So, while the Interchangeable Lens Compact market has since exploded, with entries now from Nikon, Fuji, and Sony joining Olympus and Panasonic’s sorta-shared sorta-competitor Micro Four Thirds platform, Micro Four Thirds is still the most established name in the game. And if you had any doubts about that left, the announcement of popular lens makers Tamron and Tokina, as well as specialty lens maker ASTRODESIGN, hopping on board with Sigma, Olympus, Panasonic, and Leica to support the going-on-four-year-old system ought to help remove those. There’s not a lot else to announce at this point, as no one has mentioned any coming lenses, but fans of Tamron’s travel superzooms and Tokina’s incredibly popular wide-angle zooms should rejoice in this move. Press release after the jump.
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You’ve needed a 180mm f/2.8 Macro lens, and Sigma’s bringing it to you.
1:1 reproduction ratio at 18.5″ and even greater when using a Sigma teleconverter.
The full name of this beastie is Sigma APO Macro 180mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM, which tells us it’ll be equally suited for full-frame and APS-C sensors and auto-focus on Nikon’s budget-line D-SLRs. Oh and it’s a 180mm f/2.8 with optical stabilization.
Check out the full specs on Sigma’s site here and read the press release here.
Sigma’s “Digital Neo” series – small, fast primes for Micro Four Thirds and NEX
Looking for a fast prime for your Micro Four Thirds or NEX camera? Sigma’s got two in the works, designed specifically for the smaller formats.
Coming are the 30mm f/2.8 EX DN and 19mm f/2.8 EX DN. One to two stops faster than the kit zooms that typically come with either system, it’ll be exciting to see them in action. And we’re pretty sure that Sigma can make a prime -just recently our Website Manager, Derek, picked up an older Sigma AF 28mm f/2.8 for Nikon and has been pretty much besotted with it.
As for the alphabet soup, the new DN designation stands for “Digital Neo.”
You can read the offical press release here, and the post from Sigma’s blog here.
Panasonic Announces 4 Lens Converters For Micro Four-Thirds Kit Lenses
Like your Panasonic 14-42mm or 14mm f2.5 for your G-series interchangeable lens compact, but just wish it had a bit more… flexibility? Luckily, Panasonic feels ya, and has announced four converter lenses that work with one or both of those lenses. Up for grabs are The following:
- Wide-angle converter DMW-GWC1 converts the 14mm (28mm equiv) to 11mm (or 22m equiv)
- Telephoto converter DMW-GTC1 converts the 42mm (84mm equiv) end of the kit zoom to 84mm (168mm equiv)
- Macro converter DMW-GMC1 reduces your minimum focusing distance down to .14m (5.5″), but doesn’t tell how to calculate the change in magnification from such.
- Fisheye converter DMW-GFC1 er, makes things fisheye. A 120 degree one, though.
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- DMW-GWC1
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- DMW-GFC1
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- DMW-GMC1
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- DMW-GTC1
Compatability for them is as follows:
| Converter | LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 14-42mm/F3.5-5.6 ASPH./POWER O.I.S | LUMIX G 14mm / F2.5 ASPH |
| Wide-angle | Yes | Yes |
| Telephoto | Yes | No |
| Macro | Yes | Yes |
| Fisheye | Yes | Yes |
Nikon’s 85mm f1.8G is a Portrait Lens For The Rest of Us
If you’re looking for an 85mm portrait lens (something I was just recently doing), and don’t mind trading 2/3 of a stop maximum aperture for a pocket savings of, oh, $1,200 over the faster Nikon 85mm f1.4G, the new AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G might just hit a sweet spot for you. As always, the name tells you everything you need to knows. AF-S tells us it’s got a silent wave supersonic motor built-in, so it’ll focus quietly and on bodies without a built-in motor, like the D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D3100, D5000, and D5100. 85mm, of course, is the classic portrait lens on full-frame cameras, and is an ideal head-and-shoulders portrait lens even on DX. f1.8 is slower than f1.4, sure, and you’ll lose some of that famous 85mm f1.4 creaminess wide open, but, you’ll also have an easier time nailing focus with the extended plane of focus.
And, did we mention it’ll cost just $500, and not the $1,700 of the 1.4. And, hey, you can preorder it now, too.
Using Adobe Lightroom To Help You Pick New Lenses
It’s a common problem: you’ve bought a new DSLR with a couple kit lenses, and you’re finding yourself out-growing them. It’s time to upgrade some glass, but, to what? The internet is full of all sorts of contradictory advice. Go with a 2.8 zoom. Fast primes are the way to go. And so on. And, past the entry level, it seems like everything is going to be a major investment, how do you know you’re not just going to waste your money?
Well, here’s a trick I used when I was switching systems from Olympus to Nikon and had to shop all new lenses that didn’t really line up nicely with what I was used to using. If you aren’t shopping for a special needs lens (all-in-one, macro, fisheye, tilt-shift), but just a regular ol’ lens, then you can use your exisiting photos to give you the best insight into what focal lengths you actually need in your bag. And, as always, I recommend the assistance of Adobe’s stellar Lightroom.
First off, fire it up and look at your library. Lovely, aren’t they? Your photos? Of course they are. Now, let’s get them to tell us some useful data. For this, we’ll use Smart Collections. Smart Collections are a way for us to use the embedded EXIF in our photos, where we store them, and what we’ve done to them and tagged them with to build collections that update as our catalog grows. Very useful things.
So, here’s what you do:
Olympus Announces First Weather-Sealed M4/3 Lens, the M. ED 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 EZ
Olympus has announced a new lens for its ever-growing Micro Four-Thirds system (which shares a mount and spec with Panasonic’s own efforts), the M. ED 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 EZ. Like many new M4/3 lenses, this one is designed with video applications in mind, and to that end includes a power zoom function where you can operate the zoom with a toggle rocker, like on point and shoots, allowing for smoother, less jerky zooming while you’re filming your epic masterpiece. Since the product page and press release don’t mention it, for now we’re just going to assume that’s indicated by the new EZ designation, which probably stands for “Electronic Zoom” or something similar. For further video use, the lens uses Olympus’ newer MSC (Movie & Still Compatible) quiet autofocus motor.
And, in addition to all that, this is the first M.ZUIKO lens from Olympus to feature the build quality and weather-sealing that made their mid-range ZUIKO line-up for 4/3 so respected. I personally owned two lenses from that line-up, and got to use a third for a while, and I can attest to their quality and weather-sealing, so, if this new one lives up to that legacy, it’ll be a trooper, and lend some much anticipated “pro” quality to what for years now has focused on being a consumer system. Now, if only it were a bit faster, but, I suspect there’ll always be compromises inherent in making compact zooms.
The 12-50 EZ will begin being available sometime in January, with an MSRP of $499.99. It’s up for preorder on our site here, and you can read the press release after the jump.
Tamron Announces 18-200 For Sony E-Mount / NEX System
And thus adoption for the second mirrorless system to market–Sony’s NEX system and it’s new E mount–has begun. Tamron has announced the upcoming availability of a new 18-200mm superzoom by them for Sony’s NEX system. The full name of the lens tells you most of the story: 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3 Di III VC. New here is the Di-III, presumably being their designation for mirrorless systems (Di stands for Digitally integrated, and means that the lens is full-frame but optimized for digital sensors. Di-II means the lens is designed for crop sensors). The VC indicates it’s got in-lens stabilization, which puts it on par with the Sony option. Also, Tamron has stepped up the appearance over their usual fare to match the metal build of the NEX system.
Pricing and availability aren’t known yet, but we’ll go ahead and get this up for preorder for all you NEX users looking for what we can only hope will be a cost-effective alternative to Sony’s own superzoom offering. Press release after the jump.
Nikon Announces 1 Nikkor Lenses
And just what would a new system be without some lenses to go with it? To go with its new Nikon 1 system, Nikon is introducing 4 new 1 Nikkor lenses, built for the new CX mount. The CX mount has a 2,7x crop factor, just as a reminder. The lenses are:
- 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 – this is the standard kit zoom, with an effective focal range of 27-81mm. Notice the inclusion of VR, as well. This lens will come in colors coordinated to your chosen body. This lens is so far only available in a kit.
- 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 - 81-297mm equiv. This is the expected telephoto brother to the standard kit zoom. It looks like if you buy this in a 2 lens kit it’ll also be color coordinated. If you want to pick one up separate later, it’ll set you back $249.95, and we’ll maybe carry it in either black or white. We’re still looking into that.
- 1 NIKKOR 10mm f/2.8 pancake lens - No mirrorless system is complete with a small pancake prime for the street photography crowd, and for the Nikon 1 system that’s this 27mm equivalent prime right here. It’s available in some 2-lens kits with the bodies where it’ll be, you guessed it, color-coordinated. You can add it separate for $249.95, same as the other lens, and also probably in black or white.
- 1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 - aimed at people wanting to shoot movies more, the 27-270mm equiv all-in-one zoom also features a powered zoom mechanism (ie, you don’t have to twist a zoom ring by hand, more like the rocker switch on point-and-shoots). The rocker switch can be seen towards the bottom of the lens, where you’d normally expect to see the AF/MF switch. This lens adheres to the Henry Ford policy and only comes in black, and so far as I can see can only be bought separately for $749.95
Panasonic generates X series electronically focused lenses
Isn’t there something missing? Naw. It’s just in a collapsed state. Similar to the design of Olympus’s M.Zuiko 14-42 I and II, Panasonic’s LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 14-42mm/F3.5-5.6 ASPH./ POWER O.I.S. stores itself for enhanced portability and compactitude. Yup, compactitude.
This new designation, X, indicates this and the LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 45-175mm/F4.0-5.6 ASPH./POWER O.I.S. are electronically focused, you know, like camcorders or point and shoots. The GF3x, when it ships, will be a good, wholesome GF3 bundled with the X 14-42.
More photos after the break.
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