12 lenses of Christmas: October 2023 gave us a game-changing super-telephoto from Nikon
Well, that takes a weight off! Think 600mm super-telephoto prime lenses and you’re probably thinking of unwieldy beasts that have you literally crying out for a monopod. By sharp contrast (and it definitely has sharpness and contrast in spades), Nikon announced the Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S which thanks to Phase Fresnel optical elements and clever design, tips the scales at just 1,390g. Suffice it to say that handheld shooting is a breeze. Prefer a zoom? October also saw the announcement of a Nikon Z-mount edition of the Tamron 150-500mm F5-6.7 Di III VC VXD. It’s a quality lens that undercuts Nikon’s own-brand 180-600mm for price.
Reining in the telephoto stretch to ‘’trinity’ proportions, there was also great news that the epic Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG DN OS Sports was going into production for Sony E-mount cameras. It’s a revamped and revitalized version of a lens that was originally designed for Canon and Nikon DSLRs, and one of our all-time favorite Sigma lenses.
You might be thinking that October was the month of telephotos but there was exciting wide-angle news as well. Canon kicked things off with the Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS USM (also reviewed in October) billed as the world’s widest-angle rectilinear lens to feature autofocus. As an L-series lens bristling with features, it’s every bit as expensive as you might expect, but there were plenty of budget wide-angle options to hit the news. These included the even wider manual full-frame rectilinear 7Artisan 9mm F5.6 for Canon, Nikon, Sony and L-mount mirrorless cameras, the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 FE full-framer for Sony, the Laowa 8-16mm F3.5-5 Zoom CF zoom for a range of crop-sensor cameras.
In other news, a Canon patent application was unearthed for a motorized lens that could revolutionize handheld tilt & shift photography. Meanwhile, autofocus performance was ‘significantly’ improved in the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 Di III VXD and the Tamron 28-200mm F/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD, courtesy of a firmware update. And in really ‘new’ news, a brand new lens manufacturer by the name of Thypoch announced its first series of lenses, in Leica M-mount.
The first review of the month was of the spangly new Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM. We were impressed with its humungous field of views and overall performance. It’s undeniably pricey to buy, but still less expensive than the closest-matching EF predecessor for Canon DSLRs.
In an utterly enjoyable revisit to medium format, we reviewed three Fujifilm GFX system lenses in October and loved them all. They comprised the Fujinon GF 20-35mm F4 R WR, Fujinon GF 32-64mm F4 R LM WR and Fujinon GF 55mm F1.7 R WR.
Bringing up the rear, at least in October’s timeline of reviews, we were pretty impressed with the Samyang AF 35-150mm F2-2.8 full-frame zoom for Sony mirrorless cameras. It’s a versatile lens that’s well suited to wedding and event photography.
