All posts by Phillip Reeve

I have two hobbies: Photography and photographic gear. Both are related only to a small degree.

Tokina Firin 20mm F2 FE Review: A good deal?

The Tokina Firin 20mm F2 is Tokina’s first lens for the E-mount and currently the fastest wide angle in the ~20mm range for the system. Read my in-depth review to decide if it could be a good addition to your camera bag.

 Image Samples
You can find all images shown in this review in full resolution in this Tokina Firin 2/20 flickr album.

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Review: Zeiss Loxia Planar 2/50 T*

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The Zeiss Loxia Planar 2/50 offers all the benefits of manual lens: a great focusing ring, very solid build quality and a small size but it gets rid of most disadvantages like outdated coatings, adapters and you get full exif info.
09/07/17 Update by Bastian: I have just recently been looking for a fast standard lens to use for Milkyway stitching (see this article) and compared this lens and the Sony FE 55mm 1.8 side by side. Therefore I added a few bits from these comparisons.

A German version of this review can be found on phillipreeve.de.

Sample Images

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Zeiss Loxia 2/50 | Sony a7 | f/2 | full resolution
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Zeiss Loxia 2/50 | Sony a7 | f/2 | full resolution

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Zeiss Loxia 2/50 | Sony a7 | f/2

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Tuning adapters for infinity focus and reflections – How To

Since a few people asked this is a short how-to on how I tune my adapters. As you will notice I am far from a perfectionist but so far my method has worked well for me and I think it could solve issues for some of you as well.

Correcting Infinity Focus

The Issue

Most adapters, not only the cheap ones, are a bit too short. This means that the markings on your lens are off and you can focus your lens behind infinity so the infinity hard stop of your lens won’t work. It makes sense for adapter manufacturers to make their adapters a bit too short because your Sony’s flange focal distance varies a bit and so does lens calibration. If their adapters were exactly as thick as specified there would be quite a few cases were people couldn’t focus at infinity which is way more annoying than a focus scale which is a little off.

But a too short adapter can also have negative impact on the image quality if you use a lens with floating elements. Especially with fast wide angle lenses you can get serious field curvature issues as many users of the Metabones Canon EF adapters have found out.

Important notice: This fix only works if you can focus at infinity and beyond! If you can’t reach infinity the fix will only make matters worse.

The lens is focused as infinity but the focus scale is way off because the adapter is too short

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Review: Minolta MD 100mm 1:2.5

The Minolta MD 100mm 1:2.5 is a small and affordable lens which delivers a surprisingly good performance on the Sony a7 series. Read my in-depth review to decide if it could be a good addition to your camera bag.

Specifications

Diameter 64 mm
Length 65.5 mm
Filter Thread 49 mm
Weight 310 g
Max. Magnification 0.12
Close Focusing Distance from the sensor 1 m
Number of aperture blades 6
Elements/ Groups 5/5
The Minolta MD 2.5/100 usually sells for around $150 used at ebay.com (affiliate link). 
In Germany you can buy it used for around 140 at ebay.de (affiliate link). 

Image Samples

You can find all images shown in this image in full resolution in this album.

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