Roger Cicala
I'm Roger and I am the founder of Lensrentals.com. Hailed as one of the optic nerds here, I enjoy shooting collimated light through 30X microscope objectives in my spare time. When I do take real pictures I like using something different: a Medium format, or Pentax K1, or a Sony RX1R.
Posts by Roger Cicala · page 16 of 39
Canon 100-400mm IS L Mk II Teardown: Best Built Lens Ever?
* Canon 100-400mm IS Mk II, Lensrentals.com, 2015 * You know Aaron and I love doing teardowns of almost anything. The two types we look forward to most, though, are Sony cameras and Canon lenses, because those tend to be on the cutting edge of engineering elegance. For a couple of weeks now, we’ve…
Addendum to the Nikon 300 f/4E PF ED VR Test
When I posted our Imatest results from the single copy of the Nikon 300 f/4E PF ED VR that we had received, I pointed out that the copy was slightly decentered and therefore the results were questionable. We got a second copy of the lens in today, and this one was perfectly centered. I had planned…
The Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Test: Or Why I Don’t Test Just One Copy
As most of you know, we generally test multiple copies of a lens when we evaluate it, simply because we are so aware of copy-to-copy variation. But I got caught between a rock and a hard place this week. We received exactly one copy of the new Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR lens and the purchasing…
The A7II Teardown: A Look Inside Sony’s New Camera
A while back we did a teardown of the Sony A7r, and were very impressed with its clean modular design. Now that Sony has released the A7 II we thought a similar teardown would be worthwhile. There are certainly going to be some differences. First among them, of course, is that the new camera has…
More Canon 400m DO II Comparisons
In an earlier post we were most impressed with how much better the new Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II resolved compared to the original version. I mentioned that we hadn’t been able to get many copies and didn’t have time to do any other comparisons right then, but that we would do more as soon as we…
Cotton. Sidney Cotton.
_“He caused a lot of trouble over here, you know.”_ A librarian at the Royal Aeronautical Society, when asked for references on Sydney Cotton. It’s been a while since I did a history article. I love writing about the true “characters” of photography, and to be honest, I hadn’t stumbled across…
A Thinner Sensor Stack
A few months ago, before my hiatus from blogging, we did a series of articles showing the effect that a thick sensor stack (the glass above the sensor) had when we use adapted lenses designed for a thin sensor stack. The first one was mostly about theory, the second about when it was likely to…
A Brief 400mm Comparison
Canon shooters have a bit of 400mm excitement right now. The biggest news, of course, is the release of the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS II lens, replacing the original version that’s had a very long, successful run. Not quite so much excitement was generated by the release of the 400mm f/4 DO IS II…
One, Single Samsung NX-1 Test
I just want to be clear, before we get started, this is not an NX-1 review. It’s not even a complete optical test. It’s simply me answering a single question: is this new Samsung worth further investigation from an optics/image quality standpoint? Samsung’s 28.2 megapixel, APS-C backlit sensor…
Cracking Open the 7D II
OK, I have to admit I really like the Canon 7D Mark II. I didn’t want to because it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to see the new Canon chip foundry that would be cranking out high-resolution sensors. But despite wanting to hate the 22-megapixel APS-C camera, after a fairly short exposure to the…
About That 25-300mm f/2.8 You Wanted
I get an email or text about once a month asking me if I think Canon, Nikon, or some other photo manufacturer will ever make something like a 24-300mm f/2.8 zoom lens. I’m usually gentle with those people, because I realize that a lot of people truly believe that if they want something badly…
Quick Zeiss 85mm Otus MTF Charts
Well, we finally got a few copies of Zeiss’ newest Big Ass Lens, the 85mm f/1.4 Otus in Friday afternoon. I didn’t have time to do a whole lot with them other than take a few shots, and run them through the optical bench for MTF testing, so this will be a short post. (Assuming I get a little more…