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Buyer's Guide Lenses-2012
Buyer's Guide Lenses-2012
Lenses
Labels: Lenses
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| PANASONIC | PENTAX | SIGMA |
| The Panasonic Lumix G system is another of the popular compact and high-quality, interchangeable-lens camera systems that has gained quite a following of late, and with lenses like the new Summilux 25mm prime, it's no wonder. Supersmall, superfast and supersharp, this normal lens behaves like a 50mm in 35mm-equivalent terms. The fast ƒ/1.4 maximum aperture makes low-light and shallow DOF shooting a snap, and the aspherical Leica glass ensures aberrations and flare are minimized while sharpness and color are maximized. Leica DG Summilux 25mm F/1.4 ASPH: $600. | The Pentax Q system makes it easy to buy the right lenses to cover a large focal range, numbering the series 01 through 05 and including a standard prime, standard zoom, fisheye, wide-angle and telephoto. Lenses 04 and 05 are particularly interesting, as they're designed to mimic the creative aberrations, fuzziness and generally imperfect character of toy-camera lenses. The toy telephoto is equivalent to a 100mm prime in 35mm terms, and the toy wide-angle mimics a 35mm lens. With fixed apertures and simplified focusing, these unique lenses make creativity affordable, too. Pentax Toy Lens Telephoto: $80; Pentax Toy Lens Wide: $80. | Portrait and close-up shooters with Nikon, Canon or Sigma DSLRs, be sure to look at the newly updated Sigma 105mm macro prime. With its fast ƒ/2.8 maximum aperture and now with optical image stabilization, too, the lens is ideal not only for handheld macro photography (up to life-size 1:1 enlargement), but also for any telephoto need (such as portraiture or light wildlife photography) in almost any kind of light—even when it's barely there. Sigma 105mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro: $1,400. . |
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| SONY | TAMRON | CANON |
| Sony Alpha users have a new option for a premium wide-to-tele zoom, the DT 16-50mm. With a 35mm-equivalent zoom range of 24-75mm, it offers an ideal wide angle for interiors and landscapes at the short end, and a short telephoto perfect for portraits at the long end. A fast ƒ/2.8 maximum aperture makes the lens versatile for all-around use, even in low light. Aspherical elements ensure sharpness and color fidelity, and compact size and pro-caliber build quality make the lens dust- and moisture-resistant, too. Sony SAL DT 16-50mm ƒ/2.8 SSM: $700. | If you want one single, do-it-all lens for your APS-C Canon, Sony or Nikon DSLR, check out the Tamron 18-270mm extreme zoom. Newly updated, the image-stabilized lens is purported to be the smallest 15x zoom (from very wide to very telephoto) on the market. When handholding this powerful zoom all the way out at 270mm for sports or wildlife photography, vibration compensation will come in handy to ensure pictures stay clear and sharp. Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD: $649. |
Serious wildlife and sports photographers who want to really reach out and touch the most distant subjects will crave Canon's new 500mm and 600mm supertelephoto prime lenses. They set the bar high: both are ƒ/4 lenses—fast for such long glass and helpful in low-light and fast-action situations—and both have built-in image stabilization with an advertised four stops of added stabilization. Such pro-caliber power doesn't come cheap, though. Canon EF 500mm ƒ/4 L IS II USM: $10,500. Canon EF 600mm ƒ/4 L IS II USM: $13,000. |
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