Roger's Corner
Stuff You Can Do When You Ain’t Got Nothing to Do
Are you bored yet? I don’t have to ask if your kids are bored yet. A lot of you are trying to think of something to do besides ‘out the window’ and ‘front porch’ photography. We’re all worried and anxious about a lot of things, but sooner or later, we need to do something, anything, to keep from…
How to Disinfect Camera Equipment and Spaces
I’m qualified to talk about this subject to some degree; I take care of a ton of camera equipment, and I was a physician in my past life. And I’ve had so many requests for information about this that it seems logical to put something out, so everyone has access to it. That being said, at this…
Practical Use of Field Curvature: 24-70mm Zooms
We’ve done a pretty good introduction to the field curvatures of 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm prime lenses. We made a little bit of comparison with bargain primes and zoom lenses at 35mm. This post is going to assume you are familiar with those previous posts. (Yes, I know the reality is most people…
Finally, the Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S Lens Teardown
Just so you know, my original title was “_Lens Disassembly is a Complicated Profession. Don’t You Agree?_” The editor said nobody would know what the post was about. But I promise, you’ll see by the end of this; lens disassembly is a complicated profession. We were interested in this disassembly,…
Stopping Down Some Bargain Primes and Zooms
In my last post, we looked at how the field curvature of some really excellent 35mm f/1.4 primes affected what happens when we stop down the lens. The takeaway message is that as you stop down, things change a bit differently with the different lenses, but by f/5.6 they were similar. Still slightly…
How Potatoes and Gelatin Created Color Photography
Long ago, I wrote articles about the glory days of photography. The days when any photographer worth a damn dabbled in chemical explosives or Bitumen of Judea and spun off side gigs like Lionel toy trains or fashion clothing. Back then your competition didn’t dabble in stealing your photographs,…
Removing a Fly from ‘Weather Sealed’ Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II
I’ve been doing lens stuff for a long time now. Long time. Trust me; it’s hard to remain polite the 843,911th time some newbie goes into hysterics because there’s dust in their lens. Telling them it doesn’t matter a bit, and that all their other lenses have dust they just can’t see ( because…
What to Look at to Find the Best Compact Camera for You
## Why Point and Shoot Cameras? Well, duh, because I wanted to use one. I go to the beach once a month. I wanted something that took better pictures than my cell phone, doesn’t involve carrying a bunch of gear, and doesn’t include changing lenses in blowing sand. Since I don’t use this type of…
Roger’s Rants: My Canon/Nikon Mirrorless Camera Unfanboy Opinion
I’ve gotten about 632 texts and emails over the last couple of weeks. About half of them are “I’m a Nikon / Canon shooter. Should I preorder a Z / RF camera?” My answer is generally no. The reason is simple; unless you just have to play with the new technology and have money to burn, wait until the…
Testing Lenses: Best Individual Focus MTF Curves
OK, in the last post we did something useful, but rather boring: we looked at how MTF changes when lenses are stopped down. Today we’re going to use a more powerful optical bench tool, the MTF vs. Field vs. Focus. Unless you work in a metrology lab (and probably not even then, very few are…
My Last Circular Polarizer Post
I posted an article about circular polarizing filters recently, letting you see some data I obtained for Lensrentals when they were reviewing which of the polarizing filters were among the best. I concluded that they all polarized light really well. I also said that none of the CPs I tested seemed…
The Minolta 40-80mm f/2.8 Gearbox Zoom; The Clockwork Lens
**There were giants in the earth in those days . . . They were mighty men, men of renown. _Genesis 6:4_** I’ve always been fascinated by the history of lenses. I write about it a lot. To me, the most fascinating items are those made many years ago, with what we would consider wholly inadequate…