Compact 180-200mm primes are pretty much dead today and have been replaced by bigger and heavier zoom lenses. Personally, I have been hoping for a modern incarnation of something like the Voigtländer 180mm 4.0 SL Apo-Lanthar or the Sigma 180mm 5.6 Apo Macro for a long time. In 2025 Laowa released this Laowa 180mm 4.5 1.5:1 Apo Macro. Is this the versatile tele prime we have been waiting for? Let’s try to find out in this review.
Sometimes when new lenses are being announced they sound too good to be true and here that was certainly the case: the Sony FE 16mm 1.8 G has a lower MSRP than the already amazingly great Sony FE 20mm 1.8 G while being similarly sized. But not enough: it is “only” 2 mm less wide than the higher priced and much bigger Sony FE 14mm 1.8 GM which doesn’t even feature a filter thread. Is this the perfect ultra wide angle prime for fullframe Sony E-mount cameras? Let’s find out in this review.
Between 2015 and 2016 Cosina released three ultra wide angle lenses for M-mount, the VM 10mm 5.6 Hyper-Wide Heliar, the VM 15mm 4.5 Super-Wide-Heliar III and this VM 12mm 5.6 Ultra-Wide-Heliar III. While the 10mm and 15mm are still in production 10 years later, this 12mm has been discontinued after 3 years only. What was the reason for that? Let’s find out in this review.
Lens is being tested on 42mp Sony A7rII and 24mp Leica M10
Continue reading Review: Voigtländer VM 12mm 5.6 Ultra-Wide-Heliar MK III
From 2010 to 2023 this Nikon AF-S 85mm 1.4G had been Nikon’s top of the line fullframe fast 85mm portrait tele lens. I personally used it back in the day on Nikon DSLRs until I switched to Sony’s mirrorless cameras. Now that we have decent AF adapters for these Nikon lenses I thought it would be a good idea to revisit it and see if it is still a lens worth considering today.
The Irix 11mm 4.0 is the second widest rectilinear (non-fisheye) lens released for DSLRs. Because it was released at the end of the DSLR era – when many of us already made the shift to mirrorless – you actually can not find a lot of useful information on it online. So when one showed up at a dealer wit a bargain price tag I decided to finally give it a try. Let’s have a closer look!
