Roger's Corner
LensRentals Staff to Participate in Reddit Ask Me Anything on Monday at 3pm ET
We’re excited to announce that Roger Cicala and Aaron Closz will be participating in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session of reddit’s /r/photography forum on Monday at 3 pm ET. Over the last few years, /r/photography has been a huge supporter of our blog, so we wanted to give back by inviting the users…
A Clear History of Glass
I’ve written about glass, as in lenses, for years now. But I’ve never looked into the history of glass as just a substance, because, well, who cared? When I accidentally did some reading about early glass, though, I was rather amazed at just how important it was. So I thought I’d write about the…
I’m Gonna Party Like It’s 1995
I doubt any of you remember it, but 1995 was the coming out party for Digital SLRs. There had been digital cameras before then. There had even been digital SLR cameras of a sort – modified cameras tethered to a hard drive — before then. But in 1995 camera makers released digital SLR cameras for the…
I Sing of OLAF . . .
I have a couple of things to talk about today. First, is to announce the winner of our name the new machine contest. Second is to answer about 1,000 people’s questions regarding optical testing and adjustment. ## The New Machine’s New Name First, if you don’t known what we are naming then you can…
Disruption and Innovation
This is a long article, meant to be read at your leisure. You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. _Bob Dylan_ Technology changes tend to be of two types: incremental improvements or disruptive innovations. Incremental improvements allow one…
Assumptions, Expectations, and Plastic Mounts
Photography companies love catchword marketing. They like catchwords because photographers make assumptions about what those words mean, even though the words really don’t mean anything. So basically, they say nothing, but it makes you believe something. Two of my favorite examples are…
Iceland Spar: The Rock That Discovered Optics
Every year, I can’t think of anything I want for Christmas. So this year, I was pretty excited to come home and tell my wife, “I know exactly what I want for Christmas. A nice big piece of Iceland spar.” I even sent her a link to make it easy. (It’s certainly a comment on our times that I sent a…
Metabones Blackmagic
Metabones, maker of the impressive Speedbooster adapters is back at it again. When the Speedbooster first came out, I wrote about it being like magic, increasing the aperture and field-of-view of Nikon and Canon full-frame lenses mounted to NEX and micro 4/3 cameras, while maintaining or even…
Photo Geek Contest 2013 Winners
I am the poster child for that old saying, “Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.” I thought it would be fun to have a little contest just for the Photo Geeks who read my blog posts. I thought maybe 10 or 15 people would enter and we’d be like the 8 year-old soccer team: Trophies and pizza…
The Cynic’s Photography Dictionary
Picture – A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in three. _Ambrose Bierce_ I’m a fan of the satirical and cynical definitions of Ambrose Bierce, first written as a daily newspaper column and later collected in The Devil’s Dictionary. (It was originally called the Cynic’s Word…
The First Annual Photogeek Geek Photo Contest
I’ve been writing a lot of geeky testing stuff for the last couple of weeks, most of which can be summed up as ‘take some pictures; if they look good everything is fine.’ So last weekend, I went out and took some pictures. It was pretty fun. So much fun that I thought maybe I could have a photo…
There Is No Perfect Lens Test, Either
In my last article, I wrote about the fact that every copy of a given lens has some bit of sample variation. This affects lens reviews, whether lab-based or photography-based, because the copy they tested will be just a bit different from the copy you buy. I suggested, that if you want to get a…