My worst photography experience (or rather, lack thereof) is with Soloshot robotic cameraman. They had a Kickstarter campaign years ago, and I pledged a pretty sum for their top "pro" model. That sure enough, I never received. And the worst thing is, that it was not a fraud per se, the company still exists and sells its products. They just decided to cancel the one model I ordered (out of three in their range), and keep my money. The support answers my emails until the point when they learn my order number =D And then the email threads end. Honestly, I have never seen such attitude. And it's not that I want my money back, it just feels really wierd and unpretty. There. Thanks to everyone who has read my rant) It feels a little better now)

Not gonna lie, the "Lens in a Cap" thing reminded me that I still kind of want one. It's terrible, but I love it for that. A dedicated technically bad lens would be fun for my kind of shooting, especially considering how my city looks.

I never had experiences like this... Because I watch your video's, thanks man!

One of the most enjoyable reviews I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t want to stress you out, but I have that Sony 16-70 lens. Three of them. Two out of the three are sharp. One was returned. My most impressionable experience was when my fully manual Pentax MX camera died in the mid 80s. I replaced it with an ME. I was so bored with the ME, I stopped shooting for several years. That left a more significant impression on me than my 100-400 GM hitting the concrete floor, requiring extensive repair.

When a review on camera lenses starts with the clever joke "I've been feeling reflective recently" you know you're in for a treat. And so it was. Well played, Mr Frost! 👍🏻

I may have to borrow this! "Horrible plastic hunk of inadequacy!" Funny, thanks!

You should add more of that sense of humour and sass into your regular videos, I love the fresh tone in this one!

“…the dufus who bought it off of me changed his mind afterward”. 🤣. Why did that make my day!?

Thank you for Opening up and sharing. Lovely to hear from you :)

Your most entertaining video yet! This was bloody fantastic. Cheers

Brilliant video!

My worse gear experience was in Africa in 2007. There were dark storm clouds every afternoon and as it got later it was high ISO time. I had a Nikon D200 which didn't really do ISO's higher than 400. The Canon shooters had some brand new Canon body (1D mach whatever) that was handling ISO's of 3200 and they were loving showing us their high ISO images. Thank goodness the D3 came along soon afterward.

Photos with Loreo 'Lens in a Cap' are like top tier among others i've seen during other reviews on this chanel, really enjoyable. Almost like those photos in family album from my childhood, i mean they are pretty good in lo-fi way, same vibe and style as from cheap 35mm compact camera

The Tokina story was awesome. Thanks for sharing.

This was hugely entertaining Christopher. LOL with you , not at you. I feel your pain . Must have been ridiculous trying to test these bombas. Thanks 😊

Enjoyed hearing this side of you and hope it helped you vent out.

Brilliant, thanks!!

lovely video! Thank you for enduring these various lenses, filters, and camera so we don't have to.

Watching this with subtitles as I'm deaf. I loved the line, "the well known manufacturer known as camera" LMFAO! You've got a new subscriber here, I loved this sense of humour. Back to the point, bad experiences or disappointments, Tamron 18-400mm Nikon F mount. "The only lens you'll ever need!". Biggest waste of money for an at best, mediocre lens.

This is hilarious! I love the flowery language! I have never heard you speak with such emotion! Great job.

What a lineup 😀 becaurse of you I never had a bad experience in buying lenses. I always view your reviews before giving out money. 13 lenses have made the way into My collection and I love Them all.

Well, as for the last lenses I tried out recently, my mention in this category goes to the Tokina AF 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 AT-X and the huge gap that's ajar between what it could have been and what it actually is. When I first tried it out, I was happily surprised in finding that it's the only 400mm lens I encountered so far that suited into my camera bag while still attached to my Canon EOS 90D. Adding to this was the oft-mentioned Tokina build quality and even the interesting detail that it had wheel in the lens cap that would be in touch with any polarizing filters attached to the lens, allowing for them to be turned easily with the hood mounted on the lens. But then I tried shooting it, and while - at least in my books - it's not a complete washout optically, it still left a lot to be deserved. Especially disappointing was the slow yet noisy and uncertain autofocus, but probably even more headscratching was the fact that pictures taken with it turned out rather dark, necessitating me to adjust the camery by about +1.5 EVs even in broad daylight. So, in total it's just close to a mess, especially since such a compact lens like this easily tempts you into leaving your better telephotos at home. I'm not quite sure yet, but it's highly likely that I'm not going to keep this one for long.

I actually had the Zeiss 16-70 for a while but sold it on pretty soon to fund other equipments. It wasn't terrible in my eyes, well built, focuses quickly, and the rendering was nice. I never really noticed the sharpness issue but I generally don't pixel peep. I suppose it was still not good value for money but honestly it worked for me and that's what matters.

I'd like to see some shots of the sun through that filter. If you still have it, why not give it a try? Probably good for pictures of welding being done too.

I know your pain ! Being a photo related artist most of my life , every thing interests me and gets me trouble trying it all , good or bad !

Thanks to your reviews I have never bought a bad lens. I think I have had some bad photos because of low light and high ISO but nothing from a bad lens. I have also learned how to de-noise some of those grainy photos so no worries.

That $30 "camera" seems like a geat product, my 4 year old son would have ton of fun with it

My first fast prime ever was the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7. It’s actually a lens that produces gorgeous results and is delightfully tiny, but at the time, with the AF performance of early mirrorless bodies, it was often painful to actually shoot any human subjects with it. As time went on, mirrorless became better at focusing, and even though it’s still a slow focusing lens, it’s not too bad today. Interestingly, a lot of Canon lenses are really slow focusing; the EF-M 22mm is absolutely egregious, and many of their cheaper RF lenses focus very slowly. But their bodies are so good at determining AF that they hide how slow the lenses are at focusing.

Hard to remember any particularly bad experiences really. But three things: 1) I guess my first digital camera way back when, high end point and shoot Canon. I hated it. I was just so used to film and the digital look made me sick to my stomach. I hardly used it and regretted buying it. Stuck to film for a LONG time after that, eventually processing my own and scanning. 2) As part of my sticking to film, I bought and used some twin lens reflex cameras. A Rolleicord I had came with a lens coating issue that I just could not fix. The coating had come partially off somehow, but I could find no way to remove the rest of it so I could just enjoy a non-coated lens (which I certainly would have). My last resort was to attempt to heat it over a flame and remove it. But, needing to physically wipe the coating away after heating it, I had to cool the barrel enough to grip it and be able to wipe the lens. I carefully (so I thought) ran a little water over the barrel . . . Of course the lens cracked. How stupid could I be? 3) A guy in Malaysia who bought a lens from me on Ebay asked me to buy something for him in Japan and he'd send the money and shipping fee to me. I bought it and he never sent me any money. I think he thought I'd trust him enough to ship the package before he sent me the money. Idiot! I still have his special viewfinder sitting in a box around here somewhere about 10 years later.

Loool the 24 stops and filter for six months in the back bonner

That Tokina 16-50/2.8 is optically identical to the Pentax 16-50/2.8. I had that lens years ago when I was still using Pentax. It was a bit soft wide-open. I actually remember reading on a forum somewhere that people said the f/2.8 on this lens was not really something to be used for taking photos, but to get a brighter viewfinder and better AF performance. Still, it wasn't all bad. It was fairly small and light for a lens in its class. And already at f/3.2 or 3.5 I got some portraits that looked really nice. And at f/5.6 it was very sharp. But that's 2 stops down. After I switched to Nikon I got the AF-S 17-55mm f/2.8. That is just a much better lens. Better bokeh, better sharpness wide open, and much faster autofocus (though that's the body as well - Pentax just hesitates more in general). The only downside was field curvature at wider angles, so it's not ideal for landscapes.

I see you visited Cardiff to test the Tokina. This is the same lens as the Pentax 16-50 f2.8 and although like many other people's experience, I did eventually have the motor fail, I have found it OK in use.

My worst experience? Recently comparing my Tamron 16-300mm VC PZD on a Canon APS-C 24 MP with my wifes brand new Panasonic Lumix 95TZ compact with a beautiful Leica lens. On a shot with 2 Storks and 2 hares far in the field, at approx. 200m the Tamron was sharp at first glance. But zooming in on my monitor it was big pixels, while the TZ95 stayed razor sharp, even at extreme zooming in. A sold the Tamron immediately and bought back a Canon 70-200 F4 IS USM L lens. Phew. Happy with the results now.

That was so good! 🤣

I used to dream about owning Tamron lenses back in the day. Then I forgot about them. :P Great video!

I had the Formatt Hitech 24-stop filter for a while. Fantastic for imaging sunspots. I've now got a dedicated solar telescope instead.

I had my Canon 16-35 mm f/2.8L mark II fall to the ground off my tripod because the tripod plate wasn't connected properly. The lens broke into two pieces while on a job. Thankfully it was only a small repair bill because none of the optics were affected.

hmm my almost nightmare with my camera is probably that time when I grilled an infrared gel filter which I've fitted at the back of my mirror-lens to shoot the sun (that thing smelled like burnt kebab!). I'm just grateful and thankful that the camera sensor wasn't touched!

The worst experience was when I was shooting video for my youth group (mid summer 2022) I forgot to tighten down the plate release for my tripod I was moving it, saw my canon 70D YEET its self off my tripod onto the concrete floor on the lens a canon 18-135 IS STM. the body works still works (still my daily). The lens had focusing problems so I opened it up to fix it, thought I did it right and broke a flex cable as I was sealing it up. Good part I still had a 18-55 and 70-200 F4 IS MK1, but I was going to youth conference in Florida in two days... after that a summer camp within a week. For those two things I had to use a 18-55. 2022 Christmas (one of my Christmas presents was a 50mm 1.8 stm) I saved enough to get a 24-105 F4 IS MK1 to replace my 18-55 and those my 18-135.

Thank you very much - great fun, great pun (is this the correct word?) I like your reviews very much, together with those of Dustin Abbot. This is a very pleasing summary of crap😂

Im dying....love this!!!!🤣

Straight cracked up at the test image of the Camera camera. I've see it before, but still.

Sugar... hehe. Train to Busan... even better! Still gotta watch the movie. We visited our kids in Korea a couple of weeks ago, and we took the train to Busan. What a country. Did you ever get to see the used camera gear in Seoul at the iPark Mall, Chris? B.t.w. I really enjoyed this whimsical but earnest "review".

My worst photography experience had to be trying to enlarge a high ISO film negative of a ship shot through a periscope while on board a fast attack submarine bobbing just under the waves. We needed to read the hull ID. And did, thankfully. Along with hours of motion sickness.

Dreadful experience was when I bought broken copy of a Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8 lens somewhen in 2011, as I was pretty inexperienced back then, seller payed for 1/2 of a service price, but lens was bad even after that, Tokina used to made physically tough lenses, with pretty questionable performance in terms of optical qualities, with extremely fragile and even for its time aging electronics.

The little tank of a camera, the Argus. The most basic of focussing, a gear you rotate at the top that rotates the lens. The dent that gear puts in your thumb is permanent. I was lured by a very heavy gal to her place, saying it was a Nikon.

What a terrifying beast, Chris. This savagery is beyond comprehension. 😂

Hilarious. And thank you for sacrificing your sanity for our benefit.

My only bad experience would be the Meike MK 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. It was cool but it was also a completely manual lens and extremely hard to use. I ended up returning it shortly after getting it. I do have a manual lens now and that's the Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x macro and that is very hard to use and it's taken me a long while to get used to it's quirks

I have the Tokina ATX 12~28f4 and find it very sharp. The only problem I find with it is CA where the sky is in the photo and there is thin tree branches in the foreground. Easily removed in Lightroom though. My 17~50f2.8 is the old Tamron SP one, and I'm ok with that. Glad i never saw the Tokina version for sale anywhere or I may have opted for it. My dropped lens was the Canon 50f1.8. It fell from a loungeroom table onto a carpeted floor and just separated in to 3 pieces. Couldn't believe it! About a 40cm drop onto carpet. It's a lovely lens, but really cheaply made

The last one gave me literally lowpixelphobia. I seriously had an eyesore when I watched the testing of the camera camera from camera

I remember saving up a considerable for me at the time amount to buy the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 lens for my Nikon D5300. When it arrived I took it with me to a trip to Malta right away only to find out right away that the auto focus was so bad that most of the photos would just be blurry, making me use manual focus for the entire trip. I ended up spending even more to get the USB dock and a calibration chart and spend HOURS trying to "calibrate" it, just to get more and more frustrated until I sold it off at a loss and decided never to buy a Sigma again.

Funniest video ever! This was hugely entertaining and happy that you did the hard work so the rest of us need not to 😂

You just sold me an ND filter. It's exactly what I'm looking for to get rid of people in my images!

I loved this, even if Chris did not!

Apologies. But the noise reduction while testing 24-stop filter gave me a chuckle. My personal worst was Mitakon 85mm f1.2. It had a hard stop on focus that couldn't reach more then 15m. Also, fringing was especially bad wide open.

Did you know Loreo produced a perspective-control version of the Lens in a Cap! Hopefully, I still have mine somewhere...

haha this was a lot of fun but looking at the pictures from the Tokina at the start, a bit harsh maybe. I thought they looked O.K. My worst experience was when I dropped my Contax 1 rangefinder camera (circa 1930s) in the river. End of camera!

Thanks to your efforts, we know what NOT to buy and what TO buy! :0)))

Thingify 18-36mm Pinhole Pro X will look good for B&W Retro style Photography.

Can´t stop laughing... ;-)) Great, funny video, Chris

The worst for me was the Sigma 30mm 'Art' for Canon EF-S. It was near impossible getting a sharp image because of front-/backfocus issues. Almost all third party lenses I used so far had something irritating. I am sticking with first party lenses nowadays, not that there would be a lot of third party options for the RF mount, anyway.

I know you never try pinhole lenses again, but please try Lensbaby's Obscura lens. You might like it.

Make one with you favorite lenses of all time!

got a minolta himatic 7s off of ebay for a good price, description said sticky shutter and misaligned rangefinder. easy fixes. doused the shutter in some naptha and aligned the rangefinder and put some nice adox chs100 through it, all were OOF. discovered that someone had been inside the camera and have messed with the helicoid and have also cut the light meter wires (wondered why it didnt work). had to fix that. lost a good roll of some fine film :/ also recently shot my first roll of provia 100f and i discovered later that my lens had a lazy aperture and all my photos were blown out, slide film being slide film. shame

I laughed all the way through this but not at your pain. :-)

Oh, definitely the 8/600 Sigma Reflex. It has a dark blue spot right in the centre of frame and casts blue over everything, no matter if you're pointing into or away from the light source. Bummer.

The most horrifying cameras I have used are the antique box cameras. The quality ones are made out of wood, viewfinders are almost unusable and the shutter speed depends on how fast you move the shutter release! The image quality on the single element lens makes just about any lens made in the last 50 years look razer sharp. To top it off you only get 8 shots a roll on huge 6x9 negatives that come out with lower quality pictures then 35mm film. Took me years to find a box camera that worked well and was able to get decent pictures, paid a whole $4 for it. They are a lot of fun to use but for image quality they truly are the worst besides pinhole and toy cameras.

10 minutes before boarding a plane to a very remote and very expensive place, I dropped my camera bag and bent my lens mount.

when is possibile video review of fujfilm gfx lenses ?

My experience with the Sony APSC 35mm f/1.8 was pretty bad. Right off the bat, I paid a little more money than I was hoping because I wasn't very experienced with eBay yet, and completely missed that shipping was over $35. I'm not sure if I got a bad copy or if the lens was just that much worse than I was expecting, but I was never happy with the sharpness. Even worse than the sharpness was the awful spherochromatism; if I was trying to shoot anywhere wider than f/2.8 (and I got the lens for indoors shooting where I'd want more light), anything that wasn't perfectly in focus was haloed by hideous orange and blue highlights. I dunno, maybe I just had too high of expectations, but on the other hand I fully believe that, aside from wide-open contrast, the Canon FD 50mm f/1.8 that I adapted to my a6000 was several times better despite being literally 1/10 the price if you included the adapter.

This is minor compared to what's listed here, but I still currently shoot with a Nikon D5100, and I have a couple kit lenses to go with it (the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR lens that came with the camera, and a 55-200mm f/4-5.6 G ED VR lens). One day I accidentally dropped the 55-200mm lens from about 3 feet off the ground, the lens survived, but the VR system was broken. Since then I've still been shooting with it, but I can't shoot with a shutter speed slower than 1/200th of a second. I can't wait for the day I can afford a full frame mirrorless camera and a reliable, sturdy telephoto lens. Not being able to get long exposures at telephoto range has been driving me insane!

Where is that wooden dolphin located at?

I do not care about the generic lens reviews. All the exotic stuff is what's exciting. And this video kinda had some highlights I might go back to.

You managed to get good images from the Tokina lens

My worst experience was Canon EF 50mm f1,8 STM. It has bokeh characteristics so bad, I don;t even know how they did that. Vertical features like towers appear to double and have some sort of a ball on the end of them, backlight leaves look like vomit a cat would throw up after eating a square mile of grass. I am trying to replace the glass in it with innards of Helios 44 lens, but it does not look promising.

nikon 18-80 f/2.8-4 VR, for their F Mount DX lineup. I thought the lens was great, actually, but it was one of my first ones and I didn't realize at the time how overpriced it was, and ended up losing quite a bit of money on the resell too (since no one wanted to buy it)

Goodness... I need some good flaring now.

My worst photography experience was when I was still earning a little doing photography in school and had a limited selection of lenses. Had this client hell bent on getting a fisheye picture when I didn't have a fisheye lens. They almost made me cry. That was horrible.

My worst experience was the Zeiss 24-70 f4 e-mount.

Many of the images frankly looks perfectly fine to me on the mobile phone screen I'm watching now. Oh and I shoot film by the way 😂

"Oooooooooh shiiiiiiiiiiiiii t." Lol.

😂 you got me laughing.

I own the Tokina and the Loreo, and I need to stand on their side For the Tokina, slow focus was a Canon thing as my Nikon variant never feel sluggish on AF but I have to say, F3.5 is the furthest I dare use for presentable photos there was some mysterious blur on one side on the photo that I've pay visit to the local dealer, twice, to fix but at its day, Tamron 17-50 is inferior in my mind and everybody loves it instead of Tokina and Sigma 17/18-50? forget it, it just wasn't the Sigma of nowadays for the Loreo, it's the cheapest (if not the only) lockable body cap the lens bit was meant to be used at a pinch, but not for general usage if you really look for a lens/body cap, go for a Japanese Voigtlander 40mm I know there are cap lens for mirrorless but they are uber-expensive comparing to Loreo

My worst ever photography experience is amateur Sony DSLR cameras and Canon 24-70 2.8 (first version) Canon 24-70, I must say is a great looking lens with an impressive casing. Its opposite zoom, like 70-24 and big petal shaping blend covering entire retractable part, it looks cool and effective on entire range. But there was nothing else good about this lens.Even the ideal copy of this lens will not give a sharp image at the edges due to the curved field. But I had a far from ideal copy (like many other photographers, QC of this lens is a meme) - curved optical axes, autofocus lived its own life. Sometimes this lens worked so unreliably and and so pissed me off in middle of the day at work, that I was ready to change my 5d2 with it for 550d with 18-55. And amateur Sony DSLRs were just awfully unreliable, the lousiest user experience ever. I had A100 and then A580 - both with terribly sticky sensors. For context, I shooting with Canon ILCs for almost ten years now and have never cleaned the sensor. In Sony bodies sensor was covered with a whole layer of dust in a couple weeks, any work at f/11 and beyond was absolutely impossible. Metering and auto white balance in A100 useless. The A580's autofocus accuracy was.... Lets say I used it like a manual mirrorless camera.

I was setting up a studio setup with a 600w battery flash on a boom and about to attach a 90cm umbrella parabolic Octabox ($170) ... the spigot on the boom snapped in two and I lunged to try and catch the flash ... I missed , the flash smashed down ripping through the seamless BG ($110) , the bulb on the flash smashed ($200) and I stumbled putting my foot through the side of the Octabox ... expensive 5 seconds

The worst was the Canon EF 28-80mm f3.5-5.6 II that came with my first camera, the Rebel XTi. This lens was soft, focused slowly and noisily, provided a not so useful range in APS-C and generally sucked. I hated it. I was able to upgrade to the EF 18-135 IS after a little while and that was a breath of fresh air even though it wasn't that great of a lens either. Luckily, now we have cheap primes like the yong nuo 35 and 50mm and other good options from brands like meike and samyang. I would have loved a cheap prime like that instead of that awful 28-80. I'm an all primes person now with the exception of my trusty 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 USM that I use on my EOS 620, 5D classic and even RP from time to time. Another really bad one was my EF 16-35 f2.8L USM II. This lens had good bokeh, good contrast and generally very pleasing colors but it's super soft at 2.8 even at the center. It gets barely usable by f4 and is pretty good at f8. But as you can imagine, I bought a f2.8 zoom to use it wide open. Especially after I had used the version III of the lens which is brilliant. I was thoroughly disappointed with the version II. I sold it and bought an RF 35mm f1.8 as I used the 16-35 mostly at 35mm. Best decision ever.

Buying a very expensive NIKON speedlight flash and dropping it on my first use... Light bulb broke. Repairs where quote at the price of buying a new flash... Took me 5 years to gather the confidence to do the repair (bulb from ebay, 10 bucks). It worked great again! 5 days later the batteries leaked and the print board was ruined... I am convinced that flash is cursed...

What did you mean when you said the first one was "one of Tokinas oldest lenses"? They've been making lenses since at least the 70s.

Ok these lenses are pretty much a real nightmare to use, true. And i though long ago with a EF 50mm 1.4 USM i had a absolutely unsharp trashcan of a lens, which was in fact compared to these lenses awesome. My worst lens i ever bought was btw a 75-300mm IS USM telezoom. USM worked nice, IS was not really good but at least helped a bit, but the image quality....ouch! Another "lens", even worse (a lot more worse!) was a 500mm compact, manual focus mirror lens i got 2nd hand very cheap just to try if its really that bad (it isnt, but nor its good for anything!) I also sold not long ago a lot of "trashy" EF lenses and my older DSLR, most lenses about 20 years old or even older. Instead, i got a RF 800 F11 and just wow.... totally worth it to replace a bag of old, bad glass with this "compact" supertele!

Once I tried a DSLR

My worst an funniest Photography experience was slicing a fly in half with the shutter of my 77d. I was in the observatory i work for in my free time to take pictures of the moon with a 9000mm f/10 telescope. The thing is, this telescope is open, so flys can enter it and they do it in autnum. Normaly its no problem, the lower end, where you can put in an eyepiece or the camera is normaly open, also they can fall out. This time it was closed, also the half dead flys were still in the telescope. When i was taking pictures in live view, there was a fly sharp before the moon. I thought, hey this looks cool and took the photo. Yeah, i didn't think about, that if the fly is sharp in live view, it is ON THE SENSOR! So i cut the fly in half and a nearby photography shop needed 30 minutes to clean the sensor. What shoud i say... now i work for exact the same company, selling telescopes for getting extra money whike i'm studying at university xD I hope it's readable, i'm not a native english speaker.

Worst experience I had? Using my old EOS 1100D. It was dirt cheap but the noise performance and dynamic range were absolutely terrible and as it was second hand and converted to full spectrum, there was a lot of dust on the sensor, plus the glass that was used as a replacement was "sticky" and even a professional camera guy didn't manage to get rid of the dust completely. Horrible experience. I got some good pictures with it regardless but still.

Sigma 14mm f2.8 EX. It could flare on a foggy day. Ceilings with spotlights were impossible..

I kinda hate 28mm and at the moment I have at least 8 of them to sell. All m42 mount.

I feel you on that Sony 16-70mm... Ugh Sony WTH was that crap all about!

My canon m6 mark ii's auto focus died in the camera a month after the warranty ran out

I don't have a worst photog experience, but I dislike wide angle and zoom lenses. I have this plastic Nikon 28-80G which is annoying but I still get quality shots out of it. I usually put it on my APS-C due to the aforementioned.

My worst experience was with canon EOS 50mm f1.4. I bought it new in 2011 and unfortunately my copy of this lens was terribly soft with almost unusable autofocus on low aperture values.

No need to remind "this is a totally independent review"