Category: Equipment
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Packing Photography Gear for International (or Domestic) Travel
For the last couple of years, I’ve become pretty good at packing my bags for travel, while making sure all of the gear I need arrives safely and securely. Certainly, packing bags and traveling effectively is an art form in its own right, and I wanted to take you through the process of my packing,…
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Sony Goes World Class: The 24-70mm f/2.8 GM MTF and Variance Tests
I was one of those who noted Sony had some troubles, as manufacturers often do, with some of their first generation lenses for full-frame FE mount cameras. When they announced the G Master lens series I was really excited to test them. I was expecting Sony to have made progress both with optical…
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Now In Stock: ARRI Alexa Mini & ARRI Amira
There’s no need to bury the lede on this one, so here it is: Lensrentals now carries the ARRI Amira and Alexa Mini. Some of our video clients, especially those with the benefit of higher budgets, may already have worked with one of these cameras. Many have also probably had experience with similar…
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Just the Lenses: The 70-200mm f/4 Comparison
There is a very good reason that we haven’t gotten around to testing one of the most commonly used zoom lenses until just now. We forgot. I was testing the Sony FE 70-200mm f/4 G OSS lens because we had just torn one down, I was impressed by the construction, and I wanted to see if the copy-to-copy…
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Focal Length Guide for Shooting in Large Spaces
There can be a lot of guessing involved when choosing gear for an unfamiliar venue. The techs at LR are consistently asked questions about the best focal length to use for an event. There are focal length calculators online like this one that can help determine which is right for you, and this…
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LensRentals Tears Down the Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 Lens
LensRentals hasn’t been able to get enough copies of the Zeiss Batis lenses to even fill our existing orders, much less enough for Aaron and I to test and play with them. But one of our customers was kind enough to drop a Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 lens the other day. Nothing looked smashed, but after…
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Mythbusting: Parfocal Photo Zooms
About twice a week I get a call from a photo-videographer wanting to know which photo zoom lenses in a certain focal length are parfocal (stays in focus while changing focal lengths). It’s understandable why they would ask; a superb photo zoom is 1/10th the cost of a good video zoom. They get…
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How to Clean Your Camera Lenses (And Check For Problems)
In the past, Roger has shown us time and time again, that internal dust and other artifacts rarely have an effect on the image quality produced by your lenses. With how complicated the optics in a lens are designed, lenses are rarely affected by these small flaws such as lens dust. That said, every…
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The Long-Awaited, Scary and Amazing Fuji Lens Teardown
For, oh, about 2 years now, every time we do a lens teardown I get emails from Fuji shooters asking me to tear down one of their lenses. There are several reasons we haven’t. For one thing, we have far fewer copies of those lenses so there is less reason to work on them. Since we can’t get parts…
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Comparing the Leica Monochrom to a Sony a7R II
## What Is A Monochrome Sensor And Why Does It Exist? Leica cameras have always been exciting to me. I think it’s mostly because of how expensive they are. Holding and using something incredibly out of my budget gives the shooting experience a little extra magic. But even with that magic, I…
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A Peek Inside the Leica Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-90mm f/2.8-4 ASPH
We always get excited when a lens comes out with some new technology or major changes. This time, the new technology came from an unexpected source when Leica released the Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-90mm f/2.8-4 ASPH lens. I know most of you don’t think of Leica as technological groundbreakers and most of…
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LensRentals Review of the Kessler Second Shooter Slider
Full disclosure: I watch a lot of cooking shows. Top Chef, Mind of a Chef, and No Reservations are some of my go-to’s, but my absolute favorite (and by far the dorkiest) is Good Eats. A sort of founding commandment or mantra of that show kept popping into my head over my last couple weekends when…
