Irix has announced a new 30mm f/1.4 lens that it says uses the same optical design found in its 30mm cine model, but has been rehoused to work for still photographers. The new DSLR lens is available in Nikon F, Canon EF, and Pentax K mounts.
About two weeks ago, we went fishing with our little fishing net from off of our backyard jetty. All of a sudden, we caught this strange but fierce-looking creature. Apparently this dark and mean looking beast was lurking beneath the depths of the channel that lies at the far end of our backyard. I immediately recognized it as being the larva of a dragonfly.
Now here's a neat use of Canon's lenses: the University of Toronto owns one of the smallest professional astronomical telescopes in the world that uses an array of photographic camera lenses instead of a single lens. Called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, it uses ten ordinary Canon 400mm f/2.8L IS II lenses that cost $9,999 each. That's $100,000 in photo gear.
We've seen one video demonstration of the Canon 7D Mark II's impressive AutoFocus system, and we've heard the amazing specs, but it's a picture of a dragonfly that really drove home the point, for us, of how good this system is at locking focus on a moving subject.
When filmmaker Paul Kroeker happened across a dragonfly that lay dying on his …