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This 5x macro is possibly the strangest lens you’ve ever seen

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There are a lot of oddball lenses out there these days. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Look at Laowa’s crazy lookin’ 24mm f/14 2x macro probe lens, for example. I’ve played with that one myself and it’s a lot of fun and pretty awesome. The Yasuhara Nanoha Macro Lens for Sony, though, takes the reach much further, going all the way to 5x. And the best bit? It costs a mere $399.

You might wonder what’s so unusual about it. Well, for a start it’s got a strange removable hood thing that houses several LED lights, powered by USB (yup, it’ snot for firmware updates, just powering LEDs).  But that’s not all. This thing… Well, Arthur Reutov’s made a video about it. So, why don’t you have a watch?

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Tamron 70-180 vs. Canon 70-200: Lens review for Sony

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The non-photographers might want to skip this blog post as it is a fairly detailed Tamron 70-180 v Canon 70-200 lens review for Sony E-mount cameras. There have been lots of reviews comparing the new Tamron 70-180mm f/2.8 Di III VXD (A056) against the Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS (SEL70200GM) and Sony FE 70-200mm F4 G OSS (SEL70200G) zoom lenses. These reviews are great, but I feel there’s a bit of gap as they assume you already have one of the big white Sony zoom lenses. I know many people that have switched to Sony over the last few years from Canon who have held onto some of their Canon lenses to use with an adapter. With the Sony 70-200 f2.8 currently costing £2149.00 quite a few I know have held onto their Canon 70-200 f2.8 lens, put off by the huge cost of the Sony equivalent. This was definitely the case for me.

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An in-depth review of Meike’s new $159 3.5mm f/2.8 Circular Fisheye lens

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Recently Meike announced their new 3.5mm f/2.8 Circular Fisheye lens. It’s a super low budget extreme wide-angle lens costing a mere $159.99 designed for Micro Four Thirds mirrorless systems.

New Zealand based Photographer and filmmaker Richard Wong has been playing with one for a little while. In this video, he goes over it in quite some depth offering up his thoughts about the new lens and puts it side-by-side against the similarly-ludicrously-wide Laowa 4mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens.

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Laowa just made the worlds widest rectilinear full frame lens… and its AWESOME!

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We recently released some footage of Laowas 9mm f5.6 Dreamer. This Full-frame rectilinear lens blew us away, but we needed to get more footage to really understand the lens.

It seems like a silly concept to describe how wide 9mm is. However, the first time you open the camera you realize, WOW!… that’s wide. Most of the time, when using the lens you end up looking around to see JUST how wide it is! I found the perfect shot to describe it!

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First real world samples and review of the new Laowa 65mm APS-C 2x macro lens

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When we reviewed the Laowa 100mm f/2.8 2X we said it could compete with a microscope. Laowa’s new 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO is no different.

The Laowa 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO is just a slightly smaller version of its full-frame brother*. Venus Optics managed to cram in all the features and bonuses of its 100mm macro into a smaller package.

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First impressions review of the Sigma 105mm f/1.4 Art lens – The “Bokeh Master”

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There’s no way around it, the new Sigma 105mm f/1.4 Art lens is freakishly huge. Compared to the Nikon 105mm f/1.4E lens released a couple of years ago, it just looks ridiculous. The Sigma is substantially bigger and weighs about 70% more than the Nikon. It even weighs more than my Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom.

But how does it actually feel to shoot? And how good are the images? I’ve had the opportunity to play with one over the last few days, so this post goes through some of my initial thoughts, and what I think of the lens so far. If you want the short version, though, I love it and hated having to give it back.

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Yongnuo’s new 50mm f/1.4 lens keeps up with Canon at less than 2/3rds the price

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Yongnuo has been coming pretty thick and fast with lenses over the last couple of years. Sure, they’re generally copies of somebody else’s lens, but they’re cheap and, for the most part, seem to perform fairly well considering the price. Announced last month, the Yongnuo 50mm f/1.4, though, looks to be of their own design.

The first review of the new lens has now been posted to YouTube by Christopher Frost, and it appears to be pretty favourable. It not only keeps up, for the most part, with Canon’s 65% more expensive 50mm f/1.4 USM, but it even seems to beat it in some aspects.

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Moment lenses for Smartphones: Thoughts after a month

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You may remember that a little while back I wrote a first look at the Moment lenses (these: Moment lenses) and I was pretty impressed with the build quality. The image quality was pretty good too. One of my concerns, though, was that they are pretty large and heavy compared to other lens systems that I’ve used in the past and I wasn’t sure whether that would affect how I used them or not. We all know the old adage of the best camera is the one you have with you. So I thought that maybe because of the size and weight, I would eventually decide that I couldn’t be bothered to carry them around with me, which would make them not that useful.

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First look at the Moment Lenses for iPhone X

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Many of us love taking photos with our smartphones and the cameras on phones are getting better and better. I’ve been super impressed with the cameras on the iPhone X. In fact, other than the fact that I am one of those people who always wants to get the latest tech, the cameras are the most important reason I upgrade my phone almost every year.

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Review: The Laowa 15mm f/2 FE lens delivers fine results at a fair price

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A few weeks ago Laowa sent me a copy of their first lens dedicated to Sony’s full frame e-mount system, the 15mm f/2. This lens is meant for landscape & astrophotographers who want to capture as much of the beautiful night sky as possible; which means wide and fast.

Last year I was able to get a copy of their 12mm f/2.8 for Canon and used it on my Sony A7Rii with a Metabones adaptor. I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed the lens. A lot of what was great about that lens can be translated over to this one as well. First, let’s talk about the physical design and characteristics.

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