One of our favorite types of video to make is buying guides, to help our viewers decide what products are best for them. It also presents an opportunity for me to share my personal preferences about what I would choose. Our latest episode is all about Canon RF mount lenses, and I give you my favorites in the following categories: ultra-wide, normal primes, standard zoom, telephoto zoom, portrait lenses, and macros.
Sigma today announced its new 18-50mm /f2.8 DC DN lens -- a small zoom lens for mirrorless cameras with APS-C sensors -- and photographer Gordon Laing decided to see how it compared to Sony's 16-50 f/3.5-5.6 kit lens.
Within a few months of each other at the beginning of 2021, both Sony and Sigma announced 35mm f/1.4 lenses for full-frame Sony E-mount cameras. They were just begging for a comparison to be made.
While reviewing the Leica 24-70mm f/2.8, I was able to spend some time with a lens from Sigma that has been accused of being the exact same lens in a rehoused body. But is it?
After testing the RF mount 50mm f/1.8, Photographer Alex Barrera didn't think it had the "pop" that other Canon RF lenses had shown. To see if it was just in his head, he decided to pit it directly against that lens's predecessor: the EF 50mm f/1.8.
Youtuber Matt Granger has published an 18-minute Nikon 50mm shootout that pits the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 against the 50mm f/1.2 and the 58mm f/0.95 Noct. As Granger says, every system needs a great 50mm lens, so which of these is the best?
Photographer Benj Haisch has published a 13-minute review of the TTArtisan 50mm f/1.4 APSH lens, a $369 rangefinder optic that he believes performs much better than anticipated when compared to a lens that costs nearly twelve times as much.
Photographer Alex Barrera has published a 10-minute video where he compares both of Canon's RF 85mm lenses: the 85mm f/2 Macro IS STM and the 85mm f/1.2 L USM. In it, he alleges that "one of these lenses is not a true 85mm."
The guys over at DPReview TV recently set out to test the new Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L lens. But instead of simply shooting some samples and talking about sharpness, they decided to pit it against the classic EF-mount version of this same lens so they could see "how far this lens has come."
If you're a total bokeh maniac, two of the lenses you've probably looked at with yearning are the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 and the Nikon Noct 58mm f/0.95. But how do these actually very different lenses compare to one another when you shoot them side-by-side?
Tamron raised a lot of eyebrows last week when it revealed its shockingly affordable new 70-180mm f/2.8 lens for Sony E-mount. At just $1,200, the lens is less than half the price of Sony's 70-200mm G Master... but can it compete in terms of performance?
Portrait photographer and YouTuber Alex Barrera recently went out and shot a full side-by-side comparison of the Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L and the RF 85mm f/1.2L DS lenses. His sample photos can help you decide if Canon's "Defocus Smoothing" is worth the loss of light and the extra $300 it'll cost you.
Photographer and YouTuber Matt Granger has put together a lens shootout that'll be really valuable for anybody who is new to Canon's full-frame mirrorless cameras. In this video, he compares the image quality of the four main RF-mount zoom lenses: the 28-70mm f/2, the 24-70mm f/2.8, the 24-105mm f/4, and the 24-240mm f/4-6.3.
Landscape photographer Mads Peter Iversen swears by his 24-105mm f/4 lenses. While many landscape shooters prefer ultra-wide angle lenses in the 14-24mm range, or will opt for a 24-70mm mid-range zoom, Iversen believes a 24-105 is the better choice. In the video above, he explains why.
Back in July, photographer Patrick Seguin took advantage of his CPS membership to test out one of the most beastly lenses Canon has released in recent memory: the Canon RF 28-70mm f/2 L USM. In the video above, he pits this lens against the tried and true EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM to see just how much better the new RF lens performs.
Portrait photographer Julia Trotti recently put together a useful comparison video for beginners where she captures portraits using a crop-sensor camera and her most-used prime lenses: a 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and 135mm.
Andrew of husband and wife photography team Denae and Andrew recently partnered up with KEH to test out 10 of the best-selling vintage 50mm lenses on the used market. From old Nikon and Canon glass, to Minolta, Pentax and even a Contax lens, all of these can be had for under $100, and Andrew wanted to find out which of the 10 performed best.
Given how much more it costs to buy an f/1.4 prime compared to an f/1.8, beginners in particular often ask if the upgrade is worth it. Build quality and optical quality being equal, is the difference in light gathering capability and depth of field noticeable? Can you really tell?
Ever since Canon and Nikon debuted their latest lens mounts, there's been a lot of talk about the "optical advantages" of the shallower, wider Z and RF-mounts. Canon even released a video more-or-less shaming their own EF lenses by comparison. But does this translate into meaningful real-world results?
Photographer Julia Trotti made this 7-minute video that shows how your choice of focal length affects your results in portrait photography.
If you're looking for an 85mm portrait lens for your Sony full-frame e-mount camera, you should seriously consider the 'budget' FE 85mm f/1.8 Sony announced back in February. It might have seemed like an afterthought, but this $600 lens can keep up with glass more than twice its price.
There's a new Web app in town, and it might just help you pick between those two lenses that are battling it out for your next paycheck. The app is called 'Lens vs Lens,' and it might be the most comprehensive real world comparison tool out there.
Sigma is undoubtedly, tantalizingly on fire. Their Art series lenses consistently undercut and outperform the competition, as they proved yet again by manufacturing an 85mm f/1.4 lens that is not only $600 cheaper than Sony's top-of-the-line 85mm GM, but according to DPReview, it's better 'across the board.'
What's better for portraits? Is it the versatility of a great 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens, or the bright bokeh-tastic performance of a solid 85mm f/1.4 lens? That's what photographer Manny Ortiz set out to discover this week.
Yongnuo has been making decent Canon knockoffs for a while now, so when it was discovered that an 85mm f/1.8 Canon clone was in the works, we got excited. Now, we get to find out if the Yongnuo, at half the price of its Canon counterpart, can keep up.
The Fuji X-T2 have been showing some amazing preliminary results from people testing it in the real world, but can it stack up against Nikon's flagship D5? Portrait photographer Taylor Jackson wanted to find out.
I'm going to preface this by saying that this isn't a lens review article, there are many photographers better suited for this topic, so if you're after refraction index comparisons and chromatic aberration charts this article probably isn't for you.
"As a rule of thumb, if your [Director of Photography] mentions something with a German-sounding name, it means it's going to be super expensive." Ain't that the truth...
"Zooms? We don't need no stinkin' zooms!" said a gaggle of ZEISS shooters. At least that's what we imagine ZEISS-lovers saying as they look at the comparison shot above by photographer and ZEISS lens ambassador Christian Dandyk.
I was one of those who noted Sony had some troubles, as manufacturers often do, with some of their first generation lenses for full-frame FE mount cameras. When they announced the G Master lens series I was really excited to test them.
The three lenses above let you see equally far, but one of them will fit comfortably into your bag while the others probably wouldn't fit comfortably anywhere. Can you guess which are which? Go ahead... think it over... we'll wait...
Here's a cool holiday chart that only us photo types will appreciate. It was put together by Sigma Jack and Sigma's in-house 'design wiz' Emi Erata, and shows the entire Sigma lens lineup arranged by size and placed next to some to-scale objects so you can visualize just how large some of these behemoths are.
The people behind camera comparison and recommendation website snapsort have just launched …