For those who don’t visit often, this isn’t a lens review. It is simply my impression and the Imatest results for the first batch of Zeiss ZE 15mm f/2.8 lenses that we did before they got shipped out to our customers. Particularly with a very wide lens like this, Imatest results must be taken for [...]

Tyler, as Tyler does, handed me three copies of the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens this morning. It wasn’t a great day for testing; Wednesdays are always the busiest repair and turnaround day. But I did manage to squeeze in  a couple of hours with them.    

I get asked a simple question almost every day: Why do your results say this, Joe’s results say that, and Bill’s results say something different? The questions surprised me at first; I grew up in biological and medical research and took it for granted everyone expected different tests to have slightly different results. But different [...]

I started this series to simply demonstrate a well-known fact; that contrast detection autofocus in Live View was more accurate than standard Phase Detection autofocus for still subjects. It ended up being a bit more than I’d bargained for just with the Canon cameras. After that series was done, I promised several people that I [...]

You probably know we got 5 copies of the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 II today and did some resolution testing before they all shipped out. If you read this blog often, you probably know that Aaron and I gave every lens a careful shake, peered inside, and generally looked for any possible excuse to open one [...]

Here it is, only 6 months after announcement! The Canon 24-70 f/2.8L II has finally arrived. I’d love to say something like: “Never have so many forums contained so many threads containing such strong opinions from people who’ve never touched a lens.” But that would be silly. It happens just about every time a new [...]

As some of you know, I’ve been testing a large number of Nikon cameras and lenses as part of the Autofocus Reality series. (Nikon full frame results will be up in a day or so.) I noticed an abnormality in one copy of a lens we were testing that some of you might find interesting.

I while back I put out a notice that the Sigma 150mm and 180mm OS Macros had an issue if you shot JPGs on a Canon 5D Mk III and left peripheral illumination correction on. The camera auto-corrected for vignetting that wasn’t there, leaving an interesting pattern with a dark center and lightened edges and [...]

One thing we preach here a lot is that just because a dropped lens looks fine on the outside doesn’t mean it is fine. The other thing we preach a lot is that a tiny difference in the centering, tilt or placement of a single element can have a dramatic effect on image quality. Aaron made [...]

Some days it’s good to be a geeky gear-head. This is one of them because a) I finished testing autofocus on all of the Canon camera bodies we had, b) I actually found out some interesting stuff, and c) I got worked up about camera marketers while doing it, so I have my next post [...]