Category: Resolution Tests
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Scoping Out Digiscoping
## Digiscoping I’ve always been a bit fascinated by digiscoping. For those who are out of the loop, digiscoping involves taking images through a spotting scope rather than a camera lens. The advantages are obvious. A spotting scope provides magnification equivalent to a lens of 1,250 to 3,000mm.…
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The Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 is Good
For those who don’t visit often, this isn’t a lens review. It is simply my impression and the Imatest results for the first batch of Zeiss ZE 15mm f/2.8 lenses that we did before they got shipped out to our customers. Particularly with a very wide lens like this, Imatest results must be taken for…
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Quick Look at the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro
Tyler, as Tyler does, handed me three copies of the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens this morning. It wasn’t a great day for testing; Wednesdays are always the busiest repair and turnaround day. But I did manage to squeeze in a couple of hours with them. The size surprised me at first. Not that it’s…
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Why Aren’t the Damn Numbers the Same????
I get asked a simple question almost every day: Why do your results say this, Joe’s results say that, and Bill’s results say something different? The questions surprised me at first; I grew up in biological and medical research and took it for granted everyone expected different tests to have…
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Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 II Resolution Tests
Here it is, only 6 months after announcement! The Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II has finally arrived. I’d love to say something like: “Never have so many forums contained so many threads containing such strong opinions from people who’ve never touched a lens.” But that would be silly. It happens just…
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Imatest Macro Results (With Apologies to the Nikon 105 VR Micro)
A few months back we tested a number of Nikon lenses on the D800 cameras, hoping to determine which lenses could bring the absolute best resolution out of that camera’s 36-megapixel sensor. The results were interesting, and in a few cases surprising. More than a few Fanboys went ballistic over…
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Quick Nikon 28mm f/1.8 Imatest Report
We had 4 copies of the new Nikon 28mm f/1.8 G AF-S (available to rent today) arrive today and I managed to snag a Nikon D800 just long enough to run Imatest numbers on the 4 copies of the lens. Most impressive!!! As always, the Don’t Lose Perspective disclaimer applies: this is simply MTF50 numbers…
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Standard-range micro 4/3 Imatest Results
This is the second in a series of three posts about Imatest results on m4/3 mount lenses. The first post covered most of the lenses of 25mm and wider focal length. Most of the zoom lenses in that test were done at, or near, their widest focal length since we were concentrating on the wider angle…
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Wide-Angle Micro 4/3 Imatest Results
Note: The results for standard range m4/3 lenses and zooms at 25mm are in the next article. A lot of Sony users liked seeing some Imatest results for NEX lenses, and some micro 4/3 users asked us to do the same thing. That’s a more complicated undertaking for several reasons. First, there is a much…
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Quick Tamron 24-70 MTF Data
We got a couple of Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 VC in Canon mount today and I was able to compare them, very briefly, with the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L. The Tamron is not quite the range of the Canon on the long end, clearly a few mm shorter than Canon (which is clearly a couple of mm short of 70mm). For anyone…
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“D” resolution tests
It’s been kind of an exciting couple of weeks, with 3 major new SLRs released and a couple of more on the way. There are plenty of people out there who are doing in-depth reviews, touting the greatness of the new cameras, and trashing them online without having touched one (My favorite so far is…
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G1X Imatest Results
Many of you know there’s nothing I enjoy more than doing meaningless tests just out of curiosity. I tend to not publish most of them because I figure nobody but me is really interested, but I’ll throw this one out there. We got our first batch of Canon G1X cameras in. I’ll be blunt: I don’t…