You know you’re ballin’ as a photographer when you can use your lens collection to play a giant game of chess.
The complete 32 piece set includes 70-200 f/2.8 pawns, 600mm f/4 Kings and 500mm f4 Queens, 400mm f/2.8 Bishops, 300mm f/2.8 Knights, and 200mm f/2.0 Rooks in black (Nikon) and white (Canon). [#]
If you don’t have a complete set of lenses to make your own set, you can rent a set for a week from LensRentals for $9,221 (not including shipping, which will cost you between $1,100 and $2,400).
Nikon has just announced the new AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G lens, which has a FoV equivalent to a 60mm on a full frame body. It boasts a minimum focusing distance of just 6.4 inches, and has a reproduction ratio of 1:1. Read more…
Olympus unveiled a boatload of Micro Four Thirds gear this morning, including three new PEN cameras, two new prime lenses, and a flash. All three cameras pack a 12.3 megapixel sensor with ISO that goes up to 12,800, a speedy new autofocus system (the “world’s fastest”), and 1080i HD video recording. The E-P3 (shown above), the flagship camera of the PEN line, features an all-metal body, a pop-up flash, and an OLED touchscreen. It’ll cost you $900 when it’s out in August 2011. Read more…
An unfortunate photo-lover in Hong Kong recently got into a fight with his girlfriend, who proceeded to smash his beautiful collection of Nikon lenses. Among the casualties were a Nikkor 28-70 f2.8D, Tokina 28-70 F2.6-2.8, Nikkor 80-200 f2.8D, Nikkor 17-35 F2.8D, and a Nikon TC-20E teleconverter. Read more…
Things aren’t going very well for Sigma these days — just days after the world balked at the $9,700 price tag it’s attaching to the upcoming SD1 DSLR, Nikon is announcing that it’s suing Sigma for $150 million over the vibration reduction technology found in Sigma DSLR lenses. Furthermore, it’s demanding that Sigma put a halt to the manufacturing and sale of lenses that infringe on the VR patents, which might be a large number of OS (Optical Stabilization) lenses.
If colleges offered camera equipment anatomy classes, this Leica lens cutaway might be one of the things you’d be examining in the lab. It’s a Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm sliced cleanly down the middle, revealing all the glass and pieces inside that go into making the lens. Read more…
Photography lens manufacturers use all sorts of abbreviations and acronyms to explain the features of their lenses. In an effort to educate use, the photography lens manufacturers really just confuse us. Hopefully you’ll understand a bit about the different lens feature abbreviations by reading this post. Read more…
The highly publicized wedding of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton is happening tomorrow, and Reuters will be sending a 15 member team composed of photographers from all across Europe to cover the event. The photo above by team member Phil Noble shows the crazy amount of gear he and photographer Kai Pfaffenbach will be carrying.
The plan however (as thorough as it is) involves some serious kit. Between us we will carry 10 cameras and a vast array of glass from 800 and 600mm lenses down to a 15mm fish eye and an even wider lens on a Go-Pro action camera. Conservatively this is 50kg (110 pounds) of kit each.
We hear they’re also looking for anyone with a spare donkey that could help lug around the equipment.
Nikon created this beautiful video promoting Nikkor lenses, and included interesting looks into how their lenses are manufactured. Previously we shared a post showing how Canon manufactures their 500mm lens.
If you want to play around with lo-fi photography, you don’t have to venture into the world of analog or hack together a DIY lens for your DSLR. There’s cheap plastic lenses you can buy for a toy-camera look, and one of them is the Holga HL-N lens available for both Canon and Nikon mounts. Read more…
