Category: Geek Articles
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RED Weapon Helium 8K S35 Hands-on or: DSMC2 and You
To be perfectly honest, this article started purely as an excuse for me to play with a carbon fiber 8K RED Weapon. I figured I’d take it out for a weekend, shoot some footage, melt my computer trying to edit it, write a hands-on review, and be done with it. Gradually, though, I realized that a…
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An Update and Comparison of the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS
About a month ago, Roger posted his MTF bench results for the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED AF-S VR (TL;DR: it’s optically superb), and down in the comments there were some requests to compare it not only to the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II in the article, but also to the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM…
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Third Party Ultra-Wide Lenses MTF Comparison
Contrary to what most people believe, we do pay some attention when people ask us to do MTF testing on certain lenses. I’m not saying we do it, but we do pay attention to the requests and when we have some downtime will look at that request lists and see if there’s something on it we can get to.…
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Front Element Lens Protection Revisited
The internet is an interesting resource. Once you’ve put a reference up, it’s there forever. Over time, things may change, but that 10-year-old article doesn’t. A few weeks ago someone used some old articles I’d written (1, 2, 3) as a reason why he doesn’t use protective UV filters. They claimed I…
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Real World Testing of the New Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L III
Last month Roger did his standard series of optical bench tests on the new Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L III. But that doesn’t show you what it looks like in real pictures. I decided to take the new lens and a large selection of comparable lenses from Canon, as well as offerings from Nikon, Sony, and…
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Things to Know When Transitioning to Sony Mirrorless Camera Systems
There is no doubt that Sony has made some massive changes over the last few years in the photography industry. What was once a brand that many laughed at, has now become the leading sensor manufacturer and most exciting camera manufacturer in the digital era. So I wanted to take a moment and give…
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An Inside Look at the Rokinon 50mm AF FE Autofocus Lens
I have had a love-hate relationship with Samyang / Rokinon lenses for a long time now. (We carry the Rokinon brand, because the distributor, Elite Brands offers repair services in the U. S.) Rokinon lenses provide good optics at an incredible price. They aren’t ‘built like a tank’ and aren’t going…
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Taking Apart the New Nikon 105mm f/1.4E ED AF-S
We recently tested the Nikon 105mm f/1.4E ED AF-S lens and were mightily impressed. Optically it was better than I’d ever expected. We had idly talked about doing a teardown when stock allowed, but we got an unexpected opportunity yesterday: one of our week-old copies had some significant dust in…
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Canon 24-105 f/4 IS Mark II MTF Results
I like to start articles by stating my expectations, because, like everyone, my expectations going in color my opinion after seeing the results. Given Canon’s recent series of home-run lens upgrades, I expected the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS II would be a superb lens. I was particularly expecting…
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What is Color Depth and Why Is It Important for Video?
One of the most common questions I get from video customers is, “What do 10-bit 4:2:2 and 8-bit 4:2:0 actually mean?” The explanation can get pretty technical, so it’s easy to default to the opinion that higher numbers equal better footage. That’s true in a sense, but following that logic leads to…
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Testing NASA Optical Lenses – How We Measure Sharpness and Accuracy
We’ve spent about 5 years developing and repurposing various types of optical testing for use testing photo and video lenses. It’s been a long process with lots of learning (learning is when you find out you’re doing it wrong), and improvements along the way. We’re pretty close to finished; our…
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Fun with Field of Focus II: Copy-to-Copy Variation and Lens Testing
I mentioned in our first post in this series that one of the major reasons I was interested in looking at field curvatures was as a means of detecting lenses that are weaker on one side (or perhaps one corner). If you haven’t looked at that post, you really need to before you tackle this one. In…
