guts

Nikon Z7 Teardown: Inside Nikon’s 1st Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera

Our brand new Nikon Z7 full frame mirrorless camera arrived at the office this week, and we immediately got down to business. Four years ago, Sony fired the first shot of this battle with the A7 and continued to release one iteration after another, each improving on the last, and did so completely unanswered by the competition until August 23rd of this year when Nikon announced the Z7 and the Z6.

Here’s a Teardown of a Leica M Camera

There are about 1,200 moving parts inside a Leica M rangefinder. In this 3.5-minute video, Tamarkin Camera in Chicago disassembles a Leica M give show what goes on inside the famous red dot cameras.

A Canon Lens vs. a 60,000 PSI Waterjet

In this 4-minute video that's both fascinating and heartbreaking for photography lovers, the Waterjet Channel puts a Canon 17-85mm lens through a vigorous test. Well, it's not really a test. They're cutting it in half with a waterjet that packs 60,000 PSI of water pressure.

Teardown: A Look Inside the Fujifilm X100T

iFixit has published a complete teardown of the Fujifilm X100T. If you've ever wanted to see the guts of the $1,099 camera, here's your chance to have a peek without spending 2 to 4 hours and putting your camera at risk.

This 1939 Cutaway Diagram Shows the Anatomy of a Leica Camera

When the Leica camera was born in the early 1900s, it was the first practical 35mm camera to use standard 35mm cinema film. In 1930, Leica introduced the Leica I Schraubgewinde, which used an interchangeable lens system based on the Leica LTM (Leica Thread Mount) 39mm screw thread.

Want a peek of the inner workings of Leica's early LTM camera? Today's your lucky day.

Nikon Sliced This D5 in Half to Reveal the DSLR’s Guts

Nikon's big announcement at CES 2016 in Las Vegas this year was the new flagship D5 DSLR. In the company's exhibition space, Nikon is displaying a Nikon D5 DSLR and Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens that have been sliced cleanly in half to show off the innards with a cross-section view.

Sony a7R II Teardown Gives Us an Inside Look at the Mirrorless Beast

One camera that has generated a great deal of interest in recent days is the Sony a7R II, which packs the world's first BSI full-frame sensor, ISO 102400, and 4K video into a flagship mirrorless body.

The folks over at iFixit have just published a teardown of the a7r II, giving us a glimpse into the guts of the highly-anticipated camera body.

Teardown: A Look at the Guts of the Canon 5DS

When my company LensRentals first got the first Canon 5Ds and 5DSR cameras in stock, we immediately started screaming that we wanted to take one apart. It turns out we received enough 5Ds cameras to let us have a day with one to do just that. Of course, we don't expect to find out anything amazing and revealing. We expect it will look pretty much like the Canon 5DIII and 7DII on the inside. But hey, you never know. Plus we'll be repairing these soon enough, so we might as well find our way around now.

This Step-by-Step Teardown of the Nikon D80 Shows You What’s Inside a DSLR

After having his ex-girlfriend stab his Nikon D80 to death using a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, Jon of Prime Studios decided to "take lemons and make lemonade" by using the camera for an in-depth teardown. In the 16-minute video above, Jon takes the DSLR apart to show us what things are like on the inside and what some of the main components are.

Why Photographing Gorillas in the Wild Takes a Huge Amount of Guts

Want to see what it's like to photograph wild gorillas up close and personal? Check out the clip above from the 1974 documentary Gorilla by Dieter Plage. It shows Belgian photographer and conservationist Adrien Deschryver in heart of Kahuzi-Biega National Park in Zaire, snapping pictures of gorillas from a short distance away.

In dramatic scenes the tale of an abandoned baby is shown in heart-stopping detail. Brought into the forest by Deschryver to help it adjust to its natural habitat, it begins to scream when it hears other gorillas, and is subsequently snatched from him by the dominant silverback. Stunning photography captures the sheer force of the silverback’s intimidating demonstration before he grabs the youngster.

Deschryver demonstrates one of the things you learn in Photographing Gorillas 101: don't run when they charge.

What Pancake Lenses Look Like On the Inside

I’ve always been fascinated by pancake lenses. It just amazes me that something that small can actually function. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we’ve been taking things apart to determine where and how (and sometimes if) the lenses can be adjusted optically. So, I decided to do two pancake lenses for mirrorless cameras side-by-side to see how they differed (the Sony 16mm f/2.8 E mount and the Olympus 17mm f/2.8 micro 4/3 mount). I wasn’t sure there would be much we could do with pancakes (and there wasn’t), but I still found the look inside rather interesting.

X-Ray Photographs of Camera Gear

Freelance photographer Bill Rhodes captured this X-Ray photograph that reveals what various pieces of camera equipment look like on the inside. There's lenses, a camera, a radio transmitter, remote shutter release, light modifiers, and batteries.

Canon 1Ds and 400mm f/4 DO IS Lens Sliced Down the Middle

Leica and Sony aren't the only camera companies that slice their cameras and lenses down the middle to give the world a peek at their guts -- Canon does it too. On the first floor of one of its headquarter buildings in Japan is a small museum that has a cross-sectioned Canon 1Ds DSLR and 400mm f/4 DO IS USM lens on display. Back in the day, the camera had a price of $5,500 and the lens cost $8,900, meaning Canon sliced nearly $15,000 of gear in half for this display.

A Peek Inside the Leica M6 Rangefinder

Last week we showed you some photographs of Leica lenses cut cleanly down the middle. This week we have some interesting photographs of what a Leica M6 rangefinder camera looks like when the outer layer is removed.

Nikon D5100 Carefully Dissected, Found to Have “4 Billion” Screws

If you've ever wanted to know what the guts of a Nikon D5100 look like, iFixit just published a meticulously documented teardown of the camera. Aside from pointing out the various parts found in the body, an interesting conclusion the iFixit team came to was that the D5100 has a horrible "Repairability Score" of 2/10, where 10 is easiest to repair. The reason? "Approximately 4 billion screws hold the device together" (They're exaggerating, of course).