daniel_bliss

Strangely, Sony with its narrow-throat E-mount doesn't seem to inhibit the release of optically excellent lenses. Makes me wonder if Nikon's Z-mount really had to be that big and whether at least some of the lenses as a result are larger than necessary. On the other hand, Nikon's 14-30/4S and 14-24/2.8S appear to be lenses that could not have been done for the F-mount and possibly can't be done for Sony E-mount either.

 

 

I believe Sigma has demonstrated that higher performing lenses are also possible for the F-mount (looking at the 40/1.4 Art as one example) but that the resulting lenses are excessively large and heavy. And it appears that somewhat smaller and lighter lenses are possible for the wide-throat Z-mount - though none of the lenses currently available can claim to be compact. The popular 14-24/24-70/70-200 f/2.8 set was already fairly expensive in its latest F-mount manifestation; the current Z-mount trio ups the prices once again.

 

Wish I'd seen this sooner, but not just Sigma -- have you seen Tamron's 35mm f1.4 for Nikon and Canon DSLR? It's clearly the best-in-class lens right now, DSLR or mirrorless--what an outcome for being Tamron's first ever f1.4.

I'd like to ask before this thread drifts into history whether anyone with experience of both the TC14E/14EII and the TC14E III has compared the two types for autofocus and VR performance with modern telephoto glass. I have an almost 30-year-old TC14E that I use occasionally with my 70-200FL -- no real problems there though it takes the edge just a tad off the optics -- and with the 300/4PF, on which I really can't see optical degradation at all but it slows way down for autofocus and pretty much neuters VR. I'm curious if the newer design does better in terms of playing with the autofocus and VR.

I have the Coolscan V (LS-50); in an unfortunate moment (OK, roughly two days of agonizing over it) of penny pinching I decided to save $500 relative to a Coolscan 5000 back in about 2005 when my Polaroid started to fail. The scan quality isn't the issue -- it's very, very good. The issue is the speed, for while the Coolscan V is faster than most other scanners it's only just over half the speed of the 5000 due to the 5000's two-line CCD. We're talking 20 seconds versus 38 per frame. That plus the Coolscan 5000's ability to take a bulk slide feeder makes it the better production environment piece.

 

There are still third-party servicers working on the Coolscans, adjusting and lubricating them, cleaning the mirror, that kind of thing.

 

I also use an ES-1 adapter on a Nikon D800 with Nikon's 60mm AF-S macro lens. I find this more convenient than the Coolscan for mounted slides with film that's in good condition, but it's a non-starter for negatives and strip film and also not so good for damaged or faded film. The ES-2 adapter, not nearly as nicely built as the ES-1 as it's plastic instead of metal, is a very versatile piece, with a locking collar to prevent the film from rotating, a holder for strip film and a set of adapter rings included for lens mounting (in contrast the 62mm ring for the ES-1 is an accessory). And, when used with a D780 or D850 these give you the ability to convert negative images in-camera if you're OK settling for JPEG output (in contrast, if you want your negatives raw, you'll have to import them into Photoshop or similar and reverse them manually). Third-party vendors produce 120 film holders which you can also use with reversal mode on the D780 and D850. But using the Coolscan directly with Vuescan is nice; DNG output, JPEG output, TIFF output, whatever you want, the ability to batch a film strip of up to I believe seven images, and a nifty ability to sort out slightly faded Ektachrome.

A bit of thread archaeology here but I found this interesting and I've just gotten my Coolscan LS-50 (V) going again, so....here goes.

 

I bought the Coolscan in about 2004 or 5 not wanting at the time to spring the extra $500 for the 5000. I have to say the main killer is speed. The LS-50 is faster than the market norm at 38 seconds per scan, but the 5000 is almost twice as fast again with the two-line CCD. And if you're willing to part with an arm and a leg on eBay, you can get an automatic slide feeder as well. So this is the production environment scanner.

 

I don't think there's any meaningful difference in build quality. The only physical difference is that double-wide CCD in the 5000; as far as I know the bulk slide feeder is blocked from the LS-50 by firmware alone.

 

I use Vuescan. I've found I need to set about a 2.8mm offset when using the strip film feeder. Not quite sure why.

Plenty of opportunities for DSLR for Nikon, not least because it's still more than 95 percent of the user base, probably closer to 98.

 

The portfolio of telephoto lenses is amazing. Not a whole lot of room for improvement there. Class leading zooms. Class-unique phase fresnel lenses. Amazing prime lenses too. The overweight 600/4 could stand replacement with something lighter. Maybe some would like a new 85/1.4, or any new 105 (let's say a macro that focus-breathes less, or an AF version of the AIS f1.8 or 2.5).

 

The f1.8 prime lineup is great, other than the lack of a 105.

 

Where there's room for improvement is with standard and wide-angle zooms. The 14-24 is now slightly beaten by Canon and third parties, though only slightly. The 17-35 f2.8 is obsolete. The 16-35 could stand improvement. I think most today would prefer a good 24-70/4 over the mediocre 24-120/4, or the fragile 24-85/3.5-4.5, but even a nicer 24-85 3.5-4.5 in an AF-P version would be a nice complement for the excellent 70-300 AF-P. Even the 18-35G, a very nice handling lens, is probably beaten optically at this point by Tamron.

 

Let's say you update the 600/4 and the 105 macro; replace the 17-35 2.8; bring out an AF-P 24-85/3.5-4.5 or AF-P 24-70/4, maybe give the 16-35 a shot in the arm. That would thoroughly cover their bases for DSLR and anything else would be gravy.

 

Pair that with a policy of bringing improved Expeed processing and on-sensor PDAF to the DSLR lineup, and I think most people would be very happy. Four or five new lenses and endowing the D850, D500 and D7500 with on-sensor PDAF would really secure this lineup and its huge customer base at relatively low cost to Nikon.

I think the 24/2.8D can definitely work. I have a pre-D version from the early 1990s, the proper focus ring but no D chip, and while it was frankly disappointing on the early digital bodies it has been given a new lease of life by the D800. The main thing with this lens seems to be, the less low-pass filtration on the sensor, the better; the newer cameras have thinner low-pass filters, often without anti-aliasing at all; there's some outer field astigmatism on the 24/2.8 at all apertures (which I suspect disagrees with the older, thicker low-pass filters and may also cause issues with bokeh) and it is definitely not close to being telecentric in design (again, the thinner the low-pass filtration the better for dealing with this). As an F100/D800 lens, which is how I have used it, I really can't fault it for reportage at all, though for landscape and some interiors you want to evaluate whether corners, bokeh and light falloff are important to you below f5.6. This issue has been fixed with the f1.8 line. The 24/2.8 is also a very lightweight design with a floating element (i.e. not all elements move in unison; this is to boost performance at all focusing distances, not just either far away or close up), so complex and I suspect vulnerable to knocks, so test before you buy if you can.

Back directly to the topic of this lens, have people here seen the Tamron MTF chart for the 35 f/1.4? It is-out-of-this-world sensational. If it is even close to accurate this is going to be a very interesting launch -- even if, by any reasonable standard, an 800-plus-gram 35mm prime that takes 72mm filters can be considered brick-like in proportions.

If either of the above haven't provided you with any positive result, try Midwest Camera Repair in Wyandotte, Michigan--they do excellent work on lenses and they service pretty much everything.

<p>With just the two lenses you have already, I'd generally lean toward the 28. Note that for several years I used a 24 and an 80-200 in combination for 90 percent of my work at a newspaper, but I always had recourse to a 50 and at times to a mid-range zoom just in case. I'd be leery of getting only the 24 without that extra backup. </p>

<p>As for the lenses themselves, I currently use that old Nikkor 24 AF-N along side a 28G, and the two lenses are quite different. We'll skip the 24 for now as it's not the one you're looking at but the 28G is an interesting beast, very good bokeh, very good optics, a good match for environmental portraits or street photography but an unusual field curvature that means if a landscape is what I'm after, I will go for the 24 unless my primary interest is keeping the center and the foreground sharp and letting the rest slide slightly. I'm assuming the Sigma 24 has rather more regular behavior than the 28G, like that old Nikkor 24.</p>

<p>Of course these are slightly contradicting pieces of advice, and you may have to make choices with budget as well. But I hope this helps. For what it's worth I'd regard 24-50-85-180 or 28-85-180 as for the most part very complete set-ups (with the 24-50 option being slightly more flexible but the 28 being slightly better as a single focal length), based on my own experience 15 to 20 years ago with 24-50-105-180. Once I switched to the zoom, then it became a bit less of a stretch from 80 to 24, and at the time Nikon did not have an autofocus 28 that was both reasonably priced and good.</p>

<p>Note, the 28/2.8 AF is not the same as the AIS. The original five element AF version was based on the awful Series E one, and the revised, post-1993 six element version is a new design. The post-1981 AIS design is an eight element design that's very highly corrected for close focus.</p>

<p>Yes, and they've gotten better over the years. The ordering system is flawless, returns extremely easy, their online system is the best on the Internet, the telephone support is far nicer to deal with than it used to be (NY brusqueness has been toned down), and they're one of the very few places that still do a 30-day return period. And they clearly the widest stock of any single camera store.</p>

<p>Does having dials count? You could say the Nikon F4, which puts 1/8000th on a good old fashioned dial, even though it's actually electronically controlled.</p>

<p>I would say the D610, on the grounds of workflow. Unless you plan to do JPEG -- which the D800 is capable of pulling off if you get the exposure right -- you're going to be buried in data for weddings. A 24MP raw file is much more manageable, with little in the way of penalty in terms of dimensions of the final print as far as a wedding client is concerned.<br>

Check on Nikon Professional Services equipment eligibility. I see elsewhere in this thread that the D600/610 don't qualify, which as far as I know is not the case; they're on "List 1". This list shows you what you need to re-qualify for NPS; call Nikon to check if this applies for an initial qualification as well. Of course there are some obviously pro lenses that have managed to get on both List 1 and List 2 (the "non-priority" stuff). So, I reiterate, check with Nikon.<br>

http://nikonpro.com/Renewal-NPS-Equipment-List.pdf</p>

<p>Too much noise reduction for my taste on Pentax. Nikon used to totally mangle certain colors on JPEG (e.g. red) in terms of both accuracy and resolution, but those days have thankfully passed. I think the big picture is that Pentax is getting a lot of credit for bringing out more or less the high-end APS camera that Canon and Nikon skipped with the floods and Fukushima.</p>

<p>You're way out of focus on the D7000. Use LiveView, use AF fine tune, use manual focus, but whatever you do, do something. Probably better to use some kind of backfocus/frontfocus test target just to make sure the camera isn't systematically focusing too close or too long.</p>

<p>If we're talking lag time here, what you want is a D3, D4 or D800. About 40 milliseconds, and very short viewfinder blackout as well. I don't know the D700 but assume it's in the same ballpark. The high-end DX bodies are around the 50 to 60 millisecond mark, and I don't know the D600 either but assume it's probably a bit slower than the high-end FX bodies.<br>

<br /> Imaging-resource.com measures this for pretty much every camera they test. That would be where I'd check it out if you don't have access to a camera. I've noticed the D800 seems just a tad snappier than the DX bodies I've had. (The D2H excepted, I think that one may be the fastest of the entire lot.)</p>

<p>@Ilkka Nissila; I agree up to a point that there are some systemic focusing errors in Nikon AF, but in my experience it seems to have been not so much by (lack of) design as by quality control problems. I noticed iffy performance and a tendency toward backfocus under incandescent on both my D2H and D200; when I rented a Fuji S5 and noticed it nailing the correct focus every time, it piqued my interest to say the least, but it was not until I bought a pair of D7000 bodies that both backfocused every time under incandescent that I went a little bit incandescent and sent them both back to Nikon. I had read the horror stories about multiple D7000 trips to Nikon with no resolution, so I tested them very thoroughly to sort out which situations produced inaccurate focus, and in which direction, and which situations produced accurate focus, and provided those findings to Nikon as well. Turned out there was an adjustment problem on both bodies with the AF mirror angle; once fixed, both cameras have been very dependable, though I have now sold one of them.</p>

<p>I think that, especially with lenses that have high CA, the mirror angle simply brings up the images the phase-detect AF has to align in a place on the sensor that varies depending on the color temperature. If that mirror angle is correct, the images shift as predicted in any white balance situation; if it is not correct, the only one that will work accurately is the 5500 Kelvin for which Nikon seems to calibrate their AF, and in my case, the camera front-focused outdoors on cloudy days (7000 Kelvin) and backfocused moderately with flash (4000 Kelvin) and backfocused horribly under incandescent (2700 Kelvin).</p>

<p>If it's a D7000 I'd definitely have it looked at. The system as a whole seems to have had a lot of cases of AF mirrors being out of adjustment in such a way that they are positioned at the wrong angle. A telltale sign of this is if the AF is performing consistently in a different way from one color temperature to another, e.g. correct focus under sunlight, frontfocus under cloud and shadow (higher color temperature, more blue), and backfocus under incandescent light (lower color temperature, more orange). Alternatively, it may just be backfocusing everything, in which case I think it's actually an easier adjustment for the service center. For me, both bodies had the AF mirror angle problem. A word of advice; you'll get better results out of Nikon service if you do the sleuthing and process of elimination yourself and describe in detail how the camera performs under different conditions.</p>

<p>I think it's always worth looking certain models over pretty closely and the D7000 is one of them. I had two, still have one of them, and both had the same flaw that resulted in an amazing amount of frustration with focus.</p>

<p>Both required a mirror angle adjustment.</p>

<p>The mirror angle adjustment deals with the AF reflective mirror that drops down from the main viewfinder mirror to deflect the AF measurement where the sensor can pick it up. The tipoff for Nikon Service — why they actually got it right the first time as opposed to a lot of back and forth like what I've sometimes had in the past — was my report that the AF was behaving very differently in daylight versus incandescent. Basically, it would focus correctly at 5000 Kelvin, backfocus slightly at 4000 Kelvin with flash, and backfocus badly at 2700 or so (incandescent light). This effect was most pronounced with very sharp lenses with high CA, such as my 17-55 zoom, and least pronounced with older, low CA designs. </p>

<p>The adjustment frankly transformed both cameras. I really hadn't had a realistic idea of what to expect from DSLR sharpness before that, having had a D200 with what I suspect was a similar problem that was never diagnosed, and a D2HS which is of course only 4MP. I'd hired a Fujifilm S5 to shoot a wedding and noted how it always just nailed the focus perfectly with my 17-55, and that probably should have led me to really test the D200 closely. But only when the D7000 bodies showed up, both with the same issue, did I really decide to probe the issue fully.</p>

<p>So, be sure you test you AF in different types of light and measure the differing degrees of focus accuracy, as phase detect focus WILL be affected by it.</p>

<p>I have to say, I'm curious as to what my alternatives are. This pricing combined with the terms of service from Adobe have a remarkable amount in common with cell phone service — you subscribe, and you keep the rate for as long as you stay on the plan, but come off it for any period of time and there's no knowing what will happen. But, unlike the phone service, there's another variable at work here — file format — effectively locking you into a particular platform.<br /> <br /> So that leaves the question of how secure we are with a permanent rental model for software, when Adobe's customer service and corporate culture are all too much like Quark in the 1990s. The only reason they're even in the game with me on this offer is because Apple has been so opaque with what they want to do with Aperture. Even Apple's outstanding technical support doesn't cover for that.<br /> <br /> Accordingly, I'm looking for advice on what to do — go with the $9.95 offer and switch from Aperture; or stay on Aperture and use a PS alternative like PixelMator; or go with the $9.95 offer and continue to use Aperture and just leave Lightroom be. I have pretty much ruled out going with CS or CC and will use Quark 10 for page layout, but am still in this dilemma on photo processing.<br>

<br /> Bear in mind I'm eligible for education pricing.</p>

<p>I have a thing about battery standardization and for that reason alone I'd give it up on the D300's system. However another important point to consider is that between the boost in resolution and the general improvement in Nikon JPEGs, I think it's much more realistic to use the D7100 in JPEG mode than the D300 and that gets around the buffer issue.</p>

<p>That refurb pricing is more like it. Usually Nikon's refurb discounts are risible. I'd still prefer it if they do what Apple does and go with their normal 10-15 percent or so discount but with full warranty coverage. Then the discount wouldn't seem risible but would actually make sense.</p>

<p>Shun, looking at the pictures of the AW1, it's pretty clear to me that the front plate on the AW1 is recessed compare to other Nikon 1 cameras. The film/sensor plane is very close to the front plate, and the lens mount appears to protrude because of the front plate being two or three millimeters back from where it is on the other bodies. The base of the AW lenses has the lens mount connection recessed inside it by about two or three millimeters, and then I'd assume that there's a hefty rubber O'ring on the inside of the back of the lens. Of course, I'm sure Nikon has the ability to simply redesign all other future Nikon 1 bodies so that they too can take the AW lenses.</p>

<p>Just about all the AF-D lenses have it engraved on the aperture ring like that. </p>

<p>I don't think you're quite perpendicular to the painting. Possibly also the posterboard that it's on isn't perfectly flat. Lastly canned distortion profiles of any kind may not be perfect at all distances. Most lenses aren't at their best close up; distortion will sometimes intensify, corner sharpness will often deteriorate.<br>

I personally favor something very bog-standard simple for what you're trying to do, like a 50 or an 85. And there's definitely nothing wrong with using a dedicated macro lens either.</p>