Category: Teardowns and Disassembly
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Canon 35mm f/1.4 Mk II Teardown
As soon as we optically tested the Canon 35mm f/1.4 Mk II lens we couldn’t wait to tear into one for a couple of reasons. One was that Canon has been making a lot of interesting advances in lens mechanics lately, so we’re always excited to look inside their new lenses. Another was that Canon…
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Cine Lens Teardown Comparison: Zeiss 85mm CP.2 T2.1 and Rokinon Xeen 85mm T1.5
I was pretty excited when I first heard about the Rokinon Xeen line of Cinema lenses. For several years now, Samyang / Rokinon photography lenses have given photographers with reasonable expectations some superb alternatives. They sell optically excellent lenses at amazingly low prices. There are…
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Canon 5Ds Teardown
When Lensrentals.com first got the first Canon 5Ds and 5D sr cameras in stock, Aaron and I immediately started screaming that we wanted to take one apart. It turns out we received enough 5Ds cameras to let us have a day with one to do just that. Of course, we don’t expect to find out anything…
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The Space Lens Mystery Screw
We get to do some fun things through our testing company, Olaf Optical Testing. A lot of it I can’t talk about but sometimes we get a project that we can share. One of these came up recently when Matt Leeg asked us if we were interested in testing and cleaning an Angenieux 25mm f/0.95 lens that was…
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Tamron 15-30 f/2.8 Di VC Partial Teardown
We’ve become fans of the Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 Di VC USD lens since we first tested it optically, but we haven’t really been inside of one yet. It’s not that we weren’t curious. We’ve just been trying to get through the week before and after Memorial Day, typically one of the busier times of the…
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Tearing Down the Sony 24-70 f/4 ZA OSS Vario Tessar
Those of you who read our teardowns know that we commonly are tearing down Canon or Nikon mount lenses. The reasons are pretty simple and it basically comes down to the fact that we have a lot more of those lenses. If we have a lot more it’s less of a problem to take a couple out of stock for a…
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Canon 100-400mm IS L Mk II Teardown: Best Built Lens Ever?
You know Aaron and I love doing teardowns of almost anything. The two types we look forward to most, though, are Sony cameras and Canon lenses, because those tend to be on the cutting edge of engineering elegance. For a couple of weeks now, we’ve been wanting to sink our screwdrivers into the new…
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The A7II Teardown: A Look Inside Sony’s New Camera
A while back we did a teardown of the Sony A7r, and were very impressed with its clean modular design. Now that Sony has released the A7 II we thought a similar teardown would be worthwhile. There are certainly going to be some differences. First among them, of course, is that the new camera has…
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Cracking Open the 7D II
OK, I have to admit I really like the Canon 7D Mark II. I didn’t want to because it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to see the new Canon chip foundry that would be cranking out high-resolution sensors. But despite wanting to hate the 22-megapixel APS-C camera, after a fairly short exposure to the…
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Of Course We Took One Apart
This is a Geek Article. Many of you don’t understand the term ‘Geek’ properly, so perhaps this will help. As the graph shows, if you aren’t both intelligent and obsessed with photo gear, you won’t enjoy this article.
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Some Holiday Lens Mutilation
A couple of weeks ago I got an email asking if we would be willing to take some lenses, remove the electronics, fix the aperture wide-open, and permanently lock them at infinity focus. It seems the person who needed this done was having trouble finding a legitimate repair shop or service center…
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The A7R teardown: A look inside Sony’s awesome full-frame mirrorless camera
- Do not try this at home. This post was made by semi-trained, semi-professional repair technicians who sort of know what they’re doing. - The following blog post contains graphic images of the inside of a very nice camera. If such things make you squeamish, don’t read further. - No cameras were…