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Leica APO Summicron-SL 50mm F2 ASPH lens review
Announced on 15 August 2019 (see our coverage here), the Leica APO Summicron-SL 50mm F2 ASPH is a relatively compact high-end lens for Leica SL cameras. Inside, the lens design is complex for a 50mm. However, it’s designed for a digital sensor, so some prerequisites must be met. It has no less than 12 elements in total, with several AD (anomalous dispersion) elements to mitigate CA and fringing, plus three with aspherical surfaces to reduce SA and distortion. The lens also adopts what some call a “digital element,” or a lens profile, to correct vignetting, distortion and CA, more as an afterthought in this case, as the lens is so…
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Leica Q3 review: the quintessential Leica
Leica’s Q series is the company’s best-selling digital camera to date and it’s not all that difficult to see why. Kevin Carter looks at the latest iteration, the Leica Q3 Small, light and unobtrusive the Leica Q embodies all that’s attractive of the Leica M with added the benefit of a Kabe-designed Leica autofocus 28mm F1.7 lens. This is the closest we have to an autofocus M series camera, and unless you’re adept at using one of those you’ll be more successful shooting at the initial aperture or close to it and far more discrete using a Leica Q. What’s more, the latest iteration the Leica Q3 is the fastest…
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Hidden Features of Capture One Pro: Save Filters for Searching Metadata
Filters are an often over-looked feature in Capture One and they’re really very powerful for searching for images. You might already use them to find starred or colour tagged images but they can be set-up to search for any metadata that’s listed in the Metadata tool. As a camera and lens reviewer (formerly for numerous press titles in the UK), I often want to find photographs taken on certain cameras or lenses and so I have theses filters saved for just that purpose. I can also search by ISO, aperture value and even shutter speed if want to (the latter not so much, if I’m being honest). While those particular…
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Hidden Features of Capture One: Save your Workspace
Capture One Pro is a highly customisable app, and there’s nothing worse than getting it all set up only to find the workspace has changed for whatever reason. I often find it different to how I left it (or thought I had), whether that’s due to a bug, an update, the yearly upgrade, or simply user error (such as removing tools or complete tool tabs) it’s difficult to say. Fortunately, Capture One has an option to save the current workspace. Once saved it’s easy to restore and it’s easy to set up several customised workspaces for different tasks. You might for instance never use the tethering option, so you can…
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Hidden Features of Capture One Pro: Redeploy as a Fast Browser
Why use Capture One Pro as a fast browser? In theory, Capture One can’t be used to browse until images are imported into either a Catalog or a Session. And, in my opinion, it’s this design that makes Capture One Pro a little daunting for new users, as you’re immediately asked to make a choice between them before you can use it. However, in practice, there is an (unofficial and therefore unsupported) “third” way to use it, and that is as a fast browser. One of the downsides of RAW converters like this is that you have to import images through a “gatekeeper” (the import, or ‘importer’) app. Once files…
