Tony Northrup: high megapixels is best for low light & high iso

Tony writes:

Low megapixel cameras have less noise in low light because of bigger pixels, right? Camera manufacturers AND smartphone manufacturers use that in their advertising, but is it true?
NO. We put three sets of cameras to the test, for both still images and video. The cameras tested include the Sony a7S III, Sony a7R IV, Sony a1, Canon R5, Canon R6, Fujifilm X-H2, and Fujifilm X-T4. In EVERY case, the high megapixel camera outperformed the lower megapixel camera in low-light, high ISO photography AND video. Every time.

Tokina 11-18mm E lens review at Opticallimits: “the value king in its class”

Tokina 11-18mm lens is at BHphoto. Adorama. Amazon US&EU.

Opticallimits tested the lens and concluded:

It’s nice to see that Tokina is finally back with a new original design. And the Tokina atx-m 11-18mm f/2.8 E doesn’t disappoint. Like all ultra-wide lenses, it has a few rough edges but overall, we are generally very pleased with the performance. This is especially true for the resolution chapter. With the exception of 18mm @ f/2.8, it is pretty sharp across the image field. At medium aperture settings, it even approaches greatness. Thanks to comparatively low native image distortions, image auto-correction doesn’t need to work hard either – thus maintaining most of the resolution goodness. The original vignetting is very high at 11mm f/2.8 but it’s reasonably well controlled at other settings and quite low with auto-correction again. Lateral CAs are an old Tokina enemy and they are indeed visible in RAW files but they represent no problem after processing. The sunstar rendering is decent at medium aperture settings. A weakness is flare in backlit situations, so better use the supplied lens hood.

The Tokina lens follows the brand’s long tradition of having a very good build quality. The lens is lightweight yet doesn’t sacrifice a solid feel. The control rings are very smooth. The inner lens tube extends slightly when zooming towards the wide-end – there is nothing wrong with this, but it is a little unusual in this respect. The AF is reasonably fast and it’s perfectly silent. While it won’t affect most users, we’d prefer finer steps of the AF motor though. As is, manual focusing via the focus-by-wire system feels somewhat coarse.

The Tokina atx-m 11-18mm f/2.8 E enters a busy market segment with lots of options to choose from. Besides being a pretty good lens to boot, it is also more affordable than most making it the value king in its class.

First review of the TTartisan 50mm f/1.4 Tilt lens

TTArtisan is available on their worldwide store, Amazon US, Amazon DE, Amazon UK.

Photo-tea.com posted a first review of the new TTArtisan 50mm f/1.4 Tilt lens. The following two image show hoe much it can tilt:

And here are a couple of image samples:

PhotoTea says it was surprised to see how easy it is to create such effects. They also like the fact can also use this lens as a regular fast 50mm prime if you don’t need to get that effect.