Three full-frame lenses landed in the same 48-hour stretch, and all three make the same argument from different directions: you can get a fast prime without remortgaging a camera bag.
The week in three primes
Viltrox filled the gap in its own f/1.4 Pro line. The AF 35mm f/1.4 Pro is out for Sony E and Nikon Z at $829, or $663.20 if you buy straight from Viltrox's own store, which is the launch price they're running right now. Sirui launched two primes at $149 each. Sigma, meanwhile, put a price on the camera that's supposed to be the smallest full-frame body you can buy: $2,199 for the FP2 body, shipping November 11.
There's also software news worth catching up on. Capture One 16.9 shipped on October 29 with a set of portrait retouching tools aimed squarely at the kind of work that never quite gets finished.
Let me take them in order of how much they'll change what you actually carry.
Viltrox completes the f/1.4 trio
Viltrox's Pro full-frame line now covers 35mm, 50mm and 85mm, all at f/1.4. The company says the full set comes in under $2,000, and the 35mm is the newest of the three.
The optical design is 16 elements in 11 groups: 2 UA (Ultra-Precision Aspherical) elements, 3 ED elements and 4 HR elements. Eleven aperture blades. Minimum focus distance 0.3m, max magnification 0.18x. Focusing is Viltrox's HyperVCM system with a VCM motor, and Viltrox says face and eye detection are supported.
The part I'd want to think hard about is weight. Viltrox's own spec sheet lists 760g for the E-mount version and 780g for the Z-mount one, at 111mm and 112.5mm long respectively, with a 77mm filter thread. Nikon lists its own Z 35mm f/1.4 at 415g, and Sony's FE 35mm f/1.4 GM at 524g. So the Z-mount Viltrox is 365g heavier than Nikon's and 256g heavier than Sony's.
I haven't handled one, so I can't tell you whether that extra mass reads as solid or just front-heavy in the hand. What the numbers do say is that 780g on a full-frame body is not a lightweight kit lens. It's the price of a 16-element design with three exotic glass types in it, and at $829 the question is whether Viltrox's optics hold up where Nikon's and Sony's do.
Two Sirui primes for the price of a filter
Sirui's Swift series is the more interesting release of the week, purely because of the number attached to it: $149 for the 20mm f/2.4, $149 for the 40mm f/2.2. Same price for both. Sirui's own store lists all six variants — 20mm and 40mm in E, L and X mounts — at $149.00 each, with shipping expected from November 6.
The official spec table lists both as full-frame coverage, 11 elements in 9 groups for the 20mm and 11 in 8 for the 40mm, nine aperture blades on each. Both have a clicked aperture ring, an AF/MF switch and a customisable Fn button. Filter thread is 58mm on both. The 20mm focuses down to 0.2m at 0.136x magnification; the 40mm to 0.4m at 0.14x. Weight is 207g for the 20mm and 210g for the 40mm in E-mount.
There's an STM motor in both, and Sirui describes the pair as dust-resistant, smudge-resistant and weather-sealed.
Two things I can't resolve from the official material. First, Sirui's product page lists the X mount as a variant but doesn't say whether the X version is full-frame or APS-C — the spec table says "Full Frame" for the pair without breaking it out per mount. Second, there's no Nikon Z version, which is a conspicuous absence given how much of the market runs Z.
The smallest full-frame body has a price now
Sigma announced the FP2 on October 23, and it's the piece of news from this week that most affects how I'd think about a carry-on bag.
The spec sheet on Sigma's own site lists a 24.5-megapixel partially stacked CMOS sensor, 6K Open Gate recording, up to 14.1 stops of dynamic range, 32-bit float audio, 20fps continuous shooting, a 3.15-inch tilting LCD and 70GB of internal storage. Dimensions are 112.8 × 69.9 × 41.8mm. Weight is 446g including the battery, 388g for the body alone.
Sigma calls it the smallest full-frame camera in the world, with a footnote dating the claim to October 2026. The launch price is $2,199 for the body, and it ships November 11. Sigma also lists $2,749 for the kit with the 50mm F2 DG Contemporary, and $2,749 with the EVF-21 viewfinder.
The 70GB of internal storage is the bit that interests me. A card slot can fill up mid-take; internal memory means recording continues. Combined with a body under 400g without the battery, this is the kind of full-frame body I'd consider leaving the house in with nothing but the body and a 50mm.
Capture One 16.9 cleans up hair
Capture One 16.9 landed on October 29, and the release notes headline is Stray Hair Retouching — two sliders, one for hair outside the hair area and one for hair inside it. There's also Skin Tone Retouching for matching colour casts and Body Skin Retouching, which extends Even Skin to the full body.
The Color Editor got a redesigned colour wheel, a target picker and editable RGB and HSL values. Enhanced Denoise got faster. Assisted Review is still in beta in the viewer, and Multi-User Sessions have come out of beta with export and Follow.
The live-review features matter a lot to people who shoot tethered and not at all to people who don't. The retouching tools are the part that lands on a desk at the end of a portrait job, where a single stray hair across the cheek is the kind of thing that eats twenty minutes of a retoucher's afternoon.
What I'd actually buy
None of these is a review, because I haven't shot with any of them. But on spec sheets alone, the Sirui pair is the most interesting thing here. A $149 full-frame autofocus prime with a clicked aperture ring and a weather-sealed body is a genuinely new price point, and if the 20mm holds up at f/2.4, that's a travel kit that doesn't need a second lens.
The Viltrox 35mm is the harder sell. $829 and 780g buys you 16 elements and 11 blades. Nikon's 35mm f/1.4 is $576 right now with a discount and weighs 415g. If I already owned a Z body, that's a close call, and if I wanted the light kit I'd be looking at something else entirely.
The FP2 is the answer to a question I wasn't asking, which is the highest compliment I can give a camera.
What I'll be watching is whether the Sirui X-mount version turns out to be full-frame, and what the 20mm actually looks like wide open at f/2.4 — that's the spec that decides whether the $149 is a bargain or a rounding error.