After successfully funding a Kickstarter campaign for the resurrection of Biotar 75mm f/1.5, Oprema Jena is bringing back its “little brother,” Biotar 58mm f/2.0. The lens features unique bokeh, and it’s very sharp even at wide aperture. However, one of its most interesting features is certainly the record number of 17 aperture blades.
The new Atlanta Falcons stadium has an aperture roof
Football club Atlanta Falcons has a brand new stadium. The designers say it was inspired by Roman Pantheon, but as photographers, we found something else more interesting. The stadium’s retractable roof is inspired by camera aperture, and it opens and closes just like the aperture does.
Making sense of aperture, shutter speed and ISO with the exposure triangle
How important is exposure in photography? What are the components of exposure? What is the “Exposure Triangle”? These are the questions I will attempt to answer in this introductory post about ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed – the components of achieving a properly exposed photo.
Understanding the purpose and value of exposure is a must for photographers, particularly beginners who are serious about developing their craft.
This animated video tells you everything you need to know about aperture
The aperture is one of the most difficult things for new photographers to wrap their head around. The number system seems confusing (smaller number, bigger hole), depth of field, how it affects exposure. It’s a lot to take in all at once.
This five minute animated video from YouTuber Apalapse goes over everything you ever needed to know about your camera lens’s aperture. It goes over some of the issues associated with picking which type of lenses you might want to buy, too.
This is how Canon’s f/0.95 Dream Lens performs on a Sony mirorless body
Do you use a DLSR lens on a mirrorless camera? Have you ever considered buying a “Dream Lens” for it? It’s pricey and relatively rare, so it’s worth thinking it through. But a member of Sonyalpharumors, Austrokiwi, allowed us to share his review. He bought a Canon 50mm F0.95 lens for his Sony A7rII. And this is how it performs:[Read More…]
What the heck is hyperfocal distance?
I often get the feeling that photography is talked and written about as if its practitioners have an innate knowledge of the terms involved. Any craft or profession comes with its own specialist language, but if you’re new to it—and even if you’re not—you can often feel overwhelmed by the terminology, let alone the technicalities of the medium. Thinking back ‘hyperfocal distance’ is one of the terms that most baffled me.
You will most likely hear ‘hyperfocal distance’ mentioned in relation to landscape photography. It describes a mathematically calculated sweet-spot that, when you focus there, maximises the depth-of-field across your scene. For, while you might believe that using a small aperture and focusing at infinity would do the job, it doesn’t.
What Actually Happens When You Stop Down a Lens
I got an email the other day that got me thinking. A guy simply asked “How far do I have to stop down a lens to get maximum performance. I’ve heard two stops from wide open. I’ve heard down to f/8. Which is correct?”
I asked him which lens he was referring to, and was he talking about the center point, corners, or overall. He didn’t realize that it mattered. He thought all lenses were the same and had this idea that eventually there was an aperture where the lens was maximally sharp and the corners were as sharp as the center. At this point, I realized there was no way I could tell him everything he needed to know in an email and I decided to write a blog post about it.
Everything You Need To Know About Depth of Focus and Lens Equivalency
After learning about the history and science of lenses, and gaining some knowledge about the properties of modern lenses, it’s time to take a deeper look at depths of field and how it’s affected by sensor size.
Kick back as John Hess of Filmmaker IQ takes us on a 17-minute long journey through the optics, the terms and the calculations that will help you understand how depth of field works once and for all.
DIY: Awesome Iris Lamp Has Aperture That Opens & Closes As Light Is Turned On Or Off
Cancel your weekend plans, we’ve got an Iris Lamp to build! The awesome DIY tutorial comes to us courtesy of Jonathan Odom, a full time designer and maker over at the Instructables Design Studio. Odom’s portfolio of builds is pretty incredible, but this aperture inspired wall lamp really grabbed our attention. (Kinda reminds me of the Aperture Ring Box we featured not too long ago!)
Odom says the design for his Iris Lamp is somewhat of a spin on a similar lamp he made (which you can check out here). For both designs, he says he was inspired by the notion of “mechanical movement in design that’s typically static.”
The light is powered on and off simply by rotating the outer wood ring, which also opens and closes the aperture iris.[Read More…]
Aperture Blades Open To Reveal Engagement Ring In This Awesome Lens Inspired DIY Ring Box
California based educator and DIY maker, Matt Chalker, really, really loves his girlfriend. That’s why when he decided to propose to her, he wanted to make something extra special. And that he did. Chalker spent about 60 hours building one of the coolest engagement ring boxes I’ve ever seen.
Chalker’s girlfriend, a wedding and portrait photographer, is pretty passionate about her craft. He wanted to incorporate that into his proposal and came up with the idea to make a ring box which revealed the engagement ring via working aperture blades. It’s truly something beautiful![Read More…]
