Roger Cicala
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Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED AF-S VR MTF Tests
Well, we all want to call it the 70-200 VR III, since it replaces the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8G AF-S VR II. But the new lens is officially the 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED AF-S VR. It is most definitely a different lens; it’s 22 elements include one fluorite, one high-refractive, and six ED elements, along with…
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Testing NASA Optical Lenses – How We Measure Sharpness and Accuracy
We’ve spent about 5 years developing and repurposing various types of optical testing for use testing photo and video lenses. It’s been a long process with lots of learning (learning is when you find out you’re doing it wrong), and improvements along the way. We’re pretty close to finished; our…
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Fun with Field of Focus II: Copy-to-Copy Variation and Lens Testing
I mentioned in our first post in this series that one of the major reasons I was interested in looking at field curvatures was as a means of detecting lenses that are weaker on one side (or perhaps one corner). If you haven’t looked at that post, you really need to before you tackle this one. In…
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Nikon 105mm f/1.4 E MTF Bench Tests
Joey recently wrote an article about his new crush, the Nikon 105mm f/1.4 E lens, and has been in the lab about every other day since then, asking me if I’ve run the MTFs yet. “You’re going to be blown away,” he says. And every other day I tell him, “I don’t get blown away very often.” So finally…
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Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L Mark III Optical Bench Tests
I tend to not get overly excited about new releases. The last few years have seen a lot of incremental upgrades that rarely blow me away. Usually, I end up thinking the new version of whatever is better than the last version. Not “rush out to the store and buy it” better, but “consider upgrading if…
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Fun with Field of Focus Part 1
I’ve mentioned in some other posts that our optical tools can do a lot more than just test a lens’ MTF. For most of the last two years, though, testing MTF is what we’ve been doing. We may not seem all that busy, but we’ve assembled what is probably the world’s largest database of current camera…
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This is Your (Well Our) Camera at Burning Man
In the repair department, there are things we hate. Salt water for cameras and lenses, salt water and sand for tripods and lenses. Sand in legs of the zoom mechanism of lenses ruins threads, they’ll never be smooth again. Right behind those two is dust. Dust doesn’t always destroy equipment, but…
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Is Your Camera Really The Best Optical Test?
_“But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:17._ I have enjoyed, for some years now, the process of learning about lenses and optics. This blog shares a lot of what I’m in the process of learning. A lot of you…
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Lensrentals’ Canon 5D Mk IV Teardown
Today the Canon 5D Mk IV cameras are out and I’m sure by this afternoon there will be unboxing videos all over YouTube. Aaron and I decided to do an unboxing post, too. By unboxing, of course, we mean taking it apart. If you want to make comparisons, you can look at our old (2012) 5D Mk III…
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The (sort of) Great 400mm Lens Shootout!
I get asked a lot about different telephoto lenses. Is the 400 DO II better than the 400 DO? Which is better, the Tamron 150-600mm or the Sigma 150-600mm? You’ve probably noticed that I don’t answer those questions. The reason is simple. Our optical bench is designed to test lenses up to 2.5kg…
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More PhotoGeekery: Finite Conjugate MTF Bench Tests for Macro Lenses
For the last several years we’ve talked about the fact that lens performance can vary with focusing distance. Our optical bench tests at infinity. Computerized target analysis (Imatest and DxO) tests at close distances. But when the results of target analysis and bench tests differ it’s hard to…
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The Zeiss FE Batis 25mm f/2.8 & Loxia 35mm f/2 Lens MTF Charts
For quite a while now, some you have asked where the MTF results were for the Zeiss Batis and Loxia lenses, and my answer has been not done yet. There were a lot of reasons for that. Chief among these was the lenses are so popular that we can’t get as many as we want and keep them in stock long…
