the last word

Rishi Sanyal, one of the reviewers on DPR, mentioned that he was seeing parasitic interaction of Sony a7R shutter shock and optically-stabilized (OSS, in Sony-speak) lenses that meant that users were often better off leaving OSS turned off. I thought I’d do some testing. I mounted a Sony 70-200mm f/4 OSS FE lens on an… [Read More]

When you first learned about photography, right along with the Sunny Sixteen rule, I’ll bet you learned this one: When shooting hand held, set the shutter speed to at least as fast as one over the focal length of the lens. That rule was originally promulgated for 35mm cameras. Should you scale the shutter speed… [Read More]

One of the things I’ve been doing while I’m sick and can’t get out much is making a few images of a teapot on the drain board in my kitchen.        

I’ve reported before that the Sony alpha 7 cameras — the a7, a7R, a7S, and a7II — change their raw digitizing precision from 13 to 12 bits when the shutter drive mode is changed from single shot to continuous mode. I have speculated that the reason they do that is to increase the frame rate…. [Read More]

The slowest corner at Laguna Seca is turn 11, a slightly-over-ninety-degree left that opens onto the main straight. Because there’s a fair amount on room on the outside, and you want to carry a lot of speed into the straight or you’ll pay for it for a long time, drivers often approach turn 11 with a… [Read More]