Olympus 25 mm f2.8 pancake lens review: small really is beautiful
Wednesday 15 July 2009 Filed in: Reviews
I love
pancakes. There is no better breakfast. But surely
there have to be much better lenses than the
flattened and presumably optically compromised
pancake lenses that the likes of Pentax and Olympus
are serving up? With that in mind, I set out to get a
taste of the Olympus 25mm f2.8 pancake lens made for
the four-thirds mount, which, given the 2x crop
factor due to the four-thirds sensor size, translates
into the equivalent of a normal 50 mm lens on a 35 mm
full-frame camera.
From a practical point of view, small is nearly always more desirable when it comes to portability but, almost inevitably, in photography small is a signal that image quality has been sacrificed on the altar of convenience. Read More...
From a practical point of view, small is nearly always more desirable when it comes to portability but, almost inevitably, in photography small is a signal that image quality has been sacrificed on the altar of convenience. Read More...
Canon 5D Mark II: great mind, shame about the body
Saturday 20 June 2009 Filed in: Reviews
But Canon, bless their socks, just seemed to have the innovative edge: autofocus, in particular, was where they shone. Then image stabilization in lenses. Both significant attributes for a wildlife photographer. And, finally, when it came to digital, there they were leading the pack again. The Canon D30 was, and remains, a masterful camera. Forget that it was made of plastic, had a miniscule 3 megapixels and cost me $9000 New Zealand dollars: per pixel, I don’t think there has ever been a better camera.
Fast forward to 2009: the Canon 5D Mark II finally arrives in New Zealand. Read More...
Canon 70-300 DO Lens: Good Concept, Shame about the Contradiction
Sunday 11 May 2008 Filed in: Reviews
A recent
review of the Canon 70-300 DO lens in
Popular Photography has prompted me to
report my own experience with this much-maligned
lens.
A portable telephoto is pretty much an oxymoron: an inevitable compromise between two contradictory concepts. For moving about, typically smaller and lighter are better. For image quality in a 300 mm lens, usually larger is better, with more glass correlating with better light gathering ability.
Enter Canon’s DO lenses. The DO stands for diffractive optics, and these are the first lenses from any manufacturer (and at this stage there are only two: the 400 f4 DO IS USM and the 70-300 f4.5-5.6 DO IS USM) to employ a grate in the lens elements that bends the incoming light to a greater extent than normal refractive lens elements, thereby allowing the lens to be smaller and largely free of the chromatic aberrations that plague digital photography (usually seen as purple fringing along high contrast edges).
First introduced in 2004, the Canon 70-300 DO IS USM lens (with a street price of around $1200 USD) promised to deliver the Holy Grail in the world of the portable telephoto zoom: a small, compact lens that could produce stellar image quality. Not only that, Canon threw in the very latest image stabilization technology (supposedly making you at least three stops steadier than you would otherwise be handheld), meaning that you could leave the tripod at home. It all seemed far too good to be true – and, in essence, it was. Read More...
A portable telephoto is pretty much an oxymoron: an inevitable compromise between two contradictory concepts. For moving about, typically smaller and lighter are better. For image quality in a 300 mm lens, usually larger is better, with more glass correlating with better light gathering ability.
Enter Canon’s DO lenses. The DO stands for diffractive optics, and these are the first lenses from any manufacturer (and at this stage there are only two: the 400 f4 DO IS USM and the 70-300 f4.5-5.6 DO IS USM) to employ a grate in the lens elements that bends the incoming light to a greater extent than normal refractive lens elements, thereby allowing the lens to be smaller and largely free of the chromatic aberrations that plague digital photography (usually seen as purple fringing along high contrast edges).
First introduced in 2004, the Canon 70-300 DO IS USM lens (with a street price of around $1200 USD) promised to deliver the Holy Grail in the world of the portable telephoto zoom: a small, compact lens that could produce stellar image quality. Not only that, Canon threw in the very latest image stabilization technology (supposedly making you at least three stops steadier than you would otherwise be handheld), meaning that you could leave the tripod at home. It all seemed far too good to be true – and, in essence, it was. Read More...
Canon 24-70 mm f2.8 L vs Canon 24-105 mm f4 L IS
Saturday 08 March 2008 Filed in: Reviews
There is
probably no more frequently asked question on
photography forums than what is the better lens when
comparing Canon's two professional mid-range zooms.
These discussions are invariably circular and pretty
much get nowhere, like an old married couple arguing:
"he said..." "she said..." "he said..." etc,
ad
infinitum. Typically they end
up confirming what we already know at the start: the
Canon 24-70 f2.8 L is one stop faster and somewhat
bigger; the Canon 24-105 f4 L has image stabilization
(IS) built into the lens and has more reach on the
long end. They are both built like tanks. They both
cost a similar amount (maybe not an arm and a leg
when you consider their quality, but the equivalent
of a hand and a few toes anyway). One's tempted to
say, "You pays ya money and you makes ya choice."
But what choice should you make? Read More...
But what choice should you make? Read More...
Leica D Summilux 25mm f1.4 – Review
Monday 25 February 2008 Filed in: Reviews
This is
a remarkably squat, unexpectedly heavy
lens. If it were a
member of a rugby team, there is no doubt that it
would be a front-row prop. But this is no
thick-necked thug capable of doing only a single
job. Defying its build, it shows more of the
finesse of a ballet dancer. Read
More...