stevme Posted October 27, 2006 Share #21 Posted October 27, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) Why would his thoughts be worth reading and considering? If he isn't competent enough to compare two lenses, how could he possibly be competent enough to compare the M8 with other cameras? The answer to why Mr. Reichman's comments are worthy of note are contained in his entire website, which contains a wealth of well considered views on photography, not to mention his Video magazine, to which I subscribe. You will have to make the case that most of his entire body of work is nearly worthless to carry any weight with me, and I rather doubt that you can do it Mr. White, although I welcome you to try. There are several hundred pages, so you better get started. Cheers Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 Hi stevme, Take a look here First Sean, and now Michael Reichmann -. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
abrewer Posted October 27, 2006 Share #22 Posted October 27, 2006 Hey! Go easy on Mike! He has probably the broadest-ranging, and most thoughtful, landscape and nature photography website out there! Luminous Landscape I enjoy reading his articles. The travel articles in particular are well-written and tell stories that I enjoy. Same with the software articles. They always have great visuals to help me along the path to...ahem...refinement! You can't deny he's got a lot of good, enlightening information on the site for the amateur and general photographer. He's also, and I think he'd agree, a "Leica-phile"! And in all fairness, I don't always agree with his assessment of equipment, same as some other folks here. After all, we have Sean to do reviews for us! So what's not to like? Thanks. Allan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sean_reid Posted October 27, 2006 Share #23 Posted October 27, 2006 The images produced by a camera are the sum of an enormous number of variables. And those variables must be equalized so that we can know that any differences in the final images are due only to the cameras themselves. Um...thanks Peter for that explanation of how one should review a camera. If I ever start doing that, I'll try to keep your pointers in mind. Look, Michael is a friend of mine and I respect him. None of us is right 100% of the time but I take what Michael has to say seriously and give it careful consideration. I certainly can't say that for all reviewers out there. Michael is very knowledgeable and he concentrates on aspects that are of consequence to the real-life use of cameras and lenses. I recommend LL as a great resource for serious photographers (except for the articles on LL by that Reid guy, they're a little dodgy). Cheers, Sean Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterJWhite Posted October 27, 2006 Share #24 Posted October 27, 2006 Perhaps his many years of working as a photographer would qualify him. He also states that he does not do technical reviews just reviews of what it is like useing a particular product. quote] You have mail, Peter. ABr Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
canlogic Posted October 27, 2006 Share #25 Posted October 27, 2006 Easy guys. Keep it above the level of personal insults, please. ABr quote] Anyone who reviews cameras or anything else does so from their own viewpoint. I don't happen to agree with everything MR says nor do I agree with everything Sein says on reidreviews but both sites offer an extraordinary amount of good and valuable information. Both of these guys do and write about what they are passionate about. Dissing the guy because of some minor point that you don't happen to believe in says nothing about him but does show your own true colors. If you don't like the things that they write about then why would you visit their sites? Perhaps so you can show how wrong they are? Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion but some of these sites like LL and SR certainly give a lot more good information than all the ruler shooters out there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfunnell Posted October 27, 2006 Share #26 Posted October 27, 2006 Edit ABr Assuming things not in evidence as facts, for mine. But anyway... I, for one, am awaiting the link to your site chock-full of photography equipment reviews performed to your own exacting standards, and entertaining and informative essays and articles on other aspects of photography. I'm always up for a good read, so I look forward to it. Hey, I'm even up for paying to access such a site, should the free samples leading me there be up to snuff. ...Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterJWhite Posted October 27, 2006 Share #27 Posted October 27, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) If you don't like the things that they write about then why would you visit their sites? I don't visit his site. Not any more. After reading the nonsense he's written, why would I? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted October 27, 2006 Share #28 Posted October 27, 2006 Do I even want to go here. Peter i also do a ton of testing on gear and I also have posted those results good , bad or ugly. All i can say is every review and every test is a piece of the puzzle on how a lens or camera performs, weather you have a bone to pick with Mike or Sean who really cares. Trust me no one, but to insult folks that take the time and effort to do it is wrong. I am a working Pro and put a lot of time into helping others with tests and reviews and make judgement calls of decisions for folks that want to buy gear. If you feel you can do that and help someone than we are all ears otherwise you sound like a guy sitting in a arm chair waiting for the sun to come up. No offense my friend but you sound like a bitter old man. If not the case than proof me wrong and show us a better way to run tests because there are not many of us out there that go out on a limb everyday with our reputations on the line. Micheal and Sean do. Be it right or wrong the info is out there for people to study. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterJWhite Posted October 27, 2006 Share #29 Posted October 27, 2006 Do I even want to go here. Peter i also do a ton of testing on gear and I also have posted those results good , bad or ugly. All i can say is every review and every test is a piece of the puzzle on how a lens or camera performs, weather you have a bone to pick with Mike or Sean who really cares. Trust me no one, but to insult folks that take the time and effort to do it is wrong. I am a working Pro and put a lot of time into helping others with tests and reviews and make judgement calls of decisions for folks that want to buy gear. If you feel you can do that and help someone than we are all ears otherwise you sound like a guy sitting in a arm chair waiting for the sun to come up. No offense my friend but you sound like a bitter old man. If not the case than proof me wrong and show us a better way to run tests because there are not many of us out there that go out on a limb everyday with our reputations on the line. Micheal and Sean do. Be it right or wrong the info is out there for people to study. Here's how to do a flare test. Mount the camera on a tripod. Point the camera at a subject with a light source. Don't move either the camera or the light source. Take pictures, changing lenses, or whatever else you want to test. But don't change the position of the camera, or the subject matter. In Reichmann's "test" the subject matter was moving. So it's an invalid test for flare. I pointed out to him that the test was invalid and why. He stands by the test, by claiming that, well, it really isn't a test after all. Fine. It's not a test. He and I can agree on that. ;-) But he still claims, on the basis of his "untest", that the 16-35 flares more than the 17-40, at 17mm. I don't know if it does or doesn't. But his "test" tells us nothing about which lens flares more than the other, and he claims that it does. He's wrong. And for you Reichmann fans out there, one doesn't have to be a lens tester to know when a "test" is invalid. Simple logic is all you need for that. In his article, Reichmann provided all the facts anyone needs to know that his test is invalid. If you enjoy reading his delightful prose, I'm happy for you. I went to his site looking for facts, and didn't find any that were particularly useful. I certainly didn't find out whether one of these two lenses performs any better than the other. And his sloppiness in this "test" calls into question the validity of all his supposed "tests". So that begs the question, why would anyone read them? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted October 27, 2006 Share #30 Posted October 27, 2006 Peter be it if his test is right or wrong , we do have to look at anyones test as not as Gospel. There is no one doing scientific testing of these things per say and doing them they way they think are best. Like I said you have to take things as pieces of a puzzle and try to get to a point were all the data you collect makes some sens. hey i don't agree what others say all the time either and sometimes you really need to prove these things yourselve to the best of your abilities also. personally i test for me and my needs but share those tests to make some sense of what something is doing or not doing. Am i right all the time , No but i have 31 years experience so i can't be totally wrong either. but we all make mistakes and also make bad calls. i don't know Micheal and i have seen folks all over his ass on some reviews he has done and some folks think he is a god or something . so like I said it is just makes sense to average what is said and do your own homework sometimes. anyway Micheal gets thelove and hate of it all , frankly i wonder why he bothers. It's certainly not for the money Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stevenrk Posted October 27, 2006 Share #31 Posted October 27, 2006 OK, we get it. Time to move on, no? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rosuna Posted October 27, 2006 Share #32 Posted October 27, 2006 In Reichmann's "test" the subject matter was moving. Is that true in practical terms? How much the Earth moves in a few seconds? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sm23221 Posted October 27, 2006 Share #33 Posted October 27, 2006 Perhaps one should read the reviews including Michael's ... to come to some conclusions instead of attacking the reviewers. Michael, you have mail. ABr Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterJWhite Posted October 27, 2006 Share #34 Posted October 27, 2006 Is that true in practical terms? How much the Earth moves in a few seconds? It makes no difference how much the earth moves. The fact is that the earth is rotating, and orbiting the sun. So the relative positions of points on the surface of the earth, and the sun, is constantly changing. If in the 17-40 shot the sun was completely blocked by the steel tower, and in the 16-35 shot the edge of the sun had just appeared from behind the steel tower, more light would have been hitting the front element of the 16-35 than had hit the front element of the 17-40. And, direct light from the sun would have reached the 16-35 lens, where no direct light had reached the 17-40 lens. The rate at which the earth rotates is irrelevant, as in one instant the tower can completely block the sun, and in the very next instant, it can not be completely blocking direct light from the sun. In other words, there would have to be a specific moment in time when the rotation of the earth would be enough to allow direct light from the sun to reach the lens, and before that specific moment, no direct light from the sun would have contacted the lens. And if that moment occured during the lens change, that could account for the difference we see between the two images. It would certainly account for some sort of difference in the images, that goes without question. And in order to make any statement about a difference between these two lenses, as Reichmann has done, he has to eliminate any such differences in the way the two lenses are "tested". He hasn't done so, and so the "test" is invalid. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted October 27, 2006 Share #35 Posted October 27, 2006 How much the Earth moves in a few seconds? If there are 24 time zones around the earth, and it's about 25,000 miles around at the equator, that's about 1000 miles per hour of rotational speed. At 5280 feet per mile and 3600 seconds per hour, that works out to about 1500 rotational feet per second. We would need trigonometry to gauge the change in angle of the sun's rays, but it you look at a shadow on the ground and place your foot at the edge of a shadow, it takes 20 or so seconds to see the edge of the shadow move. That's not really so fast. Also, having spent a lot of time shooting dance on theaters, and having spent a b-u-n-c-h of dough to get lenses that aren't flare-prone, I would say it would be hard to determine the effect of a slight movement relative to the sun on different amounts of flare. Also, if some light is coming past the obstacle, that oncoming light will cause flare. Even if the volume of oncoming light changes, the relative effect on flare should not be discernible, as long as there is oncoming light in both pix. May I add that I find Reichmann's reviews and articles informative and interesting. As they are free to the reader, it's hard to complain. I've gotten advice that has cost me more than that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlm Posted October 27, 2006 Share #36 Posted October 27, 2006 of course the earth's rotation matters, isn't that pj's primary argument? However, if you bring reality to bear, MR would ahve to take quite a while between lens changes before there would be a visible postion change. some rough calc's: in 12 hours, the sun moves a max of 180 degrees across the sky (and that is peak of summer...I guess MR also erred by not giving us the latitude and month, eh?). that works out to 15 degrees /hr, ,25 degrees/min, .004 degrees/second. A 17mm lens with a full frame (damn that MR...what crop, if any, was used!) has about 100 degree FOV, so what percentage of the FOV does 4 seconds represent? peanuts, maybe significant if you are talking about lines of resolution, but not for the position of an object in the frame, even taking tower/sun alignment into consideration. another red herring issue Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitchell Posted October 27, 2006 Share #37 Posted October 27, 2006 I think Peter is being too limited in his conclusion. In every photo the content is described by light. If taken outside during the day, the light will vary according to the position of the sun which is constantly changing. It is therefore clear that no comparisons of cameras or lenses should take place outside in daylight unless they are taken from the exact same position at the exact same time which is impossible. I'm very disturbed that Micheal and Sean don't realize this. Yeah right. !:^) Best, Mitchell Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrc Posted October 27, 2006 Share #38 Posted October 27, 2006 Another aspect of Reichmann's test was that there wasn't only one test, there were were two -- in the second test, there was (apparently) one source of light with a camera on the tripod and the lens that tended to show slightly more flare in the first test also showed it in this test. Since these are real-world tests, I would tend to give the tests some credence. Reichmann also seems not to have any particular bias; he's not advocating or defending ones lens or the other, he's simply investigating. I've often wondered if it's even theoretically possible to do camera tests like Peter wants; a physicist or an optics specialist might be able to tell you, but shooting simple targets under controlled lighting conditions would also seem to exclude a lot of desirable information. What you would really need to do is to build a set, with a wide range of lighting available, in different spectrums, with a large group of targets of different shapes and sizes set up at different ranges, and perhaps painted with color-chart hues set at different angles and with different levels of glossiness. But then how would you view the results? With perfect printers or perfect monitors? Peter is correct about one thing in his complaint (which was intemperate, and that's always regrettable) -- quite some time passed between the two shots in the test, and the sun would have move noticably. (Look at the cloud.) JC Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lxlim Posted October 27, 2006 Share #39 Posted October 27, 2006 Here's how to do a flare test. Mount the camera on a tripod. Point the camera at a subject with a light source. Don't move either the camera or the light source. Take pictures, changing lenses, or whatever else you want to test. But don't change the position of the camera, or the subject matter. Peter, I'm new here but I must say this in support of Sean and Michael R that they return to the photography community something that is valuable. Views that are tempered by their experience. Granted, that you may be right about Michael's testing but every lens design is a compromise in design with the added variation introduced in manufacturing. Every coating on the lens element is a compromise on the part of the lens designer. To test thoroughly will require the reviewer to test with lights sources with different spectral output, point and broad sources placed at different positions in the image. Shot at every mm of your focal lens range and at every aperture available to the lens. Every lens will flare given the right conditions. Daylight, tungsten, UV depending on what you environment is. Michael shot it in his natural environment of his work. You shot it in controlled conditions for a specific light source. You have to decide for yourself with tests that satisfies you on your own time if the tests of others are inadequate. It is up to us to take value from the experience of others and the least we can do is to show appreciation. Alex Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rosuna Posted October 27, 2006 Share #40 Posted October 27, 2006 So the relative positions of points on the surface of the earth, and the sun, is constantly changing. ...that is also true for the mountains... The mountains are being eroded continuously. Kids growth continuously. Therefore, you cannot make a test taking a picture of a mountain or a kid, isn't? Are those movements (planets, mountains, kids) relevant for a test made in a few seconds? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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