daniel_bliss

<p>I wonder if the on-chip AF capability is harming certain other capabilities of the sensor? If that's the case it's going to have implications for this attempt by camera manufacturers to combine top-notch video and stills performance in a single body. Still, definitely worth waiting for a second opinion on this one. </p>

<p>@Andy L — I see your point; also I strongly agree that the Sigma lens is largely about enabling DX to play catch-up with FX, getting DX's standard to wide-angle weak spot to a point where it is "good enough". I'm beginning to think I either need to go back to basics — which for me means the 24 or 18-35, a prime 35 or 50, and my 70-200 with a single FX body as my primary shooting rig — or double down on my DX pattern of the last few years (17-55 or similar and 70-200). The dilemma I'm having is that DX seems to be seriously short of wider-angle options that I like, while FX is short in the standard zoom department. One way out — and getting clearly down to two lenses in FX rather than the 24/50/telezoom combo I used with film — might be FX with the Tamron VC lens handling the 24-50 range that I'd actually use, and the telephoto zoom covering the rest. But pooling everyone's comments and my own research, I don't see a comparable strategy for DX because of being cut off at the knees after 28mm equivalent; my experience of DX ultrawide has not been a good one as I tried and failed a number of years ago with what I can only hope were bad samples. The key thing is hitting that 24mm FX/15-16mm DX point with a lens I like. Would anyone care to comment on ultrawide with the D7100, let's say the Tokina 11-16 and Nikkor 10-24/12-24, and how the results compare with lenses of equivalent angles of view on FX?</p>

<p>All helpful responses, thanks. First off, there will be some video shooting, hence the interest in VR/VC. Second, my basic landscape and reportage rig in film 15 years ago was a 24mm lens and an 80-200, and I'm looking for a similar kind of set-up now, but with an important addition — a mid-range zoom. I've had the 17-55 now for six years and really enjoyed it, got a great deal of value out of it, and never felt limited by the range other than occasionally I would have liked it to go slightly wider. I think I'm probably a natural fit for a 24-70 in FX and would only occasionally feel restricted by the Sigma f1.8; were I to end up staying focused on DX, holding on to the 17-55 as my primary "normal" lens is a serious possibility. <br>

I also have a 70-300 VR that I use, mostly with my D7000, for nature shots, and a TC14E for the 70-200 zoom. I eventually intend to get a longer lens, but whether the 300/4, a hypothetical 300/4 VR, or the new 80-400 is an open question, and in any case this won't be for a while yet. I am looking to get back into gallery sales of reportage and landscapes, and back when I was doing that almost all my photographs were 24, 28 or 80-200. The big change since then is the way the 17-55 finally sold me on mid-range zooms, which I'd disliked up to that point.<br>

One other question, now that I think about it, is workflow involving the mid-range zoom. The 17-55 is extremely efficient in this regard; very consistent optical quality (edge-to-edge sharpness at mid-range and distance, a bit dodgy in the outer field and corners close up but that's rarely a problem in practice, a moderate amount of correctible CA, and not much difference from one aperture to the next) including no complex distortion to correct, just a simple linear adjustment. I get the impression that several of the FX zooms including the Tamron have complex distortion, and would like to know what folks recommend, through means such as plugins and choices of raw software, for dealing with it. The early reviews of the Sigma 1.8 at least on Canon suggest to me that it would be on the easier end of this equation.<br>

I see a couple of suggestions for using the 16-35/4 in order to provide a cross platform DX/FX solution. While I like the basic idea, I suspect I'd need to keep the 17-55 or else switch it for either the Sigma or Tamron for the sake of having some more options with depth of field isolation. This effectively puts a significant crimp on the budget and I doubt whether it would work for me. Another factor is that I don't really see an ultrawide solution in DX that I like and that's part of what's steering me in a more FX direction; I feel the DX ultrawide products either involve playing the sample lottery or settling for more modest performance.</p>

<p>I have a system including D7000s and a D800, and may be replacing the two D7000s with either a D7100, D300 replacement (if one emerges this year) or a second FX body. Bear in mind that the way I use the D800 is multiformat, so I do use DX lenses on it from time to time and use the 1.2x mode in addition to FX quite a bit for action.<br>

The question is what way to go on a mid-range zoom. Basically, given the very promising tests of the new Sigma 18-35 1.8, indicating performance on at least Canon's higher-end APS bodies that competes directly with typical full-frame zooms on FX (no Nikon tests yet because no Nikon lenses in the sales channel yet), I'm trying to decide between a full-frame approach centered on a Tamron 24-70 VC 2.8 or Nikkor 24-70 2.8, a mixed approach centered on either the Tamron or Sigma, or a crop-sensor-centered approach on the Sigma.<br>

So the question goes (given there probably aren't any Nikon-compatible Sigma 1.8 zooms in the wild yet), what's everyone's experience with the big 24-70 zooms on both FX and DX, and does the color-depth, acuity, resolution etc., of the D7100 body compete well with high-res FX bodies when used with the best glass, or is it more comparable to lower-resolution, lower-dynamic range bodies? In an ideal world I'd have both but budgetarily I cannot do that.</p>

<p>My experience with the 80-200 AF-D is that it just wasn't all that good wide open near the telephoto end. Stop it down to f4 if you're operating in 150 to 200mm and you'll be just fine. Nikon's original 80-200 2.8 lenses — the huge manual focus version and the very slow focusing AF version — are better in this regard than either of the AF-D versions, the one touch or the two touch, though they don't focus as close. Starting with the 80-200 AFS, they improved again at the telephoto end.</p>

<p>To the original poster: Check your focus tests again, in order to make sure you're shooting under the same color balance for both the close-up and infinity. If you're shooting the infinity test under outdoor lighting and the close-up under indoor lighting, it's not a consistent test. The reason is that color temperature (e.g. cooler outdoor sunlight versus warmer, more yellow, indoor incandescent light) can affect AF performance, especially if the mirror angle on the camera is incorrectly adjusted. <br>

You might want to replicate this with other lenses before sending to Nikon — preferably other similar lenses, along the lines of being very sharp and having a wider maximum aperture. In my case the problem showed up much more strongly with newer lenses that are sharp and very contrasty but have high chromatic aberration, such as the 17-55 DX. My 24/2.8 which is a less contrasty lens that's very low in CA had a far less pronounced difference, though it was still just discernable with fine-tuning.</p>

<p>The D7000 is not a comfortable camera to hold without the vertical grip. Where it gets even more ridiculous is that with the grip attached, holding the camera vertically is much more comfortable than holding it horizontally, because the vertical grip is bigger around and slightly more curved. I don't know why Nikon felt they had to reinvent the wheel from the proven F100/F5 body style, but with the D80/90/7000 they have. I also don't know why they couldn't have simply designed the standard grip to match the shape of the vertical one. </p>

<p>Apparently they've now done something similar with the D800 as well; a grip that's too shallow and too square. Insane.</p>

<p>His comments on the D800E are very interesting. Thinking about it afterwards, I believe people need to consider the following -- that because of the advantage the D800E gives to detail over noise, this is going to amount to a huge increase in effective resolution at higher ISO settings.<br>

<br /> The key is Unsharp Mask. You're not going to see the effect much at ISO 100 because the read noise on an Exmoor sensor is so low that even Unsharp Masking a standard D800 file all the way isn't going to bring out much of a problem. But at ISO 800, what you'll find is D800 files where there's a real battle between Unsharp Mask and noise, while the D800E files will still need almost no noise reduction because they needed no unsharp masking and therefore the noise was not brought out of the picture.<br>

<br /> Imagine what this means for some of Brandenburg's most famous shots, notably the Brother Wolf cover. It means the image quality of medium format Velvia now enters the realm of high ISO 35mm shooting.<br>

<br /> The D800E effectively becomes a serious breakthrough for nature and wildlife photographers. While the ISO 100-shooting landscape photographer will notice only a modest change and the urban or commercial photographer will be having to play tricks with moire, the low-light nature and wildlife photographer gets one of the most liberating changes in years.</p>

<p>The problem I've had with both my D7000 bodies is that they back focus more and more as you get toward warmer (cooler temperature Kelvin) lighting on the subject. In 5000K or more lighting -- that would include sunshine or daylight cloud, or for that matter shooting a picture of a TV screen -- there's no problem; in fact it's amazing what the AF can get even some older lenses can do on the D7000's very high-resolution sensor. By the time you're under 2700K incandescent light, the frustration is constant as there's consistent backfocus. As a temporary workaround I switch on a -12 AF adjustment as a default for all lenses when I'm working with incandescent light, and then switch it off again for outdoors. I'm planning on sending the bodies into Nikon for adjustment, and if they can get the AF to work properly under all color temperatures I'll be happy. If not, I'm probably going to have to move to a different camera. Given what I've heard from two professionals on the subject I'm not optimistic, but I live in hope.<br>

Having said all this, it's important to point out how powerful a feature the AF fine-tune is. You will see things out of your lenses that you may not have seen before, both because the AF (when it's working right) is handling them more accurately and because lenses that might have been slightly out of whack now take on a performance you've never experienced before. There's even a benefit with manual focus as the D7000 restored the full AF rangefinder that was basically ruined on the D200 and D300.</p>

<p>Luckily I'm an email packrat, so I was able to get my original Capture 4 > NX product key upgrade from 2006, which sufficed as the original product key, and then enter my Capture NX2 upgrade key as well. Honestly, though, it seems crazy of Nikon to blank out the serial numbers for a point update rather than a version upgrade. <br>

Still, there may be a sensible explanation. I know there was something about Nikon previously setting up the serial number of Capture at a very low level of the operating system as a kernel extension on the Mac, so maybe this also has something to do with Lion compatibility -- as the old arrangement was not really an appropriate way of doing it, digging too deeply into the core of the OS. Lion's security improvements have significantly changed the access developers have to the core of the OS, and maybe Nikon effectively had to force entering the serial numbers this one time as part of achieving Lion compatibility.</p>

<p>From my own experience -- and backed up by very good authority -- there is clearly a problem with the way in which D7000 autofocus works under warm color temperatures and in particular incandescent light. Under 2500K to 3000K light, you're looking at a consistent -12 adjustment with f2.8 lenses and about a -8 with f3.5. Under daylight, there is no problem that I can see, but the D7000's response to incandescent with autofocus is a serious problem that should have been attended to by Nikon a long time ago.</p>

<p>I strongly recommend setting up the banks (U1 and U2 on the dial) with different focus adjustments for different color temperatures. For 3000K light I'd suggest you start with -12 or so for f2.8 zooms and primes, -8 for f3.5 and -5 or -6 for f4.5 lenses. For daylight it isn't a problem but the D7000's AF responds differently to warmer reflected light on the subject (i.e. cooler color temperatures on a Kelvin scale). Once you have an appropriate setting for the light on the subject it should work OK. All my lenses are spot-on for backfocus/frontfocus; both my D7000 bodies behave perfectly in daylight but veer toward backfocus in exactly the same way under most indoor lighting, unless you're fortunate enough to be working under daylight-balanced indoor light. You'll notice that focus adjustment goes up and up with a wider maximum aperture; I would suspect that you may have difficulty being able to adjust an f1.4 lens on the D7000 under incandescent as you'd be butting up the maximum adjustment of -20 if my experience is anything to go by.</p>

<p>Nobody has discussed different types of lighting.</p>

<p>What about INCANDESCENT light? Whenever I turn my D7000s on to objects that are lit by a low color temperature light, e.g. incandescent or indoor-balanced compact florescent, they consistently backfocus. The workaround is about a -12 adjustment in the focus adjustment. The problem is most noticeable at the wideangle end of standard-range zooms. Turning the camera on an object lit by daylight-balanced or cloudy or sunlight or even a TV screen (which is 6500K, therefore comparable to cloudy light) solves the problem. With LiveView, there is no problem no matter what the light.</p>

<p>These focusing problems have been around for some time on Nikon and are particularly pronounced on the D7000. I have to go back to my F100 to get reliable focus under all lighting conditions. I'm told the D3 series is also good but from what I've seen all other current Nikons have the problem to varying extents, with the D7000 having it the worst.</p>

<p>Thanks to the "conservatives" on the US Supreme Court, a century of precedent was thrown out in the 2007 decision Leegin Creative Leather Products vs PSKS, by the usual 5-4 majority. Courts in the US had always interpreted the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890 to mean that minimum selling prices were a form of vertical price fixing. Robert Bork, the very right-wing U of Chicago law professor, put out a bunch of journal articles in the 1970s arguing that much existing antitrust and anti-monopoly regulation was in fact both inefficient and a violation of property rights (Ronald Reagan later tried to appoint Bork to the Supreme Court), and it was basically Bork's writings the majority cited in Leegin. <br>

The state of the law now is that the Sherman Act, as well as the Consumer Goods Pricing Act 1975 (passed by Democrats, signed by Republican President Ford), can't really do much about this without new legislation. Several members of Congress have tried to introduce such new legislation over the past four years but it hasn't gone anywhere yet. </p>

 

<p>There were always several features of cheaper Nikon digital bodies that were deal-breakers for me. Lack of aperture indexing for older lenses; questionable trade-offs on build such as lack of dust and moisture sealing; inferior viewfinders; inferior AF; inferior options for vertical grips; missing support for AF adjustment; and compromises on sensors. All have been resolved in the D7000. The only significant thing it lacks from the bigger bodies is the ten-pin accessory interface. On technical points you also have to shift buttons slightly more to use the screen and the menus, like the D90 and unlike the D300s -- but for me that's more than made up for by speed-ups in the in-use handling like the U1 and U2 recall settings.</p>

<p>I think it will make a fine body for serious photography. Not to mention saving something like 130 grams from a D200 is more than welcome.</p>

<p>I'm curious to see what, if anything, they have in mind for a D400, or if they'll lower the price point for getting into full frame.</p>

<p>I have one technical question; it's not clear to me if there's enough space under the built-in flash overhang to allow proper movement from one of Nikon's tilt-and-shift lenses. There specifically isn't on a D200 but the lenses work fine on a D300.</p>

<p>The 35/1.4 strikes me as overpriced, though. Even Nikon's 24mm lenses are on the high side, both the tilt-and-shift that lacks full movements like its Canon counterpart, and the 1.4 that's just plain pricey never mind its quality, but this 35 is blatant -- a solid $600 too much in my view.</p>

<p>I would have totally bought an FM2n back in the day had Nikon done something about the eye relief on the viewfinder. Or an F3, had Nikon put a faster shutter in. But I ended up with an N8008s for several years. On balance I think I slightly favor the FM2n, or better yet the FM3, and contact lenses -- except that I tried contacts some time ago and didn't get enough of a tear film out of my right eye for them to work. Basically I like small, compact cameras and top-notch flash support, and the FM2/FM3 with motor drive is lighter and perhaps even a bit smaller than a D700 and without the motor drive you're into P&S territory by today's standards.</p>

<p>Owning a D200 with a 17-55 the most obvious functional problem is that the camera's autofocus doesn't deal very well with the 17-55 at the widest angles. I've not tried the lens on a D300, not owning one, but on an F100 (granted, not a body I use the lens with), the AF never misses at 17 to 20 or so like it does from time to time on the D200. I've noticed the same thing on my 18-70 DX as well. I just don't think the D200's AF tolerances are tight enough for dealing with wide angle lenses. In practice, this won't be a problem for landscape as depth of field takes over; it has only arisen for me indoors at closer distances.<br>

The 17-55 is very, very good but I'd say the 16-85 would be even better for the job. It's another 10 ounces or so lighter than the 17-55, from what I understand it's close to as good optically -- bear in mind the 17-55 is exceeding the D200 sensor most of the time -- and you get the extra zoom range as well. I think you're going to find that you want to carry the big rig, so to speak, up the high mountains -- and with one digital body and a 16-85, you just about have Galen Rowell's early 1980s mountaineering getup completely covered (FM or FTN body, 24, 55 macro, 75-150/3.5), only with even less weight.</p>

<p>Sorry for the forum archaeology, but Shun, what are you seeing away from the extreme end of the 70-200 VRII -- i.e., in the middle of the zoom range?</p>

I seriously thought of buying the Sigma a while back, when it first came out about eight or

nine years ago in its original HSM version (now I guess it has slightly different glass for

digital or something). What dissuaded me is that Sigma has long since ditched the feature

they had where lenses focused in the same direction as the camera brand for that

particular mount -- and now they all focus in the Canon/Minolta/Sony direction. I

guarantee you it will goof you up if you manually focus at all. I had a Tamron SP 300mm

2.8 for a brief while, and while it's a wonderful lens, the focus direction got me every time.

 

The other practicality is warranty coverage; in the US Nikon simply cannot be beat, for

length of warranty or quality of service, at least on "pro" product like this.

 

I think everyone else here has covered optics pretty well.

 

Downside? Yes. I think Nikon has been struggling with QC on their lenses of late -- but

so has everyone else. And my experience with Nikon service has been very good; they're

quicker and more customer oriented than they used to be.

Cadillac system -- MacPro with the Xeon processors, 2.66GHz, or if you really want to go wild, 3GHz. As much memory as you want. Let's say 4GB for starters. Apple 23" or 30" Cinema Display.

 

More than adequate -- MacBook Pro, Core2Duo, 4GB (now very cheap), Apple 20" or 23" Cinema Display (it will take a 30 if you wish). Consider external drives, both hard and DVD. I use a MacBook (original CoreDuo) but the Pro now has a big advantage being able to go to 4GB.

 

Filesize, all depends on how big you want. On a 4000dpi Nikon Coolscan 8000 or 9000 for the 6x6, I' thinking 200MB or so for a single layer file. On a 2400 dpi flatbed for the 5x7", we're getting up toward 400MB. 2GB will be tight.

 

The other nice thing with 4GB is that besides the huge speed increase, the internal hard drive speed becomes almost irrelevant with the current configurations. See here for details.

 

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/Macbook_Pro_15_Memory_Benchmarks

 

Laptop ought to be fine unless you're doing a lot of batch processing, in which case I think I'd still go with the desktop of possible. As cool as the C2D laptops run, they will still heat up running full blast.

I was absolutely stunned by the trumpeter shot. Usually camera manufacturers don't show off their product with handheld camera torture shots like this -- 6400 ISO, lighting off kilter, white balance off kilter, and it still looks great.

 

Let's hope we get D300 high ISO samples too. I will say this -- D300 ISO 200 looks better than D200 ISO 200 on this evidence.

If the D70 is limiting you, upgrade. If not, don't worry about it. The D200 strikes me as a

very fine solution unless you want to do a lot of vertical shooting in which case you'd

better have big hands for that add-on grip; it's larger than the one on the D2 series which

I can just about manage with my small paws.

 

Nikon usually "S"s sooner or later. N8008 in 1988; N8008s in 1991; N90 in 1992; N90s in

1994. With digital it's been a bit faster, usually about 16-18 months. So if you wait six

months it stands to reason there will be a D200s. But sometimes the S upgrades aren't

really that big. The only recent "S" upgrade that stands out to me as a truly major

overhaul was bumping the D2H up to the D2HS; and in that case the D2HS was what they

promised the D2H would be.

 

Personally I don't see the obvious flaws with the D200 that I saw with the D2H, so I

wouldn't sweat it. My feeling is that the JPEG engine could stand some improvement,

maybe a tweak to the sensor to reduce the interference on readout, a few other knick-

knacks here and there like a slightly tighter hot shoe, maybe something more substantial

than double-sided tape to attach the grip rubber to the body, but nothing really

revolutionary.

It shouldn't be acting like this. Here's the MTF graph from Nikon . .

 

http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/lens/af/zoom/af-s_vr_zoom70-200mmf_28g_if/index.htm

 

As you can see; trremendous edge-to-edge on DX digital (out to about 14mm from the

center); the soft corners should show up only on film or full-frame digital. You'll see if

you look around the Nikon site that it is also directly competitive with the 180/2.8 on

digital. Note Nikon's MTF charts measure wide-open performance only.

 

Here's my own experience. I tried two samples. The first one wasn't crisp. A little behind

the 80-200 2.8. It also seemed to be backfocusing a bit. The second one was much

better, a little ahead of the 80-200 2.8. In both cases on digital the performance is

extremely even across the frame. These results are on a D2HS.

A more "normal" perspective for a prime would probably be the Sigma 30/1.4 -- or for a

slightly longer effect like the old 55mm lenses, the Nikkor 35/2 AF or 35/1.4 AI-S. I think

for an unobtrusive walkaround in a strange land a single lens solution is a good one but

the best single solution is probably the 17-55; it goes wide enough AND long enough and

has a big enough aperture. The key is enough. One of the best pieces of photojournalism

I've ever seen was Ted Polumbaum's "Today is Not Like Yesterday" on Chile 1989-1991

during the transition from military rule to democracy. In a sensitive situation like that, a

simple unobtrusive walkaround rig with a reasonable amount of versatility was exactly

what was called for; in his case, a Nikon FM2 and a Tokina 28-70/2.8 with ISO 400 black

and white film. Today, the D70 with a 17-55/2.8 does basically the same job. Note also

that with digital we have a big advantage over film for noise and general image quality, in

the case of a D70 probably about a stop, so the 18-70 kit lens would now suffice for what

Polumbaum did with film 15 years ago.

Simply do not buy from a store that isn't a Nikon authorized dealer. The lowest prices I have

seen lately from authorized dealers are from Cord Camera, Cameta, and buydig.com, all

around the $1,500 mark.