Work got busy the last couple of days so had no time to post. Here’s a quick filler post with a couple of minor updates.
First of all, my two Switar C mount lenses finally arrived. These are the 25mm f/1.4 and 75mm f/1.9 lens. Since I purchased it, I’ve seen samples of the 25mm and it gives mixed results – looks super sharp in some yet heavy blurring of the edges in others… will be interesting checking it out – it’s tiny by the way. I’ll post more on that …

Zeiss Ikon is a storied name in photographic history. Originally a company formed in the 1920′s out of four optical German manufacturers, Zeiss Ikon AG went on to create a series of great 35mm rangefinders. The company shut up shop in the 70′s but with the recent resurgence of the Zeiss brand, a modern era Zeiss Ikon film rangefinder was announced in 2004.
For the past month I’ve been shooting with the Zeiss Ikon. This is my hands on review which will detail how this modern film camera fares in a …

A follow up to The Resolution of Film. These are quick and dirty observations about film vs digital while I write a larger article on the topic.
This post is about the dynamic range of film – something film is famed for in photography.
Actually, I should be specific. It’s negative film, both black and white and colour, that has a highly regarded dynamic range – usually considered to surpass that of digital. For transparencies / slides (e.g. Velvia), this is actually the opposite as film of this type actually has a …

I have a copy of the above lens for review… It’s Zeiss’ new and highly regarded macro lens for the Canon mount. I don’t have the Canon macro on hand to compare it to so will be writing a standalone review of it in the next two weeks (as used with my 5D Mark II). Let me know if any special requests, things you want me to cover, otherwise it’ll be the usual real world review with plenty of high quality image samples, etc.

The name Zeiss needs no introduction in the field of lenses & optics, having been a cornerstone of the industry for countless decades. Recently however, Zeiss have stepped up its efforts for the DSLR market and last year announced a couple of fast (f/1.4) lenses for the popular 50mm and 85mm / normal telephoto range. I was given the Zeiss 85mm f1.4 for a couple of weeks to try on my Canon 5D Mark II and here are my findings.
Intro
I’ve used a lot of Zeiss glass in the past, both …

Today someone asked me to elaborate about my reference yesterday to the Canoscan’s 8800F “budget” characteristics … here’s a quick summary and a comparison with a Nikon Coolscan 5000.
As a very quick introduction, the Canoscan is a budget flatbed scanner from Canon. It has a high max DPI resolution and retails at the very low price of somewhere between $160 – $200. When I first got the scanner, I was amazed that it could support such a wide variety of film formats – from 35mm film to MF to regular …

I’ve always wanted to use an online self publishing / photo book service and recently I finally made time to give it a shot. I wanted to create Akuri a Christmas gift – a photo book of our beautiful dog who left us this year, Ume – so I chose blurb.com‘s offering. On the blurb site, they offer a download for their book making software ‘Booksmart’. Once installed on your PC (or Mac), you get to choose from several book styles such as:

Small Square (7″ x 7″)
Standard Landscape (10″ …

A few people have emailed me to ask what I’m working on next from a review standpoint so I thought I’d provide an update on my blog so you all know what to expect. In the next month you can expect the following to be posted:

Comparative review between the world’s best digital compact camera and a compact film camera
Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 ZE Planar T* Lens Review (this is a Zeiss lens for Canon EOS mount – I’ll be testing on a 5D Mark II)
Zeiss Ikon film rangefinder
Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 Distagon …

Most people who use Photoshop will already be aware of plugins by NIK software, including Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, etc. I’m generally in two minds about their plugins – on one hand I’ve seen them put to fantastic use, with photographers creating wonderful post processed images… on the flip side, like some Photoshop techniques which are easy-to-use-but-hard-to-master, I’ve seen them horribly overused.
Well the other day I did a quick search for a free processing plugins for Photoshop and came across OptikVerve Lab’s virtualPhotographer, a free filter plugin for …

(Edit- If you’re looking for my Olympus E-P1 review, go here).
This will be a short review of the Switar 26mm f/1.1 C mount lens, tested on an Olympus E-P1 (micro four third) . I don’t know a huge amount of history of this lens but here are the highlights:

The lens was originally made for the 16mm cine format. Due to specific design characteristics of the micro four thirds format, for the first time, photographers are now able to mount C mount lenses on digital cameras
The Switar 26mm f/1.1 gives …