Lens News

Filmmaker John P. Hess at Filmmaker IQ brings us this highly informative video that expertly documents the science behind the evolution of photography’s most vital tool—the lens. 

Many, many years ago a coworker at Altman Camera in Chicago showed me that it was possible to screw a Vivitar +10 Macro Adapter into a partially disassembled set of Nikon K-series extension rings and thereby build a soft focus lens that practically exploded with delightfully horrendous aberrations. It was fixed-focus, you had to bob to-and-fro like a drunken sailor to use it, but it was sensationally unsharp and I’ve been hooked on this genre ever since.

The term bokeh refers to a photographic technique that creates soft out of focus areas in an image. The brief video embedded below shows how to use a Russian-made Jupiter 9 85mm F/2 lens and a tilt ring adapter on a mirrorless camera to create stunning videos with a beautiful bokeh background look.

Camera gear is expensive and no matter how careful we are, accidents sometimes happen. 

Ever wonder what it might be like to use an ancient lens on a brand new digital camera? Photographer Mathieu Stern did so he created a cool new video series where he does just that.

One of the main tools we have for creating visual effects are lenses, the photographer’s eye on the world. Every choice of lens has implications about what you can and cannot include in the frame, how subjects within the frame relate to one another and how we use aperture settings and focal length to create a special point of view. In this chapter we’ll explore lens choice as well as lens controls that are essential to creative photography, including depth of field and focusing options.