JIS screwdrivers are 100% necessary. It may seem PH fit at first, but it's _a tiny bit off_ enough to cause damage. The point of JIS is shorter and squared.
For those who haven't followed the camera world for a while, at this point a lens for a mirrorless camera will have a USB-C port to receive firmware updates.
Tamron lenses for instance will allow a wired control or a wireless dongle to communicate with an app/computer and change the lens behavior, switch what the physical buttons and rings do. Potentially you can manage stepping through settings for stop motion like effects, time lapses or stacking.
We're far from the days a lens was just metal and glass※. There are obvious downsides, but in practice it's actually a huge stepup IMHO. Every photographer is different and does different things, being able to fully adjust your gear is a godsend, especially as we need speed and reactivity.
※ there are still plenty, and plenty more will be designed and produced anew, but I don't think it's the major trend.
For some reason, cinema lenses are still - for the most part - purely mechanical. For film and TV, most camera operators still focus manually - often via gears attached externally to the lens.
Coming from modern photography, manual focusing is inconvenient and difficult to learn. But there's something very old-school cool about cine lenses. They feel great.
> at this point a lens for a mirrorless camera will have a USB-C port
Ideally, camera bodies should support firmware updates via the body in a non-discriminatory way, but until then I wish manufacturers support firmware updates via USB-C.
Looking at you Samyang Lens Station. I think users have been sufficiently upset, and they're adding USB-C to newer lenses.
I would contend that if you were to pick a trend line in the last ten, twelve years it is actually the return of high quality, cutting edge manual focus lenses for stills photography, which was a negligible market by 2014.
Mirrorless has restored the utility of manual focus lenses in such a dramatic way that many of the significant advances in optical quality at every price point are happening in manual focus, and there is a real return to the understanding of the value of lens "character".
Time will tell how much of this is a stepping-stone to Chinese manufacturers moving to AF lenses (which is definitely a part of it) but many of the best new lens designs are coming from the likes of Cosina-Voigtländer and various cinema-adjacent stills brands.
The TPS62140's 30ns propagation delay is not enough to blow a fuse. The first rule of fuses (which many modern engineers do not understand!), is that fuses are not there to save your parts, and they simply will not do that. Fuses exist to prevent fires.
Even a fast fuse is very, very slow compared to semiconductors. I've seen transistors blow up to "protect" fuses. They're for stopping fires and preventing the slaughtering of batteries, nothing more, nothing less.
This is the kind of thing I'd love to see robots take over. Companies don't want to service these things much; the labor is too costly. They could just distribute the repair manuals and we could get robots to do it.
Placing disassembled screws on double sided tape is such a great idea, I am going to try that next time I disassemble my electronics (as opposed dropping everything in a container and spend time finding the original size screws during reassembly).
I did some work recently while I was between jobs, designing and assembling camera lenses. It was so fascinating, and satisfying. Strongly disappointed they couldn't afford to pay me to stay.
That was a fun site to browse. I really enjoy fixing / hacking on non-disposable equipment (lab, test, optics, etc.) and there are some well-done write-ups in there.
17 comments
[ 53.6 ms ] story [ 368 ms ] threadThis is incredible work, though.
Tamron lenses for instance will allow a wired control or a wireless dongle to communicate with an app/computer and change the lens behavior, switch what the physical buttons and rings do. Potentially you can manage stepping through settings for stop motion like effects, time lapses or stacking.
We're far from the days a lens was just metal and glass※. There are obvious downsides, but in practice it's actually a huge stepup IMHO. Every photographer is different and does different things, being able to fully adjust your gear is a godsend, especially as we need speed and reactivity.
※ there are still plenty, and plenty more will be designed and produced anew, but I don't think it's the major trend.
For some reason, cinema lenses are still - for the most part - purely mechanical. For film and TV, most camera operators still focus manually - often via gears attached externally to the lens.
Coming from modern photography, manual focusing is inconvenient and difficult to learn. But there's something very old-school cool about cine lenses. They feel great.
Ideally, camera bodies should support firmware updates via the body in a non-discriminatory way, but until then I wish manufacturers support firmware updates via USB-C.
Looking at you Samyang Lens Station. I think users have been sufficiently upset, and they're adding USB-C to newer lenses.
Mirrorless has restored the utility of manual focus lenses in such a dramatic way that many of the significant advances in optical quality at every price point are happening in manual focus, and there is a real return to the understanding of the value of lens "character".
Time will tell how much of this is a stepping-stone to Chinese manufacturers moving to AF lenses (which is definitely a part of it) but many of the best new lens designs are coming from the likes of Cosina-Voigtländer and various cinema-adjacent stills brands.
So do you mean that even camera lenses now ship unfinished?
Even a fast fuse is very, very slow compared to semiconductors. I've seen transistors blow up to "protect" fuses. They're for stopping fires and preventing the slaughtering of batteries, nothing more, nothing less.