A camera’s sensor size is a very good predictor of how good its image quality is, but understanding and comparing the sensors sizes isn’t very easy. While televisions and computer monitors are usually measured by diagonal length, sensors sizes are listed with its two dimensions in millimeters. Back in 2008, David Pogue of the New York Times wrote an article about this issue, calling for someone to develop an online tool for converting confusing sensor measurements into the diagonal length of the sensor in inches. Within three hours two new websites were born: Sensor-Size and Sensor Size Calculator.
Dutch consumer product website Beste Product (“best product”) decided to set up a royal rumble between the two heavyweights of the camera industry: Canon and Nikon. They created an infographic comparing the two companies in things such as expert and user opinions, popularity, and sales. Even if you’re sick and tired of the endless comparisons and debates (as you should be), the infographic provides some interesting facts about how the two companies are doing. Infographic after the jump
Turns out Fujifilm’s new FinePix X100 isn’t just nice to look at — DxOMark just published results from testing the camera’s APS-C sensor, finding that it delivered better results in all aspects compared to the best Micro Four Thirds camera sensors (namely the Olympus PEN EP2 and Panasonic Lumix DMC GH2) and rivals the quality of the best APS-C sensors found in DSLR and SLT cameras. Now if only the camera would start becoming available here in the US…
Here’s a video comparing the mirror and shutter curtain mechanisms of the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Nikon D700, and Nikon D7000 DSLRs. It’s pretty surprising how much the Canon mirrors bounce compared to the Nikon ones…
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Fujifilm’s Finepix X100 and the classic Leica M3. Needless to say, the X100 is one classy looking digital camera. It just started shipping this past weekend in Japan, and should begin arriving elsewhere in the very near future. If you want a closer look at the camera’s features, check out the 124 page owners manual that recently found its way online. Read the rest of this entry »
The people behind camera comparison and recommendation website snapsort have just launched lenshero, a site designed to recommend the lens you need at the price you want. After telling the application your camera and what you’re looking for in a lens (e.g. type, focal range, price), the site will spit out some recommendations of lenses that fit your criteria, ordering them by their pros and cons. It’s a neat little app that you might want to bookmark if you’re in the market for some new gear.
If you’re looking into buying a certain lens, you might be interested in seeing what kind of photography other people have done with that lens. Flickriver’s Lens Explorer page is a pretty easy way to quickly look through example photographs on Flickr that were captured with a specific lens. Just choose a brand and model, and begin browsing the river!
FindTheBest is the latest startup founded by Kevin O’Connor, the guy who started the online ad company DoubleClick and sold it to Google for over $3 billion. It’s a human-powered comparison engine consisting of “comparison apps” in which various things of the same category are compared side by side with comparison points specific to that category. For example, the camera lenses comparison app allows you to browse lenses from a number of manufacturers, filtering and ordering them by things such as focal length, minimum aperture, and weight.
The site needs to gain a lot more traction before other photography-related apps turn up (e.g. tripods, photo labs, etc…), but the site could potentially be very useful for browsing camera gear and other photography-related categories in the future.
Photographer Mike Collins created this simple video that gives you a visual look at the difference between full frame sensors and crop frame sensors when using the same lens. The video uses a Canon 5D Mark II for the full frame shots, and a Canon 7D (1.6x crop factor) for the crop shots.
This is a short test with the tripod in the same spot switching between prime lenses to show how the crop affects the 7D. The subject, ace stand in Chris Clement, was roughly five feet from the camera. This isn’t meant to be an aesthetic test to show the difference in image quality between the two cameras. It’s a down and dirty field guide for myself and the other shooters we work with so we can quickly figure what lens we want to use on each camera.
We go from 20mm all the way to 100mm with a Lensbaby composer thrown in at the very end.
You might be surprised at how different the lens are, especially if you’ve never used both full frame and crop frame before.
KTVU in Oakland is reporting that a Bay Area woman named Mariam l. Walton has come forward with apparently solid proof that the photographs were not taken by Ansel Adams but her Uncle Earl. She was watching KTVU report on the story Tuesday when she suddenly saw a photograph of the Jeffrey Pine on Sentinal Dome and recognized it as a print her uncle Earl Brooks made back in 1923. Read the rest of this entry »
