Category: Teardowns and Disassembly
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The Great 400mm f/2.8 Teardown Comparison. Part 1 – The Canon 400mm f/2.8 L IS III
We tend to not publish tear-downs of super-telephoto lenses. They’re big and heavy, always well made and well engineered, like you would expect in something that costs as much as a used car. Big, heavy, and boring don’t make for an interesting teardown. So we take them apart, make our in-house repair manual, and don’t put […]
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Disassembly of the Canon RF 50mm f1.2L
It is the best of lenses, it is the worst of lenses, it is the lens of perfection, it is the lens of complexity, it is the lens of new technology, it may be the lens of non-repairability. A little while ago, Canon released the computer generated MTF charts for the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2 lens. Despite my ambivalence about […]
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Teardown of the Nikon Z7 Mirrorless Camera
We published our teardown of the Canon EOS-R and then had to decide which of the Nikon Z cameras to do. We decided to go with the top-end Nikon Z7. The Nikon Z6 would be the more appropriate comparison from a price standpoint; the Nikon Z6 is retailing for $2145, the Canon EOS-R for $2299, […]
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Teardown of the Canon EOS R Mirrorless Camera
I’ve wanted to look inside the new Canon and Nikon mirrorless cameras since the moment they were announced, so I’m probably more excited about this than you guys are. I’m really not sure what to expect. Early on, when we took apart a Sony A7R, we were struck by how clean and straightforward mirrorless cameras […]
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Lens Teardowns and Comparisons of the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II and III
Years ago, I introduced Roger’s Law of New Product Introduction AKA The Fanboy Uncertainty Principle. But what about new releases that really aren’t new? Usually, they fail to reach sufficient quantum energy to generate much of an opinion either way. They are the dark matter of photography, detectable only by the size of B&H’s website. It has been my […]
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Please, Don’t Take Our Photography and Video Gear to Burning Man
Each year around this time, we’re faced with what we call a ‘doomsday’ event within the office; where dozens of our camera, lenses and other gear arrive back from rental orders, destroyed by the environment. And while our customer base is amazing, and often accept their repairs and replacement costs to the destroyed gear, each […]
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Nearly Complete Teardown of The Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS II
So, some things happened recently. We got stock on Canon EF 70-200 f/4L IS II lenses, and even though they go out on rental the day we get them in stock, we were able to do MTF testing on them. The very low sample variation we saw made us want to take one apart and […]
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Taking Apart The Sony A7rIII – In Search of Better Weather Sealing
Weather resistant – A term that consumers falsely define as ‘weatherproof’ and camera companies accurately define as ‘the warranty doesn’t cover water damage’. The Cynic’s Photography Dictionary The Sony A7R III has been out for quite a while. Generally, it’s a superbly popular camera with excellent reviews. We were busy moving to a bigger office, […]
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Taking Apart the Sigma Cine 85mm T1.5 FF Lens
We’ve been impressed with the Sigma Cine lenses. We weren’t surprised that they’re generally sharper than classic Cine primes; that’s what we’ve come to expect from Sigma. We were pleasantly surprised by the smoothness of focusing and aperture and the apparent build quality. Since we’d previously done teardowns of the Zeiss 85mm T1.5 CP.2 and Rokinon Xeen […]
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Taking Apart the Zeiss 85mm T2.1 CP.3 Cinema Lens
Long ago, in an office far, far away we did a teardown of the Zeiss 85mm CP.2 lens. Since we’ve already seen the earlier model, we thought it would be interesting to take a peek inside the new Zeiss 85mm CP.3 lens as well. We’re going to have to work on them eventually, and it’s always […]
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Completing the Teardown of the Sony FE 70-200 f/2.8 GM OSS: Part II
You probably shouldn’t read this article unless you’ve at least skimmed through Part 1. To summarize, we had a Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens that had been dropped and no longer would focus. We tore it down both to see if we could repair it and to see what-all was up inside there. In the […]
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Lens Teardown of the Complicated Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS: Part I
A lot of you are aware that we’ve been rather puzzled by the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens. It didn’t test like we expected it to, which led us to reevaluate our testing methods with outside consultants (we’re now comfortable they are valid, BTW), question the accuracy of different types of autofocus, and search […]