Category: Technical Discussions
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You CAN Correct It In Post, but . . .
## . . . . there is no free lunch. I hear this about 20 times a day and it’s true: “Yes, it has a lot of distortion, but that’s easy to correct in post.” It’s a totally true statement. Unfortunately, way too often, the complete statement goes like this: “I got it because it has such high…
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Quick Resolution Tests on Two New 70-200s
We got stock on two new 70-200mm lenses this week: the Nikon 70-200 f/4 VR and the Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 VC. I would have loved to do some side-by-side comparisons. They’re priced similarly and I expect a lot of Nikon shooters will be choosing between these two since both are quite a bit less…
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A Quick 6D AF Test
A while back we did a series of articles and found that certain Canon lenses on the newest Canon cameras (5DIII and 1Dx) autofocused more accurately when tested for single shot stills using center point AF only. These combinations acutally had as accurate AF as what we could obtain with Live View.…
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The Panasonic 35-100 f/2.8 First Impression: The Glass is 87.6% Full
I’ve been waiting for the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 OIS lens since, well, since the Panasonic 12-35 f/2.8 lens came out. Much to my surprise, Tyler had 7 copies sitting on my desk this morning. As usual when something like this arrives I only had a few hours before the packers would start screaming…
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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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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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Autofocus Reality Part 4: Nikon Full Frame
I started this series to simply demonstrate a well-known fact; that contrast detection autofocus in Live View was more accurate than standard Phase Detection autofocus for still subjects. It ended up being a bit more than I’d bargained for just with the Canon cameras. After that series was done, I…
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Canon Illumination Correction and Third-Party Lenses
I while back I put out a notice that the Sigma 150mm and 180mm OS Macros had an issue if you shot JPGs on a Canon 5D Mk III and left peripheral illumination correction on. The camera auto-corrected for vignetting that wasn’t there, leaving an interesting pattern with a dark center and lightened…
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A Tilted Element Demonstration
One thing we preach here a lot is that just because a dropped lens looks fine on the outside doesn’t mean it is fine. The other thing we preach a lot is that a tiny difference in the centering, tilt or placement of a single element can have a dramatic effect on image quality. Aaron made a great…
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Autofocus Reality Part 3B: Canon Cameras
Some days it’s good to be a geeky gear-head. This is one of them because a) I finished testing autofocus on all of the Canon camera bodies we had, b) I actually found out some interesting stuff, and c) I got worked up about camera marketers while doing it, so I have my next post in the works…
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Autofocus Reality Part 3A: Canon Lenses
Sometimes I get to write cool, new stuff. Sometimes there’s just grunt work to be done, usually of my own making. This is one of those times. To bring you up to date if you’ve landed here first, this is how I got here. Autofocus Reality Part 1 showed that on center-point, single-shot autofocus,…
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Autofocus Reality Part 2: One vs. Two, Old vs. New
The first part of this series confirmed what we already new: Live view focus is more accurate than phase detection AF. This part is going to (sort of) look at something I’ve wondered about along with some related old wives’ tales. And unlike the first article, at the end of this we’ll have learned…