Admiring Light

Olympus has been on a roll lately.  While many of their early Micro 4/3 lens options were decent optically, the build quality was generally lacking and there was a lack of any really stellar optics.  This has all changed since 2011.  Olympus has switched gears somewhat and started catering to the high-end shooter who wants …

This past fall, Panasonic made several announcements in advance of Photokina, but one that flew under the radar a bit was the addition of a very compact 35-100mm f/4-5.6 lens. The new 35-100mm is a slower option that sits alongside the excellent 35-100mm f/2.8 from Panasonic. This new lens, which gives the same field of …

When the X-series of mirrorless cameras from Fujifilm launched last year, it began with three prime lenses: an 18mm f/2, a 35mm f/1.4 and a 60mm f/2.4 Macro.  This gave the system a nice base to start with, and provided three very high quality primes for the serious photographer.  Later last year, Fuji expanded the …

The Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8 Sonnar has been around since the beginning of Sony’s full frame E-Mount launch, and a lot of people consider it an outstanding lens.  I thought about not doing an FE 55mm f/1.8 review, as it’s been out for a while, but after using the lens over the past two weeks, …

Samsung has been somewhat stealthily building a fairly strong lens lineup for their NX cameras over the past few years, and today I’m taking a look at what is often the core lens in a high-end lens lineup: the fast standard zoom.  Samsung’s 16-50mm f/2-2.8 joins an elite group of standard zooms for interchangeable lens …

I went downtown for a quick jaunt today.  I went to North Bank Park, where I go a lot.  I’ve exhausted a lot of the photographic opportunities here, at least when it comes to the cityscape…(though I think it’s impossible to truly exhaust a location…it just gets harder).  I got a few nice photos, but …

The Fujifilm X-T10 follows the tremendous success Fuji had with the first camera in the X-T series, the X-T1.  The X-T1 has been the X-Series flagship for a bit more than a year, and the X-T10 provides a lot of what made the X-T1 great in a smaller and much more affordable package. The X-T10 …

Panasonic has had a long line of premium compact cameras in their LX lineup.  Previously, these cameras featured fast lenses, premium construction and fairly good image quality, considering the relatively small sensor.  However, with the rise of high-end compact cameras with large sensors, such as the Sony RX100 series and Canon’s G1X lineup, Panasonic felt …