Lensrentals Blog
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Finally Got Around Touit
I was lucky enough to be invited to New York for Zeiss’ Touit lens release and they were kind enough to loan me a 32mm f/1.8 lens in Sony E mount to experiment with. Unfortunately being away during our busiest repair season got me behind and I’ve only just now had a chance to experiment with the…
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A Few Easy Lens Dustings
I get asked about 15 times a week, “How can I get the dust out of my lens?” The right answer is you don’t. All lenses have dust in them and it doesn’t affect the images at all 99% of the time. Even if you clean it all out, it will be back after you use the lens a few times. There are occasionally…
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How to Ruin Your (or Our) Gear in 5 Minutes (Without Water)
If there hasn’t been a Color Run 5k or 10k race near you, there probably will be soon. And with all that color, you certainly want to take some pictures, right? Not with your camera you don’t (and not with ours either). I’m never one to worry much about lens dust. I’ve written about why you…
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First Look: Rokinon 24mm f/3.5 Tilt-Shift – Part 2.
When we optically tested the RokiBowYang tilt shift, I mentioned that my recommendation was tempered by wanting to see how it was built. Parts and repairs, at least in the U. S., are nonexistent and the price is a bit high for me to consider it a disposable, like the 14mm RokiBowYang. So first…
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First Look: Rokinon 24mm f/3.5 Tilt-Shift Lens – Part 1
The release of the Rokinon 24mm f/3.5 Tilt-shift lens (also branded as Samyang or Bower) has created quite a bit of excitement. For Canon and Nikon shooters, it offers a 24mm tilt-shift alternative for around half the price of the brand name lenses. For shooters of other systems, it offers a…
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Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM vs. Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC
There is a bit of confusion regarding the names of the old versus new version of Sigma’s 30mm DX (crop sensor) lens. The original version is officially the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM, while the new one is the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM A1. I think. I do want to thank them for not calling it the 30mm…
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Zeiss ZE 135mm f/2 vs. Canon 135mm f/2L
We had a chance a few days ago to look at the first copy of the Zeiss 135mm APO-Sonnar CP.2 lens, but today received several copies of the 135mm APO-Sonnar in ZE (Canon) mount. I’ve been wanting to play with it personally, of course, but more to the point wanted the chance to test multiple copies,…
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First Look: Zeiss CP.2 135mm T2.1
Of course, being a photo guy who loves shooting at 135mm, I can’t wait to get my hands on the photo version of the new Zeiss 135mm lens. I don’t have that yet, but we did get the CP.2 Cine version of the lens, the Zeiss CP.2 135mm T2.1 in today. In addition to making our video shooters all drool,…
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How a Ballhead Works
This will probably be of limited interest to most of you, but we like to know how things work, not just how well they work. Since we haven’t had any lenses or cameras to take apart lately, we thought we’d take a couple of pictures when we disassembled a ballhead in case any of you were interested.…
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First Look: Zeiss CZ.2 70-200mm T2.9
Ah, as if the 70-200 zoom field wasn’t crowded enough, with each camera maker having one or four along with the Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 VC and the Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 OS, but Tyler decided we have to stock yet another one. So today I have to test yet another 70-200mm, the Zeiss 70-200 T2.9 CP.2. ##…
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Sharpening Maps and Masks
Obviously I’m a gearhead, so I like to know the traits of the lenses I shoot with. I want to know what aperture gives maximal corner sharpness, for example, whether the plane of focus is curved or flat, where the distortion changes in a zoom, which end of the zoom range or focusing distance is the…
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Wavelength-Detecting Sensor Eliminates Bayer Filter, Triples Resolution
> _“Current camera sensor technology is completely backwards.” Dr. Eno Lirpa_ Everyone knows that in order to generate color, a digital camera’s sensor is overlaid with a Bayer filter. The filter makes each pixel sensitive to either red, blue, or green light. Software than interpolates this red,…