Lenses and Optics
Nikon 105mm f/1.4 E MTF Bench Tests
Joey recently wrote an article about his new crush, the Nikon 105mm f/1.4 E lens, and has been in the lab about every other day since then, asking me if I’ve run the MTFs yet. “You’re going to be blown away,” he says. And every other day I tell him, “I don’t get blown away very often.” So finally…
Nikon 105mm f/1.4E: An Ode to Nikon’s Best Lens
When I first heard about the new Nikon 105mm f/1.4E, I was pretty excited but cautious. I knew it was going to be big, heavy, and expensive, but worth it? What would I use it for? Nikon has always had an edge when it comes to camera bodies, but their lenses generally fall behind other brand’s…
Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L Mark III Optical Bench Tests
I tend to not get overly excited about new releases. The last few years have seen a lot of incremental upgrades that rarely blow me away. Usually, I end up thinking the new version of whatever is better than the last version. Not “rush out to the store and buy it” better, but “consider upgrading if…
The Ultimate 50mm Lens Comparison
I want to share with you guys a personal lens purchasing journey that I’ve been on for awhile now. My favorite genre of photography is travel photography; I love capturing landscapes, on location portraits, action sports, and general tourist stuff. It’s a very broad topic, and I want my camera gear…
Fun with Field of Focus Part 1
I’ve mentioned in some other posts that our optical tools can do a lot more than just test a lens’ MTF. For most of the last two years, though, testing MTF is what we’ve been doing. We may not seem all that busy, but we’ve assembled what is probably the world’s largest database of current camera…
Is Your Camera Really The Best Optical Test?
_“But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:17._ I have enjoyed, for some years now, the process of learning about lenses and optics. This blog shares a lot of what I’m in the process of learning. A lot of you…
The (sort of) Great 400mm Lens Shootout!
I get asked a lot about different telephoto lenses. Is the 400 DO II better than the 400 DO? Which is better, the Tamron 150-600mm or the Sigma 150-600mm? You’ve probably noticed that I don’t answer those questions. The reason is simple. Our optical bench is designed to test lenses up to 2.5kg…
More PhotoGeekery: Finite Conjugate MTF Bench Tests for Macro Lenses
For the last several years we’ve talked about the fact that lens performance can vary with focusing distance. Our optical bench tests at infinity. Computerized target analysis (Imatest and DxO) tests at close distances. But when the results of target analysis and bench tests differ it’s hard to…
The Zeiss FE Batis 25mm f/2.8 & Loxia 35mm f/2 Lens MTF Charts
For quite a while now, some you have asked where the MTF results were for the Zeiss Batis and Loxia lenses, and my answer has been not done yet. There were a lot of reasons for that. Chief among these was the lenses are so popular that we can’t get as many as we want and keep them in stock long…
Sony FE Planar T 50mm f/1.4 ZA MTF and Variance Testing
OK, you probably know I don’t like ultra-long lens names. I don’t like lenses that are expensive (who does?). So when you throw out a 50mm lens with a long name, like the Sony FE Planar T\* 50mm f/1.4 ZA, and price it at $1,500 I’m a bit predisposed not to like it. Seriously, that’s a lot of money…
Guide to Leica Wide Angle Lenses on Sony a7 Series Bodies
It’s been known for some time that wide angle M mount lenses have issues on Sony mirrorless cameras because of the way the sensors are designed, but there’s never been a very good list of what lenses work best, much less a visual reference to see how bad things can really be. So I took it upon…
The Sony FE Lenses MTF and Variance Summary
We’ve put all of this information out in other articles, but it was as we finished each one so it’s become scattered about. I wanted to simply put up all of our MTF and variance curves for Sony FE lenses in one place so you wouldn’t have to hunt and search for different articles to get the…