Lensrentals Blog
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Canon 11-24 f/4 L MTF Tests
I’ll be honest. I’m pretty excited about the Canon 11-24mm f/4 L lens. I love shooting ultra-wide and the chance to shoot this wide with a rectilinear lens on a full-frame camera has me pretty excited. But I’m also very aware of how near-impossibly difficult designing a lens this wide would be, so…
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Just the Lenses: Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8
Our Just the Lenses posts are optical tests where we compare various lenses on the optical bench. Unlike DxO or Imatest test results, no cameras are involved, eliminating one of the major variables. It’s particularly useful when we’re looking at third-party lenses that can be used on various…
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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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Addendum to the Nikon 300 f/4E PF ED VR Test
When I posted our Imatest results from the single copy of the Nikon 300 f/4E PF ED VR that we had received, I pointed out that the copy was slightly decentered and therefore the results were questionable. We got a second copy of the lens in today, and this one was perfectly centered. I had planned…
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The Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Test: Or Why I Don’t Test Just One Copy
As most of you know, we generally test multiple copies of a lens when we evaluate it, simply because we are so aware of copy-to-copy variation. But I got caught between a rock and a hard place this week. We received exactly one copy of the new Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR lens and the purchasing…
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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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More Canon 400m DO II Comparisons
In an earlier post we were most impressed with how much better the new Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II resolved compared to the original version. I mentioned that we hadn’t been able to get many copies and didn’t have time to do any other comparisons right then, but that we would do more as soon as we…
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Cotton. Sidney Cotton.
_“He caused a lot of trouble over here, you know.”_ A librarian at the Royal Aeronautical Society, when asked for references on Sydney Cotton. It’s been a while since I did a history article. I love writing about the true “characters” of photography, and to be honest, I hadn’t stumbled across…
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A Thinner Sensor Stack
A few months ago, before my hiatus from blogging, we did a series of articles showing the effect that a thick sensor stack (the glass above the sensor) had when we use adapted lenses designed for a thin sensor stack. The first one was mostly about theory, the second about when it was likely to…
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A Brief 400mm Comparison
Canon shooters have a bit of 400mm excitement right now. The biggest news, of course, is the release of the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS II lens, replacing the original version that’s had a very long, successful run. Not quite so much excitement was generated by the release of the 400mm f/4 DO IS II…
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Christmas Special – Save 25% on Rentals
Do your holiday plans or New Year’s resolutions involve photography? If you’ve been excitedly waiting to use a certain piece of gear, now is the best time to try something for the first time. Use promo code HOLIDAYS to save 25% off any rental this season from December 23rd to January 2nd. - Orders…
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One, Single Samsung NX-1 Test
I just want to be clear, before we get started, this is not an NX-1 review. It’s not even a complete optical test. It’s simply me answering a single question: is this new Samsung worth further investigation from an optics/image quality standpoint? Samsung’s 28.2 megapixel, APS-C backlit sensor…