Blog

Now the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM Lens enters the market. Being a prime Canon L Series Lens, the Canon 50 f/1.2 far exceeds all existing Canon 50mm lenses in nearly all aspects - including three negative ones: size, weight and price. Since Canon already has a 50mm f/1.4 lens, they would not release a slightly wider aperture version at a far higher price, size and weight without offering significantly better features and image quality. Otherwise, people simply would not buy the lens. The question is - are the actual differences enough?

Continue reading at The Digital Picture

Via PhotographyBLOG

Photographer Joe Reifer wrote a nice review of the new Lensbaby G3 selective focus SLR lens. Check it out at The Online Photographer.

Fucking hell! After over a year of searching, I finally found a Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality No. 2 Series IV soft focus lens! This was a revered pictorial lens and the inspiration for the Cooke PS945. I think it’ll be perfect for a portrait series I’ve been planning. I’ll have to get the shutter serviced, but I can’t wait to get my hands on this thing!

Expect sample shots soon. I’ve been meaning to rent the Cooke for a test drive anyway, so I’ll see if I can get some comparison images together (something I’ve been wanting to see but haven’t found).

There’s now a growing database of Leica’s lens codes for use on the M8. Why pay $120 and wait 6–8 weeks to have Leica code your lenses when you can do it yourself with a marker?

Check out this how-to by Mike Prevette on the Leica user forums for details.

Previous posts on the subject: Hacking Leica digital lens coding, Leica M lenses coding for digital, Free digital coding upgrade on new Leica lenses in US & CA

Via the ever-vigilant Auspicious Dragon Photostream

Flickr member bricolage.108 hacked a 35mm trashcam into a double-sided lens/pinhole monster. He writes:

If using a normal film roll this camera takes redscaled ["redscale" is where you shoot the film backwards, so the light gets filtered through the antihalation layers before hitting the emulsion and turns the image red/orange or yellow, depending on the film] pinholes from one side, and trashy lens shots on the other. It also makes doubles, exposing both sides of the film.

The same way if i redscale the roll first, i can take redcale shots using the lens and "normal" pinholes, on the same roll with the same camera.

I can, for example overlap the same subject using two "different cameras" and techniques or (and this i think it’s conceptually interesting) create (simultaneously) an image where the shot and what’s "behind the camera" are both visible.

Here’s an image he made with it, more here.

Flickr member Mr. Mikey Mike has made some gorgeous photos with a lens made from a loupe!

Here’s the lens itself:

You can see more photos made with this lens in his homemade lens photo set on Flickr.

Trask Bedortha has been playing with flipping and mixing lens elements to get distortion-free wider-angle coverage. Check out the examples and descriptions in this thread in the Through the Viewfinder group (where you shoot the ground glass of another camera) on Flickr.

How many times have you seen "small cleaning mark on lens, does not affect image quality" in ads for used cameras? Is it true? What about severe defects, like, say, "a loose spiral spring, some odd hardened liquid bubbles, dust, and a unidentified German insect in the lens"? Jurgen Kreckel, who repairs and rebuilds vintage medium format folding cameras, took such a lens—a 50/1.4 Planar—to Dresden and found out.

The results are nothing short of shocking.

MAKE Blog says:

The latest Citizen Scientist has a short how-to on making a telephoto lens from a spotting scope - "You can make a telephone lens for your camera with a spotting scope and a center-slotted aluminum bracket… The camera is attached to the bracket with a bolt that fits the camera’s tripod mount. The spotting scope is attached using appropriate hardware."

Read more at the Citizen Scientist.

The lens performed well across its range, particularly in terms of corner sharpness at wide angle, while essentially matching our EF 85mm f1.8 prime in terms of resolving power. We were also impressed with the Image Stabilisation which allowed us to handhold at much slower shutter speeds than normal. Compared to lenses designed for bodies with smaller sensors though, it suffered from a worse degree of light fall-off, but this is par for the course for wide-angle lenses designed for full-frame bodies.

There’s an effective demonstration of Canon’s IS (Image Stabilisation) handheld at 1/13 second, too. (The shit works!)

Read review at Camera Labs

Via PhotographyBLOG

See also: Bill Caulfeild-Browne’s A Comparison of the new Canon 24-105 mm f4 L IS lens with the Canon 24-70 mm f2.8 L and Mark D. Segal’s How I Decided to Up-Grade From a Canon 28~135 IS to a Canon 24~105 F/4L IS at Luminous Landscape