The search got a lot smarter
The search engine behind UsedLens has been completely rewritten. The old one worked, mostly, but it had some embarrassing blind spots. Search for a "Sigma 50mm f/2" and you'd get lens hoods, 150-600mm supertelephoto zooms, and f/2.8 lenses mixed into the results. The number "50" appeared inside "850" (a lens hood model number), and "f/2" matched "f/2.8" as a substring. Multiply those small errors across every search and the results were noisier than they should have been.
The new engine fixes all of that. Focal lengths are properly bounded, so 50mm means 50mm, not anything containing the digits "5" and "0". Apertures are matched precisely, so f/2 won't pull in f/2.8 results. Model codes like "R5" won't match "R50" or "R500". And brand searches now understand that Olympus and OM System are the same company, that Rokinon and Samyang are the same lenses, and that "Fuji" and "Fujifilm" shouldn't give you different results.
Behind the scenes there's also a ranking system now. Every listing is automatically classified as a primary product (a camera or lens), an OEM accessory (a genuine Canon lens hood, a Nikon battery grip), or a third-party accessory. Primary products always appear first. That means when you're looking at a Canon EOS R5 page, you see R5 camera bodies, not lens caps, screen protectors, and SmallRig cages.
Product pages
UsedLens now has dedicated pages for individual cameras and lenses. Instead of just a search results list, each product gets its own page with a description, key specs, price range across retailers, and all the current listings in one place. Here's an example: the Canon EOS R6 Mark II page.
There are a few thousand of these live already, covering most of the cameras and lenses you'd actually search for, from a Canon AE-1 to a Hasselblad X2D, from a Fujifilm GF 23mm f/4 to a Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Super Wide Heliar. You can browse them through the brand pages in the menu, and more are being added regularly.
Each page pulls live data from across all 40+ retailers, so the prices and stock levels are always current. If a lens is available at MPB, Wex, Park Cameras, London Camera Exchange, and eBay simultaneously, you'll see all of them on one page, sorted by price.
London Camera Exchange is back
LCE had been missing from UsedLens for a while. Their website's security setup was blocking our data feed. That's now been resolved, and their full used stock is back on the site. LCE is one of the best sources for used gear in the UK, with branches across the country. Having them back makes a real difference to the breadth of our listings; particularly for Leica, medium format, and the kind of well-maintained used stock that comes through a specialist retailer rather than eBay.
What's next
More product pages, better coverage of niche and vintage equipment, and some improvements to the alert system so you can get notified when a specific camera or lens drops in price or comes back into stock. The search engine will keep getting refined as edge cases come up. If you search for something and the results look wrong, I'd genuinely like to hear about it.
UsedLens compares used camera and lens prices across 40+ UK retailers including MPB, Wex, Park Cameras, London Camera Exchange, eBay, and many more. Start searching →
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