hi Lows Note has just uncovered a new patent describing 30mm, 33mm and 35mm f/1.0 lenses.
Fotodiox has announced their new Fotodiox Pro PRONTO AF lens adapter that lets you autofocus Leica M lenses on your Fujifilm X mount mirrorless cameras. The adapter was initially announced a little while ago, but it’s just now being made available.
Yes, Leica M lenses are manual focus lenses, but this adapter adds autofocus capability for other camera systems. This isn’t Fotodiox’s first Leica M autofocus adapter, having previously released one for Sony, but this one now lets you use them with Fuji, too.
The Viltrox 85mm f/1.8 lens has started to become quite a popular lens choice for Sony E mount shooters due to its decent level of performance vs its fairly low $399 price tag (compared to the $600 Sony). It’s also available in Fuji X flavour, too. But can this lens go even faster than f/1.8? Yeah, apparently.
The video above by Stefan Malloch was actually posted back in April, but only just now seems to have gained any real traction, but it turns out you can update the Viltrox 85mm f/1.8 lens to f/1.6, giving you an extra third of a stop, rounder bokeh and a slightly (barely noticeable, really) shallower depth of field, with just a simple firmware update.
Given the social distancing measures in place around the world right now, this seems like a good idea. Fujifilm Japan has filed a new patent for a couple of long telephoto prime lenses. Specifically, XF 300mm f/4 and 500mm f/5.6 lenses. Designed for Fujifilm’s line of APS-C cameras, these would offer the equivalent field of view to about 450mm and 750mm respectively on full-frame systems.
It’s not that often you see limited edition lenses these days, except with the likes of Leica. Even then, it’s usually just a limited edition colour of an already existing lens (or to launch a new one). TTArtisan, however, is making a very limited edition 50mm f/0.95 for the Sony E and Fujifilm X mounts. Only 20 will be produced for each mount.
TTArtisan hasn’t made an official announcement about the lens that I’ve seen yet, but it’s shown up on the website of Japanese distributor Shoten Kobo. It is a manual focus lens offering about a field of view equivalent to about a 75mm lens on a full-frame body. And the price? Well, it’ll only be around $400.
With lenses skyrocketing in price lately, especially on the mirrorless front, it can be difficult for beginner mirrorless shooters to find inexpensive lenses. For DSLRs there are plenty, but for mirrorless cameras, the selection isn’t quite as broad. For Fujifilm X users, though, that selection has just expanded a little, with two new lenses from Pergear.
Earlier this month, Pergear released a 25mm f/1.8 lens for Fuji X, but now they’ve added to the lineup with 35mm f/1.6 and 50mm f/1.8 lenses. They are manual focus lenses, but they give low budget shooters a nice inexpensive set of primes for covering a multitude of uses.
It was recently rumoured that Laowa was getting ready to announce their 4mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens on three new mounts. Specifically, the APS-C formats for Sony E, Canon EF-M and Fuji X. There was no news about when, just that they’d been spotted on Weibo.
The Laowa 4mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens has been out for Micro Four Thirds since August last year, and at a hair under $200, it’s an absolute bargain. The new mounts for Sony, Canon and Fuji retain the same price, and shipping now.
Profoto calls it “The world’s smallest studio light”. Most of the rest of us just call it the $1,100 speedlight. Yes, that’s right, we’re talking about the Profoto A1X. An update to the original $1,000 speedlight, the A1X has also proven to be a fairly popular light amongst Nikon, Canon, Sony and Olympus shooters. Thus far, though, Fuji users had been left out in the cold, at least on the hot-shoe.
No more, though. Fujifilm has announced compatibility with the new Profoto A1X AirTTL-F designed specifically for use with Fujifilm cameras. Support also comes for the Off-Camera Flash Kit, which includes the A1X AirTTL-F as well as the button-free Profoto Connect Wireless Transmitter.
Chinese camera accessories manufacturer SIRUI revealed a 50mm f/1.8 1.33x anamorphic lens at this year’s IFA trade show in Berlin. Many of you hoped for a cheap anamorphic lens, and indeed – it will be one of the most affordable ones in the market. It’s coming soon in three mounts, and it will retail at around 700 euros ($770).
Folks at cinema5D got to take a look at the upcoming 50mm f/1.8 1.33x anamorphic lens at the ongoing IBC 2019. They revealed more about it, but also filmed a bit with it so you can see the lens in action.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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