Lensbusters.com

Storage has long been a problem. Despite Moore’s Law, I seem to keep filling larger cheaper drives. Ok, so it’s a first world problem, I admit it! At some point in the past, I was converting all my raw files to RAW. The appeal then was that the DNG files promised to be more universal than the RAW files produced by various camera manufacturers. Comparisons of RAW and Lossy DNG with Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and Capture One at 1:1 ARW file processed in Photoshop with auto settings (left), Lossy DNG processed in Photoshop with auto settings (center), Lossy DNG processed in Capture One with auto settings (right) all at 1:1 pixels. Unfortunately, Adobe seems to be a less and less friendly company. I’ve been doing the right thing for decades and paying for their software. But they seem to be trying to make everything much more difficult with licensing and not sharing the details of their DNG format with other image editing competitors. None-the-less We’re stuck with Adobe for a lot of t

Recently I unearthed my (original version?) Metabones Speed Booster. For those not familiar, this adapter is a revolutionary idea that takes full frame lenses and reduces the magnification and image circle to match smaller sensor sizes. They also have the added benefit of increasing the effective aperture. In my case I'm taking Canon EF mount lenses and using them on my Sony e-mount mirrorless cameras. So one amazing feature of digital photography is the ability of software to correct lens defects. In fact profiles either built in or custom made exist for many lenses that correct for geometric distortion (pincushion or barrel distortion), chromatic aberration and vignetting. I rely on those corrections now. And it occurred to me, how do profiles work when using the "Speed Booster"? There's glass in there, clearly there's going to be some different defects than the primary lens on its own. Does the profile for the primary lens apply at all when using the "

Recently I added a Infra-Red converted camera to my stable of digital cameras. There's been a surprisingly steep learning curve. The camera was an amateur conversion - some guy on Ebay did his own conversion by simply (I'm sure it's not that simple really) removing the IR filter. As I am using Sony mirrorless cameras, I thought it'd be cool to have a tiny little IR body to play around with. In this case it's a Sony a5000. Without any filter in front of the lens, this camera creates unremarkable results. In fact, image quality suffers without much notable difference in the visible image. However, if you put a filter on the lens that limits visible light and lets IR pass through the results can be very dramagic. There are some ways to make for interesting color images, but thus far my favorite use of this technique is black and white. I'm fairly new to Capture One and try avoid Adobe products when I can. So I thought I'd share some of the conversion tech