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Mitakon

Mitakon recreates Leica’s Summaron M 28mm f/5.6 at a tenth the cost

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Mitakon has announced their newest lens. It’s full-frame Mitakon Creator 28mm f/5.6, which they say “recreate[s] the iconic Leica Summaron M 28mm f/5.6 lens with faithful adherence to the original lens characters”. Except, in this case, Mitakon is doing it at a fraction of the $3,095 price the Leica lens demands. In fact, it’s an entire order of magnitude cheaper, at only $299.

Exactly how well the Mitakon adheres to the Leica original remains to be seen, but this is where Mitakon claims to be aiming its sights. Given the price difference, though, even without the Leica name stamped on it, I expect it won’t be identical in terms of image quality.

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The Mitakon Speedmaster 65mm f/1.4 is the fastest lens available for Hasselblad XCD

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ZY Optics has announced that its Mitakon Speedmaster 65mm f/1.4, initially released for Fujifilm GFX cameras, is now available in Hasselblad X flavour. This makes the manual focus lens the fastest lens available for the Hasselblad X system. It has an aperture range from a bright f/1.4, stopping down to f/16, with a field of view on Hasselblad X cameras similar to that of a 50mm lens on full-frame cameras.

Being such a wide aperture lens and taking advantage of a medium format sensor, its relative depth of field is also shallower than it would be at f/1.4 on full-frame for the same field of view. Its diaphragm contains nine aperture blades for what ZY Optics describes as “outstanding bokeh” and they say it produces no vignetting at all, with consistent sharpness from edge to edge.

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ZY Optics completes its MFT cine lens lineup with the new Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm T1.0 MFT Cine

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ZY Optics has announced the newest in their T1 lens in their cinema lens lineup. The Mitakon 50mm T1.0 MFT Cine joins the 17mm, 25mm and 35mm T1.0 lenses announced last year to complete their Micro Four Thirds cine lens lineup. As with the other lenses in the range, the 50mm T1.0 is very low budget, coming in at only $399 and now you can buy a bundle containing all four lenses which includes a free protective case.

Offering a 25° field of view, equivalent to a 100mm lens on full-frame, the new lens offers similar characteristics and bokeh to the rest of Mitakon’s MFT Cine lineup, giving filmmakers consistency as they swap between them. It has a minimum focus distance of only 60cm and with that super bright T1 aperture, the 9-blade circular aperture presents very pleasing out-of-focus areas.

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This 50mm f/0.95 face-off puts Laowa vs Mitakon vs TTArtisan vs Brightin Star lenses against each other

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There seem to be a lot of very fast lens options these days, even for full-frame cameras. Very few are them are coming from the long-established big-name companies like the camera manufacturers themselves or even Sigma and Tamron, but there are a lot of manual focus ones coming from some of the newer Chinese lens manufacturers.

In this video, Christopher Frost puts four full-frame 50mm f/0.95 lenses to the test to see how they stack up against each other, including the Mitakon, TTArtisan, Brightin Star and the recently announced Laowa Argus lens. The Laowa is a hair wider than the other three at 45mm rather than 50, but it’s close enough.

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Holiday Gift Guide – Best Lenses of 2021

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The season of giving is upon us – which becomes immediately obvious whenever you walk into a store and you’re overwhelmed by Whamageddon. If you want to avoid the Christmas music and prefer to do your shopping online, then have no fear, DIYP’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guides are here to rescue you with some of our favourite new releases of the year, as well as a few old favourites that always seem to find a place in our gear bags.

In this post, we’re going to be taking a look at lenses, but keep an eye out for upcoming guides featuring Lighting, Tripods, Sliders & Gimbals, and other accessories and gadgets and be sure to check out our previous guide going over the best of this year’s new Cameras.

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Mitakon Creator 135mm f/2.5 is a $300 tele lens for Canon, Nikon, and Sony

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ZY Optics has announced Mitakon Creator 135mm f/2.5, an affordable telephoto prime lens. It’s a new, improved, and a little faster version of Creator 135mm f/2.8, only this one was made in five different mounts, including both DSLR and mirrorless. And with the price tag of $299, it’s still fairly affordable just like the f/2.8 version.

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ZY Optics brings its Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95 to Leica L mount

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ZY Optics has announced the release of their Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95 lens for L mount. The fast aperture manual focus lens is designed for use with full-frame mirrorless cameras and is compatible with the complete line of L mount cameras from Sigma, Panasonic and Leica.

The Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95 was initially offered in full-frame format with Sony E mount in 2014. A Mark II came in 2017 and it was then refreshed in 2019 with a new Mark III version. The Mark III was still available in Sony E mount but also Nikon Z and Canon RF, too. Today’s release now makes it available for every full-frame mirrorless system currently available.

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Mitakon announces 17mm, 24mm and 35mm T1.0 Cine lenses for Micro Four Thirds

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ZY Optics, the company behind Mitakon lenses, has released a new range of T1.0 Speedmaster Cine lenses. All three of the lenses at focal lengths of 17mm, 25mm and 35mm are available for Micro Four Thirds. The 35mm is also available in Fujifilm X, Canon RF and Sony E mount as well. Of course, it can only fill the sensor on the two latter brands if it’s Super 35mm or APS-C.

The new lenses are essentially cinema housings for their 17mm f/0.95, 25mm f/0.95 and 35mm f/0.95 photography lenses, with the features one would expect from a cine lens, like a stepless silent geared aperture ring and a smooth geared focus ring with a longer throw and precise scale markings.

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Mitakon has finally released the Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II for Micro Four Thirds

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Micro Four Thirds shooters have been waiting a long time for this one. This APS-C format lens was initially released way back in 2016 for Fuji X, Sony E and Canon EF-M mounts, but notably lacking was MFT. Well, that’s all changed now, as ZY Optics has launched the Mitakon 35mm f/0.95 Mark II with a Micro Four Thirds mount… In Japan.

On a Micro Four Thirds camera, the lens offers a field of view equivalent of a 70mm focal length on a full-frame body, but with a nice wide f/0.95 aperture for shooting in low light conditions and getting that shallow depth of field. It features the same construction as its APS-C brethren, with 11 elements in 8 groups and a 55mm front filter thread.

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ZY Optics announces super bright Mitakon Speedmaster 17mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds

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ZY Optics has expanded their f/0.95 Micro Four Thirds lens lineup with the new Mitakon Speedmaster 17mm f/0.95 lens, offering a similar field of view to that of a standard 35mm lens on full-frame. This brings the Mitakon Speedmaster f/0.95 lens count for Micro Four Thirds up to two, adding to their existing 25mm f/0.95 lens.

It features 12 elements in 9 groups with a single extra-low dispersion element and four high refractive index elements to minimise chromatic aberration. ZY Optics says the lens delivers a “compelling sharpness across the frame, even at f0.95”.

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