lester_hawksby1

You're welcome.

 

Some bits of Rockwell are very helpful... some really aren't. I don't, for instance, think I will ever share his liking for high-saturation JPEG-basic.

Les:

 

In short: The lens stopdown lever will work, and many old lenses are fine performers on modern digital bodies. However, if you don't already know the difference between pre-AI (F mount) and AI/AIs lenses, you will need to tread carefully.

 

Long explanation: (sorry if any of this is either below or above your level, and I hope it's not too confusing!) - If your lens says Nikkor-Q or similar, be careful. All the ones I've seen that say Nikkor-(letter), where the letter is a code for the number of elements, are very old types. AI and AIS manual lenses are fine on new dSLR bodies, but older "pre-AI" lenses can damage modern AF lens mounts.

 

AI-era lenses have hollow cutout "rabbit ears" (metering prongs), a second row of tiny aperture numbers right at the back, and cut slots in the back of the aperture ring designed to interface with 1970s and 80s manual bodies. Pre-AI ones, which usually have solid prongs and no second set of aperture numbers, have no cutouts in the back of the aperture ring - this can cause them to foul parts of modern bodies' mounts. Just in case I've not confused you enough already, many pre-AI lenses were updated to AI standard; those that were done by Nikon are fine, those that weren't may not be.

 

Ken Rockwell's explanation of the difference is, for once, calmly written and reasonably thought through:http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/nikortek.htm#f

 

Hope that helps!

For goodness' sake, can people who've never met a d40 *please* stop speculating about what they erroneously believe it can't do?

 

Joseph, you can certainly use that mirror lens on a d40. I have a 300mm mirror rather like yours, with no electrical connections, and it works OK with the following method:

 

You need to set the big dial on the top to "M" - nothing else will do. Then the camera will stop complaining about "no lens attached" and allow you to shoot. The meter will not work, so you will need to shoot a trial frame, examine the histogram, and then adjust the shutter speed (roll the control wheel) to get the correct exposure.

 

(You will need a solid tripod or a VERY fast shutter speed to avoid severe camerashake, and focusing is very exacting with such a long lens, so don't give up if your initial results disappoint - the learning curve is steep)

Some of the very long macros may not allow you sufficient working distance for larger subjects in situ. A 50, 55 or 60 may be more suitable. The depth of field battle also seems to be easier to win with shorter macros.

 

After long and (mostly) helpful discussions on this forum I bought the 50mm f/2.8 Sigma macro for copy-stand and small-object work. It is well built, sharp, and rather cheaper than the 60mm Nikon which is very little better. It gets my vote.

No adapter is necessary - everything will physically fit your older bodies. However, modern AF-capable lenses lack the "rabbit ears" prongs needed to interface with your bodies' lightmeters.

 

The very newest "G" lenses don't have an aperture control of their own so aren't terribly useful, but there's nothing you can do about that - just stick to ones with their own aperture rings.

 

Is there any particular lens you have in mind? Your older glass is good stuff; modern zooms (and some, but not all, wides) are better than older zooms, but I doubt many modern lenses are radically better than your 50 or 100 at their respective lengths.

If you have one of the older Mac DVD-burning drives that only works with -R discs, and feed it the wrong type, it refuses to see any disc at all.

(Found out the hard way on my office Mac when someone ordered the wrong sort). Therefore, your drive IS capable of burning +R media.

 

Do a verify, then see if you can access a random sample of the files; when you can, stop worrying about it :-)

Alex: Yes, the modern 45/2.8 pancake is an "AI-P" lens, chipped to allow metering on electronic cameras.

Pushing or pulling? I'm not quite clear what you mean. Do you intend to have your film push or pull processed and want to tell the camera to adjust its exposure settings accordingly? Or do you mean something else?

It's difficult to see how an 85/2 could be anything other than physically large - but the Sonnar design used in that Jupiter is a particularly solid lump of glass internally, hence the weight. Some SLR 85/2s are lighter... but still larger.

 

I have one of these lenses and like it. Oil/grease on the aperture blades is normal and not a bad sign. I really hope you have a good 'un.

Depth of field is *shorter* than it appears in the finder - so things that appear to be in focus actually aren't. Sometimes things will look fine to me in the finder, but not be quite critically correct when I examine the results. The green LED seems to me to respond to a narrower range; sometimes it will be unlit when the viewfinder image looks correct and, sure enough, I was just a little off. Occasionally the green light makes mistakes, but most of the time I find it better than sight alone *for me personally*. If your experience is different I am intrigued to hear it.

 

I usually focus with the viewfinder first, then check the green dot, then check the viewfinder focus again - it only takes a moment. It's well within my field of vision without taking my eyes off the viewfinder, now I've learned not to stop and look AT the light - I just check there's a fuzzy green glow in the corner of my eye. More a case of watching it *in addition* rather than "instead" of the frame. Took me a little while to teach my eye to do that, but easy compared to learning to use a Kontur finder :-)

 

(I am a longtime RF user so I'm pretty much conditioned to compose - focus - recompose - fire, whatever technology I'm using. I suspect I might feel differently about working this way if my formative years had been spent using AF SLRs)

For what it's worth, on my d40 the green dot is a very reliable indicator for manual focusing with most lenses and situations. The green dot is not completely trustworthy at close macro distances or with a 300/5.6 mirror lens - exactly situations in which the AF would have trouble if I were using AF versions of those lenses. Not very surprising. With the 30/1.4 Sigma, 50/2 AI manual and even a 24/2.8 AI the dot is perfectly accurate even at their closest focus distances - certainly far better than one can achieve with the stock screen alone.

 

As far as I can tell, this is not because of screen placement inaccuracy but because the screen's impression of DoF is overgenerous - so much so that I probably could not tell if the screen was perfectly placed or not! Is it possible that fitting the Katz Eye screen to a d70 (or any camera!) might *reveal* inaccuracies in the focus screen shims that were not visible with the stock screens? I believe so.

Anthony - modern "bright" viewfinder screens give a more optimistic impression of what's in focus than the old "matt" ones did, as they let more light pass straight through. It really shows up at wider apertures and with manual focus.

Virtually everything that will mount on your Nikon F3 is coated. Before WW2 only the most expensive lenses were coated and then not always; after it, only the cheapest were uncoated. The Nikon F mount was designed well into the coated era and virtually everything made for it is coated. The vast majority of photographers prefer the increased contrast, particularly in colour.

 

A very small proportion of (mostly rangefinder and LF) people like the "look" given by antique uncoated lenses on black & white film. Technical perfection is, after all, not the be all and end all of a lens. However, I suspect that a large portion of what such users like about these lenses is to do with the physical design, not the lack of coating; older lenses have different physical arrangements of different types of glass, which makes more difference to final image qualities. In any case the difference is subtle.

 

Unless you have done a great deal of B&W film work with both new and older equipment, I would advise not worrying about it too much. Instead, invest in just about any Nikon AI-era primes. All of them are coated, most of them are absolute stars in the focals you mention; I have a soft spot for the 50mm f/2. You will need to choose the 35 carefully, that's all.

 

If posessing highly sophisticated lens coatings really starts to bother you, go buy an old pre-war Leica II or III with uncoated 50/3.5 Elmar and shoot a comparison roll alongside your favourite up-to-date 50mm Nikon. If you don't like the Leica you won't lose very much money selling it on.

A "sea of techniques" is a very good way of describing dSLRs' initial learning shock! That picture is definitely working towards something interesting, though it's perhaps not quite there yet.

50mm f/2 AI on d40, first as a general purpose lens, now mostly for portraits. I don't think the slightly slower pace of working is a great disadvantage for me, and the quality is wonderful; it seems to have become a rather flattering lens with cropped sensors.

I bought the big Rocket when I started film scanning, but it seems good for pretty much anything. It is definitely better than other blowers I've used, though I've not tried the Q-ball.

How vintage is vintage? If your "vintage" lenses are manual rather than autofocus, every body lower than a d200 (right down to the 40) will behave exactly the same way with them - you'll need to learn to use the histogram to meter. It's not difficult, but it means you will notice little difference between d40/50/70 other than viewfinder and screen sizes.

 

The d40 can mount lenses all the way back to my ancient pre-AI 50/2 Nikkor, though I usually use the later AI version. I do not know if other lenses of the pre-AI (Nikon F) era work, but there's nothing on the mount to clash with things so it's a good bet. It mounts everything AI, too.

 

Other bodies will not mount lenses earlier than AI era, but will autofocus with more AF lenses. If you have manual focus lenses and don't know whether they're AI or pre-AI, try google.

Congratulations, have fun :-)

The more I look, the more it really does look to me like you've got a bad unit there. Exposure, dynamic range and colour accuracy are one thing and take work, but it should be *sharp* right out of the box - mine was.

OK, I've finally pulled down the massive TIFF and I can see a couple of things.

 

Firstly, congratulations - your combination of film choice and exposure habits seem to be out of the Plustek's dynamic range. However, I'm not completely sure of this as I'm not completely sure that the scanner exposure is right. I've not had problems on my own slides, but mine are all Provias shot in very controlled light rather than the great outdoors. Then again, I seem to get away with it in black and white... exposure issues do not seem to affect sharpness for me, that's a separate matter.

 

Secondly, I can't tell if your sharpness problem is due to film flatness or a problem with the scanner's optical system. If I squint hard I can almost convince myself that the scan looks as though it is nearly resolving dye "grain" in the emulsion at the centre of the frame (an effect I've certainly seen on my own scans, though I don't have an example handy) but nowhere near it at the edges. If this is true, however, it means your original slide is terribly unsharp - which I'm sure you would have noticed. (How good is it when projected?)

 

Does the black & white grain you observe look as sharp as the following example? (Same scanner and, yes, I know it's big grain - though I can't remember if I downsampled)

http://pics.livejournal.com/raygungothic/pic/0000q662

Everybody needs a tripod, whether they end up using it frequently or rarely. Not everybody needs a monopod by a long way. On the other hand monopods are cheap and all but the very worst are absolutely fine, whereas tripods can get very expensive yet there's always a better one out there.

 

A good tripod will last a long time; think of it as an investment. One my father bought in the early 1970s has only just worn out after decades of use by both of us - one of the best equipment investments I've ever seen in photography.

 

Therefore: plan and budget for getting a GOOD tripod as soon as you can afford it. In the future you can buy a cheap monopod at short notice if you really find yourself needing one.

Hi Bart,

 

Sorry to hear you're having so much trouble. The comparison images are pretty helpful, and it does look like something's not as it ought to be...

 

When you scan at 7200dpi, do you get a detailed rendition of your film grain? If not, you either (a) have film flatness problems or (b) have a unit which has been dropped in shipping. Check with a glass-mounted slide (I have had flawlessly sharp results from slides in glass on mine). If a glass scan is good, it's a flatness problem. If not, time for the makers to send you a new scanner.

 

If you can see the grain all the way across the scan, there is probably nothing wrong with your scanner's optics. However, ALL scans need some form of unsharp mask applying. Your digital p&s does some sharpening automatically, so you're not really comparing like with like if those images are unfiltered as you say. The real test is how much detail CAN be extracted, not initial appearance.

 

Also, it seems to me that one gets more detailed results scanning at 7200dpi and resampling down to 3600 than you do scanning at 3600 initially. There is not usually enough detail to be worth keeping all 7200dpi so you may as well downsample before your first save. After lengthy comparison this became my standard procedure.

 

Exposure/film dynamic range/scanner dynamic range is another matter. Think of it as being a separate problem from the issue of sharpness. You say you're scanning in 48 bit; in that mode, do your raw scans clip at either end of the histogram? If so, your slides may be too dense for the Plustek... I've heard this can happen, but not really encountered it myself. It depends upon the film you use and your exposure habits.

 

If you email me a raw scan I will see what can be done...

Tecno are Jessops, but web-only and usually cheaper. They're not bad.

I've done this, and it works well for some things and not for others.

 

Bear in mind that you will be

- charged for converting money to pay for it

- charged import tax

- charged for the evaluation of import tax

- charged for the postage

 

and at the end you still won't have a warranty. When I was buying a nothing-to-go-wrong manual film body that had just ceased distribution in the US (hence massively reduced) but remained full price here, it was very much worth it. For a digital body that's in current production, I seriously doubt it's a good idea.

Did you have any luck with this in the end? I have one of these and get good results, but it took me a while at the beginning to find the best working methods. If you're still having problems I may be able to help.