Just wanted to reiterate my thanks at the tremendous quality and quantity of equipment reviews and lens tests at phillipreeve.net.
Phillip and the rest of the team, you have made the absolute best site for review of Sony E-mount gear and especially lenses. No one can touch you (although Fred Miranda's tests are also excellent - perhaps he can join your team at some point ).
lightskyland wrote:
Just wanted to reiterate my thanks at the tremendous quality and quantity of equipment reviews and lens tests at phillipreeve.net.
Phillip and the rest of the team, you have made the absolute best site for review of Sony E-mount gear and especially lenses. No one can touch you (although Fred Miranda's tests are also excellent - perhaps he can join your team at some point ).
They are terrific! I was fortunate to meet one of them in person a couple years ago. I told the story once but want to share it again. Several summers ago I was waiting for the sunset at a popular spot in Hallstatt, Austria. A young man next to me asked if the lenses I had on my two cameras are the new Voigtlander 15mm and the Canon 24mm T&S, I said yes. I thought I had seen him before but couldn't quite connect the dots. Then it dawned on me that he looked like one of the reviewers on phillipreeve.net. I asked him:"Are you German?", he said: "yes.", I asked:"Is your name Bastian?", he said: "Yes!". Talk about small world! We had a nice conversation afterwards. He was nice enough to let me take a couple shots with the CV 10mm he was testing. There two guys from different countries who had never met before, standing on the same spot in foreign land, yet we connected because of our common interest in photography. I will never forget that episode.
Agreed - one of many reasons I moved to Sony from Canon was from reading their website. Their huge pool of knowledge helped to cement my thoughts about going mirrorless, knowing that there was a supportive community in using and adapting manual glass.
First it was the Minolta MD 35-70 f3.5 Macro, and it is even better than what I read out of their review. After that, I was hooked.
Then the comparably great and convenient MD 75-150 f4.
Then the CV 21 f3.5, the unique Pentax 28mm f3.5 and the Minolta 50mm f1.4.
These are the lenses which now have their firm place in my bag. I also have tried several others, but they aren't (or weren't) as great or fun to use. Not even the CY 35-70 f3.4 which also got a favorable review but is somehow too clumsy for me, and the Minolta rendering, although not as "perfect" as the Zeiss rendering in some respects, does speak to me more.
Thank you very much guys, for your great guidance!
Agreed, I love the reviews on Phillip's site and read them religiously. I very much appreciate that they are on no one's payroll, and probably my favorite aspect is the honest assessment of what each reviewer did with each lens (shot it for a while then sold it to replace with xx lens; uses it regularly; sold it immediately; etc.).
The manual lens guides are excellent and this is also a resource for those without big gear budgets.
Phillipreeve.net was such a great resource to have when I switched over from Canon EF to Sony, and still is much used reference point for me. And of course FM and Guy and everyone here as well. EF was pretty simple and straightforward, and moving to Sony kind of seemed like the wild west with the differing product lines and so many easily adaptable options.
I'm constantly sharing that Philipreeve.net article on EFCS with people who don't know better. Glad I found that one early on!
It's always a treat to go and see a new lens review is up. Even if it's something I'll never buy, I just enjoy reading about people using projector lenses for portraits, stitching wide-open fast telephoto lenses, or getting the best results with rangefinder glass on a FF Sony.
Awww. Thanks for the warm words . They mean a lot.
First I want to thank my team a lot. When I started it I just wanted to create a place where I could share my own experience and knowledge which was actually to a large part learned on FM. (Please don't go back to the really old stuff, it is a little embarrissing today ). Since then it has become a real team effort. Now we are constantly discussing lenses from different perspectives across the continents which has increased review quality a lot and also improved the format. In the last 1.5 years when I had little time for the blog they kept it lively with little input from me. So thank you Bastian, David, Jannik and Juriaan!
Also a big thank you to the community here. I started with a Nex-3 in the Alt board back in the day when there were basically no lenses available and most legacy lenses from the "dead mounts" uncharted water. The community here was essential in my learning about lenses in general and also in discovering interesting lenses which would be worthwile to review. Fred himself was still shooting Canon and we were a much smaller community than today. I sometimes miss the spirit of that time but then I enjoy that the E-mount has become so popular because we have so many interesting new lenses because of it.
Also a big thanks to Fred for hosting this community. I take part in a few German boards which makes me really appreciate how civil the tone is around here as well as the quality of the discussion.
Every time I'm considering a lens to purchase I check both FM & Phillip Reeve's sites and then make a decision. You can't go wrong in that case. And it means a lot specially because there are plenty of sites where reviews are always incomplete and/or based upon amateur criteria. These two webs are a daily treasure and a way to feel part of a community where knowledge is always welcome.
Phillip Reeve wrote:
Also a big thanks to Fred for hosting this community. I take part in a few German boards which makes me really appreciate how civil the tone is around here as well as the quality of the discussion.
Fully agree. Fred has created the best community on the Internet for photographic discussion! That is by providing strong leadership about the tone of discourse here. We all owe him a great deal of thanks for that.
fededuran wrote:
Every time I'm considering a lens to purchase I check both FM & Phillip Reeve's sites and then make a decision. You can't go wrong in that case. And it means a lot specially because there are plenty of sites where reviews are always incomplete and/or based upon amateur criteria. These two webs are a daily treasure and a way to feel part of a community where knowledge is always welcome.
Same here. My usual process when buying the glass is check FM review feedback, Big Bronco test then followed by Phillip's site review. I even followed Bastian on Flickr
I have three manual focus lenses thanks to that website. Even more importantly, I have a smug sense of superiority over other photographers due my manual focus skillz. That website has turned me into a horrible human being.
). Since then it has become a real team effort. Now we are constantly discussing lenses from different perspectives across the continents which has increased review quality a lot and also improved the format. In the last 1.5 years when I had little time for the blog they kept it lively with little input from me. So thank you Bastian, David, Jannik and Juriaan!