(This post is part of an ongoing review of the iPhone 12 Pro Max.) It was dark and getting darker as I drove away from the Teutonia Peak trailhead in the Mojave National Preserve. I turned right, heading away from my Airbnb in Baker, situated along Interstate 15, and drove…
(This post is part of an ongoing review of the iPhone 12 Pro Max.) When I first turned down Cima road from I-15 I was relieved. The news reports in August had been depressing, nighttime videos of firemen battling a forest of Joshua trees aflame, one clip showing what appeared…
My new camera has arrived and I bought it in gold. Two years ago I had an iPhone 6s Plus, which I got only by pressing the manager of a local Apple retail store when my version 6 Plus phone died and they were out of stock of that model—Apple…
(This post is part of a series of posts reviewing the Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens.) If you hold it and shift it around so the light reflects off the glass, the surface of a Glimmerglass filter looks like it has been sprinkled with some sort of metallic dust, maybe gold.…
(This post is part of a series of posts reviewing the Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens.) Beach Bokeh Boo! The Fuji 50mm f/1.0 compared to the 56mm f/1.2 There is far more to a lens than bokeh—the character of the out-of-focus areas—but with an f/1 lens set wide open the out-of-focus…
(This post is part of a series of posts reviewing the Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens.) Bokeh is a word for the background (or foreground, I suppose) blur characteristics of an image. It differs from lens to lens (sometimes by a lot) and sometimes it differs a lot with the same…
(This post is part of a series of posts reviewing the Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens.) "First light" is a phrase from the astronomy community, usually referring to the first road-test image taken with a newly-built telescope, but it is also used more casually by the non-professional astronomer to refer to…
(This post is part of a series of posts reviewing the Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens.) The new Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens is here—what is it like? With any super-fast lens your expectations are that it will be huge, with a triple-digit filter diameter. And the lens is big, just not…
(This post is part of a series of posts reviewing the Fuji 50mm f/1.0 lens.) If you were designing a lens what would you do? Ahead of you is a line of trees, planted in a straight row. They form the top of a “T”, you stand at the bottom…
In my review of the Peak Design Travel Tripod I mentioned that I had lost the hanging hook, the cap on the bottom of the center extension pole, the first time I had used it. I had taken the hook off to extract the hidden iPhone holder and when I…