Category Archives: Meta

Meta, Thypoch

November / Black Friday Deals 2026

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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.

Thypoch

The campaign runs from October 20th until December 3rd.

Pretty much all the Thypoch lenses are discounted in their official Thypoch Webshop (affiliate link). Sadly during this promotion period you cannot use our discount code.

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. Unlike last year they saw significant discounts this time and they are highly recommended. The 28mm and the 75mm 1.4 are both lenses I personally bought and use.

The Ksana 35mm 2.0 only saw an 8% discount, but it is a very well balanced yet surprisingly compact 35mm 2.0 lens.

Nikon and Sony Deals at Amazon and B&H

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Meta

Recent Guide Updates

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Recent Guide Updates

Over the past weeks I have been updating all these guides once more. This is always a lot of work and not a lot of fun, so I hope you continue to find them useful. It is now finally the moment to complain that your favorite lens is not included 🙂

I also noticed something rather unusual: new lenses used get cheaper over time, but compared to last year many of the Sony and Sigma lenses saw sometimes massive increases of their MSRP in the US thanks to the tariffs. The prices of the Chinese and Korean lenses are mostly stable, sometimes widening the gap even further. Especially some of the older Sony lenses are really bad deals now.

Supporting Us

This website is advertising free, except for the unobtrusive affiliate links. Please have a look at some of our competitors (e.g. opticallimits, cameralabs, dustinabbott or sonyalpha.blog) and ask yourself if that is the user experience you are looking for, where you cannot change the page even once without a pop up showing up, you have advert bars at the bottom or side and ads are even being scattered across the actual content, so you are more likely to accidentally click on them.

If not, keep in mind you can support us and keep this page advert free by using these donation buttons:

via Paypal (BastianK)
via Paypal (Martin)

Meta, Review

Lenses I would like to Review

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Introduction

There are some lenses I would like to review one day, but the more interesting (read: rare and expensive) they are, the less feasible it is for me to buy them just to write a review.
Thanks to several readers here I already got the opportunity to remove several lenses from this list in the past, but there are still some left:

E-mount:

Sony FE 12-24mm 2.8 GM Review
Sigma 14mm 1.4 Review
Sony FE 14mm 1.8 GM Review
Sigma 17mm 4.0 Review
Samyang 18mm 2.8 AF Review
Sigma 20-200mm 3.5-6.3 C Review
Sony FE 20mm 1.8 G Review
Samyang 24mm 1.8 AF Review
Voigtländer 28mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar E
Sony FE 28-70mm 2.0 GM
Sigma 28-45mm 1.8
Sigma 35mm 1.2 II Review 
Sigma 50mm 1.2
Sony FE 50-150mm 2.0 GM
Sony FE 50mm 1.4 GM Review
Samyang 50mm 1.4 AF MKII Review
Sony FE 50mm 1.2 GM Review
Sony FE 85mm 1.4 GM MK II Review
Sigma 85mm 1.2 Review coming soon
Samyang 85mm 1.4 AF MKII
Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF Review

Continue reading Lenses I would like to Review →

Meta, Review

Reviewing Lenses isn’t really worth it

60 Comments

It is this time of the year again. I sadly see many blogs loading their pages with so much advertising these days that it makes it hard to spot the actual content anymore. Some also opted for membership programs like Patreon. We on the other hand always financed this blog exclusively through unobtrusive affiliate links and donations. This is only possible because it is a passion project by people with actual jobs that just happen to love photography.

I still have no intention to add annoying adverts or introducing a membership/Patreon system, as I have always been an advocate of free internet and freely accessible information. I also don’t want to push junk software with high margins that I would never want to use myself or offer questionably useful presets.

This means I have to push this article 1-2 times per year – similar to what Wikipedia is doing every now and then – to reach more people.

There are many articles here that generate zero income: for example the Analogue Adventures and everything from the Technical Knowledge category, as these are not really about a product that could be bought by you. Same is also true for the reviews of simply bad lenses. Why would you buy them through affiliate links if we just told you they suck? 

Affiliate links also don’t work for everyone and every item. If you are not from Canada or the US, B&H is surely less attractive. Many people from Europe don’t like ordering directly from Asia because of import duties and some items may also not be available through our affiliate partners at all.

Thinking of reviews of affordable vintage lenses: if you buy a lens for $50 on eBay, we only get a $1 commission for that. So in these cases, you would do us a bigger favour by donating $5 and buying that lens at a lower price locally (if possible), than using the affiliate links.

If you find yourself in one of these categories – or if you simply want to support us without using affiliate links – you can do that by using this Paypal donate button under our articles:

via Paypal (BastianK)
via Paypal (Martin)

The money you donate will go directly to the author of that article. Even though the blog had two million visitors last year according to our statistics, only around 100 decided to make a donation (you know who you are, thanks a lot for that!), so you can make a real difference here.

And if you often find yourself ordering from one of our affiliates: why not bookmark and use any of our Amazon or eBay links as starting point for your purchases? It won’t cost you anything extra and helps us a lot. It doesn’t matter what you order, whether it is photography related or not, as long as you clicked on one of the links first.

Some articles highlighting the work we do here you might have missed:
Different Filter Stacks and what they mean for us: Sony E | Nikon Z | Leica M | Kolari UT
Comparison: Super Fast 35mm f/0.95 | f/1.2 Fullframe Lenses
Sony FE Lenses: The honest Guide for the A7/A9/A1 Series

And some quirky and rare lenses you won’t find being reviewed this thorough anywhere else:
Review: TTArtisan 75mm f/1.5 – A Modern and Affordable Zeiss Biotar 75/1.5?
Review: Laowa 8-15mm f/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye
Review: SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime LM
Review: Nikon 200mm 2.0 IF-ED Ai – The first of its Kind

Meta

Site Update: Gallery

9 Comments

The header bar has a new category called “Gallery”, you can also go there directly here.

This is for those of you that are mainly here for the pictures and less so for the lenses. I am starting with 9 different galleries and before extending those, I first want to see what the feedback looks like. 

So drop a message in the comment section, especially if you encounter any kind of issues.