241–250 of 291 posts
I have the Canon 50mm/f1.8 aka the "Nifty Fifty". Got it a few years ago when it was still under $100. At the time, it was the cheapest prime lens you could but. I really like the photos I get with that lens.
For a lot of shots I want the specific look of ƒ/2.0 on a decent prime lens. I don't actually want an aperture wider than that.
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Half of reason I even bother with full frame is wide open. Any smartphone these days can give perfectly good sharp photos. I lug the beast around to get shots you can't get with a smartphone.
Shooting wide open is fashionable because it’s a sign of expensive gear. Once artificial bokeh is perfected I expect people will stop obsessing over blurry backgrounds.
What I don't understand isn't the design of the lenses, which are chasing ever-tightening windows of precision in a competetive market with high margins and discriminating consumers. Of course they're going to be overdesigned. What gets me is that lens distortion is a fully reversible convolution. It's not lossy, at all. Or rather, it's only lossy in the sense that the existing quantization in the sensor is already l…
A great example of this is DiffuserCam [1], which uses a diffuser as a “lens”, combined with a carefully measured point spread function (PSF) of a single point for each axial plane to estimate the “true” PSF that actually varies throughout the entire volume. So although in this work they estimate the reconstruction by making a translational invariance assumption, this is done for practical reasons and quality is lost.
To fully recover a lossless image as you suggest, one would have to measure a PSF for each point in the volume.
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That's basically what micro 4/3 cameras are doing. As far as I know they all can do distortion correction in-camera for JPEG output, and the prime lenses are generally quite cheap and very compact. For example Panasonic has a 25mm f/1.7 lens that is 125 grams and costs $150 brand new. Of course you can also buy similar focal length lenses that are huge and weigh over a pound, while spending $1500+. But I don't know h…
I disagree. The Panasonic 25mm f/1.7 is equivalent to a 50mm f3.4 on full frame. For 150g on full-frame you can get a 50mm 1.8 , at a cost of 150$ brand new. So on full frame at a similar weight and at the same price you get superior optics. If you really care about the weight, the 40mm 2.8 has the same weight and the same price but superior optics again. All modern FF cameras do distortion correction too. M4/3 lense…
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> DPReview largely seems to write for the crowd that doesn't even care about the art aspect and just wants validation that they have better photo gear than others. DPReview, FStoppers, PetaPixel, and back in before the web the Popular Photography and Modern Photography magazines. There's a big market for prosumer gear that costs a lot, has ideal technical specs, and hangs around the owner's neck like a prize. Of cour…
A while ago I read a comment that was really eye opener: most big YouTube photography channels out there are mostly about gear, not about "taking pictures". It shows how much money the industry moves (or how prevalent GAS is).
Most people putting out high-production-value videos regularly aren't doing it for fun or to make the world a better place; they're closely watching how much money they make from it.
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Many of the Ls are metal on the inside. A tough lightweight plastic shell can have major advantages (lighter, impact resistance, etc.) For a great example of a sharp modern L, check out the 16-35 f/4 IS. I'm not an ultra wide photographer by nature, but that lens impresses me each time it is called-upon. Choosing lenses, in the long run, is such a personal choice. My favorite first came to market in the early 1990s (…
Yeah I’ve got a few of the L lenses and am impressed by them. I think the 50mm f/1.2 is particularly known for being soft though. 35mm f/1.4 - super sharp, great quality lens. 100-400 f/3.5-5.6 II - amazing lens. Very sharp and focuses very fast. I often use this with a canon multiplier as well for wildlife shots. For the price it’s amazing. 16-35 f/4 IS - this is such a great landscape lens.
Wide open in heavy snowfall at night, there's nothing I've experienced like it. Not quite life-changing, but it's real good.
Couldn't justify a purchase, but I may have purchased a used 1.4 a month later..... The focus-falloff, rendering, and out-of-focus elements aren't the same, but it's still wonderful in the dark and inexpensive-enough to be replaced if I kill it. Someday, the stars will align and I'll work with a 1.2 again.
My desert-island lens is a (used) 400 f/5.6. Someday I'll try the 100-400, but worry about the telescoping assembly ingesting moisture and dust in the field.
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Seems right for a used Civic in good working condition. And it will get you wherever the beautiful shots are without giving trouble.
Huh. I’ve never owned a car or tried to buy one—I live in NYC and I never got around to getting a driver’s license. I was just under the impression cars cost many times that much at minimum.
$2000 could easily get a 15 year old Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla or similar compact car with a reputation for longevity, without major issues. Shopping in that price range can, however be risky if you're not mechanically inclined enough to inspect the condition of the car and don't have the aid of someone who is.
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The Thing is probably my favorite movie and the practical creature effects are still largely considered the gold standard of the craft. But in 2K the artificiality is getting a lot more noticeable and while I will certainly be getting it in 4K I'm starting to realize that maybe 720p is the best way to view it for the sake of full immersion. YMMV.
Contrasting that to the digital remaster (presumably first for DVD) which is AMAZING. They did an incredible job restoring the image.
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And some TVs only offer low latency on certain inputs, so it pays to do some research.
Research sounds like a huge time investment. Just read the manual.
Reading the manual doesn't help when your TV doesn't have a fast mode. And many don't.
There is a multitude of practical reasons. First of all, modern digital sensors offer resolutions far beyond what normal film material would offer. So 35mm cameras easily beat the resolution of classical medium format film. You need lenses to match that resolution. Then there are new requirements like AF and optical image stabilisation. With classical prime lenses, focussing often would move the whole lens forward an…
I shoot with a nice, but old, MF camera and prime lens on a tripod and then do wet prints (usually) or drum scans (rarely). Based on close examination of drum scans, I estimate my setup gives images of around 60-80 megapixels. Knock that down somewhat for color. This is a bit lower than the quoted resolution for the film I use, if you read the spec sheet.
Rough comparison of digital vs film leads me to conclude that you can’t just compare the camera resolution against the film scan resolution. Maybe it’s the low-pass filter / Bayer filter, but a film scan will have the same image quality as a raw digital photo of somewhat larger size (say, 50%).
So if you take a high-end full-frame digital camera with a 24x36mm sensor, you get 50 megapixels, and my film setup will get you around the same number of pixels when shooting color, but the film scans will be sharper. The film is 4x the area—56x70mm. So it’s close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a top-of-the-line full-frame digital camera could beat a 645. But 645 is the smallest of the medium format sizes, and digital wouldn’t be beating it by a huge margin. It’s a bit subjective, because the transfer functions for digital and film are so different and there’s no obvious correct way to compare them mathematically.
That said, digital will easily win at higher ISOs.