nazdravanul
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 p.2 #4 · Diglloyd Medium Format subscription? | |
I found diglloyd a priceless source of information for FF lenses (TS, Zeiss, native, DSLR, mirrorless, all that stuff). It saved me from a couple of very expensive mistakes and helped me work with the strengths and weaknesses of some of my gear (my own testing confirmed most of his findings).
For Fuji GF - not as much. He works (exclusively) with rented medium format gear, as such his reviews seem a bit rushed and his mastery of GFX gear is not really up to snuff, in some cases (I couldn't reproduce his findings on focus stacking issues with the GFX 100, once the stacking interval was correctly setup, and after a while a lot of those paragraphs were retracted). I didn't experience any of his issues with QC problems on the GF primes, but the decentering & asymmetry of the 32-64 was indeed confirmed in my testing on 3 different samples of that lens, to varying degrees, so, yes in retrospective, had I not paid attention to his reviews I may have not been very thorough in checking the lens and ultimately returning the zoom.
Also, he was struggling with aliasing artefacts for various Sony sensors (including Fuji medium format) which ultimately turned out to be related to his postproduction workflow and 1 Lightroom feature he was eagerly promoting.
So, to sum up: he used to be a gold standard in lens / gear testing. Currently, while his content still has real value, it's not as quality consistent as it used to be. I would still recommend him, but in some cases, critical assessment is needed.
Later edit: sometimes he would have important insights that no other internet review / test would be able to provide (excellent lenses turning out to be duds under various conditions, or lenses that were not very valued by reviewers turning out to be really useful under various other conditions). Again, even if I can no longer take his word without hesitation, the insights he gives for testing various aspects of lens / camera performance are still valuable, even if it is just to guide my own testing. I can focus on potentially problematic areas, already identified by him, and guide my own working or purchase decision-making process from there. Normally he is digging for sh.t, so the good news is: 1. if he hasn't found any, chances are you're good to go 2. if he has found something, it's generally a good direction to look for and evaluate the real extent and impact on your work of the problem (ignoring his findings can be a costly decision, as already stated)
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