Smallest aperture changes with camera used?

I am at present working on some winter landscape photos. I mounted my 28-200mm

and camera on a solid tripod and set to making some images. I was using two

bodies - the F80 and F100 and noted that the smallest aperture available to me

on the F80 with the lens at 200mm was f/38, whilst the F100 only manages f/36.

When I got home I tried the lens on my F6 and only got f/36 on that as well!

It would seem that the F80 is able to give me a greater depth of field, no?

 

Any ideas why this could be? Is it something to do with the film gate on the

F80?

 

Off topic, but which Nikkor lens with a 'normal' range has the smallest

aperture available? F/38 is good, but I want to really stop down on some shots

to more than this.

 

One of my recent photos for the project - at F/32:

http://www.photo.net/photo/6962344

What is the reason for shooting at such small aperture? Diffraction kicks in at f16, I

personally never shoot smaller than f11 with film.

f/32 + 1/3 stop is f/36

 

f/32 + 1/2 stop is f/38

 

f/32 + 2/3 stop is f/40

 

f/32 + 1 stop is f/45

 

I guess your F80 displays fstops with a resolution of 1/2 stop and your F100 uses 1/3 stop.

 

Also ... the difference in DOF between f/36 and f/38 is 1/6 fstop. So even if the lens would stop down differently (which I doubt), the gain in DOF is minimal ... using apertures that small might also lead to loss of sharpness due to diffraction.

No idea but there is not much a difference between f38 and f36.

Ian, first of all I love your prose. That aside, it seems the Albans photo suffers more from dirty air than a sharpness of lens. IMHO of course. Regards, Bernie

Thank you all kindly for your time and answers. Rainer, I think you have it there - the F80 does have half-stop increments, so it must be the camera behaving differently rather than the lens.

 

Leslie, I am using small apertures as my aim is to achieve good front to back clarity - so that the eye may rove around the image without meeting diffuse areas. I have been looking at some wonderful and inspiring landscape images taken at f/32 to f/64 - these almost transport the viewer to the location depicted, and I can look anywhere on the photo and all is clear. Flowers, grass, sea and sky, all sharp and sumptuously clear.

 

Bernie - yes, there was a haze, but the air was clean - what you see is the morning mist burning off from the valley which gave the scene an extra dimension I felt.

 

Regards, Ian

Did you happen to have the lens zoomed differently when you checked this on the different cameras? Many zoom lenses will allow a smaller aperture as they zoom out, so it's also possible that your lens only allows f38+ as you get closer to 200mm?

Thank you Pen. Yes, I have noted what you say, but the lens was zoomed right out for both cameras.

 

Ian

"Rainer, I think you have it there - the F80 does have half-stop increments"

 

It is quite conceivable that the exposure will be the same with all cameras (besides the factthat we arew are discussing a 1/6th stop difference) and that the difference is only a matter of what increments the display is programmed to indicate.

 

I strongly suspect with that lens the loss of resolution from diffraction that comes from using such a small aperture will render the argument moot.

Shooting at f/36 on a 24x36 mm format is just silly. Diffraction eats all the detail. You waste all the "clarity" the format is capable of exhibiting to gain a little more DOF. The f/64-kind of photography was conducted with 8x10" cameras which are vastly different from the comparatively tiny 24x36 frame.

 

If you need depth in landscape photography, use a lens (or camera system) that can provide movements such as tilt, shift etc. Then you can have everything in sharp focus at optimum apertures such as f/5.6 - f/16.

Ian,

 

the landscape works you are admiring are most likely shot with Large Format cameras which allow you to change the focus plane. Also diffraction with LF lenses is much less of an issue than with 35mm gear. Having said all that, I use small apertures as well with my 5D - DOF is more important in some instances than to worry about diffraction. Folks who only shoot f11 as their smallest aperture probably don't shoot landscapes.

.. or they use tilt/shift lenses.

I agree with Bjorn. Unless you are looking for a soft, unsharp look, I really don't recommend going past f16 or even f11 with 35mm lenses. I often do shoot at f45, but that's with my 4x5 field camera. If you are really after maximum DOF, you might consider a 4x5. The lens tilt movement is what makes this kind of camera the king for landscapes, not the f45 part so much.

 

 

Kent in SD

I think that f/64 trick works well only with large or medium format cameras/lenses. You

need about 3mm to 5mm of aperture opening to avoid diffraction, and that can be

achieved for MF and LF lenses more easily than in the 35mm format at these small f

numbers.

 

In reality, you ought to stay much more open (f/5.6 at the wide end; f/11 at normal lens

range, ... ) and focus on the farthest object you want sharp.

 

 

But you can also google Harald Merklinger to learn the inconvenient truth about the

uniform unsharpness of hyperfocal distance focusing.

The *only* lens I have in my possession designed for 24x36 and being (just) adequately sharp at f/45 is the Coastal 60mm f/4 UV/Vis/IR APO. This is a $ 4.500 lens and surely not something you'll see in everyone's camera bag. The otherwise excellent 85mm f/2.8 PC-Micro-Nikkor also has f/45 but the outcome is poor, so I wouldn't dream of using that lens beyond f/32 and normally stops before f/22. Consumer zoom lenses that end at f/29 or smaller are just a bad joke when it comes to critical sharpness in that range.

 

My large-format lenses are not supersharp at f/45 (or f/64), but the formats I'm using (4x5" and 8x10") are so huge compared to 24x36 that you can get away with these settings and still achieve excellent prints.

Focusing at the lens' near-focus limit will also display a smaller aperture value than focusing at infinity.

Thank you again - learning a lot here today. I will look into this further - and refrain from the smallest apertures. I know of diffraction, but did not know that it affected telephoto lenses (because of the larger aperture needed - f/4 of a 20mm lens will be smaller than f/4 of a 200mm lens) so badly.

 

Ian, UK

"the F80 does have half-stop increments, so it must be the camera behaving differently rather than the lens."

 

The lens behaves exactly the same on both cameras, and stops down to exactly the same physical minimum aperture. Both bodies also behave exactly the same - the stop down lever will move its full travel and set the aperture to the absolute physical minimum fully closed setting. The only difference you are seeing is in the value *displayed* in the viewfinder / LCD panel, which is not necessarily the same as the exact aperture *in use* in this scenario.

 

It's no different than if you were in aperture priority mode and set the same aperture (full stop value) on both bodies. The F100 will often display a slightly different shutter speed than the F80 because the display is graduated in 1/3 stops, whereas the F80 will only display the nearest 1/2 stop value. Both cameras will set the shutter to the exact same stepless speed (say 1/165), but the speed displayed will be different (1/160 in the F100 and 1/180 in the F80).

 

The F100 can be set to display/adjust in 1/2 stops via the custom function CSM 2-2 (1/3 stop default is CSM 2-3). If you set your F100 to match the the F80, you'll probably see matching aperture displays.