BorrowLenses Blog: Photo & Video Gear Rentals

Field Report – Zeiss Score Big with the Milvus 85mm Lens

by Sohail Mamdani | Dec 10, 2015 | Gear Talk | 0 comments

As they prepare to discontinue their “classic” line of ZF and ZE lenses, Zeiss have released the “Milvus” line of lenses to replace them. I took the 85mm f/1.4 Milvus out for a try and came back much more impressed than I have been with their older ZF/ZE lenses, which have begun to show their age.

Swap out That Wide Angle Lens for Your Landscape Photography

by Sohail Mamdani | Jul 7, 2015 | Gear Talk, Tips & Tricks | 4 comments

Landscape shooters love their wide-angle lenses. From the amazing Nikon 14–24mm f/2.8 to the new Canon 11–24mm f/4, it’s usually the wides that get everyone excited about landscape photography. Every so often, however, it pays to change things up.

Finding the Photo in the Cruft

by Sohail Mamdani | Sep 13, 2012 | Gear Talk | 8 comments

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by the power of software to bring out something interesting in images that might otherwise be a wash, but wouldn’t you know it, I’m still capable of being amazed. I’m currently shooting with the Nikon D800 of late as part of an assignment (more to come on that later), and I was up in the hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay Area at night, hoping to get some shots of the brilliantly-lit vista that encompassed San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and parts of the Peninsula area. Of course, I got up there, and everything was completely fogged in. I was miffed. Even the slight glimpse of the city in the background behind the Bay Bridge was mostly obscured by fog. I was ready to pass up on the image, finding not much of value, but then decided to play with it a bit. Since I had megapixels to spare (the D800 has a 36MP sensor), I decided to crop the heck out of it. Okay, That was kind of cool, and it was still a 22MP image. But it was still just a fog-blurred image. I decided to see what Lightroom 4 could do with it. Well, okay, that’s not half-bad. Exposure bump by +0.30, highlights lowered by -16, +48 on Clarity and +51 on Vibrance. Not half-bad at all. I didn’t want to stop there. If Lightroom could bring that much life back into this image, what could I do with one of my favorite software packages, Color Efex Pro 4 from Nik Software. I added a little bit of the Detail Extractor...