I recently got a M4 Max Macbook Pro with 128 GB of DRAM. It has seemed to be a peppy machine. Today I benchmarked it against my main workstation, using the Puget Systems Photoshop benchmarking tool. Spoiler: it’s pretty darned fast. This isn’t really a fair fight. On one hand, the Dell 64-core 512GB Ryzen… [Read More]
Why I use medium format
There was a recent survey on DPR that asked the title question and several related ones. Some of the answers were interesting, and inspired me to write this post about my reasons. First, some history. I first started using medium format in 1949. I was six years old, and my mother and father gave me… [Read More]
Of fidelity, photography, audio, and wine
On the DPR Medium Format Forum, a poster has advocated for use of the term “image fidelity” as a scalar description of photographic technical quality. He has referenced the term “high fidelity” in audio as an analog and an exemplar. I am unconvinced that this new terminology offers any advantages over the conventional term “image… [Read More]
Fujifilm 30mm f/5.6 T/S lens — allowable tilt error
Lensrentals has loaned me a Fuji GF 30mm f/5.6 tilt/shift lens. There have been reports of unwanted tilt when using this lens. I conducted an analysis of how much tilt it takes to cause various amounts of defocus error. While the stimulus for this work was the 30/5.6 T/S lens, it is applicable to any… [Read More]
Fujifilm GF 30/5.6 Tilt/Shift lens on GFX 100 II — Illumination falloff
Lensrentals has loaned me a Fujifilm 30 mm f/5.6 tilt/shift (T/S) lens to test. I mounted it on a GFX 100 II, focused it at infinity, aimed it at a white wall, and made four images at each f-stop from 5.6 through 11, rotating the camera 90 degrees around the lens axis. I brought the… [Read More]