Camera and Lens Reviews — blog

What do you get when an optician, an engineer and a business man meet at a bar? The birth of one of the oldest and greatest lens manufacturers in the world. Way back in 1886 Taylor, Taylor & Hobson first opened up shop and began creating some of the worlds best optics. They designed some great optical formulas and created beautiful cinema lenses that helped make Hollywood what it is today. So much so that in 2013 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said they "helped define the look of motion pictures over the last century" and gave them...

Back in 1964 Leica noticed that rangefinders weren't the hot ticket they once were and an emerging market of SLR bodies coming out of Japan were slowly taking over their turf. So what was a hoity-toity German camera company to do? Well, after trying for 12 years with the awkwardly designed Leicaflex line they finally cried uncle and partnered up with Minolta to create the R series in 1976. And by 'partners' I mean they copied most of Minolta's electronics and chassis design, set up shop in Portugal, and called it the Leica R3. And this went on for decades! Right up until...

While I'm not sure about the rest of the planet it did take spring an awfully long time to arrive here in Ontario. But luckily it did just in time for the Victoria Day holiday weekend and the trilliums were in full bloom. So I took the opportunity to take some pretty photos of flowers (and nature in general) with one phenomenal macro lens. The Voigtlander 125mm Apo-Lanthar f2.5 SL lens is a pretty powerful beast but before I go into its performance I would like to touch upon the history of the Apo-Lanthar line. Voigtlander the company originated in...

Back in 2011, I had a great conversation with a frequent customer at the shop about the quality of film versus digital. I had told him that I was planning on doing the photography at my own wedding since it was going to be a tiny event of only 20 people. He was quite adamant that I be sure to take my photos on film and not digital. Aside from all the technical arguments one could make, he made one excellent point which I still cannot argue against: the longevity of film vs a digital file.    Nikon F100 w/ Nikon...

What would you get if a high end Swiss precision watch maker suddenly decided to design and build a reflex camera? Well back in 1939 Pignons S.A. asked that very question and jumped head first into the emerging 35mm film camera market. With that they went on a 50 year journey that ended with the same amount of camera bodies that could be produced today in a factory over the course of a few weeks and bankruptcy.     Alpa cameras are an anomaly in the film camera world. Extremely well built with hundreds of individually hand crafted and hand...