In a recent post I talked about the minor difficulty of making a meaningful comparison between different cameras’ ability to acquire and track focus. This brought to mind a more general problem about hardware comparisons and the mismatch between what photographers need to know, and what metrics they end up discussing. Nerdy photographers (rather than …
A standardised comparison of extreme autofocus capability Many photographic assignments demand effective operation in near-dark conditions. Sometimes it’s in the brief; at others the need arises unexpectedly: nature abhors a vacuum as surely as life hates an exact schedule. Suddenly the photographer finds themselves at the limit of their equipment’s capability: maximum aperture, uncomfortably high …
Until you know for sure, it’s confusing to know who to believe. Is a 50mm f1.4 lens equivalent to a 75mm f1.8 on APS-C? Are Micro FourThirds sensors two stops noisier than full frame sensors? Can you get the ‘medium format drop-focus look’ on APS-C by using a two stop faster lens? If you want …
It’s hard to find a title for this article. It’s also not immediately obvious why this lens should have risen above its peers. Historically there’s been a distinct pecking order for lens reputation: in first place, any third party lens made by Leica and Zeiss; in second place, native glass – first Canon, then Nikon; …
White Label Chinese 50mm f1.1 v Brightin Star 50mm f0.95 v Minolta 58mm f1.2 In the beginning, fast lenses were needed to gather light to quicken exposure times, freeing photographers to shoot spontaneously – to move, and to capture motion. Faster lenses enabled them to work in darker environments and use higher quality, less sensitive …
Tamron SP 35mm VC f1.8 v Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art DG HSM At maximum aperture, and a focal distance of 10m, the Sigma has distinctly sharper corners, with resolution dropping off rapidly in Zone D, but substantially more vignette. The Tamron has a more gradually tapering performance both in terms of vignette and resolution, but …
Adaptation of lenses for smaller formats, with correspondingly smaller image circles, involves advantages and trade-offs: adapted lenses are typically more varied, plentiful, smaller and cheaper – but inevitably suffer from compatibility issues, ranging from the trivial to the insuperable. The GFX 44x33mm sensor lies between the classic 35mm ‘full-frame’ and 645 medium formats. As well …
Exposure: Understanding Aperture, Shutter and ISO The very first photograph and the most recently taken, a few picoseconds ago – in fact every photograph taken and every photograph that will be taken in every possible future – was, is and will be made by opening a hole of variable size and allowing light to fall …
Resolution: Unshifted For comparison we here include a capture at f5.6 by the Panasonic Lumix-S 20-60mm kit lens with lens profiling turned on.
Light Handling & Flare There’s more to a lens than resolution, so we’ll come to that last. Light angles are actually a dominant property of the behaviour of shift lenses on both sides of the iris – especially when comparing vintage lenses with period coatings. The Olympus 35mm Shift here tested has been remounted to …
