Category: Geek Articles
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A Technical Review of the Fujifilm GFX 100RF
The Fuji GFX 100RF arrived from Lensrentals.com looking brand new. The first surprise was how compact it felt compared to the other GFX cameras. For a medium-format camera, it is downright svelte, close in heft to a Nikon Z7 with a small 35mm lens. The design evokes a modern digital version of the…
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Still Tearing It Up: Teardown of the Sony PTZ FR7
### A Birthday Teardown Let’s talk about the Pink Elephant in the room and get that out of the way. I ghosted you, I know. It wasn’t my plan, but sometimes shirt happens. Kind of a perfect storm of shirts, actually. There was Covid when everything came to a halt, and we wondered for most of a year…
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A Technical Review of the Fujifilm GF 30mm Tilt Shift
I’ve had a Fujifilm 30mm GF f/5.6 tilt/shift lens on loan from Lensrentals for about three weeks, and I’ve done the basic testing. I had hoped to get some time using the lens the way it was intended, but testing this complex lens turned out to take all the time I’d allotted to the task. I will…
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A Technical Look at the Hasselblad XCD 135mm f/2.8
The Hasselblad XCD 135/2.8 is one of the first batch of lenses for the Hasselblad X1D and X2D (X mount) cameras. It is usually sold bundled with a matched 1.7x teleconverter (TC) and a tripod collar that attaches to the TC. Except for the focusing ring, the lens is completely devoid of controls –…
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Technical Review of the Hasselblad XCD 55V Lens
The Hasselblad XCD 55V is a 55mm f/2.5 lens for the X1D and X2D (X-mount) cameras. It is one of the V-series X-mount lenses. The line currently consists of 25mm, 38mm, 55mm, and 90mm lenses. All have f/2.5 as their widest aperture. All have high-speed leaf shutters, which are great for outdoor…
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How Modern Camera Shutters Work
There seems to be some confusion on the issue of how modern camera shutters work. I’m going to try to clear some of that up in this post. Some caveats: - There are variations among camera manufacturers that I’m going to gloss over. - This applies to CMOS sensors that employ at least one…
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Previsualization in Photography
I live near Carmel, California. The photographic history of this place is freighted with an approach to image-making called _previsualization_. Ansel Adams wrote about visualization, which he defined as “the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure”. Minor White later…
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Sensor Format Size and Image Quality
In the last 10 or 12 years, I’ve owned and made many images with APS-C (with crop factors between 1.3 and 1.5), full frame (FF), and 33×44 (MF, or crop MF, depending on your level of precision – and maybe your agenda). During that time, I’ve also used larger MF cameras and a 72×96 mm Betterlight…
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How to Expose Raw Files – Part 2
_This is Part 2 of an article published last week. For the best understanding, please read part one by clicking here._ Last week, we talked a bit about how the camera exposes raw files and used an analogy of rainwater and buckets to explain that. Today, we’re going to dive into the topic more and…
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How to Expose Raw Files – Part 1
Throughout the two-century history of photography, the subject of exposure has been repeatedly addressed and hotly debated. In the film era, people talked about exposure and B&W’s negative development in two ways. At first, when most of the photography was done with sheets and plates, it was…
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How Your Camera and Image Processor Determine Colors
The Internet is full of debates along the lines of: - Whether Sony colors are better than Nikon colors - Whether Canon colors are better than Sony colors Sometimes, people are talking about in-camera JPEGs, and it is possible to have a moderately fruitful discussion. How fruitful it might be…
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How Your Camera’s Focus Bracketing System Works
For many years, photographers have had focus-stacking programs like Helicon Focus and Zerene Stacker. You can now get the capability in some general-purpose image editors like Lightroom and Capture One Pro. Focus stacking software takes as input a series of images of the same subject with the focal…
