Category Testing Lenses: Best Individual Focus MTF Curves | Lensrentals Blog

Equipment

Testing Lenses: Best Individual Focus MTF Curves

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OK, in the last post we did something useful, but rather boring: we looked at how MTF changes when lenses are stopped down. Today we’re going to use a more powerful optical bench tool, the MTF vs. Field vs. Focus. Unless you work in a metrology lab (and probably not even then, very few are performing […]

Stopped down MTF Tests of cineLenses

Geek Articles

Testing Lenses: Stopped-Down MTF Curves

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For quite a while now we’ve been publishing our MTF curves. They’ve always been the same thing; at least ten copies of each lens, in 4 rotations, and measured at the widest aperture. The reasons for that are (to us) very straightforward. Our purpose in doing the tests is to establish reasonable expectations, learn what type […]

Equipment

Canon’s Holy Grail – Using the Canon 200mm f/1.8 L USM

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Certainly, you’re probably aware of Canon’s 85mm f/1.2L, and the Canon 50mm f/1.2L, but Canon has a long history of incredibly fast lenses, many of which that have since seemingly disappeared off of the face of the Earth. Many of them are now called the Holy Grails of Canon Glass and for legitimate reasons. Among […]

8K Sensor and Lens Changes

Geek Articles

The 8K Conundrum – When Bad Lenses Mount Good Sensors

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This is a guest post from Brandon Dube, whose name you’ve seen on many of our articles. In addition to his metrology work, he also does high fidelity numerical optical simulation, and spends his summers at places like NASA/JPL working on the cameras that are going in the Mars 2020 rover. This may be our […]

Taking apart a Minolta Lens

Equipment

The Minolta 40-80mm f/2.8 Gearbox Zoom; The Clockwork Lens

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There were giants in the earth in those days . . . They were mighty men, men of renown.  Genesis 6:4 I’ve always been fascinated by the history of lenses. I write about it a lot. To me, the most fascinating items are those made many years ago, with what we would consider wholly inadequate technology, which did things […]

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