Introduction

We have seen a few exciting lenses from Laowa in recent years, especially in their Argus product line, which seems to be Laowa’s premium line of lenses. The one here, Laowa Argus 25mm f/0.95 CF APO is one of them. A manual focus “standard/wide-angle” lens for APS-C cameras with an ultra-fast maximum aperture of f/0.95. It has an unusual focal length of 25mm (fullframe equivalent of 37.5mm*), between the more usual 23mm and 27mm focal lengths (FF equivalents of 35mm and 40mm*). The 0.95 aperture promises impressive and nice background separation and hopefully a nice bokeh and extreme low-light capabilities. Besides, the APO designation indicates Laowa has used its APO technology in this lens and it should give much better correction of spherical and chromatic aberrations than non-APO lenses. Let’s see how good it is in the real world!

* The fullframe equivalent focal length of 37.5mm is true for Sony, Nikon, and Fujifilm cameras, while on a Canon APS-C, it will be equivalent to a 40mm lens on a fullframe camera.

I tested this lens on a Nikon Zfc
You can see this review a YouTube video here

Sample Images

Continue reading Review: Laowa Argus 25mm f/0.95 CF APO (APS-C) →

As you may or may not know we have several guides on fullframe E-mount lenses:

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

• 9-18mm Ultra-Wideangle lenses for the Sony A7/A9/A1 Series
• 20-28mm Wideangle lenses for the Sony A7/A9/A1 Series
• 35mm lenses for the Sony A7/A9/A1 Series
• 50mm lenses for the Sony A7/A9/A1 Series
• 85-135mm Portrait Lenses for the Sony A7/A9/A1 Series

Keeping these guides up to date takes a lot of time but I nevertheless try to do it on a yearly basis.

That time has come again so I just spent about 3 weeks doing exactly that, this means many new lenses have been added and the prices and also the recommendations for many lenses have been updated.

Continue reading Lens Guides Updated and Upgraded →

A few days ago I asked you what you think would be a good platform to get announcements about new posts any maybe also start discussions or simply chatting.

Discord was mentioned quite often in your comments. I did some research – as I didn’t know much about it – and it does indeed offer some features I was looking for. I also like that it is you who decides what you want to see and not some algorithm. So I set up a phillipreeve.net Discord server where already some of you joined.

Continue reading phillipreeve.net now on Discord →

Introduction

Fisheye lenses are not exactly hugely popular and the fact that we haven’t seen a fullframe fisheye lens designed for mirrorless yet – in more than 60 years of the Leica-M system we haven’t seen a single one – only supports this. So maybe this 11mm 2.8 from TTArtisan is a welcome surprise, being the first of its kind? Let us find out in this review!
February 2023: Alternatives section updated

Sample Images

Continue reading Review: TTArtisan 11mm 2.8 Fisheye →