Dear Manufacturers of m43s lenses*,
Here’s the lens I dream of for my tiny m43 cameras: a pancake tele. Something in the 100-200mm equivalent range. At least f2.8.

I own the 45mm/1.8 (90mm equiv), and it’s too bulky. I’m thinking closer to the 20mm size. The 75mm is even closer in the reach department, but it’s even bigger than the 45mm. No, I want a true pancake lens. 45mm or longer.

If you can make this happen, it would be a game changer. Truly.

*That’s at least Olympus, Panasonic, and Sigma.

@yyys if you want less phones flying at shows, tell management/venues/security to explicitly allow DSLRs. Problem solved.

— Micah (@photomicah) April 10, 2013

Stop discriminating against us gentle folk who don’t ruin anybody else’s good time by raising our cameras in the air for half the damn show.  They’re just too damned heavy for us to do that!

We don’t need bright flash or bright LCDs.

Boot the phones, let in the SLRs.  That’s all I’m asking.

I thought of an analogy today that I hope will help in the fight to get more people shooting raw.

JPEG : RAW :: Polaroid : Negatives

I don’t personally know any pros out there still shooting jpegs, but I know there are some old salts who just don’t “get it” when it comes to raw.  So here it is.  You wouldn’t give a client a Polaroid test shot, nor would you try to work from one.  So why would you change that behaviour in the digital realm? Continue reading →

It might seem conventional wisdom that a bundle of glass, no matter how robust or “pro” it may have been built, should NOT be dropped.

On pavement.

Several times.

Especially not one that weighs over three pounds and costs two grand to replace.  (even though I paid $1600 brand new–what’s up with that?!)

So over several years I’ve repeatedly dropped my most used lens, and now it’s time to repair it.  I was shooting birds on the Willamette the other day and realized that things weren’t looking sharp until f11.  Having had the lens for about seven years now, I know what a properly working specimen is capable of and this isn’t it.

I brought it to the local authorized repair shop, Associated Camera Repair (more on why that’s the only place that can get parts later), but they looked at it (for a couple weeks) and decided they couldn’t do anything for it.  The lens must just be as good as it gets.

So I took it home and this morning did a little test to prove to myself I’m not crazy (at least in this instance) and illustrate what I think to be the issue.  I think that after dropping it enough, something inside is now out of alignment.  How’d I test this?  Observe:

Notice the smeary-ness, and how it’s on the top edge or the bottom edge?  This is as close to the center of the frame as I could get.  This shouldn’t me asymmetrical at the edge of the frame, let alone center of the frame.

Here’s the test procedure:  The 70-200mm f/2.8 VR (v1) (oh yea, that’s the lens we’re talking about here, sorry) has a tripod mount directly on the lens, which rotates on a collar.  So all I had to do was firmly mount it on a tripod, shoot, rotate and shoot again.  AF was off between shots and VR was off.

So I’m concluding that yes, this is broken, something’s out of line, and it needs to be fixed.  Google didn’t turn up anything, so I’m going to post about my repair experience here.  I suspect that this will require a trip to Nikon USA (not excited about that!), but I’m going to try all the other local shops first.  I’ll report back here as things progress!

(about the title: I’m referencing a G Love and the Special Sauce song, which I seem to get stuck in my head whenever it’s time to bring something in for repair)

Just uploaded a video. Slapped together and laid over a Mark Hollis solo track. Lemme know what’cha think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlZ3P3DA_-s

This is in response to a blog commenter who insisted that his 35mm/f2 lens was “dog” and some generally negative feedback about a lens I happen to like a lot.

Is it a perfect lens?  No.  I would love for it to have weather sealing and for it’s focus ring to not spin while AF is working.

However, for what it is, it can’t be beat at the moment.  It’s tiny.  It focuses fast.  It’s pretty damn sharp at almost every setting.  And it works equally well on full and cropped sensors.  I really believe that it will continue to work wonders on a D800, when I get around to picking one up.

I suppose it’s possible that there is some sample variation, but every copy of this lens I’ve used has been about the same.

So without further ado, here’s a full sized image with my 35/2, shot wide open on my D700 (click for full size):

Nikon 35mm/f2 wide open (thanks to model Laura)