Let’s celebrate the festive season with a look back over all the glass of the last year. For each of the 12 days of Christmas, we’ll be giving a nostalgic nod to a month’s worth of lenses that we wrote about, tested and reviewed. So, without further ado, here’s what made a splash in January 2024…
Beating a path through the snow to our news desk, the Laowa FF II 10mm f/2.8 C&D Dreamer was the first lens of the year to get a mention.
An incredibly ultra-wide-angle prime for full-frame mirrorless cameras, it was also the first ever Venus Optics Laowa lens to feature autofocus – at least, in its Nikon Z and Sony E mount options. The lens was also announced in a manual-focus version for Canon RF and L-mount cameras.
Next up was fledgling company Thypoch, which launched its second lens for the Leica M mount. Following on from the previously released 35mm f/1.4 of a couple of months earlier, the Simera 28mm f/1.4 Asph started shipping.
A Canon patent application hinted that APS-C format RF-S 20-120mm f/4 and RF-S 18-100mm f/4 could be coming soon, while at CES, we saw Canon pushing on with dual fisheye concept lenses aimed at VR content creation.
Voigtländer served up a new pancake lens designed exclusively for Fujifilm X-mount cameras. Less than an inch thick, the Voigtländer Color-Skopar 18mm f/2.8 Aspherical has an effective focal length of 28mm in real terms and, despite being ultra-compact, nevertheless features an aperture control ring.
While Voigtländer was going super-skinny, Astrhori was going extra-large on macro magnification, announcing a new Astrhori 25mm F2.8 2-5X Ultra Macro lens with up to 5x macro magnification.
Rather than announcing any new lenses as such, Fujifilm revealed forthcoming firmware updates for three of its lenses, aiming enhance exposure consistency and peripheral illumination during zooming. Zyhongyi Optics did actually launch a brand new lens for the Fujifilm X system, in the compact form factor of the Speedmaster 20mm f/0.95, a super-speedy manual-focus lens.
Other APS-C format mount options included Canon RF, Nikon Z and Sony E. At the other end of the scale, OM System announced the M.Zuiko 150-600mm f/5.0-6.3 IS for Micro Four Thirds cameras, on which the crop factor delivers a humungous effective zoom range of 300-1200mm.
Down at the lab, we put three lenses through their paces in January. First up was the classy but compact Fujifilm XF 35mm f/2 R WR, an ideal standard prime for Fujifilm X system cameras.
Next up was the highly sophisticated and super-fast Viltrox AF 27mm F1.2 Pro APS-C format prime for Fujifilm X, Nikon Z and Sony E cameras. We rounded off with the classically retro-looking Voigtländer 35 mm/1:2.5 Color Skopar P-Type II for Leica M-mount.
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