Lenses and Optics

The Limits of Variation

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A few people were more than a little amused that I, the ultimate pixel-peeper, wrote an article demonstrating that all lenses and all cameras vary a bit; that you can’t find the ultimately sharpest lens.  Each individual copy of a given lens is a little different from the other copies. A single copy will behave […]

Lenses and Optics

Notes on Lens and Camera Variation

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A funny thing happened when I opened Lensrentals and started getting 6 or 10 copies of each lens: I found out they weren’t all the same. Not quite. And each of those copies behaved a bit different on different cameras. I wrote a couple of articles about this: This Lens is Soft and Other Myths […]

History of Photography

Lens Genealogy – Part 2

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For those who missed all the excitement, in Part 1 of this series I discussed that almost all modern SLR lenses derive from one of 6 types of lenses that were basically in use by the 1920s. Part 1 covered the first three lenses: the Symmetrical, Double Gauss, and Petzval lenses. Those three lenses give […]

Equipment

The Rapple 4000 (or Roger designs the perfect camera)

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I had an epiphany of sorts this weekend. I took home the new Schneider 50mm f/2.8 Super Angulon. For those of you not in the loop, this is a 50mm tilt-shift SLR lens made by a company that is best known for it’s Cinema lenses (along with filters, glass, and some other stuff). The point […]

Roger's Corner

58 Lines by 36 Photographers

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I loves me some quotes, so I thought I’d gather up my favorites and share them. I tried to get to 88 lines, wanting to pay tribute to the ultimate 80’s cult band, the Nails (or the less classic “88 lines about 44 Simpsons“). But when the dust settled I only came up with 58 […]

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