Posted in Digital Cameras, Lenses on October 16th, 2006

Tamron just released the wonderful AF18-250mm F/3.5-6.3 Di-II LD lens.
It’s a zoomlens with an enormous range, ready to mount on a number of DSLR cameras.
It zooms from wide-angle to a very nice tele-distance so it can do almost anything you like to do with your camera. What I appreciate very, very much is that it has a minimum focussing distance of only 45 cm!
This means that it is also a pretty good macro lens.
So is it the perfect lens, can you forget all other optics? No… the only thing lacking is an image stabilizer. That means that it will not be ideal in lesser light conditions. An SLR with in-built stabilizer might be the best match for this wonderful lens!
Read more at DCviews and Tamron.
Posted in Canon, Digital Cameras on October 15th, 2006

There are so many technical improvements going on in camera technology that we cannot do without actual reviews anymore…
A pretty new technology is face recognition: your camera helps discover human skin and automatically adjusts all settings to getting faces optimally in your picture. Nikon is already very advanced in this technology. Canon just started and it’s time to test the results of their developments in the SD800 IS compact camera.
No more failed portraits?
No SLR required for a perfect picture?
Check out the very fine review at DCresource and get convinced!
Posted in Digital Cameras on October 8th, 2006
Once again, the monthly list of the ten most popular digital cameras has been posted on the digitalcamerareview website.
The list is based on the number of times the corresponding webpages are viewed.
Again, the list is not very well balanced with 6 out of 10 models made by Canon. Panasonic comes second with 2 models, while Nikon and Sony each have 1 model in the list.
Posted in Digital Cameras, Lenses on October 7th, 2006

In the already impressive range of zoomlenses from Sigma a new one has been added: a huge and heavy precision instrument to get the smallest objects far away in sight and on your sensor.
It’s not the kind of lens anyone would like to buy: you almost need a trolley to take it with you into the fields with almost 6 kilos of weight. However, especially with the magnifying factor of modern sensors the effective focal range (35mm) can be up to 1600 mm! You can even couple the monster to a 1.4x or 2.0x teleconverter for an almost astronomic focal range.
Question is: how do you prevent this lens from movement, as it has no in-built stabilizer? At the end of the zoomrange, especially in suboptimal light conditions, the risk of shaken images is as big as the lens itself…
I would recommend to couple it to a camera with a sensor-based stabilizer!