At the end of the DSLR era, Irix set out to compete with Samyang (with their XP series) and Zeiss (with their Otus and Milvus series) in the segment of higher end manual focus lenses. Somehow I didn’t come across reviewing any of those Irix lenses yet, but that is about to change now. Will this Irix 45mm 1.4 Dragonfly be a pleasant surprise? Let’s find out in this review.
While Nikon is somewhat famous for their 28mm 1.4 lenses, when it comes to 24mm lenses as fast as f/1.4, Canon beat them by several decades, as they released their first Canon FD 24mm 1.4 S.C.C. Aspherical in 1975. Canon also kept the fans of the 24mm 1.4 lenses happy with regular updates: a New FD lens in 1979, the original Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM in 1997 and then this updated Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM in 2008. Let’s see in this review how it compares to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G (released in 2010) and to today’s mirrorless designs like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM.
Released at the end of the DSLR era, these Samyang XP lenses had a very bad timing to begin with. And unlike many of Samyang’s other lenses, this Samyang 85mm 1.2 XP was only available for Canon EF-mount, where it faced fierce competition from the Canon EF 85mm 1.2L USM II, which also featured autofocus – and on a DSLR with its subpar focusing aids no one wants to give up on that. Today we have mirrorless cameras that actually work much better with manual lenses, time to find out, if this is an overlooked gem or just an outdated relic from the past.
Continue reading Review: Samyang 85mm 1.2 XP – A true hidden Gem
At the end of the DSLR/EF-mount era Canon released a bunch of newly designed extremely high quality TS-E lenses. This Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro is one of them. It is also Canon’s longest Tilt/Shift lens so far. Is this the dream lens for product photography? Let’s find out in this review.
35mm are the favorite focal length of many reportage, event and wedding photographers. In the last years we saw boundaries being pushed as we can now choose from f/1.2 lenses with autofocus and manual focus lenses that even offer a maximum aperture of f/0.95. I gathered five recent ones of these super fast 35mm lenses with maximum apertures ranging from f/0.95 to f/1.2 and will compare them, to give you an idea which might work best for your needs.
Continue reading Comparison: Super Fast 35mm f/0.95 | f/1.2 Fullframe Lenses