shagie

While looking at the review of the <a

href="http://www.photo.net/equipment/canon/mp-e-65">Canon MP-E 65mm

1-5X Macro Lens</a> at the bottom of the page I was treated to a

listing of stores that stocked it. This is itself not a bad thing,

however, the 5th (last) on the list was Abes of Main of which the

community reviews section has <a

href="http://www.photo.net/neighbor/view-one-about?id=2&about=Abe%27s+of+Maine">many

things to say</a>.

<p>

This makes me hesitant to link to the reviews here - I do not want

anyone to patronize stores with such a reputation and get ripped off.

<p>

To those who are implementing the advertising, while I do understand

the need to generate some revenue that would help support the site

linking to advertisments for disreputable stores (in my eyes)

seriously damages the credibility of the site. I would thus urge

those who are implementing this to gain some control over the stores

that are advertised and only accept advertisments to stores with a

good reputation.

<p>I recently shot Kodak E200 @ 800, Provia 400F @ 1600 and some Kodak EPH. From this I did a journal article that is available on deviantart about what I got -- <a href="http://shagie.deviantart.com/journal/4387430/">http://shagie.deviantart.com/journal/4387430/</a>. Included in the journal article are images from the Monteray aquarium (I shot jellyfish to get the low light that I wanted) and 100% crops from each of the images when scanned at 4000 dpi.

</p>

<p>My personal opinion is if you don't need the extra stop from 800 to 1600, go with E200 @800. If you do need the extra stop then Provia 400 @1600 is certainly quite acceptable.</p>

One thing to be looking at is that image stabilzation was implemented in other optical instruments before it was implemented in lenses. Canon's first IS zoom lens was 1995. It also released an IS binoculars at the same time. However, in 1992 Canon had an image stabalized camcorder http://tinyurl.com/48s8u

The phrasing in popular photography http://tinyurl.com/5bsr7 seems to indicate that they are diffrent patents - "and how to avoid violating present Nikon and Canon patents"

Given the nature of patents and that you can slightly improve upon something and receive a patent on that improvement it is quite reasonable to belive that Canon and Nikon each have their own patents. Two methods to achive the same goal would also result in two seperate patents.

The real history of Image stablization goes back to 1976 and is not held by either Nikon or Canon but rather the US army. See patent #3982255.

(I'm giving the information below with respect to Canon because it was slightly easier to find information on it, the more sigificant diffrences between the two models (compared to Nikon), and the well written of the optics on photo.net.)

The first thing that cost more is the amount of glass in the lens. For a given focal length, the faster the lens, the more glass that is needed. The Canon 50mm f/1.4 has a lens construction of 7 elements in 6 groups while the 50mm f/1.8 has a lens construction of 6 Elements in 5 groups.

Secondly, the larger glass needs to be of a higher quality - flaws in the lens make more of a diffrence. Furthermore, additional corrective optics are occasionaly used - In the Canon 50mm f/1.4 design, it claims to use two high refractive elements while the f/1.8 design does not.

Often the design of the more expensive lens, because it is known that the photographer is intrested in quality, will use higher quality material or parts. The Canon 50mm f/1.4 uses a USM drive, while the Canon 50mm f/1.8 uses an older (and cheaper) design. This also extends to the materials used in the body of the lens.

There was a review done on the Canon 50mm f/1.4 vs the Canon 50mm f/1.8 not too long ago - http://www.photo.net/equipment/canon/ef50/