It’s not often that you get your hands on a Hasselblad, so when we received the $5,750 Hasselblad X1D II 50C in the office, to say we were excited would be an understatement. According to Hasselblad, the medium format camera is described as compact, powerful, and enhanced, and we can attest to it.
Kolari specializes in infrared and ultraviolet photography camera conversions. The company also makes filters and even built a camera out of a potato. As part of its camera conversion work, Kolari often shares teardowns of new cameras, like a detailed teardown of the Sony a1. The latest camera to hit the operating table is the Nikon Z8 full-frame mirrorless camera.
Alongside the new Canon EOS R100 mirrorless camera, Canon also announced a new pancake-style prime lens for RF-mount, the RF 28mm f/2.8 STM. While announced simultaneously with the APS-C R100 camera, the RF 28mm is a full-frame lens.
Sven Lamprecht of IRreCams specializes in infrared and astrophotography camera conversions. As part of his work, he recently performed a full spectrum conversion on his Fujifilm X-H2 camera, and detailed the entire teardown on his website.
Canon pushes for the APS-C market by with the new Canon EOS R7 and EOS R10. It’s no surprise that camera giant Canon is continuing with the massively popular mirrorless camera trend. This time around, they’ve decided to shake things up by introducing mirrorless to the smaller, more budget-friendly crop sensor market with these two new camera models.
The Nikon Z9 is here and ready to take on the Sony A1 and Canon R3 for the title of ‘Mirrorless Flagship.’ We can argue all day about which camera is the best, but there’s no question that this one is the biggest. Mirrorless cameras have all been lighter and more compact than their DSLR counterparts, but with Z9 and the R3, Nikon and Canon have changed that.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense has released a video in which a Ukrainian soldier disassembles a Russian military surveillance drone. The teardown revealed a remarkably rudimentary design that features a low-end Canon DSLR camera at its core.
According to a pair of recent YouTube videos from Max Tech and Luke Miani, the M1 Ultra Mac Studio might actually be upgradeable, but only by Apple. The SSD is removeable, but upgrades appear blocked on a software level.
The Sony flagship camera is here, the first of the mirrorless full-frame "holy trinity" of Sony, Canon, and Nikon to be released. Sony announced this beautiful beast back in January 2021, and today we’re going to take it apart, modify it into a full spectrum camera, and (hopefully) put it back together again.
The iPhone 13 series may look like an incremental update from the outside, but the team from iFixit shows that after a teardown, there are some notable differences from the 12 Pro series, especially when it comes to the camera.
As part of a customization project he undertook, self-described media creator David Knop disassembled a Polaroid Go, the company's latest instant camera. Impressed with the engineering and design, Knop decided to share what it looks like under the hood.
Roger Cicala of Lensrentals noticed that multiple copies of the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 returned to the warehouse with the same visible crack in an internal element. Why it kept happening was a mystery.
Yesterday, iFixit finally tore into the brand new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro (the Pro Max isn't available yet) during a 1 hour and 30 minute-long live stream. And about 44 minutes in, they got to the part we're most interested in: the cameras.
Since making is debut in July of 2019, the Sigma fp has gained notoriety as a very capable camera despite its mixed reviews. The decidedly lowercase ‘fp’ is Sigma’s first full-frame sensor.
Roger Cicala and the crew at Lensrentals finally got the chance to do a proper teardown of the Canon EOS R5, and what they found is an exceptionally well-sealed camera that's packed full of the latest tech. That's both a huge pro and, if you're thinking in terms of heat dissipation, a potential con.
Over at Kolari Vision, we love tearing into the newest camera gears to learn how they work and if they can be modded for infrared photography, full spectrum photography, or other things. We’ve been really excited about the R5/R6 release, and had plans to add some cooling mods and overhaul it into a proper video camera.
LensRentals recently got back a $10,000 Fujinon GFX100 medium format mirrorless camera from a customer who used it in dive housing and reported that it "suddenly died for no reason." After Fuji declared repair impossible and insurance claims were paid, LensRentals decided to take the camera apart and look inside.
The good people at Lensrentals are at it again. Using a combination of tools, expertise, and sheer moxie, they've broken into one of the most interesting lenses to be released by Canon in recent memory: the fixed-aperture RF 600mm f/11 IS STM.
The team at Lensrentals just published Part 2 of their fascinating flange distance test, where they compared various Sony, Canon, and Micro Four Thirds stills cameras. What they found is particularly relevant to Sony shooters, or anyone with a camera that has IBIS.
Lensrentals cracked open the brand new $9,500 AF-S NIKKOR 120-300mm f/2.8E FL ED SR VR lens this week, putting the behemoth of a zoom lens to the test. And while they found a "classic" Nikon build that isn't as elegant as the new Z-lenses, the bench tests reveal that the lens is "spectacularly good optically."
iFixit has finished its teardown of Apple's new iPhone SE, and one of the main revelations is a disappointing one for smartphone photographers: the new phone does NOT use the camera from the iPhone XR. Instead, Apple is using a module that is basically identical to the one in the iPhone 8.
I want to take you back to a simpler time. It’s September of 2016. Everybody is running around outside taking beautiful photos with their new cameras. The full-frame mirrorless camera showdown has yet to turn into a hot war. It has officially become cool to shoot with Sony.
iFixit has posted their teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: a smartphone that boasts, at least spec-wise, the most impressive camera array on the market. This thing is a beast, and iFixit is giving us our first look at the 108MP sensor behind its main camera module, and the folded optics behind its 4x optical zoom.
LensRentals' Roger Cicala finally got a chance to crack open the new Nikon Z-Mount 24-70mm f/2.8 S lens, and what they found inside should make Z shooters happy. Not only is lens meticulously engineered and well-sealed, it features a "modernized" design that's unlike any LR has seen from other manufacturers.
2020 is just around the corner, and if there is one thing we can be sure of, it’s that Sony probably isn’t going to be slowing down. While every iteration of the different a7 and a6000 camera lines launch with significant improvements over their predecessors, the most recent a7R took leaps and bounds in both capability and design progress.
LensRentals just finished their teardown of the incredibly light and compact new Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, and what they found will make Canon users very happy. Not only is this lens a beautifully engineered marvel--a total redesign of the "typical" 70-200mm f/2.8 formula--it is also, in Roger Cicala's words: strong, like bull.
Before EXIF data landed on the scene through the rise of digital photography, film cameras could superimpose the current date directly onto your photos, allowing you to see when you shot each one as you flipped through an album. If you've ever wondered how that date was included, here's an interesting 14-minute teardown by Applied Science that reveals the secret.
We really didn’t know what to expect going into this. Panasonic hasn’t even made an APS-C body before, never mind a full-frame flagship mirrorless camera. Though, it seems they realized the S1 series needed to make a splash if its release was going to trail behind Canon and Nikon’s first foray into professional-grade mirrorless cameras, because the S1R is massive.
After crowning the Sony FE 135mm f/1.8 G Master lens "...the sharpest lens we've ever tested. Period." LensRentals' Roger Cicala got the chance to disassemble a copy of the new lens and see if the build quality matched the optical quality. Spoiler alert: it does.
Huawei's new P30 Pro smartphone has jaw-dropping low-light abilities and industry-leading image quality. The company has been touting its quad camera system as being co-engineered by Leica, but here's an interesting piece of info that isn't being widely publicized: all the imaging sensors were made by Sony.
You might have thought the Fujifilm X-T series was finished with the release of the X-H1, that Fujifilm was digging into the competition and leaving their love of style behind as was evident with that monstrosity. (We mean that lovingly.) But, the X-T3 is here, and it’s as beautiful as ever.
The Canon EOS R is cause for controversy. After all, we’re in the middle of The Great Mirrorless Camera War. Tensions are bound to rise, turning sibling against sibling, camera tech against camera tech, and photographer against photographer. Despite this, I will do my best to describe the form factor and internal construction of the EOS R in a fair and unbiased manner.
The Yashica Y35 camera was hugely hyped as a revival of an iconic Japanese camera brand and raised over $1 million on Kickstarter, but as backers have started receiving their cameras, reviews have been overwhelmingly horrible. The Vancouver, Canada-based Point&ShootClub published this 15-minute video review of the camera (Beware: it's angry and has strong language).
Want to see the internals of Canon's first full-frame mirrorless camera? Roger Cicala over at LensRentals disassembled the new Canon EOS R to look at the design and engineering going on inside.
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.
I always put a lens hood on my lenses. Except… when they fall! As I recently finished shooting at 6 AM in the Maldives with my wife, I kicked my tripod with my Sony a7R III, Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM, and an ND-8 filter on it. The tripod fell over towards the ocean and, to my partial relief, fell on the wooden platform 7 feet (2m) below with the camera on it…
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.
JerryRigEverything just published this 7-minute teardown video of the Samsung Galaxy S9, and one of the interesting things it reveals is the mechanical workings of the DxOMark-leading camera, which is the first smartphone camera to feature a variable aperture.
Our pre-ordered Sony a7R III finally arrived this weekend, and we couldn’t wait to crack it open and see what’s inside. The a7R III has been receiving a lot of positive reviews and I can see why.
Have you ever wondered how the shutter of a DSLR works? This oddly satisfying 1.5-minute video from Chris Marquardt examines a shutter mechanism that has been extracted from a Nikon D500.