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Meta, Thypoch

November / Black Friday Deals 2025

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Introduction

Christmas is around the corner so everyone wants to sell their goods in November. The industry came up with a bunch of stuff like Single’s Day and Black Friday and many camera and lens manufacturers are also using this opportunity. In this article I will collect the deals I think are actually worthwhile.
Thypoch was the first to start their campaign this year, as soon as others follow this article will be updated.
Update: Amazon/Samyang+Adobe Lightroom added

Adobe Photo Prepaid Abo 1 Year

This year a bit more expensive but with 1 TB instead of 20 GB and still much better than the monthly rate. Probably available on all the European Amazon shops. Here the Link to Amazon.de (affiliate link).

Watch out though: this will not extend your existing 20 GB subscription. Wait until your 20 GB subscription ran out or pause it before redeeming the code for the 1 TB subscription.

Samyang Lenses (US/EU Amazon)

Samyang Remaster Slim lens kit for 169€ on Amazon.de (affiliate link) Review

All the Samyang V-AF lenses are also heavily discounted on Amazon.de (affiliate link) and can be bought for 210 to 300€ each. I bought  the 100mm T2.3 myself to review it. The 24mm T1.9, 35mm T1.9, 45mm T1.9 and 75mm T1.9 seem to be the rehoused non-Cine lenses but they feature nicer casings while often being cheaper, especially true for the nice Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE.

The US Amazon offers the Samyang AF 85mm 1.4 II (affiliate link) for $407, which is also a fair price.

Viltrox 

Many of the Viltrox lenses are also discounted on Amazon.de (affiliate link). The 35mm 1.2 LAB for 800€, the new 85mm 2.0 Evo for 250€, the 85mm 1.4 Pro for 535€ are the best deals I noticed, some of the APS-C lenses may also be worth a closer look.

If you are shopping from the US you can also find most Viltrox lenses discounted on Amazon.com (affiliate links) and on B&H (affliliate link), where it seems all lenses are discounted by 20%, so you can for example get the new Viltrox 14mm 4.0 Air for only $159 (affiliate link).

Also the official Viltrox store offers a sitewide 20% discount (affiliate link). Remeber to try using the code “PRnet” for an additional 5%.

Thypoch

The campaign runs from October 22nd until December 3rd.

Pretty much all the Thypoch lenses are discounted in their official Thypoch Webshop (affiliate link) and you can get an additional 5% discount using the code “PRNET”.

I reviewed all of these lenses and there is no stinker among them. The 28mm 1.4, the 50mm 1.4 and the 75mm 1.4 are my favorites and they also made it my list of the Best Fullframe Lenses from China. Sadly the 75mm 1.4 and the 50mm 1.4 only received small discounts, but they were already easy recommendations at full retail.

Laowa

The campaign runs from November 14th until January 2nd.

There are no huge discounts to be found here, but many lenses (not the latest releases though) received a 10% discount in their official Laowa Webshop (affiliate link). If you were already eyeing one of those, now is a good time.

Lenses worth looking at are the 85mm as well as 90mm 2:1 macro lenses and all the shift lenses. A discount for the 15mm 2.0 is also always welcome.

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Guides, lenses, Opinion

Sony FE Lenses: The honest Guide for the A7/A9/A1 Series

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Choose the right lens for your Sony Alpha with the help of our independent knowledge gained by writing many in-depth reviews.

We have an in-depth knowledge of many of the lenses listed here not only because we have used them, but also because we have reviewed many of them in detail. We are also independent from any lens manufacturer and when you check our reviews you will see that we do not hesitate to name any shortcomings of a lens.
We will also talk about lens aberrations, if you don’t know too much about these terms maybe have a look at our article Lens aberrations explained first.

Originally the idea of this guide was to include all available fullframe E-mount lenses. The number of fullframe E-mount lenses has significantly grown over the years though, so that has become an impossible task.

From now on this article will only include lenses that we find currently recommendable. That will make this article much easier to navigate and read and therefore more valuable. It should also make it easier for us to keep it up to date, as we don’t have to waste a lot of time adding uninteresting or mediocre lenses anymore. I also removed most of the super tele lenses, as we have too little experience with them. The aim is to generally keep this article below 10000 words, which is still a whole lot.

We do also have guides for:
9-18mm ultra wideangle FE lenses
20-28mm wide angle lenses
35mm FE lenses
50mm FE lenses
85-200mm FE portrait lenses
Macro lenses for the FE system
These guides often contain some older lenses not listed here (anymore).

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

Last update: March 2025
A lot of new lenses added, many older/discontinued/outdated lenses removed.

Continue reading Sony FE Lenses: The honest Guide for the A7/A9/A1 Series →

Guides, Sony Alpha 7

Guide to best Sony E-Mount 35mm Lenses for A7/A9/A1 series

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review sharpness 42mp high resolution sample test vergleich comparison bokeh handling build quality a7riii autofocus af close macro

35mm is a very popular focal length with a wide range of applications ranging from landscape over astrophotography to environmental portraiture and many consider it the best choice when only using one prime lens. We decided to summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few legacy 35mm lenses for the Sony A7 series to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the best 35mm lens for your needs.

We also have a general guide to FE-lenses, 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses, guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses, 50mm lenses, 85-200mm portrait lenses and macro lenses.

Unlike most other review sites we have no association with any lens manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. We prefer independence over fancy trips and nice meals.

Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses new from retail stores or on the used market. If you want to support our independent reviews please consider using one of the affiliate links. It doesn’t cost you anything and helps us a lot.

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

Last update: March 2025, cleaned up a bit

Continue reading Guide to best Sony E-Mount 35mm Lenses for A7/A9/A1 series →

Canon EF-Mount, Guides, Leica M, lenses, Olympus OM, Sony A-mount, Sony E-mount

Guide to the best Portrait Lenses – Sony A7/A9/A1 series

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We summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few legacy lenses in the 85-200mm bracket for the Sony A7/A9/A1 series to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the best portrait lens for your needs.

We also have a general guide to FE-lenses, 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses, guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses, 35mm lenses, 50mm lenses and macro lenses.

Unlike most other review sites we have no association with any lens manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. No fancy trips and meals.

Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses new from retail stores or on the used market. 

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

If you purchase the lens through one of the affiliate-links in this article we get a small compensation with no additional cost to you.

Last update: March 2025, several lenses added, cleaned up

Continue reading Guide to the best Portrait Lenses – Sony A7/A9/A1 series →

Canon EF-Mount, Canon FD-Mount, lenses, Minolta SR mount, Sony E-mount

Guide to wide-angle lenses for Sony A7/A9/A1 series

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Sony A7rII | Zeiss Loxia 21mm 2.8 | f/8.0

We summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few manual legacy lenses in the 20-28mm bracket to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the right wide-angle lens for your Sony A7/A9/A1 camera. In this summary we also included some adapted lenses we think are worth mentioning. We didn’t include any zoom lenses, you can find those in our general guide to FE lenses as well as the guide to 9-18mm ultra wide angle lenses.

You may also want to check out our guides to 35mm lenses, 50mm lenses and 85-200mm portrait lenses.

Some of these lenses are manual focus only (MF) whereas others feature auto focus (AF). There is also a noticeable amount of lenses listed here that do not feature electronic contacts to communicate with the camera (no Exif).

We have no association with any manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses on the market. If you want to support our independent reviews please consider using one of the affiliate links. It doesn’t cost you anything and helps us a lot.

If we have left any question unanswered please leave a comment or contact us on social media and we will do our best to answer it.

Last update: March 2025, Voigtländer 28mm 1.5E Nokton, Viltrox 28mm 4.5 AF added

Continue reading Guide to wide-angle lenses for Sony A7/A9/A1 series →