We have seen many new lens manufacturers from China and there are still more coming. This new manufacturer gave itself the name of a famous Leica designer: “Mandler”. And as their first lens they fittingly decided to bring us this Mandler 35mm 2.0 7e, which from the outside looks exactly like a Leica 35mm 2.0 Summicron-M IV. Will it also perform like the vintage Leica lens? Let’s find out in this review.
This lens will be reviewed on the 24mp Leica M10.
Pancake lenses are something I am always interested in, but so far none of the E-mount ones was really convincing. The best one until now was probably the Viltrox AF 28mm 4.5 Chip, but that lens came with one compromise too many: fixed aperture, no focus ring, no filter thread, janky sunstars. Now Viltrox is at it with a different formula: this Viltrox AF 26mm 2.8 Evo – which is in many ways inspired by Nikon’s Z 26mm 2.8 – looks like a fully fledged lens. Is this the pancake lens that Sony users have been waiting for? Let’s find out in this review!
In the mirrorless world we start to see more f/2.0 zoom lenses, a trend that started with the Canon RF 28-70mm 2.0L USM and Sony built upon with their Sony FE 28-70mm 2.0 GM and the Sony FE 50-150mm 2.0 GM. What is easily forgotten here: it was actually Sigma who first made a fullframe zoom lens with a constant f/2.0 aperture – already in 2015 and for DSLRS – the Sigma 24-35mm 2.0 DG HSM Art. Let’s have a closer look!
In the 1970s Nikon was comparably busy releasing f/1.2 F-mount lenses and the last of them was this Nikon Nikkor 50mm 1.2, first released in 1978. I already reviewed the first f/1.2 F-mount lens, the Nikon 55mm 1.2 from 1965, and also the famous and rare 58mm 1.2 Noct-Nikkor from 1977, so today we will have a look at a late sample of this Nikon Nikkor 50mm 1.2 Ai-s.
Kodak Ektar 25 was a professional low ISO colour negative film first released in 1989. This film was already discontinued in 1994 and that probably makes it one of the oldest films I had a look at here.
Processing (C-41) and scanning was done at urbanfilmlab in Germany, the pictures in this article are from one roll of film. I also took into account it expired some time ago and chose ISO12.
Continue reading Analogue Adventures – Part 54: Kodak Ektar 25 (expired) C-41