Category: Equipment
-
OLAF’s Lens Art
This is a Geek Article, with very little practical information. But there are pretty pictures that non-Geeks might like. (Not the construction pictures, the ones further down.) First, I should explain why I haven’t posted much lately. Lensrentals was able to expand into some adjacent space, which…
-
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…
-
Roger’s New Toy Needs a Name
First and foremost, if you aren’t at least a little Geeky, this post is not for you. Unless you’re one of those people who thinks ‘just take some pictures, dammit’ when I write some article about resolution testing. In that case, you might like this article because we’re taking pictures to test…
-
The Sky is Falling and the Light is Leaking: the A7r Anti-Massacree
Anti-Massacree – A humorous anti-war movement from the 1960s, suggested in the Arlo Guthrie song Alice’s Restaurant. The song, like many of my posts, was criticized for being overly long. Believe it or not, I’m mostly a lurker in online forums. I read the hysteria of the day mostly for my own…
-
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…
-
Sony A7R: A Rising Tide Lifts All the Boats?
I have to admit I didn’t get too worked up when the Sony A7 and A7R were released. The last time I wrote about Sony it was how there were so few lenses for the NEX system years after introduction. So now we’re going to a system requiring a whole new lens mount. Sure the camera’s specs were…
-
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…
-
Nikon 58mm f/1.4 is (hopefully) Not About the Numbers
## The Silence We have a routine when a new lens comes out at Lensrentals: the first new copies get sent to me for optical testing. I have about 4 or 5 hours with them because they’ll have to be packed up and shipped out to the customers that have been waiting for them and expect them tomorrow. So…
-
D610 Initial Dust Assessment
Way back when, I wrote about the dust problems we were seeing in Nikon D600 cameras. There was enough of a furor about it that when the Nikon D610 was released I assumed that the dust problem would be fixed. But I’m rather the paranoid type, and I never like assumptions, so as soon as the first…
-
Lensrentals Repair Data: 2012-2013
Correction: Lenses called “Rokinon” in the “Weeks to Failure” rate incorrectly included Bower & Samyang branded products. Because of this error, data for lenses called “Rokinon” lenses has been removed. We apologize for this inaccuracy, and any confusion that may have resulted therefrom. ## What Is…
-
Protecting Yourself from Gear Theft
In case you don’t know it, cameras and lenses are prime theft targets. You may never think it’s going to happen to you, but almost every day I hear from someone who is missing thousands of dollars worth of gear with no hope of getting it back. As a rental company, we have lots of experience with…
-
Sigma Optimization Pro and USB Dock
_“Commerce makes progress. Fortune passes everywhere.”_ – Frank Herbert A few years ago I was accused of being a Sigma hater. (For the record, I did hate their quality control and so-called repair service at that time, and I didn’t hesitate to say so in this blog.) For the third or fourth time in…