Rayqual, a Japanese manufacturer with a Geocities-esque website, recently announced a new line of adapters that will allow you to use Canon, Nikon, and Leica lenses on the Sony NEX line of EVIL cameras. While using your existing glass on the cameras might be nifty and buy you some image quality, what you lose is the ability to autofocus. Another downside is that these adapters aren’t exactly cheap – they will cost between ¥19,950 and ¥25,200 (roughly $220 and $275).

(via Engadget)

Nikon has a couple neat interactive tools that make it easy to explore and compare lenses. Their lens simulator lets you see what resulting photographs might look like with any lens and camera combination, while their new lens positioning map displays the NIKKOR lineup on a grid with aperture and focal length as the two axes.

Once you’ve found lenses or combinations you like, you can save them for future reference.

(via Digital Journal of Photography)

Stephen Von Worley over at Weather Sealed just received a lens he calls “The Glass Frisbee”. In the photo above it’s placed next to a Canon 50mm f/1.4 for size comparison. It’s a $250, 195mm f/1.25 lens that’s sold to people who need it for custom uses. The description on Surplus Shed says,

We believe these will make great wide field low power telescopes, incredible binoculars especially suited for low light conditions, or astrographs. Other uses may be for building a camera, projector, HDTV projection, telephoto, finder for your huge scope, low light compact camera obscura, etc, etc.

Von Worley plans to use his for large format photography:

I bought the Frisbee for its incredible combination of 200mm focal length and f/1.3 aperture, which I’ll use to push the limits of narrow depth of field. By the laws of physics, once shoehorned onto my large-format 4×5 monorail camera, it’s the optical equivalent of a 50mm f/0.35 lens on a full-frame SLR.

Until he gets around to it, he’s using the lens as photography-nerd bling:

You can read more about it here.

Image credits: Photographs by Stephen Von Worley

Filmmaker Kevin Shahinian of Pacific Pictures has a knack for unconventional wedding videos. In the past, he’s turned one wedding flick into a thriller, starring the newlyweds.

Key to his films is the idea that the stories are somehow universal; the plot extends beyond the individual love story that he is documenting. Though he is covering the personal stories of a single wedding party, he crafts a storyline that even strangers can appreciate.

For his most recent film, “City of Lakes,” he’s masterminded a fantastic conceptual short film by fusing live footage from a wedding and a scripted love story he created.

Though the film runs just under 30 minutes, it’s definitely worth a watch.

As an added plus, all the filming was done exclusively with Canon DSLRs, the 5D Mark II and the 7D, outfitted with L-series lenses.

The hybrid feature film was shot over the course of nine days, on location at Udaipur, India. Shahinian said that he was working with a skeleton crew that he usually works with to shoot live wedding events. Shahinian wrote on his Vimeo production page:

…it would become an unprecedented attempt to combine a fully scripted, produced film with Melissa & Samir’s real, live wedding into one, seamless film…“CITY OF LAKES” is as much a documentary about what it means to return to the birthplace of one’s ancestors, as it is an exploration of the Hindu faith, and the rituals of a Hindu marriage.

The resulting film is a colorful cultural portrait, a beautiful love story, and an engaging wedding video with a touch of Bollywood-style lightheartedness.

If you have deep pockets, Nikon has a wonderful new $6,999.95 lens for you. They’ve just announced the new Nikon AF-S 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II, a super telephoto lens for sports, nature, and travel photographers. Nikon claims that the latest Vibration Reduction technology, VR II, provides the equivalent of an extra four stops of light, which is one stop more than the previous version of this lens released in 2003. Additional improvements include Nikon’s proprietary Nano Crystal Coat, which reduces ghosting and flaring, and Automatic Panning Detection and an Active VR Mode, which allows the lens to be used at unstable locations such as in a moving vehicle.

The old lens is still being sold for ~$6,000 online, but you can expect the price to plummet once this lens is available in late May 2010. For more information on this lens, check out the press release put out by Nikon.

Sigma announced yesterday that the upcoming 8-16mm f4-5.6 DC HSM, first announced at PMA 2010, will have a retail price of £799.99.

While it’s not an accurate measure of what the lens will cost in the US, at the current exchange rate this is roughly $1,232.

The lens, designed for APS-C (crop) sensors, will be available for Sigma, Nikon, and Canon mounts when the lens is made available at the end of April. It will also be released for Sony and Pentax shortly thereafter.

When used on APS-C sensors, the lens is equivalent to a 12-24mm lens, and is the first zoom lens to offer 8mm without being a fisheye.

The closest to this Nikon and Canon come with their own lenses are the 10–24 mm f/3.5-4.5G and 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, respectively.

In his recent Twitter Q&A session regarding House being filmed with a 5D Mark II, director Greg Yaitanes answered a question about differences of the new setup by saying, “focus was hard with these lenses but more “cine-style” lenses are being made as we speak.” Lo and behold, new cine lenses are being announced!

Carl Zeiss has just announced the first set of prime and zoom lenses designed specifically for HDSLR cameras. The new Compact Prime CP.2 and Lightweight Zoom LWZ.2 lenses have interchangeable mounts and can be used on F (Nikon), EF (Canon), and PL (traditional cine camera) systems.

The primes range in focal length from 18mm to 85mm and can be used on full frame cameras, while the zooms are limited to crop sensor bodies. Here’s an interesting quote from the press release:

The trend of filming in high definition using a digital SLR camera is unstoppable. Moviemaking today is unthinkable without this technique, whether for independent filmmakers, television producers or professional still photographers who wish to expand their services.

Pricing was not unannounced, but the lenses will be available starting June 2010.

These glasses might look like typical geeky photo dad gear or something your eccentric uncle might wear, but if your eyes have uneven prescriptions, they can come in handy while shooting. That is, unless you’re classy enough to have a monocle (or contacts).

California-based photo accessory company, Hoodman, showed off this pair of glasses for photographers at PMA earlier this week. The glasses can be set with corrective lenses from an optometrist, and each lens can be individually flipped up. Corrections for the shooting eye can be adjusted with the camera’s diopter, remaining unhindered by an extra layer of glass, while the tracking eye can still benefit from corrective lenses.

Today at PMA, Sigma announced a wide range of new lenses, including a prime 85mm f1.4.

The rep at the Sigma booth who said that the prices and release dates are not solid, but these lenses should be hitting the market by the end of this year, possibly in the second quarter (after March).

They are made to fit most major DSLR brands, including not only Nikon and Canon but Sony and Pentax.

Here’s a list of the lenses with a summary of specs, pictured left to right:

• 85mm f1.4 EX DG HSM
  Medium telephoto lens for full-frame cameras. On a crop sensor, it will look like a 127.5mm lens. HSM stands for Hyper Sonic Motor, a quieter and fast autofocus mode.
• 17-50mm f2.8 DC OS HSM
  A standard zoom lens for crop sensor cameras with Optical Stabilizer function with special coating to reduce flare and ghosting.
• 8-16mm f4.5-5.6 DC HSM
  A super wide lens for crop sensor cameras, but will look like 12-24mm. Distortion is corrected by a hybrid aspherical lens and two glass mold elements.
• APO 70-200mm f2.8 EX DG OS HSM
  Telephoto zoom with Optical Stabilizer, made for full-frame cameras, compatible with Sony and Pentax with image sensor shift anti-shake system.
• APO 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM
  10x high zoom ratio ultra telephoto zoom lens with OS, for full-frame. Not as wide of an aperture, but it’s got a huge range.

Based on patents recently filed with the United States Patent Office, Canon seems to be working on technologies that could have a huge impact on how you photograph.

Since these are simply patent applications, there’s no guarantee the technology will find its way into cameras anytime soon. However, it’s interesting to see what the camera corps are working on and what we might expect sometime further down the road:

Viewfinder LCD

One of the developments is the introduction of a small LCD screen in the viewfinder, separate from the live, optical view. In the images from the patent application shown above, you can see the LCD view above the traditional optical view and information bar on the right.

This means you can keep your camera pressed to your face while shooting, reviewing prior images on the in-viewfinder LCD rather than the LCD on the back of the body. If you constantly pull the camera away from your face to review what you just shot, this feature might give you an extra boost in productivity.

Sensor-based Stabilization

Another interesting thing found by Photography Bay in the patent application for the in-viewfinder LCD is the mention of an in-camera image stabilization feature.

This is interesting to note due to the fact that Canon and Nikon have long advocated image stabilization and vibration reduction built into lenses rather than camera bodies, even while other DSLR-makers (i.e. Sony) have offered stabilization built into bodies via sensor shift technologies.

Will we see Canon and/or Nikon introducing sensor shift stabilization soon? This would be a big deal, since it would instantly improve the performance of non-IS/VR lenses.

Your Thoughts?

You can learn more by reading the patents yourself here: 20100003025 and 20100002109.

What do you think of these two features? Do you want them included in Canon/Nikon bodies, or would cameras be better off without them?

(via Photography Bay)