Category Archives: Guides

7Artisans, Guides, Laowa, Mr. Ding Studio, Pergear, TTArtisan, Viltrox, Zhong Yi

The Best Fullframe Lenses from China

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Introduction

Sony A7rII | 7artisans 28mm 1.4 | f/8.0

In 2023 there are plenty of lens manufacturers originating from China speaking to various different target audiences. While some are the Primark of the lens industry – simply trying to offer cheaper alternatives to the reknown manufacturers of lower quality – others have become the actual innovators in the photography lens business.
Having used more than 80 of those lenses from 15 different manufacturers I thought it is a good time to highlight the best ones I came across.
Update November 2025: many new lenses added, many of the lenses listed here are currently discounted thanks to Black Friday Promotions, currently discounted prices are marked in red

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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.

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Analogue, camera, Guides, lenses, Meta

Used Lens and Camera Shopping Guide for Japan

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Introduction

Sony A7rII | Zeiss Loxia 21mm 2.8 | f/4.0

If you are looking for used lenses or cameras, Japan can be a real dream destination. Having already been there two times myself I know from first hand experience that it isn’t easy to locate some of the more interesting stores though. My Finnish expat friend Juha Kannisto – who is living in Tokyo – has been helping out photographers from all over the world for years already when it comes to this topic.

I thought it would be useful to collect all this knowledge and turn it into an easy-to-access article, so here we are.

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Astrophotography, Guides, lenses

Best Astro-Photography Lenses for the Sony A7 series

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Introduction

Sony A7s | Batis 18mm 2.8 | f/2.8 | ISO6400 | 20s

Landscape astrophotography is something I have been doing for several years. Luckily over the past few years many lenses have been released that make this task easier than ever. So today we are going to have a look at all the available lenses for your Sony so you can choose the one that works best for your needs.
Last update: December 2021

What is landscape astrophotography?

Sony A7s | Nikon AF-S 20mm 1.8G | f/1.8 | 3 shot panorama |

In landscape astrophotography you will usually try to have a combination of the starry sky (with Milky Way or Northern Lights) as well as some foreground (e.g. landscape) in your frame so we are mostly looking at ultra wide to normal lenses (for stitching) here.

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