Photography is expensive, so a lot of the gear that I end up reviewing is often outside the budget of many people. Fortunately there has been a rise in the past 3-4 years of what I classify as “boutique third party brands”. These are smaller startup lensmakers who don’t have a widely established rep [Read more...]
Boutique Third Party Brands
There are a number of small lens makers who have been developing lenses particularly for modern mirrorless cameras. Most of these (but not all) are budget, manual focus alternatives.
There’s no question that Canon has developed some very impressive lenses for their EOS R full frame cameras, and the new EOS R5 and EOS R6 cameras are also impressive. What is also undeniable, however, is that many of the new Canon RF mount lenses are also very, very expensive. Case in point: I spent [&he [Read more...]

Chinese lens maker Viltrox has proved to be a very quick study for a new lens maker. They started with a few manual focus lenses (typical), but, by their third lens, graduated to autofocus lenses (not typical!) That has remained their focus, and since the AF 85mm F1.8 STM they have made nothing but autofocus [&hellip [Read more...]

Viltrox has quickly established a name for themselves because, unlike most other new boutique lens makers, they have quickly (and successfully) accepted the challenge of designing autofocus lenses rather than just manual focus options. Many other newer brands have not yet taken that plunge, but Viltrox has shown a rapid ma [Read more...]

It is extremely rare to see a Mark II version of a lens only about 15 months after the release of the original lens, but that is what we have in the Viltrox AF 85mm F1.8 STM II. I reviewed the Viltrox AF 85mm F1.8 STM only 13 months ago, but Viltrox has taken an […] [Read more...]

The Fuji platform has not been a particularly open one. The traditional major third party players like Sigma and Tamron have no Fuji XF mount lenses, and Samyang has no autofocus lenses for XF. The only real AF series for the mount were the Zeiss Touit series that were released in 2013 for Fuji XF […] [Read more...]

As you probably know, I review a wide variety of lenses. I’ve increasingly found myself reviewing lenses from brand-new lens makers in recent years. It seems like the rise of mirrorless cameras in particular has triggered a lot of fresh creativity, and there are some excellent alternatives out there to the esta [Read more...]
