I have already reviewed the Canon EF 200mm 1.8 L and the rare Voigtlander SL 180mm 4.0 APO-Lanthar, but the Olympus OM 180mm 2.0 Zuiko Auto-T is even rarer. I guess most of you didn’t know it even existed.
The Olympus an exotic relic from the past, one of Olympus’ masterpieces when it comes to 35mm lenses. So let us have a look at what I think is the first and only review of this lens on a (high res) digital full frame camera like the A7rII.
The Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7/50 is reputed to be one of the sharpest normal lenses and also the cheapest Carl Zeiss you can buy. In this in-depth review I put it to the test.
You can find these images in full resolution in this Carl Zeiss Planar 1.7/50 flickr set.
User Characterization: Ordinary travel – by bike or car or plane -doesn’t prevent you from taking many of the lenses we have recommended here. But there’s one kind of travel which places serious demands on the weight of your equipment. Hiking for many days, taking your accomodation and food on your back. Or even (In the style that many European outdoor photography enthusiasts may be used to) walking through mountains going from refuge to refuge.
This is a kind of travel that takes you to amazing landscapes that you can’t access any other way. But also, every gram of lens is a millilitre of water you can’t carry, or a gram of food you can’t have. Travelling light through the land, keeping pack weight down, is by far the best way to do this. Outdoors people will spend a fortune to reduce the weight of their knife by ten grams, their tent by fifty grams and so on. Because we know it all adds up, and when it adds up it means less food or a less enjoyable and slower experience.
For some this means that it’s a little compact camera that goes with them on wilderness adventure. But what to take if we still want to do top notch serious landscape photography with our A7 series camera?
Continue reading Best Sony FE Landscape Lenses for the Light Traveler and Hiker
Most rangefinder lenses used on a Sony a7 series camera show some serious issues because of the rather thick filter stack in front of the sensor. There are two ways to deal with this. We have previously discussed the use of front filters to counter the induced field curvature. In this article Sebboh reviews another solution.
This is an extended use review of the Kolari Ultra Thin (UT, also sometimes referred to as version 4) sensor stack modification on a Sony A7. This modification removes the AA filter and IR cut filter from a stock Sony camera and replaces it with an ultra thin 0.2mm thick IR cut filter in order to attempt to provide similar levels of performance to the Leica M9 in dealing with the steep ray angles often produced by rangefinder lenses designed for film. I have shot a UT modified Sony A7 for 6 months now and can confirm that it dramatically improves performance with certain lenses (big thanks to Nehemiah for letting me use his lenses and cameras for the comparisons shown here). I will try to outline what kind of improvements can be expected here and what drawbacks there are to getting the conversion done.
Continue reading Review: Kolari Ultra Thin Sensor Stack Modification
Macro lenses around 100 mm are among the most popular primes because they can be used for a very wide range of applications. So, how did Sony’s 2.8/90 turn out? Check out my review for the in-depth analysis.
You can find all images shown in this review in full resolution in this album.
