Nikon 70-200 f4 Chromatic Aberration?

<p>So, the 'consensus' seems to be that, with the pictures seen, there is no undue Chromatic Abhoration (!) and no need to return the lens.</p>

<p>I think if there were problems, others would have helpfully said things like 'Whoa! That's much worse than my copy, get a replacement' etc etc. They didn't.</p>

<p>Go out and enjoy it...it's not perfect wide-open in super high contrast scenes; very few lenses are. Time to try HDR maybe in such circumstances?</p>

<p>Here are a couple of images I captured with the 70-200mm/f4 AF-S VR on a D800E. The absence of chromatic aberration should be very obvious.</p>

<p>If Mike K. the OP still has concerns, I suggest that he captures similar images with his 70-200mm/f4 AF-S VR and compare.</p><div></div>

<p>There may be a hint of purple and green fringing around the gutter, but even that is minimal.</p><div></div>

<p>I'm going out on a limb here, so don't flame me or suspend my account.</p>

<p>I think the images that Mike K has posted show a pretty bad lens. If anyone thinks these images are acceptable, then they are in denial.</p>

<p>I can see the CA clearly on my monitor here at work. I also have a point of comparison. I have an 80-200 AIS F4 that would show up this lens big time. I bought this old lens for $300. Nikon are asking $1600 for Mike K's lens. I think he has a case for swapping it out.</p>

<p>We should expect more. There was a time that Nikkor lenses were every bit as good as Leica's. Over the last 15 years the quality has slowly got worse and obviously so have manufacturing tolerances.<br>

<br />For $1600 one should expect better. In the pre-digital day, we never heard of in-camera correction or focus fine tuning. I wonder why we need these things now? Pretty obvious to me.</p>

<p>Forums are about an exchange of ideas and opinions. Mike K sees the CA. So do I. The rest seem to be excusing Nikon for sloppy manufacture. Send it back. If the new one does the same then swap it for a 2.8.</p>

<p>If he would return the lens, it would at least relieve us of him fretting and arguing about it.<br>

Some people here appear confused as to what chromatic aberration looks like. Maybe they have been spoilt with modern primes or something and have no experience of it. I've seen some stinkers, especially superwide to normal zooms. It's not when you photograph something in bright sunlight or backlit and it looks a bit blue!! It's the red and green /magenta and cyan borders on the two edges of something of highest contrast. You can play with a magnifying glass and a newspaper to see it if you really need the experience.</p>

<p>Nico, are you saying you can see CA or not, I think not, but thought I'd check!</p>

<p>I can see bright blue areas in the very high contrast edges, but no bi-color bits. I'd expect to see the thin, black shadow-band on the right hand side of the porch to be one colour on one side and the other, the other.....but they're clean. I can see the minorist hints in Shun's 'gutter' pic*....just.</p>

<p>* The phrase Gutter Press comes to mind..:-)</p>

<p><em>"We should expect more. "</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

A lot of CA is controlled through Nikon's software (when using a body that has this feature and a supported lens). I have been quite surprised with the amount of CA with a number of my Nikon lenses (since I process my images with non-Nikon software, it becomes more pronounced when I open my files).<br>

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CA is easily 'fixed' through software during post processing or by using Nikon software which automatically corrects it. It is obviously there in many of the images. Whether it warrants changing out the lens is up to the OP. Trying another lens side-by-side with his lens would show whether there is a problem or not.<br>

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Mike, since it is new, I would try another lens. You have nothing to loose If you have the same issue, you will then know it is 'normal' for that lens. <br>

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CA is most prevalent during high contrast shooting situations. Stopping down the lens, a little or a lot typically eliminates it. Shun's f8 example illustrates this well.<br>

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<p>Graphic for CA on the f4 version. <a href="http://www.lenstip.com/371.5-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_AF-S_70-200_mm_f_4.0G_ED_VR_Chromatic_and_spherical_aberration.html">http://www.lenstip.com/371.5-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_AF-S_70-200_mm_f_4.0G_ED_VR_Chromatic_and_spherical_aberration.html</a></p>

<p>Graphic for CA on the f2.8 version. <a href="http://www.lenstip.com/258.5-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_AF-S_70-200_mm_f_2.8G_ED_VR_II_Chromatic_aberration.html">http://www.lenstip.com/258.5-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_AF-S_70-200_mm_f_2.8G_ED_VR_II_Chromatic_aberration.html</a></p>

<p>Note how the f2.8 version is worse at mid zoom and best at the widest, whereas the f4 version is worse at it widest and best at the longest. </p>

<p>Mike K., on your new photos the CA is quite obvious. These looks to be "real" 100% crops.</p>

<p>Also, there is an overexposure, so I think sensor blooming is helping to make this fringes more noticeable. I wonder if a correct position of the clear areas into the hystogram will make this shot acceptable... I`d check it.</p>

<p>I use to keep the exposure as correct as possible to minimize ugly effects. I never leave white areas washed; so this ammount of fringes are unusual to me, even with my worst lenses (CA wise, I mean). <br /> One of my "worst" ones is the 50/1.4 AFS (and one of my most used lenses). I`d say that on my "real life" shots with it, CAs are *never* of an issue. But as said, I always take extra care to have the correct exposure, especially with "problematic" or extreme scenarios.</p>

<p>So I`d take a few more shots to see if this issue is something you cannot avoid, or if it is just this specific situation (you can post your findings here). If it is something that appears on every shot (sincerely, I doubt it), no problem, I`d return it. If it -only- happens on extreme contrast, whashed white areas in out of range scenarios, I`d keep it.</p>

<p>Again, I can look for scenes that make my 50AFS useless, but it is hard to find thems on the 99.99% of the shots I take with it.</p>

<p>Folks, as a moderator here, I would like to remind everybody that the OP Mike K. has just spent over $1000 on a new lens. It should be very understandable that he has concerns that it may be defective. We are here to help him figure out one way or another.</p>

<p>If you are not offering any help and instead just flame people, I am afraid that you don't belong here.</p>

<p><em>I think the images that Mike K has posted show a pretty bad lens. If anyone thinks these images are acceptable, then they are in denial.</em></p>

<p>The color fringe effect in a realistic practical use photograph properly exposed is likely to be much less, which is why there is very little discussion on the topic on forums. People avoid gross overexposure of the background not because it emphasizes the color fringe but because they like to see tonal variation in all parts of the image.</p>

<p><em>Over the last 15 years the quality has slowly got worse and obviously so have manufacturing tolerances.</em></p>

<p>I have been using Nikon cameras for the last 20 years or so. I can attest that there has been a <em>dramatic</em> improvement in optical quality and autofocus capability in Nikkors in the past decade. In fact I've gotten rid of all my old Nikkors with the exception of the 35mm PC for which there is no modern equivalent. I don't actually take pictures with it any more, but keep it as a memory of a sorts.</p>

<p><em>In the pre-digital day, we never heard of in-camera correction or focus fine tuning. I wonder why we need these things now? Pretty obvious to me.</em></p>

<p>The reason for this is that modern cameras (such as the D800) are capable of image quality which is staggeringly better than what was achieved with 35mm film, and the discrepancy between the optical paths seen by the AF sensor and the main imaging sensor is more clearly evident in the result due to the increased resolution of lenses and sensors and the more precise focusing of AF-S lenses (previously systematic focusing errors were harder to detect as the focus varied more from shot to shot). Also now lenses have widest apertures that are actually shooting apertures, whereas 15 years ago even the highest quality Nikkor primes at most focal lengths started becoming useable from 1-2 stops down from maximum aperture (now I routinely shoot at f/1.4 and f/2, which places much more stringent demands on the AF system). I actually used manual focus almost all the time when I shot film, since AF was so bad as to the point of being almost useless (outside of the center point the use of which I found unacceptable since I didn't want all my photos to have centered main subjects and there was no extra resolution to allow manageable quality after significant cropping). Only with the D3 in 2008 did I switch predominantly to using AF, and I am glad it and newer cameras have focus fine tune.</p>

<p>There was of course high resolution film, such as Technical Pan, but few used it, and those that did, used it mainly on tripod and with meticulous technique. Focusing screens and viewfinders of many film cameras allowed much easier manual focusing; today we must resort to live view to focus manually yet when I shot Technical Pan on F5 there was no issue focusing manually using the viewfinder even on lenses with shallow depth of field (e.g. 100mm Zeiss f/2 Makro Planar). Some aspects of cameras have gone backwards IMO, but on the front of image quality, there has been a dramatic improvement both due to improvements in lens quality and the imaging sensor, as well as the AF system.</p>

<p>"I have an 80-200 AIS F4 that would show up this lens big time." - Really?<br>

Below are centre and edge 100% clips from my sample of Ai-S 80-200mm f/4 Zoom-Nikkor, taken on a D800 at f/5.6. There's not a lot of LoCA visible, but the lateral CA is pretty pronounced, along with a general loss of definition toward the edges and corners. There's no way that this lens can stand close comparison to a decent modern lens, although it's still useable in the field centre and with some software correction. </p>

<p>I'm also at variance with Lenstips' assessment of LoCA on the 70-200 f/4 VR. I'm normally impressed with LensTips' tests, but either my old eyes have developed a lack of sensitivity to CA, or there's almost <em>none</em> visible in <a href="http://www.lenstip.com/371.5-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_AF-S_70-200_mm_f_4.0G_ED_VR_Chromatic_and_spherical_aberration.html">their example image</a>. I'd be perfectly happy with any lens that showed such a low level of LoCA as in that Lenstip example. Quote from Lenstip - "you can notice slight colouring of blurred areas" - well, no, actually I can't.</p><div></div>

<p>RJ, Re..The LensTip images.....I guess on the 'close-ups' of the black vertical bands, below the graphs, there's definitely a magenta/red band on the left and green/cyan on the right @ 70mm f11 that becomes <em>reversed</em> to M/R on the right and G/C on the left @200 f16. Weird or What! </p>

<p>That's typical <em>lateral </em>CA Mike, and I'd take the fact that it reverses with zooming to be an indication that the designer of the lens has done a good job of balancing CA across the focal length range. The comment from Lenstip that I quoted was supposedly referring to <em>l</em><em>ongitudinal</em> CA, of which I still can't see a trace in those Zig-align pictures.</p>