Lens News

Conventional wisdom has always been that zoom lenses can’t compete with fixed focal length glass for most forms of photography. So when a respected pro asks, “Are zoom lenses just better than primes,” we stop and pay attention.

Time to hit the Reset Button and put your notions of Image Quality on Pause. In our everyday lives as photographers we prize sharpness, saturation, acutance and absence of aberration when we idealize the images we want to capture. Now it’s time to recognize that images that are blurred, smeared, warped and otherwise traumatized can be beautiful.

Lensbaby lenses produce images that are intentionally unsharp, because optical aberrations can be beautiful. In a word, a Lensbaby turns blur into bliss.

The Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 zoom for Sony E (Model A036) won the prestigious EISA Award for 2018-19 and is highly regarded as a fast, sharp option for Sony’s full-frame mirrorless cameras. Three years on, Tamron announces the G2 (second generation) Model A063 with the same zoom range and aperture.

What’s been improved? We look at the two zooms side-by-side with a critical eye.

Would you like to try your hand at close-up photography but can’t afford an expensive macro lens? Well consider this: An affordable set of extension tubes will turn just about any lens you own into a close-focusing macro lens.

Whether you’re shooting portraits or other outdoor scenes with a prominent foregoing object, you can draw attention to the main subject by minimizing depth-of-field. This technique can also add an artistic flair to your images.

For those on a budget it’s tempting to purchase an inexpensive 2X teleconverter to double the focal length of a lens you already own, instead of spending big bucks on a powerful super-telephoto zoom. But does this really make sense in terms of image quality, or are you better off just cropping your photos?

By now you probably know that the current trend in camera technology is strongly in favor of mirrorless models. In fact, apart from Pentax, all manufacturers are avoiding new DSLR models while continually upgrading their lineup of mirrorless cameras and lenses.