LensRentals announces the Photo Geek Contest 2013 winners

 

 

In October, LensRentals announced a photography contest of a very different sort, The First Annual Photogeek Geek Photo Contest. Not so much a contest of artistic merit, but rather a competition devoted to all the things that gearheads flip out over — sharp corners, test charts, bokeh, distortion, dynamic range, and putting as many elements between the camera and the lens as possible. Now, one month and 400 entries later, the winners have been chosen.

With a judging panel culled from some of the best in the busines (including our own Rob Murray), an eclectic and oddball array of photographs were awarded a variety of honors. The Photo Geek prizes (or Photo Greek if you're to believe the trophy) went to everything from a 3D printed version of a resolution chart to shooting directly into the sun to prove dynamic range; from dead insects inside of lenses to handmade cameras obscura. It's an awful lot of wonderfully fun photos — and well worth a browse.

But which photo won the coveted "cutaway Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 lens" grand prize? This insane "MacroSetUp Series" by Rishi Sanyal. Managing to reach 14x magnification, it's comprised of:

The setup consists of: Sony NEX-6::EOS-NEX adapter::Canon 1.4x II teleconverter::Bellows::Set of Kenko extension tubes::Canon 1-5X MP-E 65mm lens. The setup image shows a live feed of a frame of 645 film; I was able to image the extinction resolution (MTF < 10%) of Velvia 50 using the ISO 12233 shot pictured.

But if you want to have a look at the photos this insane rig can take, you'll have to click through to the contest winners page.

 

MacroSetUp Series by Rishi Sanyal