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This wooden lens was built using the guts of a Super-Takumar 55mm f/2 and it actually works

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When we think of lenses, we usually think of chunks of metal or plastic with glass elements inside them. If somebody says “wooden lens” to us, we usually think of CNC or laser-cut models of lenses that don’t actually have any optical properties and are simply chunks of wood that resemble a lens. But not this time. Oh, no. This one’s a wooden lens, with glass optics that actually works.

And who do you think made this lens a reality? Yup, that’s right, weird lens king, Mathieu Stern, who teamed up with the folks at Hungarian photographer lens creator, Weird Lenses, to bring the lens to life and regardless of how it might see – which seems quite good – it looks pretty awesome, too!

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Canon publishes patents for a very compact 28-70mm f/2.8 zoom lens

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Canon has published a patent for two new zoom lens in the 28-70mm f/2.8 and 28-60mm f/2.8 focal length ranges. What makes them particularly interesting, though, is how tiny they are, for zooms with such wide aperture zooms, with both coming in at a little over 105mm long at the shorter end of their focal length limit of ~28mm. Even at their maximum zooms of 60mm and 67.9mm, they still only hit 132.38mm and 138.40mm respectively, making them very compact indeed.

The “Problem to be solved”, according to the Asobinet’s quote from the patent is “to provide a zoom lens having a short total length and a small size but having high optical performance”. And it suggests that thanks to recent development in cameras – namely, Canon’s gone mirrorless – it’s now possible to create a zoom lens of this focal length range and wide aperture that meets these parameters.

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This is the number one reason why you should shoot with prime lenses

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A lot of us fall into two camps when it comes to photography. Nope, I’m not talking about Nikon versus Canon or any such silliness. I’m talking about whether you’re predominantly a zoom lens shooter or a prime lens aficionado. Personally, I love a good prime lens. I don’t know if it’s because I shoot video or because I love to photograph people, but my camera kit seems to be full of mostly prime lenses.

There are many advantages to shooting with prime lenses, yes, even for landscape or travel photography. In this video, photographer James Popsys takes us for a walk in the beautiful Welsh countryside and tells us what he loves best about shooting with primes.

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Watch this complete guide to Canon EOS M system lenses before they’re all killed off

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The timing of the release of this particular video from Christopher Frost is curious, but release it he has. It’s a complete guide to every EF-M lens made for the Canon EOS M system from brands such as Canon themselves, Sigma, Viltrox, Samyang and Laowa. The reason the timing is a little odd is that Canon seems to be preparing to completely kill off the EOS M system at any time.

The Canon EOS M6 Mark II has been discontinued, with no signs of a replacement and two new “RF-M” mount APS-C bodies are expected to be announced at some point soon – possibly on May 24th. But that might mean that the used market is about to get flooded with EOS M gear. So, maybe now is the perfect time to brush up on what lenses are out there for anybody looking for a potential bargain.

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Stop obsessing over the latest lenses – It’s probably the least important part of shooting a photo

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A good photography practice should consider all elements in the creation of an image, from technique and lighting to mastery of gear and employment of the right tools for the job. It is imperative that a competitive photographer knows their gear and knows what gear to use.

However, some camera manufacturers have a vested interest in deceiving you. Some bloggers cling to unverified information because it gives them an air of authority. Today on the glossary of photographer’s Woo we’re back on optics.

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Nikon’s F mount legacy takes one step closer to death as Nikon kills off another seven lenses

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The demise of Nikon’s DSLR product line, along with the F mount lens system that Nikon has been using for over 60 years, was pretty much inevitable with the company’s transition to mirrorless. We’ve seen them slowly kill off their DSLRs and a few of the F mount lenses, and now a few more appear to have been added to that list, according to the Nikon USA website.

Seven lenses have disappeared from the current model lens list on the Nikon USA website with product pages for those lenses indicating that “This product has been archived”. This is code for “Don’t bother, it’s been discontinued”. While they’re still available from some retailers, they probably won’t be available for much longer and once stocks run out, new ones are gone forever.

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This new tiny camera overcomes the problems of metalenses by using a whole bunch of them at once

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Metalenses have been a thing for a while now. We first wrote about them here on DIYP back in 2016 when a team at Harvard first built a lens that’s even thinner than the waves of light being focused. The goal of such lenses is to essentially shrink cameras down as much as possible. They use nanostructures to focus the light instead of the optics we’re used to in more traditional lenses, but they have something of a flaw.

It’s kind of a fatal flaw, too, and that’s image quality. The images aren’t really sharp, nor are they high resolution – especially when it comes to wide angles. They’re “ok” with a little help from AI, but they’re not great. Now, though, a team of researchers at Nanjing University in China believe they’ve solved the issue, by not just using a single metalens, but a whole array of them, with each tuned to a range of different angles.

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New Sigma patent shows design for a 28-70mm f/2 full-frame mirrorless lens

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A new patent suggests that Sigma might have a few new exciting lenses on the way soon for mirrorless cameras. The patent describes six lenses, including 28-70mm f/2 and 14-30mm f/4 DG DN lenses for full-frame and 20mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 28mm f/1.4 and 33mm f/1.4 DC DN lenses for APS-C. While a patent doesn’t always indicate that an item is definitely on the way, all of these focal lengths would fill holes in Sigma’s current mirrorless lens lineup.

With Sigma’s recent expansion into the Fuji X mount APS-C system, releasing a bunch of new APS-C format lenses designed specifically for mirrorless cameras would not only be inside the realm of possibility but it’d be a damn good idea, too. Sigma currently has only four lenses in its DC DN lineup, leaving a lot of room for growth.

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Everything you need to know about adapting lenses

Adapting lenses has become a lot more common in recent years as now that pretty much every DSLR and mirrorless camera out there shoots some form of video. Older lenses give us a favourable aesthetic that’s often lost with the latest high tech lenses that try to eliminate every lens imperfection possible. I’ve been doing it myself for about a decade now and it’s a lot of fun to see what some of those old lenses can do for your footage.

While adapting lenses might seem quite easy now, there are a few things you’ll want to look out for when buying an adapter and a couple of “gotchas” you’ll want to beware of. In this video, Caleb Pike at DSLR Video Shooter walks us through the adapting process and things we will need to think about when buying adapters and using old lenses on our current cameras.

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This new technology makes f/1.4 lenses at almost zero cost

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Researchers at Technion Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new way of making lenses with a curable liquid polymer that allows for faster prototyping of new and custom optics. It’s designed primarily for applications such as corrective lenses, augmented and virtual reality, medical imaging and astronomy, but could potentially become a new manufacturing method (or at least allow faster development) of photographic lenses.

According to a press release, the researchers began to develop the new method after realising that there were around 2.5 billion people around the planet who don’t have access to corrective eyewear. Their goal was to create “a simple method for fabricating high-quality optical components that does not rely on mechanical processing or complex and expensive infrastructure”.

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