Triple Brigthin Star review: 50mm F0.95, 55mm F1.8 and 23mm F5.6

Brigthtin Star seems to be a rebranded version of the Mitakon lenses. You can find these lenses on Amazon US, Amazon DE, Amazon UK.

Marc Alhadeff from SonyAlphaBlog reviewed three of them:

Brightin Star 50mm F0.95:

The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 (389$) is a typical F0.95 lens the provide super smooth bokeh, decent sharpness wide open and excellent as of F4 with a very good color, rendition and very good build quality
The Brightin Star provides very poetic and nice pictures for portraits or for object details with lot of background blur
The key difference with the other F0.95 lenses is the price: it is 2 times cheaper that other F0.95 while providing very similar performance !
The lens has some weaknesses : not circular bokeh balls with aperture closed down , more vignetting and situation than competition and lower resistance to flare
But for 389$ it is a bargain

Brightin Star 55mm F1.8:

The Brightin Star 55mm F1.8 (116$) provide globally very good portraits with very good bokeh balls, good background blur, very good color rendition. Sharpness could be a bit better wide open but for 116$ is does as good as the Sony 50mm F1.8 while having a better rendering for portraits

Brigthin Star 23mm F5.6:

The Brightin Star 23mm f5.6 (100$) is a very nice , light and compact pancake lens. Sharpness is very good to excellent on most of the fields but with only average corners. The color Rendition is very good
The main drawback is the bad resistance to flare , the average corners , the slow aperture of F5.6 (if you like small depth of field effect) and of course no AF

TTArtisan 90mm f/1.25 lens review by Marc Alhadeff: “delivers nice portraits with a dreamy atmosphere”

This new lens can be preordered at BHphoto and at TTartisan (worldwide shipment).

Marc from SonyAlphablog tested the lens and concluded:

The TTArtisan delivers nice portraits with a dreamy atmosphere and better results than a lens like Samyang MF 85mm F1.4 MK2, however its heavy weight and issue of focus shift makes it difficult to recommend vs eg a Samyang 85mm F1.4 AF at same price which is much sharper and has AF, unless you want to exclusively shoot at F1.25 with this lens

Niveau Wiggle Trioscopic 3D lens announced

This new Niveau Wiggle Trioscopic 3D lens has been launched on Kickstarter. And Marc from SonyAlphaBlog tested it. He concluded:

The Niveau Wiggle 3D Trioscopic lens (100$) is a refreshing lens , it is very fun to use and will allow to create original gif to illustrate a product, your website or for your social network
For a 3D printed lens it is well built and fully functional with a aperture and focusing ring. The lens fit well on The Sony body without any scrap or risk to damage your camera
The sharpness and color rendition is good when you close down a bit the aperture , but a little bit slowly wide open
You will need to learn the technique to post process them and for the first one it could take you 15min per photo but with some practice you get this down to 4-5 minutes
If you want to experiment something different , worth to try it and get fun

Dpreview published the full Sony a7 IV review: “It’s enough to wrest the crown from the R6, which is also enough for it to earn a Gold award”

A7IV at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. FocusCamera. BuyDig.

Here is Dpreviews take on the new Sony A7IV:

The Sony a7 IV is the most expensive model in its series so far, but it’s also the most capable.

The a7 IV’s image quality is extremely good, with excellent levels of detail, extensive dynamic range and attractive JPEG color. However, it’s not significantly improved over its predecessor or its rivals: you’ll get more detail in low ISO situations but this small gain seems to come with slight decreases in dynamic range and high ISO noise performance. The margins are tiny but it’s hard to see a net benefit to the new chip.

Autofocus is powerful and can be very simple to use. For a majority of subjects, you can just point an AF point at your subject (or let the camera choose one), and be confident that the camera will track it and put focus in the right place. We get the sense that it’s not quite as pinpoint accurate as the previous generation of models when it comes to focusing on eyes, but it’s much quicker and easier to use.

Video is similarly impressive, with a host of tools to support high-quality video capture. While video industry-standard features such as waveforms are absent, the a7 IV makes solo shooting easier by extending its impressive AF capabilities to video mode. Only the slightly jerky stabilization counts against what is otherwise a very powerful camera.

The a7 IV’s extensive customization and power come at the cost of complexity, though. Once you’ve explored the camera and configured it the way you want, you can ignore much of what lurks in the menus and just get out and shoot. But the ability to define virtually every behavior can be overwhelming. Even as an experienced enthusiast shooter, it was the simplicity of the AF system I appreciated much more than the extensive (excessive?) level of customization the camera offers.

In the space of eight years, the a7 series has gone from being a low-cost full-frame camera with rough edges and autofocus that lagged its DSLR peers to producing one of the most all-around capable cameras we’ve ever used. There are few photo or video activities the a7 IV can’t turn its hand to, comfortably.

Competition in this space is fierce, with Nikon and Panasonic making very capable, less expensive cameras, and Canon’s EOS R6 going toe-to-toe with the Sony in most respects. Dig deep enough, though and the ways in which the Sony stands out start to add up. It’s enough to wrest the crown from the R6, which is also enough for it to earn a Gold award.

The a7 IV is an all-round capable camera, supporting the photographer in almost any situation. Its video capabilities live up to a similar standard, making it a hugely flexible imaging tool. Its extreme levels of customization can be daunting but its powerful autofocus system means it can be a very simple camera to use.