Nikon 18-200 for night shots

[sm]

Hi,

 

I just tested the new Nikon 18 200 VR at my local camera shop and

its not a bad lense at all. I shoot a lot of night shots where

having a tripod is not practical due to crowds, constant movement. I

shoot both people and places. I�ve used my Nikon 18 70 before,

however, had to set the iso at max & photos where noisy. I also have

a sigma 24 70 2.8, but its short on the wide end. My 50 1.4 is

simply too long to be used, I may use it with my film camera (I have

a D70 & Fm2n).

 

The VR did work nicely up to 1/6 s, however, how effective will the

lenses be in what I will call street night photography, I truly cant

afford the Nikon 18 55. I sometimes use the flash to light up the

faces (balanced), how low can I sync it with the VR?

 

I noticed some distortion at the wide end, anybody knows of any PS

actions for correcting that similar to the sigma lenses.

 

If you have any experience in such case or lenses please, I�m all

ears

 

Thanks in advance,

[drew carson]

"I truly cant afford the Nikon 18 55"

 

Do you mean the 17 - 55 because the 18-55 is like $130

[dennisprice]

"...anybody knows of any PS actions for correcting [wide end distortion]?..."

 

While it's not a PS action, PTLens works great as a PS filter and includes the profile for the 18-200, as well as many other lenses. You will like the price ;-)

 

http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html

 

If you are on Mac, try LensFix, same site. Don't know if it has the profiles for the 18-200 yet, but if it doesn't, it's a simple enough matter to copy the numbers from the .txt file used with PTLens, and create a new profile for use with Mac/LensFix.

[sm]

Sorry, its nikon 17 - 55 2.8 and thanks for the software tip.

 

many thanks for the anwers, Im still cant decide about the lense thou.

[lex_jenkins]

Corel Paint Shop Pro X has some very effective, easy to use tools for fixing barrel and pincushion distortion. Chromatic aberration and purple fringing too. PSP X still can't handle RAW files well (at least not my D2H NEFs), but it offers plenty of other good features. You can download a free 30-day full featured trial version from Corel. It's almost worth the price of admission just for some of these easy to use tools, even if you don't use PSP X for color corrections, curves or other adjustments.

 

PSP X also offers a perspective correction fix, but this one is much trickier to use. Haven't quite figured it out yet.

[sm]

Thanks guys for all your input. The software hints are great and I'll check them out.

[allen_graves]

Look at the bottom of Ken Rockwell's review

 

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/18200.htm

 

He gives settings for specific focal lengths for correcting distortion in Photoshop CS2. Since I don't have the lens yet, I haven't tried them out.

 

Allen