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Posts Tagged ‘breaks’

Roger Cicala breaks down the do’s (and don’ts) of cleaning your camera gear and workspace

20 Mar

Roger Cicala, founder and owner of Lensrentals, is best known in these parts for tearing down, repairing and reviewing lenses. But not long ago (relatively speaking), it wasn’t just lenses Roger was mending; he was also a physician. As such, his experience in these two fields makes him uniquely qualified to talk about something we should all be mindful of — how to keep yourself and your camera gear disinfected through proper care and treatment of your equipment and workspace.

In the thorough blog post, Roger breaks down what cleaning supplies you should (and shouldn’t) use and what practices will help to ensure you’re being as safe as you can be during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (and beyond). From basic gear cleansing tips to advice for keeping your studio or office as clean as possible, he covers it all.

You can read the full blog post yourself over on the Lensrentals blog. If we’re lucky, Roger might even make an appearance in the comments below for those of you who have any additional questions.

Image credits: photos used with kind permission from Lensrentals.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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NASA Curiosity rover breaks its own record with new 1.8-billion-pixel Mars panorama

09 Mar

On March 4, NASA shared the highest-resolution panoramic Mars image ever captured by its Curiosity rover. The panorama features 1.8 billion pixels and is comprised of more than 1,000 individual images captured by the rover over the Thanksgiving 2019 holiday break in the US.

NASA explains that Curiosity captured two different panoramas using two different lenses: the record-breaking 1.8-billion-pixel panorama using the Mast Camera (‘Mastcam’) with a telephoto lens and a smaller 650-million-pixel panorama using a medium-angle lens. The larger panorama captured with the telephoto lens was not able to include most of the rover in the final image, but the lower-resolution panorama does include Curiosity amid the landscape.

Curiosity’s smaller 650-million-pixel panorama. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Mastcam is mounted at a height of 2m (6.5ft) on Curiosity; it supports capturing color images and videos using ‘left eye’ and ‘right eye’ lenses featuring 34mm and 100mm focal lengths. The camera has a resolution of 2MP, which produces images with a 1600 x 1200 resolution. When recording video, Curiosity’s Mastcam can capture 10 frames per second. According to NASA, the rover’s 8GB storage can hold 5,500 or more Raw frames.

While the mission team was away on holiday leave from November 24 to December 1, Curiosity worked to snap images using Mastcam over a six-and-a-half-hour period of time spread across four days. The camera was programmed to take the images from between noon and 2 PM local time to ensure that the lighting was consistent for the eventual panorama.

The new record 1.8-billion-pixel image. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA explains this holiday break provided a rare moment of downtime for the rover, which typically does not stay in one place long enough to capture so many images from the same vantage point. The resulting 1.8-billion-pixel panorama, which exceeds the rover’s previous record 1.3-billion-pixel image, took ‘months’ to assemble.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said:

While many on our team were at home enjoying turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes. This is the first time during the mission we’ve dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama.

The public can download a full-resolution version of the 1.8-billion-pixel panorama in JPEG and TIFF formats from NASA JPL’s website here, as well as the 650-million-pixel version from the same link. At its highest resolution, the panorama has a massive 2.43GB file size. The space agency offers lower quality versions with file sizes ranging from 82MB all the way down to 350KB.

In addition, NASA has an online 360-degree viewer to present the panorama in full screen with a zoom tool.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Lensrentals breaks down its most-rented photo and video gear of 2019

21 Dec

As it’s done for the past few years, Lensrentals has rounded up its most-rented photo and video gear of the year, breaking down the most popular cameras, lenses and accessories in rotation.

The data Lensrentals provides isn’t necessarily valuable for judging the photography industry as a whole, but as noted by a Lensrentals spokesperson in an email to DPReview, it is ‘the largest inventory of photography and cinematography equipment for online rental in the U.S. [and its] annual list has become somewhat of a barometer of the equipment creatives are creating or experimenting with.’

The full collection of data is available to peruse on Lensrentals’ website, but we’ve rounded up a few key insights worth pointing out.

First up, these are the top overall rental products for the 2019 year:

  1. Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II
  2. Canon 5D Mark IV
  3. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II
  4. Sony Alpha a7 III
  5. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III
  6. DJI Ronin-S 3-Axis Gimbal Stabilizer
  7. Canon 35mm f/1.4L II
  8. Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS
  9. Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM
  10. Canon 50mm f/1.2L

Year over year, not much has changed. In fact, Canon’s 50mm F1.2L lens, released in 2007, is still in the top ten list more than a decade later and the top three products remain unchanged from last year (although the Canon 5D Mark IV and 70-200mm F2.8L IS II did swap spots). Additionally, the 5D Mark III still remains in the top 25 most rented products, despite being over seven years old.

As for whether DSLR or mirrorless cameras proved more popular, it turns out it was almost split down the middle. According to Lensrentals, mirrorless and DSLR cameras accounted for 49.78% and 50.22% of rented cameras, respectively. This is a dramatic increase (21%) for mirrorless cameras compared to last year, where mirrorless cameras accounted for just 29% of rentals.

On the topic of mirrorless, Sony’s E-mount still rules the roost, with 26% of total rentals. Canon’s RF and Nikon’s Z systems remain dramatically behind at 4.91% and 2.26%, respectively, but year-over-year the RF and Z systems have increased rental volume by 600%.

Below are a few more breakdowns, provided to us by Lensrentals:

Top five lens rentals by system 2019

1. Canon EF 45.5% (up 1.5%)
2. Sony E 23.9% (up 18%)
3. Nikon F 14% (down 1.5)
4. Micro Four Thirds 7% (up 9.8%)
5. Fujifilm X 3.5% (up 14%)

Top camera rentals by system 2019

1. Canon EF 36.3% (down 7.5%)
2. Sony E 27.1% (up 7.4%)
3. Nikon F 13% (down 8%)
4. Micro Four Thirds 9.23% (down 7%)
5. Fujifilm X 4.3% (up 16.7%)

Top lens rentals by brand 2019

1. Canon 35.84% (up 5.5%)
2. Sony 15.4% (up 14%)
3. Sigma 13.9% (up 17%)
4. Nikon 8.8% (up 12%)
5. Tamron 4.3% (up 21.8%)

Top camera rentals by brand 2019

1. Canon 36.2% (up 1%)
2. Sony 26.2% (up 8%)
3. Nikon 9.7% (up 6.1%)
4. Panasonic 7.66% (up 2.8%)
5. BlackMagic 4.8% (up 130%)

Top five NEW products 2019

  1. GoPro HERO7 Black
  2. Blackmagic pocket cinema camera 4K (the 6K made the top 20 list)
  3. Sony FE 24mm f1.4 GM
  4. Sony Alpha 6400
  5. Nikon Z6

Overall, things remain mostly consistent, aside from movement within the full-frame mirrorless market, which is still in its infancy for both Canon and Nikon. You can dig deeper into all the information over on Lensrentals’ blog post and check out the 2018, 2017 and 2016 posts as well.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Lensrentals breaks down the numbers behind the most popular cameras and lenses of the year

04 Dec
Image provided by Lensrentals

As it does every year, Lensrentals has released the numbers behind the most popular gear it saw rented out through 2018. In a blog post on its website, Lensrentals details nearly every category and subcategory imaginable, showing what cameras, lenses, and formats reign supreme in the world of online rentals.

In Lensrental’s own words, ‘This barometer of equipment rental patterns is useful for the industry to gauge trends in adoption of new technology, camera and lens formats and change in brand share of the market.’

Starting with cameras, Canon still leads, with Sony and Nikon trailing, respectively. Year-over-year though, Canon is down from 44.90% in 2017 to 41.57% in 2018, while Sony and Nikon both increased from 24.67% to 26.31% and 15.06% to 15.28%, respectively. Although the data for this analysis was gathered before the general availability of both Canon and Nikon’s full-frame mirrorless offerings, Lensrentals says early data suggests Canon’s EOS R system is roughly twice as popular as Nikon’s Z6 and Z7 cameras.

The top ILC camera brands, based on percentage of total rentals, according to Lensrentals.

The Canon 5D Mark IV and 5D Mark III take the top two spots, respectively, with the Sony a7s II, Sony a7 III, and Panasonic GH5 rounding out the top five. The Sony a7 III is the only new camera (released in 2018) to make it into the top five.

While on the topic of CaNikon, Lensrentals data shows Canon’s overall camera usage has decreased slightly, going from 44.90% to 41.57% year-over-year, as Nikon’s increased from 15.06% to 15.28% year over year. Lensrentals notes this is possibly due to the release of the D850 late in 2017, which gave Nikon momentum going into the new year. Other camera brands saw growth as well in 2018, filling the void left behind by Canon.

Below is a list of the top ten cameras rented out by Lensrental users:

1. Canon 5D Mark IV
2. Canon 5D Mark III
3. Sony Alpha a7S II
4. Sony Alpha a7 III
5. Panasonic GH5
6. Sony Alpha a7R III
7. Nikon D750
8. Canon 6D Mark II
9. Nikon D850
10. Canon 6D

On the lens front, not much has changed at the top. Canon, Sony, Sigma, and Nikon take the top four spots, with 37.17%, 14.58%, 12.96%, and 9.62% of rentals, respectively. After that, the numbers drop dramatically, as seen in the below chart.

The top lens brands, based on percentage of total rentals, according to Lensrentals. Other includes: Metabones, Olympus, Rokinon, Voigtlander, Leica, Tokina, Fujinon, Pentax, Veydra, Lensbaby, Venus Optics, Hasselblad, Angenieux, Wooden Camera, SLR Magic and Schneider.

Canon’s second-generation 24-70mm F2.8 and 70-200mm F2.8 have proven to be the most popular lenses yet again. However, Sony has found its way into the top three with its own 24-70mm F2.8 and Sony lens rentals have increased approximately 60%, growth mostly driven from new lens releases. Lensrentals says the following lenses ‘drove the most growth’ for Sony:

  • Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 OSS
  • Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM
  • Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS

Panasonic also saw growth, driven exclusively by three lenses as well:

  • Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 X Power OIS II
  • Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 X Power OIS II
  • Panasonic/Leica 8-18mm f/2.8-4 ASPH

Both Sigma and Tamron saw a slow, but steady increase in popularity, as both have been rolling out new and improved lenses across their respective lineups. Below is a list of the top ten lenses, according to Lensrentals:

1. Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II
2. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II
3. Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM
4. Canon 35mm f/1.4L II
5. Canon 50mm f/1.2L
6. Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS
7. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L
8. Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro
9. Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L III
10. Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II

Overall, there isn’t too much change across the board, aside from a few notable exceptions mentioned above. Again though, this data was pulled before Canon and Nikon’s respective full-frame mirrorless cameras became available to the general public. With the cameras now available leading into the next year, there could be dramatic changes, both in the DSLR and mirrorless market as manufacturers battle it out for the top spot.

To see a more detailed analysis of the gear rented out and numbers behind the scenes, head over to Lensrentals’ blog post.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Photobucket breaks billions of photos online, upsets millions of users

04 Jul

If you’re an avid Photobucket user, you woke up to a nasty surprise this past week: the photo storage and hosting service changed their terms, breaking billions of images online in one fell swoop, without so much as a courtesy notice.

Some explanation is probably in order.

Photobucket has been allowing free users to host and link to images on its servers since 2003. If you wanted to host your photos on Photobucket and display them on some 3rd party site (also known as hotlinking) you could do that without being a paying member. This is an extremely useful—not to mention bandwidth-intensive—service to offer, and it’s one of the reasons Photobucket has managed to amass over 10 billion photos uploaded to its servers by over 100 million users.

But starting last week, the company changed its terms and membership structure, and what once was free will now cost users a whopping $ 400 per year. Suddenly, billions of images Photobucket users had hotlinked online no longer showed up. Entire forum threads, like this one found the photo blog by PetaPixel, are now devoid of images.

Instead, you have this graphic on display… over and over:

As you can imagine, Photobucket users are not happy about the change. Any time a free service turns into a paid one there’s bound to be some griping, but going from free to $ 400/year is an extreme jump by any standard.

On the one hand, it’s easy to justify Photobucket’s decision from a business standpoint: advertising revenues are dropping, and hosting that many images has to be incredibly expensive. But doing it so suddenly, without so much as a courtesy warning, has users turning to social media to vent their frustration.

Some are calling it ‘blackmail’ and ‘extortion,’ others are saying it’s business suicide, and droves of users are bidding an angry farewell:

Whatever you want to call it, one thing is certain: making such a sweeping change without warning was the wrong call. You hear that noise? It’s the stampede of users running pell mell towards Imgur.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Showing dynamism: EOS 80D breaks new ground for Canon low ISO DR

22 Mar

Our testing shows that Canon’s EOS 80D features a sensor with greatly improved Raw dynamic range. The results appear to confirm the company has moved to a new sensor design with lower read noise.

Previous Canon sensors have conducted the analogue to digital conversion step away from the sensor, an approach that contributed noise that limited dynamic range at low ISO settings (while still allowing the excellent high ISO performance that Canon’s CMOS chips built a reputation with). The sensors in the EOS 80D and EOS-1D X Mark II appear to have an on-chip ADC design that conducts the conversion within the sensor, shortening the electronic path and preventing this noise building up. Let’s take a look at the 80D’s Raw DR performance in a couple of our studio tests.

Exposure Latitude

In this test we look to see how tolerant of pushing exposure the 80D’s Raw files are. We’ve done this by exposing our scene with increasingly lower exposures, then pushed them back to the correct brightness using Adobe Camera Raw. Examining what happens in the shadows allows you to assess the exposure latitude (essentially the dynamic range) of the Raw files.

Because the changes in this test noise are primarily caused by shot noise and this is mainly determined by the amount of light the camera has had access to, the results are only directly comparable between cameras of the same sensor size. However, this will also be the case in real-world shooting if you’re limited by what shutter speed you can keep steady, so this test gives you an idea of the amount of processing latitude different formats give.

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As you can see, the 80D is contributing less noise to its images than the 70D did, and this difference will be evident when you try to pull shadows up. It isn’t quite a match for the Nikon D7200$ (document).ready(function() { $ (“#imageComparisonLink2211”).click(function() { ImageComparisonWidgetLink(2211); }); }), but it’s enough that in real-world use, the files should have similar – if not slightly more – processing flexibility than the Canon EOS 5DS$ (document).ready(function() { $ (“#imageComparisonLink2215”).click(function() { ImageComparisonWidgetLink(2215); }); }), despite the latter’s larger sensor! 

See our ISO Invariance test results

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Peter Lik’s ‘Phantom’ photograph breaks world record with $6.5 million sale

12 Dec

The world’s most expensive photograph has sold for $ 6.5 million to a private collector. The photograph ‘Phantom’ was taken by fine art photographer Peter Lik, and was joined by sales of his “Eternal Moods” for $ 1.1 million and “Illusion” for $ 2.4 million for a total of $ 10 million. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Architectural Magic: Big Stone Building Breaks Free & Floats

23 Nov

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

architecture floating building magic trick

A work of art, genius and incredible effort, half of this replica structure appears to hang in mid-air, seeming at once a perfect aesthetic fit for its surroundings and completely disconnected from the laws of physics.

architecture covent garden installation

British artist Alex Chinneck and his crew spent over 500 hours and had to construct a 4-ton counterweight to balance this faux building in the sky – what appears to be solid stone is in fact a steel-framed copy of an historic structure also found at Covent Garden (the original is nearly 200 years old).

architecture floating building illusion

architecture draft plan model

Chinneck is well known for his architecture-centric optical illusions, with this particular piece created as a play on the area’s “performance culture” – its proximity to theaters and performance spaces.

architecture faux construction process

architecture cut slice pieces

The construction process required a painstaking attention to historical details and materials in addition to grafting the appearance of age, wear and tear onto the fake structure. Another significant challenge: the seemingly haphazard breaking and slicing of everything from stones to windows and their frames.

architecture hidden steel frame

architecture floating building magic trick

From the artist: “The hovering building introduces contemporary art to traditional architecture, performing a magic trick of spectacular scale to present the everyday world in an extraordinary way. My objective was to create an accessible artwork that makes a harmonious but breath-taking contribution to its historic surroundings, leaving a lasting and positive impression upon the cultural landscape of Covent Garden and in the minds of its many visitors.”

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Nikon firmware update breaks support for third-party batteries

10 Dec

shared:NikonLogo.png

Owners of some of Nikon’s entry and mid-range DSLRs are reporting that a recent firmware update broke support for their third-party batteries. The firmware update for the Nikon D3200, D3100, D5100, D5200 and CoolPix P7700 cameras claimed to report remaining charge more accurately for the EN-EL14a lithium-ion battery. However, on installing the update, some owners found their third-party batteries suddenly incompatible.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Man breaks own World Record, now owns 4,425 antique cameras

29 Aug

dilish-parekh-collection.jpg

Mumbai-based photo journalist and camera collector Dilish Parekh has been entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for the second time. The previous record holder? Parekh himself. His collection has now grown to 4,425 antique cameras, ranging from Leica to Voigtlander. Learn more about his stockpile of cameras after the link.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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