Digital Camera News and Reviews

Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM

Sigma has announced a new lens, the 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM, for cameras from Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax.

The Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM will be a very fast standard lens on full-frame cameras and equivalent of 80mm on APS-C cameras.


Press Release:
50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM

Large aperture, standard prime lens for the latest digital cameras

The Sigma Corporation is pleased to announce the new large aperture 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM standard lens. For Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax* and Sony*

* Standard lens with large maximum aperture of F1.4.
* It creates sharp images with high contrast and ensures superior peripheral brightness.
* Incorporates molded glass aspherical lens, perfectly correcting coma aberration and creating superior image quality.
* Super multi-layer coating reduces flare and ghosting.
* Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) ensuring silent, high-speed AF

This is a large aperture prime lens with a standard focal length of 50mm, ideal for digital cameras. This lens is perfectly suited for a wide range of subjects enabling outstanding, sharply defined images against a nicely blurred background. The fast, F1.4 aperture makes this lens desirable for use with Digital SLR cameras. This lens effectively becomes an 80mm medium telephoto lens on digital cameras with APS-C size image sensors. The optimum optical design and molded glass aspherical lens elements provide excellent correction for all types of aberrations. This lens has superior peripheral brightness and provides sharp, high contrast images even at the maximum aperture. Superior optical performance is also ensured throughout the focusing range. The super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting. This lens has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm (17.7”) and has maximum magnification of 1:7.4. It creates a very attractive blur, even when a small aperture is used.

This lens incorporates HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor), which ensures a quiet and high-speed AF as
well as full-time manual focus override.

* If the camera body does not support HSM motor, AF does not work.

Nikkor AF-S 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6

Photozone.de has reviewed the Nikon lens Nikkor AF-S 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR DX. This new standard zoom lens from Nikon might be interesting to a lot of photographers.

Photozone ends up giving the Nikkor AF-S 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR DX lens a pretty good rating due to the lens being very sharp, good build quality and little vignetting.

Read the full review of the Nikkor AF-S 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR DX lens here.

Sony DT 18-70mm

Dpreview.com has reviewed the Sony DT 18-70mm 1:3.5-5.6 SAL-1870 lens. This is the kit lens for entry level DSLRs from Sony and thus it is interesting to see the quality of the Sony DT 18-70mm lens in comparison to entry level kit lenses from other brands.

Dpreview ends up giving the Sony DT 18-70mm lens a pretty poor rating because the lens is pretty old and can not handle the high resolution of the new DSLR very well. The lens also suffers from chromatic aberration from 18mm to 35mm and soft corners. On the positive side the lens is very resistant to flare and have a bit longer reach than most kit lenses.

Read the full review here.

Sony DA 16-105mm

Dpreview.com has reviewed the Sony lens DT 16-105mm 1:3.5-5.6 SAL-16105. This lens is kit lens for the Sony Alpha 700 DSLR is “designed for” for digital SLR’s. With the focal length equal to 24-157.5mm (in 35 standard) in a pretty compact body this can be a great walk-around lens.

Dpreview ends up giving the Sony DT 16-105mm a recommended rating because of the useful zoom range, very sharp at the wide side and small and good build quality. The only cons are some chromatic aberration and a bit soft at the telephoto end.

Read the extensive, full review here.