Lens News

I really like extreme lenses. Extremely wide, extremely fast, and extremely long lenses will all allow you to create unique images that stand out from the crowd. When I heard about the Sigma 8-16mm lens I wanted to get my hands on one and start shooting, so I asked my editor if I could borrow one from Sigma for testing. He wanted to know what I was going to do with it, so naturally I told him: take portraits. You might, as he did, find this a little odd—taking portraits with a wide-angle lens, and a very wide lens at that. After all, don’t photographers usually use long lenses for portraits?

Why are photographers taught to use long lenses for portraits? There are four basic tenets behind this reasoning: narrow angle of view, shallow depth of field, flattering perspective, and a comfortable working distance between you and your subject. However, flip these “rules” on their head and you’ll see why I like working with wides: wide angle of view, great potential depth of field, unique perspective, and, oddly enough, working right in your subject’s face. In short, I use the special nature of a wide lens to give my portraits a new and unique look.

Have you shot some great photos? Well, now’s the time to enter them in our brand new photo contest where you’ll have the chance to win two amazing prizes!

If you stumbled upon a rare Novoflex 600mm pistol grip “bazooka lens” at a yard sale for $17, we imagine you’d lay down your cash, grab the case, and quickly head for your car. That’s exactly what our weird lens guru Mathieu Stern did recently in Paris.

Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm and other top-tier camera and lens makers offer refurbished products directly to end users via special pages on their website. You can save some dough, but do you want to own a renewed product? Let's unpack this…

Nature photography has long captured the hearts and minds of amateur and professional photographers dedicated to capturing images of the great outdoors. Whether your passion is wildlife, landscape, or macro photography, we’d love to see examples of your best work.

Zeiss has just added three fast prime lenses to their Milvus line of premium manual-focus lenses for DSLR cameras—a 15mm f/2.8, an 18mm f/2.8 and a 135mm f/2 telephoto. This expands the respected Milvus line to nine lenses offering optimum image characteristics, premium coatings, smooth bokeh, and uncompromising build quality.