By JAAP VLEESKRUIJER A smaller camera is less luggage, but will it take lesser photographs? On the road with the Leica CL and Panasonic GX8. Originally I intended this article to be a somewhat technical one, with specifications, IQ comparisons, etc., but when I started processing and printing my images I started to realize that […]
Let’s talk music for a change. Am not an audiophile person by any means. I just like good solid gear that works, and I can say when a product is good. The new Sony WH-1000XM3 noise-cancelling headphones are such a product. Spent hours comparing them to more expensive top brands – and the longer I […]
December 24, 1994. Christmas Eve, in a suburban New York mall. Digital photography is nowhere yet. It’s all Kodak and Polaroid, yet film’s doom days are closing in. There is no future for this camera store. The two elderly employees, store manager Ray (John Larroquette) and his loquacious, liquored-up partner-in-sales Pinky (John Rhys-Davies), arrive for […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Sony has inched closer to making it possible for us to realize even modest large format photographic quality from a camera body we can hold in the palm of our hand. Medium format quality is already within reach of its new 42MP sensor, and Hasselblad will have to come up with […]
Don’t know about you, but what’s nicer than chilling out to a good movie after a hard day’s work. The Internet turns our computers into phenomenal movie libraries with access to every movie imaginable, such as Amazon’s Instant Video. Well you know the name of the game… While everyone has his or her favorite genre, […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Ever since Sony offered us a way to get traditional medium format quality photographs with the small and lightweight α7R, sharpness aficionados like me have been been made aware that most of our film era lenses are not quite a match for those wonderful small tools. What was still good and […]
(Here’s a great post by a photographer I highly admire for his mastery and versatility, Kirk Tuck, writing a photography suspense novel! I myself won two literary awards, but boy don’t let me talk about my earlier days as an aspiring writer… Kirk’s (Leica rangefinder!) thriller sounds like a great book for anyone interested in […]
Short post, big message! Seriously, the little Canon S120 is an absolute stunner. And with “little” I mean: it’s in your jeans pocket and you don’t even notice! For the size it’s quite heavy. Blame it on the outstanding build quality. The lens ring lets me keep my favorite 28mm focal length, but what’s really […]
It’s been quite a ride for the Fujifilm X series so far. Launched in March two years ago with the groundbreaking X-Pro1, the family of X cameras seems to grow faster than any of the competitors’ — despite sales being not that strong. The choice is yours, there’s the X-E2, X-A1, X-M1 and the series’ […]
Don’t want to sound contrarian for the sake of it. Everyone’s praising it. The Sony RX10, a pumped up P&S on steroids, is a marvel of an all-rounder camera. Not too small, fronted by a beautifully bright, fast, fixed Zeiss zoom with a 35mm equivalent of 24-200mm, this RX10 can shine as a street, travel […]
Here are some high-res ISO 100 to 25,600 sample images and 100% crops taken with the Fujifilm X-T1 and the Fujinon XF 10-24mm F4 OIS, a beauty of a wide angle zoom to be released by the end of March 2014. You’ll say that’a pretty lame lens with an aperture speed of throughout 4. Well […]
Beautiful finish, nice tactile feel and responsive controls — Fujifilm’s latest X-T1 mirrorless X series camera is certainly an as impressive as elegant photographic tool the Japanese camera maker can be proud of. Bear in mind, the X series is only two years old. Within no time the retro-styled cameras have grown into a respected […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN If sharpness and general image quality are your goal, as it is with me, you avoid zooms and pick the prime lens that you think is right for your subject. But that habit, as we all know, means much fumbling in the camera bag and with switching rear caps while worrying […]
To begin with, the Nikon Df, marketed as a “handcrafted” time machine to travel back to the days when “pure photography” was mostly a manual affair, this Nikon Df is a hell of a lot of camera. Some naysayers are ridiculing the concept, but have they actually ever touched a Df? There’s always the other […]
My currently favorite two cameras battling each other in the high ISO department: the Nikon Df, king of high ISO with it’s full-frame D4 sensor, pitched against a widely unknown gem of a camera, the Sony RX10 with fixed Zeiss optics. How the two cameras perform in the real world will follow. This short hands-on […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN There is no question that the Zeiss 55mm F1.4 Otus Distagon T* represents a significant optical achievement. But more than once, as I placed it on my tripod mounted Sony A7R — feeling like a ceramics collector who with one slip loses a $4,000 investment — I wondered what kind of […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN You must have noticed that as popular cameras became smaller, to almost everyone’s delight, the lenses became bigger. Greater portability of one is offset by more weight of the other; unnecessarily heavy normal focal length lenses, some of them pretty monstrous. Could this involve some heretofore unknown law of nature, deserving […]
By BRIAN SWEENEY The Nikon Df brings to SLR’s what the Leica M-E and M Monochrom bring to rangefinders: a 21st century incarnation of classic camera controls into a full-frame digital camera. The Leica allows use of manual focus lenses going back over 80 years, rangefinder-coupled and in the 24x36mm format that they were designed. […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Quite a few times I have regretted not to have had a different camera with me as I viewed results from a photographic excursion. In the past year and a half this was mostly the case when I had the Fujifilm X-Pro1 or X-E1 with their marvellous lenses and image quality […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Unlike what happened in some other Asian cities, Japanese photographers did not rush out en masse to get hold of that full-format camera (digital’s new medium format) miraculously squeezed into a palm-sized mirrorless body when it went on sale in Tokyo on November 15. There was no one else besides me […]
By RONN ALDAMAN This is an article for normal people, not technicians. The title is somewhat misleading. Some ask if the company can keep up with the competition. But the fact is, at the moment the real question to ask is: can Olympus keep up with with the demand for the new OM-D EM-1, currently […]
Everyone talks Olympus OM-D E-M1. You get a lot of camera — for a serious amount of money. For some photographers, it may be too much camera for too much money. Take the closest competitor, Panasonic’s Lumix GX7. Its kit with the Lumix G Vario 14-42mm for $999 costs less than half of the Olympus. […]
Here some quick first impressions after I played bit with the Olympus OM-D E-M1. Talk evolution rather than revolution. While the body is slightly larger than that of the original OM-D, the E-M5, it doesn’t feel that much bigger. With the battery grip and 12-40mm F2.8 attached it’s a comfortable package. Less stylish than it’s […]
Talk sensible product differentiation? Fujifilm is really milking the retro X series by targeting yet another model towards the masses. The Japanese camera maker just announced the latest X incarnation (it’s 4th, to be exact) with the X-A1, an entry-level X mirrorless with a beautiful design at downmarket price — with a conventional sensor. Up […]
Divine post by Ken Rockwell that’s more about psychology than photography. Even if you would test the Canon 1D X ($6,799) against the cheapo Canon SL1 ($599), world’s most compact DSLR, if you make the images the same size for a valid comparison = the complete, uncroppped images look completely identical, says Rockwell. Quite a […]
By BRIAN SWEENEY I’ve put together another article, this time on the C-Sonnar. “Once upon a time” optical engineers wrote books aimed at photographers wanting to understand more about the instruments that they use. They actually explained things like “focus shift” and “spherical aberration.” I’ve tried to apply lessons learned from Carroll Bernard Neblette (Photographic […]
By BENGT NYMAN I am a great fan of DxOMark test results, produced under uncompromising rigor and objectivity. I chose my last camera and lenses based on DxO Labs’ test results and I am very pleased with the results. The DxOMark test results for the Nikon D800(E) initially drew criticism from a die hard crowd […]
Specs-wise, they got a promising lineup. Look at Samsung’s mirrorless NX300: fast AF, and I mean fast, just to mention Usain Bolt who gives his name for it. Excellent noise handling with incremental ISO steps, spot-on natural colors and tones, fantastic prime pancakes, a sleek design and don’t forget the plus of instant Wi-Fi image […]
Why anyone would want to simulate film? Today’s ultra clean digital files can border on the sterile if not handled correctly. As with any product, opinions will differ, but this is my unimportant one: if you want film images, you use a film camera. If you want to simulate the closest thing to film images, […]
By BRIAN SWEENEY The revival of rangefinder photography in the 21st century has been guaranteed by the availability of the new generation of Leica digital cameras. The Epson RD-1 and Leica M8 opened the digital world to rangefinder enthusiasts. The M9 allowed use of 80 years of rangefinder lenses in the mode that they were […]
