Samsung offers $1,600, 50-150mm F2.8 lens for its NX mount

Nothing says you're serious about moving upmarket in cameras more than introducing essential pro lenses. In Samsung's case, that's the new $1,600, 50 - 150mm f2.8 S (which translates to about £1,000/AU$1,770), with its effective 77-231mm focal length. It joins the $1,300 16-50mm f2-2.8 (which runs just under £1,000/AU$1,770) unveiled at the beginning of the year as the second in the company's Premium S series of lenses. They're designed to pair mostly with the new NX1 .

Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 S Lens is big and sturdy (pictures)

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The 50-150mm lens incorporates a lot of the same perks as the 16-50mm: it's completely metal, dust-and-splash resistant, uses internal zoom and focus, has an XHR (extreme high refractive) element, a 9-blade aperture, and the Ultra-Precise Stepping Motor, which debuted in that lens. It introduces 4-axis image stabilization, which Samsung claims gives you 4 stops of relief. One of the nice features is a custom focus-range limiter -- you can define the limit range.

Oddly, as far as I can tell, this is the first fast lens designed to allow an APS-C camera emulate the staple 70-200mm on a full frame. There are a lot of 55-200mm lenses, but they're all slow consumer models.

As someone who too often has to carry a heavy combination of full-frame body with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens, my back is really looking forward to seeing how well this works as an alternative. It's no lightweight at about 2 pounds, but it still weighs about half of what all the others weight.