In the last post, I talked about the cellphone’s impact on photographic art. In this one, I’ll return to safer ground, and tell you what I think will happen to cameras in the near future. Cameras will become ubiquitous in cellphones. Because thinness is a selling point for cellphones, lens focal length and therefore sensor… [Read More]
Archives for July 2011
Good enough
Recently, I’ve heard photographers decrying the rise of the cellphone camera, complaining that the pictures are terrible. “How can people do that? Don’t they care about quality? They’ll never know what a good photograph is.” It reminds me of the still-active kerfuffle in audiophile-land about music that’s undergone lossy compression – think MP3 and AAC…. [Read More]
Wag the dog part 7
When I started putting Leica lenses on the Sony NEX-5, I assumed that just about any Leica lens was going to be a big step up from the Sony 16mm that comes with the camera (you can also get the camera with the 18-55 mm zoom). I was surprised to find image quality to be… [Read More]
Wag the dog, part 6
In Wag the dog, part 3, I pronounced the Novoflex adapter’s flange distance perfect. That seemed to be true for the Tri-Elmar, but further experimentation with other lenses shows that some focus beyond infinity to a greater or lesser degree. The errors are small and would likely not be significant in normal photography, but the… [Read More]
Wag the dog, part 5
I decided to complete my testing of Sony and Leica lenses on the Sony NEX-5 by comparing some Leica lenses to the Sony 18-55 mm zoom. I used three Leica lenses for the comparison: The 16-18-21 mm Tri-Elmar, set at 18 mm to match the shortest setting of the Sony zoom The 24 mm f/2.8… [Read More]