Lensrentals Blog

Not a whole lot new in this article, though its "experimental" results confirm well-known phenomena regarding camera lens performance. In particular, small front-element blemishes do not in general significantly degrade optical performance. That said, dirt or scratches become more important when there is greater depth of field, for example, shooting with ultra-wide angle lenses stopped down to small aperture. Naturally, how much image quality degradation is acceptable depends on the circumstances, there's no single rule that can be applied. I wouldn't try to get into the laws of physics/optics governing these considerations, there are plenty of sites on the web for that. However I recommend taking a look at the LensRentals site for its wonderfully practical, entertaining lens information (including info re: user-level lens testing): http://www.lensrentals.com

That's not a bad idea. I've used lensrentals.com to rent camera gear before, and they generally also have a price to keep the particular item you're renting: https://www.lensrentals.com/keeper That'd be a neat option on Turo - "ok, I'm looking at buying a Jeep - I want to test-drive one to validate this desire, but ideally one I could buy if I fall in love with".

Lensrentals | Full Stack Software Developer | REMOTE | https://www.lensrentals.com/ Lensrentals is the largest online rental provider for photography and videography equipment in the United States. We have a couple hundred employees at our Memphis warehouse, a few locations with associated staff in other states, and a full remote in-house software team of 7. Our stack is mostly Rails on PostgreSQL + Go backend services, talking GraphQL to a React frontend, developed in Docker, built and tested in CI, and deployed to Kubernetes. In our highly-collaborative environment, you will have the opportunity to grow as a software engineer, use new technologies, and help mentor others. Email [email protected]

If I'm not mistaken Sony G lenses are the greatest offender in terms of the amount of plastic used in the $800-$2000 price range: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2016/04/sony-fe-85mm-f1-4-gmaster-eme… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMXjJxFXRVs

My FIL (a serious amateur photographer) regularly rents specialty lenses from http://lensrentals.com They rent cameras too, not just lenses. The RED Raven model (one of the NetFlix approved models) rents for $490/week. That's just for the "body" (what RED calls the "brain"). A full kit with accessories is $850/week. Lenses are on top of that.

What are folks' favorite overviews on how these lenses work? Basic optics from my high school physics classes topped out at the telephoto lens from the article, what would be a good place to start to get a better sense of how the designs in the article help with distortion? [Edit: Found https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/08/lens-geneology-part-1/, which looks like a promising start]

His lens tests are excellent. The lens rentals blog is the best place to find them [0]. If you're in market for high quality lenses, lens rental blog is a great resource. I also like cameralabs' lens tests [1]. Not as scientific as lensrentals, however, it has real samples and images of charts for comparison, so you can get a sense for what the different resolution means in image resolution. It also tests things beyond resolution. Such as out of focus rendering, coma, sun stars, etc. [0] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog [1] https://www.cameralabs.com/camera-lens-reviews/

Yes, I am not disagreeing with you. Sony's mirrorless bodies are presently the best and the Sony GM lenses also have the best-in-class image quality, surpassing DSLR lenses. For example the Sony GM 135mm f/1.8 is the sharpest available 135mm lens [1] and the Sony GM 24mm f/1.4 is the sharpest available 24mm lens [2]. Sony's ecosystem also has many amazing third-party lenses. A personal favourite of mine is the Voigtlander Apo Lanthar 65mm f/2. [1] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/03/sony-fe-135mm-f1-8-gm-early-m… [2] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/08/some-new-wide-angle-lens-mtf-…

You can also just rent. I rented one here: https://www.lensrentals.com/rent/oculus-quest-all-in-one-vr-headset-12… For a try-before-you-by thing, I'd recommend doing 2 weeks. For the first few days, it was, "OMG, the future!" Then for a few days it was, "Not overwhelming, but still cool!" By the end of the 2 weeks, though, we were happy enough to return it.

I love the Lensrentals teardowns! I just finished reading this teardown of a then-flagship Sony camera that was exposed to saltwater. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2017/10/about-getting-your-camera-wet… Or if you're a Nikon fan, here's their teardown of a Nikon flagship a year later. Note that this camera wasn't suspected of exposure or abuse, so not really a comparison but I'm fascinated by how modern pro cameras are built, their weaknesses, and how they may or may not be serviceable. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2018/10/teardown-of-the-nikon-z7-mirr…

There's some history of "organic" or at least "natural" ingredients in photography. See, for example, the early "autochrome" color process. It uses dyed potato starch as color filters. Lampblack (granted a petro-byproduct) separated the potato bits. The plate is coated with shellac (secreted by the female lac bug).[1][2] Other big photo ingredients, past and present, include egg whites (for albumen prints)[3], gum arabic (sap of acacia tree, for emulsions), and cow/pig hooves (gelatin, for the emulsion)[4]. And, of course, the alchemist's favorites: gold, silver, platinum, palladium... What I'd take from this is that we're used to technologies involving highly refined/synthesized substances with fancy names. But so many 19th century processes were done with more day-to-day substances, and we're still partaking of those technologies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re [2] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/05/how-potatoes-and-gelatin-crea… [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albumen_print [4] https://petapixel.com/2011/11/15/did-you-know-film-and-photo-paper-are…

Roger Cicala knows a lot about lenses and pushed lens manufacturers to have better testing and quality, he created https://www.lensrentals.com/ because he got sick with low quality checks of lenses: When I started Lensrentals I had a lot of conversations with service centers that went like this. Me: "That lens you repaired still sucks". Person at service center: "No, it’s within specs". Me: "What are the specs?" Service center: "We can’t tell you". One day, after I raised hell with a factory service manager, he patted me on the head and said, “testing lenses is complicated; you don’t have the background to understand.” Any of you who has ever seen a physician after someone says something like ‘you wouldn't understand; it’s complicated’ knows what happened next. I had no option but to spend a couple of years buying testing equipment, offering internships to really smart optical engineering students, and developing a lens testing center and methodology that was as good as anything in the industry. He is also capable of writing about hard topics in a way that most people can understand them. Anyone interested in camera lenses should read also his previous posts https://www.dpreview.com/members/1329131098

since it's manual focusing anyway, there is less penalty in doing so than one would think. That's true, but the variability is much greater than is commonly appreciated: http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2014/07/sensor-stack-thickness-part-ii… : While I don’t have a mathematical formula to predict how well a given lens will work on a given camera, it should be apparent that wide-angle rangefinder lenses designed for film are going to struggle, especially on m4/3 cameras, but to some degree on other cameras. Longer focal length rangefinder lenses tend to have longer exit pupil distances and should do better. Stopping down to f/4 or f/8 should reduce the problem significantly, although it isn’t guaranteed to eliminate it near the edges of the frame. SLR lenses may also have some troubles on m4/3 cameras, since there’s nearly a 2mm difference in stack thickness. They shouldn’t have as much of a problem as rangefinder lenses, though, since they are designed for a 2mm sensor stack and they tend to have longer exit pupil distances. Older lenses designed for film cameras will tend to have more issues, of course, since they were designed for no sensor stack.

There's measurements to support your feeling that primes are better than zooms: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/11/stopping-down-some-bargain-pr… and https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2017/02/things-you-didnt-want-to-know…

Reminds me of the article from Lensrentals about how much front element scratches affect photo quality. Apparently not very much. Wait, did they say scratches? They meant a completely cracked front element. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2008/10/front-element-scratches/

Lensrentals.com founder Roger Cicala publishes teardowns of high-end modern lenses and I recall that he and his team occasionally (often?) find shims used to calibrate the optics. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/author/roger/

> Even if you have the control over the algorithm, they are still really weak. Portrait mode for example can't reliably separate the subjects hair from the background properly. This is harder than it sounds with a "real" camera lens, perfectly focusing on one point isn't necessarily the right thing to do for other points even if they're the same distance away. Most people who upgrade to a dedicated camera aren't going to look this stuff up; most reviews don't even cover it. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2016/09/fun-with-field-of-focus-part-…

> DPreview largely seems to write for the crowd that doesn't even care about the art aspect and just wants validation that they have better photo gear than others. To be fair, the author of this article is Roger Cicala of LensRentals fame [1]; optical testing is his bread and butter. He's also the first to point out that optimal lens performance is neither necessary nor sufficient for good photography, and is famously snarky in his writing towards "spec sheet warriors" and sharpness-obsessed gearheads. [1] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/author/roger/

I think that the point is that there is nothing that you could really "separate as a part", everything being fused into a single piece impossible to disassemble without destroying it. This is to put in perspective with a Zoom Lens where moving parts are designed to be assembled and disassembled: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2021/01/the-secret-of-the-broken-elem… Also, a heated metal bar dilates and thus moves, not sure it is considered having "parts".

Dust in a lens isn't a big problem. It really doesn't effect the image quality [1]. They had another tear-down to remove a fly from Canon 70-200mm [2], and it didn't make difference until stopped down. 1: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/08/the-apocalypse-of-lens-dust/ 2: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/04/removing-fly-from-weather-sea…

I suspect this is design tradeoff. First, hepa filters tend to block flow of air A LOT. Lens designers strive to get lenses to focus as quickly as possible. Any blockage of air would necessarily make it very difficult for the lens to breathe quickly. Second, dust particles in the lens do not affect the image nearly as much as you would think they do. Just look at this pic: https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2008/10/front-element-scratches/

A good companion to this article is the one by Lensrentals where they actually show what happens when the lens is stopped down, particularly the effect on flare. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2008/10/front-element-scratches/

Edit: added link [0] to lensrentals.com story about gear damaged during solar eclipse of 2017. Your cell phone camera has a wide angle lens. it's at the longer focal lengths where one might expect sensor damage, or even melt the curtains of shooting directly into the sun when high above horizon. [0] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2017/09/rental-camera-gear-destroyed-…

And here's one that matches or beats them. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2016/04/sony-goes-world-class-the-24-…

Although not primarily a review site, Lens Rentals has a very detailed blog about all things DSLR and mirrorless camera related (http://www.lensrentals.com/blog). Lens Rentals and its blog was also started by a doctor (Roger Cicala) and he remains the main contributor to the blog.

Side-topic. Shooting Holi [1] without putting your camera in an airtight sealed enclosure is a good way to ruin your equipment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/05/how-to-ruin-your-gear-in-5-min…

You can always rent a Leica M-Monochrom from LensRentals. In stock now... http://www.lensrentals.com/rent/leica/cameras/leica-m-monochrom They don't do Mamiya, but they do rent the medium format Pentax 645D. They're a very good company to deal with.

Since you where collecting sign-ups, it would be really interesting to see registrations by marketing channel and calculate a CPA for each. In terms of building the "seller" or in this case, the "lens renter" side of the market, I'd probably do targeted facebook ads to photographers with messaging around "Make Money Renting Your Gear" or even more specific messaging "Make up to $20/day/lens renting your unused gear". You could also try posting to various email lists/meetup groups/forums where photographers hang out asking for beta testers with whom you take 0% commission. Most likely, this is where you'll see the most success. You could also go for the Chegg/Zipcar model, which obviously has much higher capital costs, where you own the inventory. PPC could be a viable customer acquisition channel for you as well as "camera lens rental + city name" has decent volume, as does "lens name + rental" and "lens name + rental + city", so there's a long tail that you can exploit. All that being said, there is quite a bit of competition in this market and it will be difficult to differentiate: http://www.borrowlenses.com/ http://www.cameralensrentals.com/ http://www.lensrentals.com/ http://lensrentalscanada.com/ http://www.lenslenders.ca/ P.S. Glad to hear that 99designs ended up driving some good traffic to your site... I've also seen people list websites on Flippa.com (often with incredibly high prices) as a form of a growth hack when trying to reach internet…