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Independent, in-depth reviews of camera lenses and AR/VR optics — so you spend money on glass that earns its keep.
Reviews and guides for AR glasses, VR headsets, optical inserts, and smart lens tech.
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The Osmo Pocket 4P is worth buying in 2026 if you shoot handheld video and live outside the United States. It is the first Osmo Pocket with two lenses — a 1-inch wide camera and a 60mm f/1.8 telephoto — on a three-axis gimbal in a 230g body, and it runs around $700 (£529 / €599). US buyers face a real problem: DJI does not sell it there, so American listings are imports at inflated prices.
DxO's DeepPRIME XD noise reduction and lens corrections set the bar for RAW image quality. We tested PureRAW as a pre-processor and PhotoLab as a full editor.
ON1 Photo RAW bundles a RAW editor, catalog, AI masking, effects, and resize into one app — with a one-time purchase option Adobe will never offer.
How 35mm, 50mm, 85mm and 135mm actually change a face, why f/1.2 is not automatically better than f/1.8, and how to choose a portrait lens for a crop sensor without guessing.
Everything that decides how sharp, comfortable and glare-free a headset looks: pancake vs Fresnel lenses, sweet spot and IPD, field of view, prescription inserts, and eye relief for glasses wearers.
From the affordable 85mm f/1.8 to the dreamy 135mm GM, here are the portrait lenses worth your money on Sony E mount.
Around 50-56mm on APS-C, which frames like 75-85mm on full frame. On Micro Four Thirds, aim for 42-45mm. Multiply full-frame advice by 1.5 (1.6 on Canon APS-C) or 2.0 for MFT.
85mm for headshots — it lets you stand back, which keeps facial proportions natural and separates the subject cleanly. 50mm is the better single-lens choice if you also shoot three-quarter length, groups or indoors where you cannot back up.
Compression is a distance effect, not a lens effect. Long lenses make you stand further back, which shrinks the relative size difference between the nose and the ears, so the face looks flatter. Crop a wide shot to the same framing and you get the same perspective as the wide lens.
For most people, no. The blur difference at portrait distances is modest, the depth of field at f/1.2 is thin enough that one eye can miss focus, and the lens is typically two to four times the price and roughly twice the weight.
Because blur quantity and blur character are separate things. Aperture blade count and shape, spherical aberration correction, aspherical element polishing and the lens barrel all change how an out-of-focus highlight is drawn, even when the amount of blur is identical.
Pancake lenses fold the light path so the panel sits closer to your eye, giving a wider sweet spot, sharper edges and far less glare. Fresnel lenses are brighter and cheaper for the same panel power, but blur off-axis and produce god-rays on bright content.
The sweet spot is the part of the lens where the image is actually in focus. It shrinks fast when the lens is not centred on your pupils, so setting interpupillary distance correctly matters more to perceived sharpness than panel resolution.
Slightly, but far less than wearing glasses. Inserts add a thin lens in front of the headset optic, pushing your eye a millimetre or two back; glasses plus a spacer typically cost several millimetres and a visibly narrower view.
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