Posted on Tuesday, 22 March 2011 @ 9:19pm by David
Daffodils in bloom, Durham, N.C. | Canon 5D Mk. II and Zeiss Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 ZE lens with Canon 25mm extension tube | Exposed 1/80 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 800.
Last week was far busier than I had anticipated when I scheduled the rental of a Zeiss Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 ZE lens. I feel that I wasn’t really able to put the lens through its paces, mostly staying close to home due to a couple of developments that I’ll be announcing here shortly. Since I was working at home I worked with subjects at hand: loaves of bread, the cat, and our garden.
While soft wide-open at f/1.4 (to the point of being almost unusable), by f/2 this lens is razor sharp, and features the oft-fabled Zeiss micro-contrast: in-focus part of the image does seem to defy its two-dimensional nature. However, working in close quarters is where this lens struggles: the minimum focusing distance is three feet.
For this photograph of the daffodils that were in bloom in our front yard until yesterday, I had to resort to a 25mm extension tube, which presented me with the opposite of my problem: suddenly I had no choice but to be closer to my subject than I would have wished! That said, I think it works in this example. I’ll have a couple more to share after I get a spare moment to work them up.
Posted on Thursday, 17 March 2011 @ 11:00am by David
My third attempt at "No Knead Bread" yielded this beautiful, rustic boule. | Canon 5D Mk. II and 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens | Exposed 1/100 sec. @ f/2.8, ISO 100 | 580EX II and 550EX Speedlites triggered with Canon ST-E2 Transmitter.
Our New Blog
Over the past couple of months, Elizabeth and I have been working on a project together: a combined cooking, gardening, and home improvement blog that we’ve named With One Cat in the Yard. Today I posted about making Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread (aka No-Work Bread), which was popularized in a Mark Bittman column in The New York Times in 2006, and I thought I would cross-post it formy readers here. Our new project is certainly not a photography blog–I’ve included the technical details for the photos in this post, but you won’t find them at With One Cat in the Yard–but I hope everyone will take a look. More to come!
Flour, salt, yeast, water, and time perseverance
I’m in my third week of attempting to make good bread. I’ve always enjoyed crusty bread, but I’ve never found the price of five dollars for a boule to be particularly attractive, so I rarely buy it.
Elizabeth suggested trying a recipe that inspired many food bloggers a few years ago: Jim Lahey’s “No Knead Bread” featured in Mark Bittman’s column in The New York Times. The recipe became so popular that publishers perceived a demand for a book, so Lahey wrote My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method to further explain his method and offer variations. Both Lahey and Bittman emphasize that the process is so simple that a child could make it happen, although I don’t think my mom ever would have trusted me to drop dough into a 450° F stock pot and put it back inside an oven. Sometimes I wonder why anyone would trust me to do that now.
The wet, sticky dough after its first rise (overnight). | Canon 5D Mk. II and 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens | Exposed 1/200 sec. @ f/11, ISO 100 | Canon 550EX Speedite triggered with 580EX II Speedlite on "Master."
My first effort was not completely successful, nor was my second, but the third was just right. I was skeptical that I could make a loaf of bread worthy of an artisan bakery, but lo and behold, it’s not only possible, but has quickly become one of my new favorite breads. Not only does it look amazing and have a satisfying, crackling crust, it’s also pretty tasty. Now, it’s not the best, most flavorful bread ever, but it does have a faint sourdough flavor of which I am quite fond (on account of the lengthy fermentation period) and it’s fantastic for dipping in soup, olive oil, or as sandwich bread.
The basic recipe is stunningly simple: three cups of bread flour, one and a half cuts of water, one and a quarter teaspoon of salt, and a quarter teaspoon of yeast are briskly mixed together in a bowl and then left alone overnight: at least 12 hours, but extra time does seem to yield better results. While the original recipe calls for 1 and 5/8 cups of water, the video on the Web site and also the recipes I found on several other blogs all called for one and a half cups, and indeed that seemed to work well. After the lengthy first rise, the dough is rolled into a ball, allowed to rise again, and then baked in a pot inside of a conventional oven at 450° F. This creates a “fake oven,” as Lahey refers to it in the aforementioned video, meaning that it simulates the steam-injected ovens found in professional bakeries. The moisture of the dough is trapped within the pot and circulates throughout, ensuring a crisp crust.
Note:the recipes I follow are at the end of the post!
No Knead Bread in a cast iron Dutch oven. | Canon 5D Mk. II and Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 ZE Planar T* lens | Exposed 1/40 sec. @ f/2, ISO 1600.
For my first few loaves I used Elizabeth’s hard-anodized, eight-quart stock pot. The current thinking is that anywhere from three to five quarts is just about “right” for No Knead Bread. (The original recipe called for a six to eight quart pot.) Combined with our concern that such high temperatures for an hour and fifteen minutes might deteriorate the non-stick coating, I purchased a Lodge five-quart cast iron Dutch oven on Amazon.
However, the sticking point to this bread–literally–is not the equipment needed, but the second rise of the dough. After a few attempts, I believe I’ve found an effective alternative to the original recipe. I offer you my experiences with this bread so that you can learn from my mistakes and quickly get to the point: great bread at a great price with relatively little effort.
Posted on Thursday, 10 March 2011 @ 6:15pm by David
Bottom crust of "No Knead Bread" | Canon 5D Mk. II and 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens | Exposed 1/160 sec. @ f/8, ISO 250 | Canon 550EX and Canon 580EX II flashes triggered via Canon ST-E2
Last week I hinted that I was beginning to explore baking my own bread. For the past couple of days I’ve been working with “No Knead Bread,” which became popular in 2006 with Mark Bittman’s article about baker Jim Lahey’s process that involves quickly mixing a rough dough and then letting it rise for at least 12 hours. I hope to perfect it soon, and with it, introduce everyone to a project we’ve been working on here in Durham for a few weeks now. More to come!
Dolly on the wing-back chair, November 2007, Racine, Wis. | Canon 1D Mk. IIN and 300mm f/4L lens | Exposed 1/80 sec. @ f/4, ISO 1000
It was so easy to say “hello” at the Humane Society all those years ago. Sleeping in a cage adorned with a sign that read “I need a home for Christmas” was the cat who would come into our home and into our hearts in time to discover the joy of shredded wrapping paper under the tree. This little but loving nine pound ball of fur named Dolly has been in my life since I was in the fifth grade. Mom always said that Miss Dolly was going to sleep her life away, and indeed she spent at least 18 hours a day in one of her many nests throughout the house. She lived a good life as an indoor cat.
Sure, she clearly wished she could go outside sometimes so that she might suck the breath out of the local wildlife, as evidenced by her cackling at the window and powerful flicks of her tail against the tabletop. For a stretch she perfected the art of indoor hunting. My parents were especially happy when Dolly’s interest in mousing indoors waned, as waking to a cat gleefully taunting its prey at the foot of the bed was a little too much for them. She was trouble, but the best kind. Most nights she’d patrol the yard from atop a wing-back chair in the living room while we turned in to bed.
Dolly lived a long life, and we’re better for having her in ours. And while it’s one of the hardest things to do, today we all had to say goodbye. Living in North Carolina, I couldn’t be there. But none of us will ever forget that tabby cat. Dolly, you’re loved.
Posted on Thursday, 3 March 2011 @ 3:24pm by David
Craters on the surface: light wheat bread recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice featured on Smitten Kitchen | Canon 7D and 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens | Exposed 1/60 sec. @ f/8, ISO 200 | 580 EX II Speedlite fired in the DIY Beauty Dish on camera left.
Over the past month Elizabeth and I have been working on a new project I’ll be unveiling soon. Part of it is a new-found interest of mine: baking bread. I’ve never considered myself a good candidate for the Atkins diet because I simply cannot get enough bread in my life. Elizabeth has a bread machine that she purchased from a second hand store, and while neither one of us particularly likes the loaves it makes, I’ve found that it’s a fantastic dough-making machine–plus it takes care of the first rise. Pictured here is the top crust of a very basic, but very functional sandwich bread: Light Wheat Bread from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and featured on the Smitten Kitchen.
Posted on Tuesday, 1 March 2011 @ 10:03pm by David
Hulett House - April 2009 | Canon 5D Mk. II and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens @ 144mm | Exposed 1/100 sec. @ f/6.3, ISO 800.
A brief history of CPS
While I believe that customer service should be important to all businesses great and small, it’s clear that it isn’t always the case. So when a company does something for one of its customers that is above and beyond all expectations, it’s a good feeling. It’s also something that should be recognized by the end customer and held up as an example of loyalty-earning service. There was a lot of complaining two years ago, when Canon Professional Services transitioned into a fee-based, tiered program.
I recall a few people asking why they should have to pay for “better service,” and I scratched my head. The airlines have had a tiered fee structure for years: pay the base rate and sit in coach, but pay them several dollars more, sit in business class, and get better service. Pay even larger sums, and sit in first class with an even greater level of service. I had only been a member of CPS for a year when they changed up the program, but I have to say that I’ve seen only improvements in the past two years. Sure, Nikon Professional Services doesn’t charge (yet), but that’s in part because they’ve cut costs by firing some of their beloved NPS representatives, such as Carol Fisher, who used to represent Nikon at photojournalism programs such as the University of Missouri.
So, for the past two years I’ve paid $100 per year and received a discount of 30% on repairs plus several equipment loans for evaluation.
The problem
So what is this all about? Last week I sent in my 550 EX Speedlite that I damaged in a shoot for my Advanced Techniques class in my second semester at MU. It’s sat on a shelf for close to two years after I melted its diffuser from an hour of firing at 1:1 on manual. Before asking, the answer is that I wasn’t thinking at the time. One of the last photographs that the flash helped me to make is at the top of this post. Both of my 550 EX flashes were mounted on light stands and firing against the white walls of the mixed martial-arts gym, Hulett House. Of course an hour of shooting at full power will do bad things. But how bad?
550EX test before CPS repair: damaged flash is labeled "B". Note that the identical units are zoomed to 35mm and firing at 1/16 power. Canon 7D and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens @ 27mm | Exposed 1/100 sec. @ f/4, ISO 100
While behaving normally under E-TTL II mode, my 550EX that I had labeled “B” (for grouping purposes in wireless flash with the Canon ST-E2 transmitter) would only fire on full power in manual mode. The photo above shows just how badly the Speedlite had been damaged: both are supposed to be firing at 1/16 power, but the only one doing that is the flash on the left. So, after two years of my 550EX “B” Speedlite working only as a paperweight, I decided to send it in to CPS to be repaired and then sell it to recoup the cost of the repair.
An aside:
I have an odd hang up about broken gear: ultimately, I’d rather fix it and sell it to someone to recoup the repair costs than to let it rot on the shelf indefinitely. This is what I did a few years ago when I bought an Olympus 21mm lens off of eBay that turned out to be woefully scratched. I sent it into a man out in Colorado who gave it a new lens coating and then sold it, barely making up for the cost of the lens plus its repair.
Resolution
Refurbished Canon 580 EX Mk. II Speedlite from CPS
Last Thursday I packed up the 550 EX and shipped it FedEx to Canon’s Newport News, Virginia factory service center. One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about living in North Carolina is that FedEx Ground will get a package to Canon overnight. On Friday I approved the repair that was estimated to cost far less than I had mentally prepared for: only $77.
On Monday morning I received an e-mail that the factory was out of parts to repair the (discontinued) 550 EX, so they would be replacing it…with a 580 EX Mk. II Speedlite! I am completely convinced this would not have happened had I not been a member of Canon Professional Services.
Today, my Canon-refurbished 580 EX Mk. II arrived…and it doesn’t have a scratch on it. Sure, am I excited that I received a flash that retails for more than $450 by paying $77 and trading in my old unit? Absolutely. But it would have been far easier for Canon to tell me that they don’t have parts any more and simply ship my old flash back to me in its damaged state. This is the kind of thing that makes me think twice about ever switching brands–my loyalty has been earned with time, but it was renewed once more this afternoon when the package arrived.
Well done, Canon. Kudos on raising the bar for CPS!
Posted on Friday, 18 February 2011 @ 9:00am by David
The LensAlign MkII from Michael Tapes Design
Introduction
As long as cameras have featured autofocus, photographers have complained about its shortcomings: sometimes autofocus (AF) is dead-on, sometimes it focuses ahead of the intended target, and sometimes it focuses behind it. These flaws have been described as front-focus and back-focus, respectively. The reason for the fault in AF is found in the manufacturing process: a camera body’s AF is calibrated to a “standard” lens. However, the lenses that are produced on the assembly line are made within tolerances for deviation. With their higher resolution, DSLR’s have revealed that the tolerances in manufacturing clearly are not as strict as demanding photographers would like.
A few years ago, Michael Tapes of the eponymous Michael Tapes Design was working to create a device that photographers could use to accurately determine if and what type of focusing problems they had with their equipment. Tapes’ vision was that photographers would have proof to show the manufacturer that what they were seeing in their images was not, in fact, user error but the result of equipment. Coincidentally, just as the LensAlign Pro was coming to market, camera manufacturers provided a means to correct front-focus or rear-focus problems in-camera with Autofocus Micro-Adjustments (referred to as AFMA in this review), often buried deep in the user menu. Canon was the first to announce such a feature in its 1D Mark III body, and Nikon quickly followed suit. Note that Nikon refers to this feature as “AF Tune.”
In the fall of 2010, while reviewing a LensAlign Pro on loan from Michael Tapes Design, it was hinted that a new product was coming that would replace the less expensive but discontinued LensAlign Lite. The new unit would offer the same rear-sighting ability as the larger LensAlign Pro, it would ship flat, and it would be more cost effective for the company to produce. In total, these would make it, at least on paper, a win for customers and for the producer. And it would bear a “Mark II” designation that seems quite popular among many manufacturers at the moment.
The LensAlign MkII functions much like its larger stablemate, the LensAlign Pro, so you may wish to refer to my review of the LensAlign Pro (Part One and Part Two) before continuing. Also, if you own a LensAlign MkII, you should consult the LensAlign resources page for documentation and the ever-useful distance tool.
First a prototype and then a final production version of the LensAlign MkII was provided to me by Michael Tapes Design to prepare this review.
Design
What you see is what you get: seven pieces come together to form the new LensAlign MkII
The LensAlign MkII is essentially a scaled down LensAlign Pro that weighs in at a mere three ounces. In comparison, the LensAlign Pro is almost four times heavier at 11 ounces. One of the most exciting elements of the design of the MkII is that it shares the rear-sighting system of the LensAlign Pro.
While offering the same accuracy as the Pro model, the MkII’s construction is radically different: the pieces are cut on a precision die and are assembled by the end user. The MkII ships (and can be stored) flat in seven pieces: a sturdy base made of extruded PVC with an aluminum bottom plate and quarter-inch tripod socket, a front and back plate with sights for both standard and macro lenses, and three parts that fit on the side to keep the front and back parallel all come to support the most important part of the unit: the ruler.
The components are made of thin polystyrene but they have a lot of “flex” to them; at first I feared if I didn’t put them together correctly they would crack, but they go together quite smoothly. And because the pieces can bend there’s little risk of their breaking during assembly–in fact, the ruler is designed to “bow” into place. I have taken apart and put together both the prototype and the production version multiple times without any problems.
Click through the photos below to see how the LensAlign MkII fits together:
Note that this sequence was made while I was using the prototype of the LensAlign MkII. The final production version is assembled in the same fashion.
The Ruler
Calibrating a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens on the LensAlign MkII: the focus is on the "macro" target (closest to the ruler). Note that distortion can fool the eye into thinking that the lens is not centered on the target. Hover over this image and see the focus shifted to the rear standard, confirming that the target is square to the camera.
Since all of the other pieces come together to support the ruler, I would be remiss not to discuss it. The ruler on the MkII is an inch longer than the Pro’s, as well as half an inch wider, and double-sided with two different patterns. The first side has white numbers within black shapes, and the opposite side has black numbers within white shapes. My preference is for the white-within-black pattern, but users should try both to see which seems to be easiest for them to “read.” However, unlike the Pro, the ruler on the MkII is fixed at a 20-degree angle (Position Three on the Pro).
Initially I thought this might present more of a problem than it really does in practice. With the LensAlign Pro I will use the 20 degree position the most, but will occasionally switch to the 12.5 degree-angle when it seems too much of the ruler is in focus as the harsher angle limits can make the boundaries of the DOF “pop” a bit more. With the MkII the left-most row of numbers can sometimes be obscured by part of the front standard–this happens when calibrating wide angle lenses and macro lenses where the distance from sensor plane to LensAlign is two feet or less. However, the extra width of the MkII’s ruler means that there are more patterns to compare on opposite sides of the 0 Mark, so the difficulty in evaluating the smallest column of numbers is mitigated by comparing the two patterns immediately to the right, as in the photo above.
In Use
The LensAlign MkII has both a quarter-inch thread as well as four feet on the bottom for tabletop use. While it would be possible to use the MkII on a table, mounting it on a tripod offers far greater flexibility for making the face of the unit square to the camera. As discussed in the first part of my review of the LensAlign Pro, both the camera and tripod need to be positioned at a distance equal to 25 times the focal length of the lens (for instance, a 100mm lens should be calibrated from 2500mm away, or 8.2 feet). The camera and target are in alignment when the central AF sensor is aimed at the central view port on the LensAlign, with the bulls-eye perfectly centered within. For more details on the process of squaring the target to the camera, Tapes’ recent article about “Using True Parallel Alignment (sighting system) best practices” is a quick but good read.
For my testing of both the prototype and production MkII I attached Arca-Swiss style quick-release plates to make mounting on the tripod an easy affair. Another advantage of using an Arca-Swiss style quick release is that the LensAlign MkII or your camera body can slide from left-to-right within the channel of the quick-release clamp. This can make fine-tuning the position of the red AF target within the bulls-eye a snap and help avoid re-positioning a tripod when a minor adjustment is all that is necessary!
As I discussed in my review of the LensAlign Pro, there are three different ways of evaluating the autofocus performance and subsequent micro-adjustments:
reviewing the images on the camera’s rear screen
taking the flash card inside and reviewing the images on a computer monitor
shooting tethered so that the images appear instantly on a computer.
I’ve found that shooting tethered is the most effective way of working with the LensAlign MkII, but it certainly has its share of disadvantages, among them glare off of the laptop screen when working outside and power and USB cables to avoid tripping over. Simply reviewing the images on the back of the camera may be one of the “fastest” means of calibrating the focus, and it seems to work well most of the time. However, there are times when two or three micro-adjustment settings all look “pretty good” on the rear screen. In a situation like that, importing the JPEG’s (no need to shoot RAW) into Photoshop to use the emboss filter can help to determine which is the best setting.
Using the Emboss Filter: set the angle to 135 degrees and the height to three to make the depth of field "pop" on the LensAlign ruler
At the moment I cannot find a way to identify AFMA settings in a photograph’s metadata (evidently Canon DPP software can provide this information on Canon cameras). It is important to be mindful that the MkII does not have an “enumerator” like the Pro (there’s no built-in visual reference for which AFMA was used or how far apart the camera and LensAlign were in a given image), but a sticky note is an easy stop-gap!
My Method
Tethered capture in Adobe Lightroom
I prefer to work indoors, with the camera tethered to my computer when I’m calibrating lenses no longer in focal length than my 70-200mm zoom. I keep Adobe Lightroom open in tethered capture mode and review the JPEGs at 100% on my 24 inch monitor. A standard 16 foot tape measure will suffice for placing the camera and target at appropriate distances whenever working inside. If there’s diffuse light coming in through the window, I’ll use that. However, while I must be tripod-mounted to use the LensAlign, I prefer not to use slow shutter speeds.
Calibrating with the LensAlign MkII indoors with a wirelessly-triggered off-camera flash to illuminate the ruler.
So, if my shutter speed dips below 1/100 second using available light I will set up an external flash and bounce it off of the (white) ceiling in my office. Note that the flash is there to help evaluate the ruler, not the front standard, so bouncing off the ceiling is ideal as it will evenly illuminate its surface . Just be sure not to overexpose the ruler!
While I set up a flash wirelessly using an ST-E2 transmitter and a single Canon speedlite mounted on a light stand (unless I’m calibrating the 7D, in which case I will use its built-in wireless flash control), mounting a strobe in the camera hot shoe and bouncing it off the ceiling will work.
When calibrating the AF with a lens longer than 200mm I wait for good weather and set up outdoors, grabbing a 50 foot reel tape measure on my way out the door. I have tried to work tethered with a laptop outdoors, but I’ve found the glare off my laptop screen to be unacceptable. Your mileage may vary as not all screens are the same! I typically try to work off of the camera’s rear screen, but sometimes I have to make a series of images (with sequential changes in AFMA) and take the flash card inside to scrutinize the images on my computer.
I recommend recording individual cameras and lenses and the best AFMA for each combination in a spreadsheet. Include the date that you perform the adjustment! As I discussed in the second part of my LensAlign Pro review, it would behoove users to calibrate their lenses before any major shoot, and then again a month later, and once again three months to the day of the original calibration. This is because the best AFMA for a given camera and lens may change with time–although the change need not be universal. This February both my 5D Mk. II and 1D Mk. III required a change in AFMA with my 70-200mm lens–I calibrated it with a LensAlign MkII prototype over Christmas–but the setting I had found for my 7D last fall with the LensAlign Pro remained “good.”
Compared to Lens Align Pro
LensAlign MkII and LensAlign Pro side-by-side
While it doesn’t exactly replace the LensAlign Pro, the LensAlign MkII offers the same ability to test and adjust the autofocus performance of DSLR’s as its bigger brother, for for $100 less. Of course there are differences between the two models, but how significant they are is ultimately up to the end user, but even their designer has a preference.
While speaking to me about the design of the new LensAlign, Tapes said: “Personally, I use the MkII: it’s smaller, lighter, easier.” Retail price aside, the fundamental differences between the MkII and the Pro lie in their construction, the ruler angles, the enumerator, and the Long Ruler Kits.
Construction:
The LensAlign MkII is made of thin, lightweight, and flexible polystyrene; the components are designed to be locked together and taken apart by the end user. The MkII is more portable than the LensAlign Pro, which is made of beefier extruded PVC, assembled at the factory and then laser-tested for accuracy before shipping. (It should never be taken apart since it may no longer be accurate after being reassembled.) To travel with the MkII, simply put its pieces in a rigid envelope and drop it in the bottom of a suitcase with folded pants or other clothes. I simply cannot recommend air travel with the LensAlign Pro.
Rulers & Angles:
The improved, wider ruler pattern makes up for the fixed 20 degree angle on the MkII. On the LensAlign Pro I only use the 20 degree and 12.5 degree positions any ways. Additionally, the MkII’s ruler has a matte surface whereas the Pro’s ruler is highly reflective, making the MkII easier to work with in sunny situations.
Enumerator
This might be the only thing absent on the MkII that makes me nostalgic for its predecessor. The enumerator on the LensAlign Pro can be very helpful when comparing changes to the AFMA on a computer. However, a pad of sticky notes and a pen will do the same thing, if nowhere near as elegantly.
Long Ruler Kits
An optional accessory, the Long Ruler Kit on the LensAlign Pro creates a four-foot ruler. Because the material is nowhere near as rigid, the MkII’s Long Ruler Kit will feature only a two-foot ruler. The idea behind the Long Ruler Kit is that a photographer may set up the target at a greater distance than the recommended 25 times the focal length of the lens. Tapes explains that this can be beneficial for photographers with super-telephoto lenses who often photograph their subjects from great distances and therefore would prefer to calibrate from healthy distances. Not having used one of these kits I cannot speak to their functionality, but I will say that so far I have not felt the need for one in calibrating lenses up to 1000mm in effective focal length (500mm with a 2x TC). If the idea of a four-foot ruler appeals, there is only one choice.
Conclusion
In my review of the LensAlign Pro I wrote that “The good news is that even if LensAlign is the only practical tool available, it’s a good one.” This holds true for the LensAlign MkII: no other company makes a tool that offers the accuracy of the LensAlign family of products. DataColor didn’t try very hard when they came up with the Spyder Lens Cal, and no one else has stepped up to the plate. The LensAlign Pro is a great tool, but an expensive one both for the consumer and the manufacturer. The LensAlign MkII is every bit as accurate and more gentle on consumers’ wallets. Yet, I know there are those who are going to ask whether the product is “worth” the $80 expense.
I think the LensAlign MkII a no-brainer as it helps a bag full of expensive lenses produce the absolute sharpest images they possibly can. Personally, I never knew that the 16mm end of my 16-35mm zoom could resolve the level of detail that it does now that I’ve used a LensAlign; it’s like having an entirely different–and better–lens.
In a world full of hundreds of accessories that are priced in the range of $50-$100, the LensAlign MkII might just be the best value on the shelf. Highly Recommended!
