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Four Studio Photography Techniques to Give a Try This Winter
For many of people, February is the slow month for their photography. Cold weather and gray skies generally shun away inspiration, leaving many of us waiting until the end of it before we’re back out there being creative. That said, winter months can also be perfect for honing your studio skills,…
Things You Didn’t Want to Know About Zoom Lenses
The intersection (perhaps collision is a better word) of art and science is interesting. The scientist says “your impression is not as important as my facts.” The artists say “my impression is all that matters.” Imaging is that way. The photographer or videographer getting the look he wants from a…
First Impressions of the New Canon C700
I’ll preface this piece by saying we’re still waiting for a lot of the equipment for the Canon C700 to be available, so it’s only fair to call this more of a First Impressions than an actual review. However, Canon’s C700 is a highly-anticipated product, so I thought I’d take a barebones kit out for…
MTF Tests for the Sigma BBL: The Big, Beautiful, 85mm Art Lens
Yes, I know the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art lens just too big for you; reading the online forums, you’d think it was about the same size and weight and a 600mm f/4 lens. It’s not, of course, although it is a hefty lens at nearly 40 ounces. But that’s just a few ounces more than a Canon 85mm f/1.2…
A Look Into the New Sony FS7 Mark II
We inspect a lot of video cameras, and design flaws tend to catch our eye quickly and consistently slow the inspection process. To the casual user, removing a hard-to-reach memory card once or twice is a mild inconvenience — one that they might not even give a conscious thought. To a full-time…
Opening up the New Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II
As with most new lenses, a Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II made it’s way back to the repair department for an initial tear-down. I know there’s some randomness as to what we tear down, but we have some reasons for doing these. Sometimes, like with this new Canon, it’s simply because we know…
Lensrentals.com Review of the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art Series Lens
The most anticipated lens of 2016 didn’t come from Sony, Canon or Nikon. But rather, Sigma finally answered so many people’s request and released the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art series lens. While Roger will be covering the MTF charts and nitty gritty numbers of the lens once we get enough stock, we still…
An Overview Of The Fuji X-T2 For Video
It seems that all the video shooters I know have already chosen their go-to camera system. It’s the brand or camera body that calls to them with an immutable Siren’s song. They have memorized the spec sheets, know every minute curve of every button, and can change settings three menus deep without…
RED Weapon Helium 8K S35 Hands-on or: DSMC2 and You
To be perfectly honest, this article started purely as an excuse for me to play with a carbon fiber 8K RED Weapon. I figured I’d take it out for a weekend, shoot some footage, melt my computer trying to edit it, write a hands-on review, and be done with it. Gradually, though, I realized that a…
An Update and Comparison of the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS
About a month ago, Roger posted his MTF bench results for the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED AF-S VR (TL;DR: it’s optically superb), and down in the comments there were some requests to compare it not only to the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II in the article, but also to the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM…
Third Party Ultra-Wide Lenses MTF Comparison
Contrary to what most people believe, we do pay some attention when people ask us to do MTF testing on certain lenses. I’m not saying we do it, but we do pay attention to the requests and when we have some downtime will look at that request lists and see if there’s something on it we can get to.…
Front Element Lens Protection Revisited
The internet is an interesting resource. Once you’ve put a reference up, it’s there forever. Over time, things may change, but that 10-year-old article doesn’t. A few weeks ago someone used some old articles I’d written (1, 2, 3) as a reason why he doesn’t use protective UV filters. They claimed I…