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Zoom Lens

Sony announces the light and fast Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G lens for full-frame E mount

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Sony has today announced their newest lens, the Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G lens for full-frame Sony mirrorless cameras. It offers a versatile focal range as a general walkabout lens with a constant f/4 wide open aperture throughout. Sony says it offers “impressive Sony G Lens image quality” with high-speed accuracy and tracking AF, with a design optimised for maximum mobility and operability.

The new lens, they say, is “redefining the standard zoom in our G lens category to meet the needs of today’s content creators”. Offering a slightly slower f/4 aperture over the typical f/2.8 certainly does come with some perks that many creators will find handy, given the ISO performance of many of today’s cameras. The two biggest advantages f/4 zooms offer over their f/2.8 counterparts are price and weight.

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Tamron 50-400mm f/4.5-6.3 is a new, groundbreaking all-purpose zoom for Sony E

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Tamron has announced the Tamron 50-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Di III VC VXD, a new, versatile zoom that wants to be your go-to lens for any shooting situation. The focal length range is pretty unusual; dare I say groundbreaking.

Starting at the standard 50mm rather than 100mm, this lens differs from other ultra-telephoto zooms you’ll find in the market. While the zoom and the focal length range sound tempting, there are some drawbacks as well. So let’s check them all out.

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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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Sony has now officially announced the new 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II lens

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It had to come eventually and now it’s finally here. Sony has announced its new Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II lens to go along with its recently released FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II announced last October. Like its predecessor, the Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II is designed for full-frame Sony E mount cameras and comes with a number of new improvements that should help the shooting workflow.

Sony says it’s the “world’s lightest f/2.8 standard zoom lens”, but we usually have to take Sony’s “World’s” claims with a pinch of salt and a few caveats. In this case, though, weighing in at only 695g, they might actually have a point. It’s 20% less than the original and significantly less than its Nikon and Canon counterparts.

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Canon patents zoom lenses that get shorter as they get longer

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Well, this is a bit counterintuitive. Spotted by asobinet, Canon has patented a mechanism for a zoom lens mechanism that actually gets shorter as you increase the focal length. Yes, that’s right, the exact opposite to how zoom lenses normally work.

The patent was published on November 18th to provide zoom lenses with large apertures and small size with high optical performance. A number of lens examples are included in the patent, including a couple with ranges of approximately 28-70mm and 28-60mm with f/2.8 and f/4 maximum apertures respectively.

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Olympus releases super-wide 8-25mm f/4 lens

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Along with the new PEN E-P7, Olympus has also announced a new ultra-wide zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds. The M.Zuiko Digital ED 8-25mm f/4 PRO is the new autofocus lens with the equivalent focal length range of 16-50mm. If you’re planning to add a wide-angle zoom to your gear bag, let’s see what this new Olympus lens has to offer.

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Panasonic announces Lumix S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Macro O.I.S. lens

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Panasonic has just launched the Lumix S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 MACRO O.I.S. lens. It leaked in the lens roadmap last year, but now it’s officially here and ready for preorders. It looks like a pretty versatile lens that lets you shoot the subjects really far from you, but those really close too, so lets’ see what it has to offer.

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These guys bought the cheapest 800mm zoom lens on Wish just to see if it was any good

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I’m a big fan of cheap lenses. I don’t care even care if they mostly suck. Sometimes, a really cheap terrible lens can offer you exactly the look you’re going for – and it can get you there much more quickly than trying to degrade your image manually in post. But in this case…

Tommy, Stephen and Mitchell at TMS Productions decided to order some cheap filmmaking gear from Wish to see how well it actually worked. They got a cheap “4K” action camera and a 420-800mm f/8.3-16 telephoto zoom lens. So, why does the thumbnail say 3200mm? well, they bought a couple of cheap 2x teleconverters, too.

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