Andrew Garrard

If only Nikon could come up with some kind of sitting that took the mirror and external AF system out of the equation... (I don't we'll see a fundamental dSLR redesign, unless the D6 already has one. My interest in improved AF fine tuning mostly concerns getting the best out of current hardware with affordable firmware upgrade - for the current and next dSLR generations - rather than long term, because I suspect Nikon are done with that.)

I've heard only good things about the 19mm, but can't say I've used it (donations gratefully accepted). I agree that the quality/price trade-off has been questionable on many cases - not helped by Nikon's fixed orientation arrangement; my first T/S, back to my Canon days, was the Hartblei, and it's fully flexible like the 19mm. I get the impression that some larger format lenses are a bit iffy too (it helps that the relative aperture tends to be slow, although at some point diffraction kicks in), but I hope to try at some point. Time and money... Unless you can get above ground level in the building opposite and use an ultrawide, could you talk to the neighbors and get permission to do a vertical stitch with a drone?

For what it's worth, I think there's a difference between tripod-mounted image composition using a 10x8 sheet of film that'll cost you £5 to expose and develop using an optical work flow, and a DSLR capture. You absolutely can still mount everything on a tripod, carefully examine all corners of your frame by panning around at 100% zoom (although in my experience this is much more likely to shift the tripod than the actual lens adjustments are, which is why I wanted the split live view...), get out your tilt calculator, shoot at f/64 with a multi-second exposure, and so on. But you can also set approximately the tilt that you might want, use focus highlights (or multi-point AF confirmation), and wave the camera around by hand until the focal plane hits the things you care about - then crop the result in post. The latter wastes more pixels, but it does get you ten times the number of images. An actual 5x4 has been vaguely on my wish list for a while, but I can't really imagine not trying to focus one (at least approximately) by grabbing one of the standards and wiggling it about. Lensbaby have an entire line based on the premise that this kind of works if it doesn't cost you a fortune in film to mess things up. It's slightly unfortunate that all the PC lenses are manual focus. There's no real reason they have to be, if you choose the right AF point. I really think there's a chance for a functional step in photography by offering autofocus and automatic focal plane orientation - I still see a number of TV shows where the focal plane is clearly not parallel to the sensor, and I don't think they're all applying a post-processing effect to emulate it. I've long had the thought that in live view you can approximate this by allowing the shutter and sensor to tilt (mostly back, because otherwise you'll run out of image circle even if you don't hit anything); involving a mirror in that is an exercise in insanity, but it ought to be an option for the Z series. My faith in focus stacking except for static subjects and using a tripod (which hurts some of the sub-pixel resolution enhancement) has taken a hit from seeing rolling shutter issues, so I'll be a little unsure until we get proper global shutters that don't impact image quality too much. Capturing a 3D light field in one step solves some problems (partly, if you're Canon and have dual pixels), but current solutions have tended to get too hit by static image quality issues to justify the expense. Maybe in the future. For now, I think a decent PC lens still has its place, even in casual shooting.

I can vouch that diet Coke cans are very shiny and good at showing LoCA, especially if they have condensation...

Just to say... huh? Surely the relationship between angles depends on the focus distance. That's one reason I tend not to try to work it out, and just use focus peaking (or at least focus confirmation), and want the four-way version of split-location live view (although the 2-way helps a little), which would make tripod use a lot less tedious. Canon at least used to have a mode where all the "in focus" AF points would light up, which was useful for placing the image plane; Nikon won't do that with a manual lens (for... reasons?) but might if it's chipped and thinks it's in the right AF mode? I used my 65mm Hartblei (which is originally a medium format lens with a dedicated mount adaptor) a moderate amount on my Canon, but still haven't got around to blacking the mount I substituted on it when I went Nikon, which puts me off. I also have a 35mm Kiev tilt-shift, with locked tilt/shift angles and an iffy mount that I worry might hook on the aperture lever. I was thinking of getting rid of them, but then did a test and found that actually neither is all that bad optically (for their cost). I did look at the 24mm Samyang, but the corners were clearly iffy; the 19mm is on my "things to save for" list. I suspect the original poster has taken the time since 2013 to form an independent opinion.

I'm really envying the people whose dragonflies rest where they're visible. The ones at my local pond (small lake) can be seen zipping over the water, sometimes within a few metres of the bank, but there are a lot of reeds growing out of the pond, and you can't get a view of most of them from anywhere you can sit. Hence I have a couple of iffy images of them in flight after at least a couple of hours of even trying to frame them (they tend to be visible for no more than a couple of seconds at running pace), but they seem determined to settle somewhere hidden. I think I resorted to the 70-200 for them because I couldn't frame accurately anyway (I was shooting blind just to have the field of view to see them coming), so the 200-500 only really gave me arm ache. Handy for the birds, though. Contrast a trip to Canada, where the local dragonflies would hover a few feet away to look at me, and a dragonfly decided to eat a damselfly a couple of arm lengths away from me on a hand rail. Shame I only had the 24-70 with me at the time, of course...

The reason it frustrates me is that there's already the ability to enter maximum aperture and focal length for manual lenses, which enables matrix metering. And if you're doing that anyway, would it be so hard to have a checkbox for "Ai-S"? Or, since you can already choose whether non-G electronic lenses have aperture controlled by the lens or the camera, just use the same control to decide whether a manual lens uses the aperture ring and set it appropriately depending on whether the lens is Ai-S. It just seems like a pointless lack of functionality with no cost saving for Nikon (the kind of behaviour by which Canon left a bad taste in my mouth with my 300D). I get it perhaps for the F5 generation where Nikon may have wanted to encourage lens upgrades and settings were a little less convenient, but anyone using a manual lens on a modern dSLR probably isn't going to be talked into an autofocus upgrade based solely on metering convenience. Especially since you can chip the lens anyway - unless there's no electronic option, in the case of the f/1.2 optics which I believe Nikon still sell.

I found myself dismissively thinking that surely the used price for the 50mm AF-D must be low enough to justify getting it instead of adapting a manual lens. Then I remembered that I explicitly bought the E-series just because it's a near-pancake - and actually being able to use camera aperture control might be welcome. Which brings be back to two of my key rants - why AI-S lenses can't use camera aperture control anyway, and why the 50mm lenses have such inset front elements despite having hoods available (although it's not as annoying as the old 90mm Tamron macro, where the indent actually affects working distance).

At least you can see the focus shift; I believe Nikon and Canon are both known for just racking out to infinity and back when focus is lost completely. I've had this tracking small birds in flight against a blue sky - lose focus and you can't see them at all to track them. The 200/2 (and presumably other big scary glass) is faster at doing the same thing, which means I have a number of shots which were in focus when my finger started moving on the shutter and are way out of focus by the time the shutter released, because the lens decided to rack all the way out in a fraction of a second. At least with the 200-500 I can lift a digit before it gets all the way to the end. I'd like the "bring me back to specified focus distance" ability of some of the other big lenses as a workaround. The 200-500 is nothing like as bad as the old 150-500OS Sigma at the long end (above about 300mm that fell apart completely, and even f/11 was only starting to rein it in on a D700). But for the long end, my understanding is that Tamron 150-600/Sigma 150-600C are less good optically, the 200-500 is next, the 150-600 Sigma Sport is better at the long end, the 60-600 Sigma is unexpectedly better still at 600mm, and the 500mm PF is better than all of them (with a possible slight edge to the 500 f/4 stopped down). For long-term GAS purposes, if I wanted to improve my long end, I'd be interested in whether the 500PF is enough better than the 60-600 to justify being twice the price, other than being half the weight. Added to "hire an 800mm f/5.6" and "stop expecting to get a good shot through that much air and invest in a hide/some patience", obviously.

For the moon, even f/11 wasn't too bad at 500x1.4, but we're well into the diffraction range of a modern dSLR then; I often knock down to f/8 for the bare lens at the long end, but reluctantly. The problem with 420mm and f/11 is that it'll basically be telling me I should have got a Sigma sport (not that the 60-600 was available when I got my Nikkor, and the 150-600 isn't exactly small and cheap). The 500mm PF is on my wish list, but it's twice the price of the Sigma, and I'm still unsure whether it's twice as good (but it might be worth it for portability). Phew. So no great torque on the mount, then? Honestly I often just leave the foot (and a QR plate) on mine, and I have an L-plate on the camera. I often leave the foot pointing up, where it's a good handle but is out of the way for normal lens support. I'm tempted to weld a small umbrella onto an Arca clamp so I can use it as a sunshade/rain proofing for the lens/body when I'm out and about. Product idea, anyone?

I could believe that - as you say, if the camera lever moved but there was no pressure on a lens aperture lever, the teleconverter's lever would be free to flap. I've not noticed any weird noises from my TC14 mk2 when used on a 200-500 (one reason I got the 200-500 rather than a 150-600 was so that I had an f/5.6 option that would still get me f/8 through a teleconverter, although the image quality suffers a bit). On its own in a bag the TC's aperture lever does rattle, which worried me when I first got one (Canon's ones don't have a mechanical aperture lever, so they're just lumps of metal with some pass-through wires). I trust you're not holding the lens cantilevered off the front of the mount (which would require a lot of wrist strength or faith in your tripod). I assume anything big enough to have a foot is basically supporting the camera rather than the other way around anyway, and a D500 isn't much weight or leverage to hang off a lens mount.

Actually, I'm going to repeat that experiment, because I need a break from conference calls. Nikkor 200-500 E-aperture lens D90: DoF preview goes thunk. No viewfinder effect, and the mirror doesn't black out on DoF preview release. Either the aperture lever is moving or the mechanism attached to it (which is why a D90 can't change the aperture dynamically in DoF preview) is. I don't think there's a body that can dynamically change aperture in DoF preview but not use E aperture (check a D2x?) D850: DoF preview is completely silent at f/5.6, and very quiet at smaller apertures. If the mechanical aperture lever is moving, it's doing it inaudibly. The viewfinder doesn't glitch. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 G lens D90: DoF preview goes thunk even at f/1.8. You can't adjust the aperture at all while in DoF preview mode. The viewfinder blacks out very briefly when you release DoF preview as the mechanism resets. D850: DoF preview goes thunk very quietly even at f/1.8. You can change the aperture while in DoF preview mode, and it's reflected dynamically. There's no glitch from the viewfinder when you leave DoF preview. Nikkor 300mm f/4 AF-S (non-G) lens D90: DoF preview goes thunk, even at f/4. You can't adjust the aperture in DoF preview. The camera refuses to DoF preview or expose at anything but f/32 (F-EE). Viewfinder glitch on leaving DoF preview (with the lens set to f/32), same as the G lens. D850: With the camera controlling the aperture, same as the G lens. With the lens aperture ring controlling the aperture, no lock-out, and the aperture lever feels as though it's fully released and sprung against the lens aperture stop (rather than trying to mirror the behaviour using the aperture ring) - there are smooth steps between stops. Also the aperture change is slightly less rattly with DoF preview on. No viewfinder glitch. Nikon-E 50mm f/1.8 (AI-S) lens: D90: "F--". The DoF preview button does nothing but lock out the shutter release. The shutter release does work just fine, and the aperture set on the lens works for shutter release. D850: Correct aperture (if the non-CPU data is right). DoF preview works and allows dynamic changes, and goes clonk quietly even at f/1.8. No viewfinder glitches. Petzval 58mm f/1.9 (non-AI, also no aperture lever) lens: D90: Like the 50mm E-series. "F--". DoF preview just locks out the shutter release, doesn't go clonk or glitch on release. Shutter release works fine. D850: The camera thinks it has the E-series attached, at full aperture. DoF preview goes clonk quietly, although it doesn't do anything because there's no aperture lever for it to connect to. No viewfinder glitches. I don't own any non-AI lenses that actually have an aperture lever (whether or not they'd clear the D90's EE post sensor switch, which I think isn't the modern kind that can't get crunched), but I suspect they'd work like the AI-S lens except that the D850 would think they were at full aperture. I'm actually mildly curious what the Df would do. I believe it lacks the D8x0's dynamic aperture lever, so you may be able to set the aperture while in DoF preview mode, but you wouldn't see the effect until you released it and re-applied. I'd kind of expect a viewfinder glitch when you do so, although that my be unique to the D90. My conclusion is that the D850 won't move the aperture lever when an E lens is connected. I don't know whether the D500 has the same "dynamic aperture update" thing (or whether all E-aware bodies can do this so long as the lens has an E-aperture); the D700 didn't, and I believe the D3, D4 and D5 series do. That was educational. Back to work.

Mike pinged me about this offline, so I did an experiment last night. My D90, which doesn't know about E lenses but does know my 200-500 is f/5.6, makes a clonk on depth-of-field preview - at f/5.6, so the aperture shouldn't actually be moving. I deduce that it's moving the aperture lever. It's harder to tell on a D8x0 body, because they know about the E aperture and will actually stop down the lens. The D90 doesn't make a clonk when given a Petzval lens that has no AI coupling, so presumably on a non-AI lens it might not activate the aperture lever? At least on DoF preview. If there's no aperture lever on the lens, I'd kind of expect an aperture lever in the teleconverter to be flapping around loosely anyway.

Finally, I call this "moonrise and pigeon"; Ansel would be proud. I also call it "don't look too closely", because f/32, a dirty window and ISO 2000+ on a D90 don't mix. I was trying to join the "the 200-500 is cool" thread, but being a D90 I could only have done this at f/5.6, so I actually used a 300/4 AF-S.

Infrared grey squirrel is... grey. (Channel swapped the sky, though, because orange is just as weird. And still using a Tamron 24-70, which is still the wrong lens.) I kind of expect this to appear on a hotel room wall...