I’m trying to figure out if a Sony 16-70/4 zoom lens died during Douchebags in the Desert (a.k.a. “Burning Man”). I used it to take most of the photos linked from http://philip.greenspun.com/travel/burning-man and then had a local camera repair shop take it apart to clean out the dust.
Since then I’ve occasionally noticed some hard-to-explain softness in some images. I did some brick wall test images (you can download the full res) wide open at f/4 and also one stop down at f/5.6, both with a sufficiently high shutter speed to ensure no camera shake.
What’s a good way to test this suspect system?
1. Take the same photo, but with the camera both right side up and upside down, then flip one of the two, and compare the same corner. If the don’t look the same, something is off.
2. Take photos of out of focus highlights and look at the bokeh. Compare to pre-burning man photos. If it doesn’t look the same, something MIGHT be off.