Traditionally, photographing with formats larger than 35mm/full frame has meant losing access to the ends of the focal length range. Most medium and large format lens lines have ranged from about 24 or 28mm equivalent out to about 150mm equivalent, with any lens outside of that range being considered an exotic focal length.
The EXTREMELY rare Carl Zeiss 24mm fisheye. I wasn’t aware of the existence of this lens before researching this article.
There have been exceptions over the years – Carl Zeiss has built tiny numbers of a few very exotic lenses for Hasselblad V-series bodies, for example. Only 50 units or so of 24mm f3.5 fisheyes (for any V series camera) and less than five 1700mm f4 ultratelephotos (for focal-plane shutter models only) were built. Zeiss brought one to PhotoPlus to New York one year.
The "Sigmonster" 200-500 2.8
None of these lenses sold in any significant quantity, and they are all charter members of the “optical zoo” that includes len...
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Dan Wells, "Shuttterbug" on the trail, is a landscape photographer, long-distance hiker and student in the Master of Divinity program at Harvard Divinity School. He lives in Cambridge, MA when not in wild places photographing and contemplating our connection to the natural world. Dan's images try to capture the spirit he finds in places where, in the worlds of the Wilderness Act of 1964, "Man himself is but a visitor". He has hiked 230 miles of Vermont's Long Trail and 450 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail with his cameras, as well as photographing in numerous National Parks, Seashores and Forests over the years - often in the offseason when few people think to be there. In the summer of 2020, Dan plans to hike a stretch of hundreds of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, focusing on his own and others' spiritual connection to these special places, and making images that document these connections.
Over years of personal work and teaching photography, Dan has used a variety of equipment (presently Nikon Z7 and Fujifilm APS-C). He is looking for the perfect combination of light weight, ruggedness and superb image quality.
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