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 3 of 39
Things You Don’t Know About Stopping Down Your Lens
Warning: This is a somewhat Geeky article. It has some real points that are useful for anyone who uses lenses, though, so I’ve tried to keep it mostly in English. In imaging, there are a lot of topics where people over-generalize; there’s a general tendency for something to happen, but people…
More Ultra High-Resolution MTF Experiments
GEEK ALERT!! Let’s be absolutely clear; this is not a practical or useful article. It won’t help your photography or cinematography become better. It won’t help you choose equipment any time in the next couple of years. It won’t provide any fodder for your next Forum War. It’s just a geek article…
MTF Tests of the Sigma 35mm f/1.2 DG Art
We just finished testing a couple of 35mm prime lenses and came away quite impressed. But it took a little longer to finish testing the one everyone had been asking about; the Sigma 35mm f/1.2 DG Art lens. I declared the Tamron 35mm f/1.4 SP the sharpest 35mm lens we had tested just a week ago, so…
Some New Wide Angle Lens MTF Tests: Sony 24mm f1.4 GM; Sony 35mm f/1.8; Tamron 35mm f1.4 SP
Most of you MTF junkies are aware that I’ve published all of our prime lens MTF curves in a series of articles by brand, and that I said I would just add new lenses to those articles. I recently tested a series of new prime lenses, though, and thought they were also worth putting up together…
Why Side-Mount Buttons and Ports Break on Cameras
We spend a lot of time fixing broken stuff. As sort of a side gig to that, we advise some manufacturers about what is likely to break or is regularly breaking. We offer our input to all manufacturers; some are interested in it, and some don’t give a flying damn. For free, we blog about it, too.…
Just the MTF Charts: 70-200mm f/4 Zoom Lenses
We did the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens MTF charts last week, so let’s do the f/4 versions of the same range now. Sports shooters and portrait photographers need that f/2.8 aperture, but many of us, most of the time, are willing to trade that off for smaller-lighter-less expensive f/4 models. ### So, About…
Just the MTF Charts: 70-200mm f2.8 Zoom Lenses
Well, I’ve avoided putting up the zoom lenses as long as I could, but here we are. I’m going to do things a little differently; rather than listing by brand I’m going to try listing by range and type. I’m suspicious of it because it’s going to bring out the Brand Zealots who for some reason find…
Disassembling the Sony FE 135mm f/1.8 GM
When we optically tested the Sony FE 135mm f/1.8 GM we were mighty impressed. Then I threw up in my mouth a little when I read a couple of reviewers comment on the build quality. Because holding a lens gives you not the slightest idea about the build quality. So I was excited when a 135mm went out…
Just the Cinema MTF Charts: Tokina and Veydra Primes
The Zeiss post was really long, this one is pretty short. I will mention again, these are less than 10 copy averages; we don’t carry a lot of these lenses. But there’s no MTF data elsewhere for them, so I will put out what we have. A Quick How to on Reading MTF Charts If you’re new here, you’ll see…
Just the Cinema MTF Charts: Zeiss Cine Lenses
Zeiss makes a lot of cinema lenses, there are a lot of graphs in this post. Please remember for some, like the Supreme Primes and some of the CP.3 lenses we didn’t get much access to, the MTF graph is the average of just a few copies (the number of copies is identified on the graph). This will be…
Just the Cinema Lens MTF Charts: Canon and Sigma
We’re going to continue the Cinema prime MTFs with the Canon and Sigma lenses. Again, we’re not going in any particular order, other than what we have handy and what fits reasonably into a single post. Since these are among our most popular cinema lenses, we do generally have at least a 10-copy set…
Just the Cinema Lens MTF Charts: Xeen and Schneider
We’ve completed the MTF postings for all of the photo prime lenses. Now we’re going to start with the Cinema primes. For a lot of those that also have a photo version, the optics should be identical. That’s not always the case, however. Plus, the people interested in Cinema lenses aren’t usually…