rconey

Meh. Moon shot with 800 mm, f8. I had to prop it against a chair. With magnification in the viewfinder it is very difficult to get the lens on the moon. This was best of 7. I think I have sharper ones using the D850 and a tripod, with live view. This is maybe 33% crop.

So I think past 200mm-ish, IBIS can't make up for the difficulty holding the lens steady, in my experience.

I mainly used the 800 mm focal length (400 plus 2x tele) to take moon shots with a D800, later D850. I would prop the lens on the rail of my deck to get good shots. The lens goes past infinity on focus, so it could be tricky.

In bright light the 400 mm was ok on a DSLR, but as my eyes get worse it is more of a crap shoot. The magnification-focus peaking is helpful if slow.This is today, probably 100 yards away

hand held with 400 mm, f5.6. magnified to focus, with focus peaking. Then 100% crop of license. Not too bad.

Okay, with bright sunlight it is doable with the 400mm lens and 1/250th shutter. I do have to magnify the viewfinder heavily, focus, and then drop back to no magnification to frame, but I can get sharp focus with f5.6 at 70 yards.

I have a 400 f5.6ED and a TC-301 2x teleconverter that on a tripod are fun. I tried the 400mm and the combo hand held with the z7 and was not steady enough to get good images. After realizing I could enlarge the image in the eyepiece (not good for framing.....) I tried the 400mm alone and still could not hold steady enough. It is a beautiful, cloudless day today so maybe I'll try again with faster shutter speeds. Maybe if my hands were steadier.

I found my 135 f2 Zeiss is poor unless I magnify the image in the eyepiece, but the 100 f2 zeiss is fine without magnification. All focus peaking focus.

If I remember correctly, they wanted to multiply the actual photosites by 3 because of the "stack" of bgr sensors in a vertical array. Others countered "no fair" since resolution seemed to depend more on the x-y single surface number of pixels. Blurrist: do we know if the listed resolution above (7680x5120) is the single surface pixel number or that number multiplied by 3 deep?

Not to hijack the thread, but it is REALLY nice having image stabilization and focus peaking for my manual lenses with a Nikon Z camera. I do find that for my135mm f2 lens I have to magnify the electronic viewfinder image for focus to come in properly. 100mm and below lenses do ok without magnification.

Oooooh, you mean like an f1.4 lens set to f1.4 and a medium distance subject say wanting the eyes in focus? Yea, that is pretty tough without live view.

The < o > focus notification system on my D850 works pretty well with unchipped lenses. Obviously, live view and magnification is better, but that generally means a tripod.

Lighter is certainly a big part of the question. The Z 14-24 or 30 and the Z 24-70 2.8 certainly saved weight and per reviews I have seen, have less distortion in the corners. The Z7 saves weight over the D850. I note that the Z 70-200 lens is 3 pounds! Hmmm. Maybe a 70-200 f4 AF-S with the adapter will be better for longer.

Just curious. Is the wider throat of the Z mount particularly advantageous for wide angle lenses? Perhaps less bending of light rays for the corners? Telephoto would already require less bending. I make no pretense to remember much college physics. I also am ignoring loss of the mirror, and the significant weight saving.

The first shot was an f5.6. Here is an f2.8 shot close focused on the ice to pull out the lens flaws. Close focus with a wide background is where I would most use 20 mm anyway. F2.8 is borderline with this lens . The corners are mushy, and the chromatic aberration is visible on the house edges. (This is a different house, and is on a steep hill)

Yes, or a very knobby tree.......

24 degrees F this morning so optically clear air. Very nice, but too bad I am in town. Nikon 20-35 f2.8 at 20 mm. I didn't get the camera exactly level, and hand held. Two minutes of tinkering in ACR. "1" on purple chromatic aberration. Center focus on stone mailbox. No polarizer.

I just put the 20-35 f2.8D on my D850 for Christmas morning. It is a good lens due to the light weight and the useful range. I also tired of the 17-35 f2/8D due to poor corners and edges, and weight. I haven't quite convinced myself that the 20-35 f2.8D is THE wide lens for backpacking, but its light weight is very appealing. There is some chromatic aberration, but it is easily correctible. This lens plus the 50-135 f3.5 Ais is a nice backpacking thought, but haven't done it yet.

Don't want to scare him off just yet....................

You have entered the topic of color management. It can be as complicated as you like. To get the best chance of print colors looking like screen colors you need a calibration tool that sets the monitor for you.

Color space is part of the discussion. If you don't want to calibrate your monitor it is going to be a lot harder. You can work in sRGB color space (a narrow color space) and do ok going from screen to print. Wider color spaces(Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RBG) give room for more accurate colors but you really have to calibrate your monitor to avoid unpleasant color surprises.

Photoshop and other programs allow you to Proof or "view" custom representations of color expected by various printer/paper combinations. Those previews help fine tune colors before printing.

It actually isn't as complicated as it sounds to get to reasonable reproducibility.

Entertaining conversations, but I think I will try to stick to the question. Film vs digital cameras?

Really, the cameras operate very similarly if you have a modern film camera. Older film cameras can go so far as to lose the exposure meter and require a hand held light meter. Many of us old folks came through film to digital. Some stayed with film.

Shutter speed, aperture, and exposure are the same. Iso in film is set by the film you buy. Digital cameras set "iso" in the camera. Dynamic range of film is much lower than digital camera dynamic range of the sensor. Maybe black and white film is different in that regard? Never shot black and white.

So the act of shooting a picture is pretty much the same. THEN it gets very different. Film goes off to be developed. Digital files go in the computer for "developing" and polishing.

To each his own.

When I shot film and printed, I tried to be a minimalist in manipulation for landscapes (remeber cibachromes?). When Velvia film showed up, I started using it exclusively, still a minimalist in manipulation. Then I started scanning my slides, with minimal manipulation. I went fully digital in about 2004. I shoot raw, and at home must develop the raw image.

 

I must admit, when I got home from a recent 10 day trip to Colorado I could not remember exactly what the colors were like. some of the images were a bit underexposed. I developed them so that they were pleasing to the eye, to my taste. I think that is necessary with photography.

Accidently had camera on manual settings with slow shutter speed. High school football.

Trying out old manual lenses has been a lot of fun over the years, now on a D850 after a D800 for 6 years. I recently posted on the 200 F3.5 ED AF (for F3AF only) that I just got. It is as good as the 180 f2.8 ED manual focus I own, perhaps a little sharper in the corners. Evidently an uncommon lens.

The 50-135 f3.5 MF zoom is very good. I tried a lot of zooms and found the variable aperture ones not to work very well. Of course the 75-150 f3.5 series E is a good one.

Over time I have collected good samples of used zeiss MF lenses and use them a lot. 35 f2; 50 macro planar f2. 100 f2. 135 f2. All very nice but not really fair comparisons.

I find that the focal length I walk around with changes how I look at things. Cropping in with telephoto vs close but wide view with wide angle.

All better than being bored.

Sir: I agree with you but this was a casual post. My comments were made after a lot of comparison, as well as the requisite brick wall photography. I am not inclined to post all the photos so made a casual post. It is an odd lens, but if you like manual focus is fun. Regards. Oh, this photo was not to show corner performance.

So, boredom will take you places. I have the 180 f2.8ED MF lens and like many find the corner sharpness to be lacking. I read about this lens, which is only AF on the F3AF camera that briefly existed, and decided to try it. I found a clean version on Ebay, and have been playing around with it on a D850. It is about the same size and weight as the 180 f2.8 but does have better corner sharpness. Another toy. For the purists, the 70-200 f4 G IF-ED is sharper at 200mm and lighter.

Hello,

 

Best advice I ever got was to edit ruthlessly. Much of what we take is not worth keeping (at least for many of us). That reduces storage considerably. Think ahead to having to sort through all you store. Most of us develop a hierarchy of "goodness" to make it manageable. Personally, I sort int "Better....(whatever. The label helps me identify). I throw away anything that does not make this cut. Usually there are several shots, angles of each scene. Then I pull "Best of......". Periodically I go through all the "Best of..." and pull out a "Best of Best" grouping that I spend more time on. Eventually I (usually) discard the "Better" category to keep it manageable.

Incredibly sharp images. Why are we chasing those new lenses? Thanks,

Back in the day, when we were using neutral density filters to hold back the sky in landscapes we had room to complain. Sharp edge, graduated filter, AAARRRGHHH! What a pain! I was shooting slides so had what, 5 stops to work with?

Now, I frequently find that with bracketing the shots I want, I can avoid merging images. Sometimes, I have to merge images but I try to avoid it.

We are much closer to capturing what we need with a single shot (assume bracketing). Not always.