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Lenses

First Impressions: IRIX 150mm F2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens (Nikon F)

Chris Gampat
1 Comment
11/27/2018
2 Mins read
Pauleth Ip The Phoblographer IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens First Impressions product images 5

Last Updated on 11/27/2018 by Mark Beckenbach

The IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens takes the best of their high end Blackstone options and makes it more affordable.

At Photokina, the IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens was announced amongst the sea of other things, and if you don’t know a whole lot about IRIX it would be easy to miss them. They’re a company based in Europe and, according to the last I heard, their lenses are made in Korea. They create manual focus lenses that are high quality, have weather sealing, and include features in them many other folks don’t incorporate. And with their new IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens, they’ve included 11 aperture blades for super creamy bokeh.

Tech Specs

Our news post on the lens has all the details you want, but here’s a quote:

“The optical design consists of twelve elements – three of which are made of super-low dispersion glass (ED), another four of glass with a higher refractive index (HR), and the whole arranged into nine optical groups. Thanks to this construction, we obtain a close-to-zero distortion (at a level of 0.1%).”

Ergonomics

The IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens looks much like many of their other lenses. When you see the lens, you’ll believe this. The difference is in how it feels. The material on the exterior is a cross between their FireFly and Blackstone materials.

With the lens hood attached, the IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens gets really big. If you’re focusing to macro distances, I’m sure you’ll not use it.

The front element of the IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens is weather sealed, unlike some of the company’s Firefly products. To that end, you don’t need a lens filter to complete the sealing.

Build Quality

The IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens is weather sealed fully through–or at least that’s what they’re telling us. We’re going to need to put it through some abuse tests to confirm that.

Focusing

The IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens is manual focus. What that means is that you’re going to need to sit there and carefully focus it. If you’re focusing to infinity, IRIX has a feature where the focusing ring actually clicks into place. I imagine that focusing with this lens may require a tripod because of the motion of your hand that is needed to carefully focus a lens like this.

Image Samples

The version we played with is a prototype. And so we weren’t able to bring home sample images. Sorry folks!

First Impressions

Considering that we couldn’t attach the lens to a camera to test it, we’re still pretty surprised at how lightweight and well built the IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens feels. Many of their previous products have been fantastic in one way or another and we’re looking forward to testing this one.

aperture Bokeh build quality ergonomics focusing IRIX 150mm f2.8 Dragonfly Macro Lens lens Manual Focus nikon weather sealing
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
1 Comment

  1. Guest

    05/01/2019 8:16 am
    Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown
    Spot.IM/1.0 (Export)

    Does it have electrical contacts for Exif, etc.?

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