Tested Reviews

The u.s. importers of Rokinon—née Samyang—lenses continue their assault on the specialty glass market with an unexpected (but welcome) sortie into the Micro Four Thirds territory. This 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye for Olympus and Panasonic ILCs puts an alluring price ($299, street) and distinctive imaging into a compact package that many shooters will find fun.

Introduced in 2008, this lens is a step up from a kit zoom but still has much in common with the kit glass from Canon and Nikon. Like the big guys, the Sigma offers image stabilization, a near-silent HSM focusing motor, and a street price of around $200.Sigma’s 18–50mm does them better, however, on several fronts: It’s faster, with top-drawer glass (three aspheric and two low-dispersion elements), a stationary barrel, and metal lensmount. It scales up to a 29–80mm equivalent on our test Canon, to 27–75mm on other APS-C bodies.

When we first saw Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GX1 ($800, street, with standard kit lens; $950 with X-series power-zoom kit lens) we finally forgave the company’s designers for aiming the GF line at the snapshooter crowd.The new GX1 turns out to be what we had expected of the GF3—a small, but not absurdly tiny, camera body with a built-in flash, 16MP sensor, hot-shoe that accepts an accessory electronic viewfinder, and Panasonic’s lovely touch controls backed up by plenty of real buttons. The best part of all? It delivered delicious results in the Popular Photography Test Lab.