I wasn’t a big fan of most of Samyang’s earlier lenses, especially not their early autofocus lenses. Their latest lenses have shown significant improvements over the earlier ones though and this Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF FE even features a unique selling point: it is the lightest 135mm 1.8 lens ever made. And not only that, it is currently also the cheapest option. Do cheap and lightweight go together with good here? Let’s find out in this review.
So far I have only been talking about color-negative film here, so this Kodak Ektachrome 100 was actually the first slide film I exposed. If you don’t know what the differences between color-negative and slide film are, you can have a look here first.
Processing (E-6) and scanning (Noritsu) was done at urbanfilmlab in Germany. Pictures you see in this article are from one roll of Ektachrome 100 and a sixth of a roll of 5294 E100.
Continue reading Analogue Adventures – Part 38: Kodak Ektachrome 100 / 5294
We summarize our experience with all the native E-mount and a few manual legacy lenses in the 9-18mm bracket to give you a compact and independent resource for choosing the right super- to ultra-wide-angle lens for your Sony A7 cameras. In this summary we also included some adapted lenses we think are worth mentioning.
We also have a general guide to FE lenses, guide to 20-28mm lenses as well as a guide to 35mm lenses, 50mm lenses and 85-200mm portrait lenses.
We have no association with any lens manufacturer apart from occasionally loaning a lens for a review. Before any short introduction we tell you how long we have used a lens and if we have borrowed it from a manufacturer. But in most cases we have bought the lenses new from retail stores or on the used market.
Many of these lenses are manual focus only (MF) whereas some of them feature auto focus (AF). There is also a noticeable amount of lenses listed here that do not feature electronic contacts to communicate with the camera (no Exif).
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, Laowa 10mm 2.8 AF, 15mm 5.0 Cookie and Sony 16-25mm 2.8G added, cleaned up
Continue reading Guide to Ultra Wideangle lenses for the Sony A7/A9/A1 Series
With its huge front element the Sigma 105mm 1.4 DG HSM Art is one of the biggest and heaviest short tele lenses ever made. Is it actually worth carrying this massive lens around when there are significantly smaller and lighter 85/105mm f/1.4 lenses available? Let’s find out in this review!
Update April 2025: additional sample pictures added
Continue reading Review: Sigma 105mm 1.4 DG HSM Art – The Bokeh Master?
In late 2010 Nikon released this Nikon AF-S 35mm 1.4G to give Nikon shooters their first faster-than-f/2.0 35mm autofocus lens – something they have long been waiting for. When I was using Nikon DSLRs I had the 24mm 1.4G and the 85mm 1.4G and couldn’t afford to get this 35mm as well, so it ended up being the only lens of Nikon’s higher end AF-S f/1.4 lineup I never used. Now is the time to finally change that.
