Macro photography opens up tiny worlds that your eye could never see unaided. Now, scientists at the University of Houston have shown a way to make an 3-cent disposable macro lens that turns your smartphone into a moderately powerful microscope. These researchers have started a kickstarter project, and with more...
About Francois Malan
Post Archive By Francois Malan
Photographing the Milky Way in the Cederberg
A week ago I got the opportunity to spend a long weekend in South Africa's Cederberg Wilderness Area. While there, we enjoyed two cloudless nights, during which the stars were exceptionally bright. In fact, in this remote part of the world the stars are always exceptionally bright compared to the...
Sensor Size, Perspective and Depth of Field
A few months ago we wrote an extensive article on sensor crop factors and equivalence. In that post we covered several topics: the history of the cropped-sensor formats, brightness of the scene, perspective, depth of field, noise and diffraction. In today's post I want to focus on (if you'll excuse...
Using Nikon DX Lenses on FX Cameras
Because the glass elements in a camera lens are round, lenses project a circular image onto a camera’s sensor plane. This projected image circle must be large enough to cover the rectangular sensor, like so: Lenses designed for Nikon DX generally project a smaller image circle because they only need...