josefkissinger

<p>I have the same problem with my 24-70. Take the lens hood off and make sure you only use slim filters. I don't understand why Nikon couldn't design a lens hood that doesn't show up in the picture on a 1700$ lens. You will need to grind down the corners. Ridiculous, I know, but true.</p>

<p>ADL is a pointless marketing gimmick unless you shoot jpeg. If you want to preserve highlight detail than just underexpose your image by 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop. It will do the same thing. ADL doesn't do anything to a RAW image that you can't do in post. However, if you are a photo journalist only shooting jpeg and are subitting to your client live via satalite, you obviously don't have time to plug your 1000+ RAW images through NX 2 or Lightroom and apply ADL corrections. If your camera can apply these settings for you and append them to a jpeg file than you have just saved hours of work. I repeat, ADL DOES NOT give your RAW files more dinamic range. That is impossoble. If you decrease exposure than you will gain highlight detail at the expense of shadow detail and vise versa. If Nikon had the technology to make two exposures, one for the highlights and one for the shadows and apply them to the image instantaliously, then they would have made a miraculous technological achievement and it would be marketed as such. Can you emagnine how amazing it would be for a camera to be able to capture in HDR (high dynamic range). Sorry, you can only achive HDR in photoshop my merging serveral different exposures of the same image taken with a tripod. If you shoot RAW than you can turn ADL on or off because it wont make any difference. However, if you shoot JPEG than it will make a world of difference what setting you leave it on becase the camera is going to convert the image into the contrast range you have selected. Just like if you had your jpegs set to vivid or black and white. That's how your jpegs will be developed and you can't reverse the changes. The very definition of a RAW file is that it doen't have any processing applied to it. Thereofore it is the most versitile. You can process it however you like. The only downsides are speed and file size.</p>

Yes, I am waiting for the 28mm f/1.4 AF-S, 50mm f/1.4 AF-S, 85mm f/1.4 AF-S, and 135mm f/2 VR AF-S, all with the Nano Crystal coat. I wouldn't be surprised if if we get them within a year or two. In the meantime, I think ill get the 85mm 1.8 and just bide my time until a new version comes along. I already have the 24-70 f2.8 AF-S G and its fricking huge. And almost two stops slower than f1.8. I use it a lot for shooting events where i have to come back with the shot. But when shooting documentary work, i have more time to experiment with shallow DOF, and a small lenses don't intimidate people nearly as much.

 

Thanks everyone for your help in this decision. Just talking about it helped more than anything. I don't think ive ever had such trouble deciding on a lens. It has always beens so obvious. I must confess that I have actually owned the 85mm 1.4 several years ago before it was stolen. I have since had an affair with Canon for a couple of years and now I'm back with Nikon. It is a hard choice to downgrade from a 1.4 to the 1.8, but in this case I think it is the best decision for what I plan on using it for.

I can't decide between the 85mm f1.4 or the f1.8. Does any body own or have owned both of these lens? I'm having

a difficult time deciding between the two. Price is not a factor. However, size and weight are. I do a lot of

documentary work, and large imposing lenses don't get the desired responses from my subjects. I also like to

carry as little equipment as possible as not to stand out. For this reason I would rather have a smaller, lighter

lens than 2/3rds extra speed. I heard the f1.4 was built "tougher", but I don't go around dropping my lenses, so

that won't be an issue. The 1.4 has rounded diaphragm blades which is supposed to give "better" bokeh. I think

"better" is subjective. The deciding factor for me would be the AF speed/accuracy and sharpness wide open. I've

heard that the 1.4 has faster AF, but I find that hard to believe because it is so much bigger and all that glass

takes a lot of momentum to get going. Can anybody verify which lens has a better AF?

 

Another big issue for me is chromatic aberrations. I have the 50mm f1.4D and although its nice and sharp, it is

completely useless at shooting anything back lit. The purple and green fringing is abhorrent on my D300. Can

anybody compare the performance of the 85mm 1.4 vs the 1.8 on this issue?

 

Thanks a lot for your help.

If you like grain or noise, then that's a whole different story. I don't mind grain on B&W film. Color grain and digital noise however, leaves something to be desired. At least for me. To each his own I guess.

There is no such thing as good quality at ISO 3200, let alone at 6400, film or D3. If you shoot sports or flying saucers, and you need 2000/sec shutter speed at f/8 indoors, then by all means shoot at 6400. But just because you do doesn't mean you will have good image quality. Content, yes; image quality no. Good content is subjective (decisive moment, action stopping, sports, UFO's) image quality is not. (sharpness, noise, grain, resolotion, etc. can be measured). I don't care if you have a D3 or a HasselbladCF-39MS Digital Back, (which by the way only goes to ISO 400, and should tell you something about usable ISO speeds if you want quality) ISO 6400 is not good image quality.

First of all, I shot Velvia 50 in the day. I was excited to get and extra stop out of Velvia 100 when it came out. Second, I'm not sticking up for film. Digital is far superior in the lower ISO range. But film grain and digital noise cant' be compared. At least not yet anyways. Nikon's noise is getting pretty close to film grain. Its more gritty and has less color artifacts than it used to. Someday.

 

Maybe you've never shot with an f/1.4 lens so you don't know what it's like to shoot at ISO 200 instead of ISO 800 at f/2.8.

Why don't you just shoot with a point and shoot at ISO 1600 and just Noise Ninja it instead of spending $5000 on a D3. Wow, that would save you a lot of money. To bad it will look like S*%t! Thank you Walter for enlightening them on the concept of detail.

 

Why is it that when people switch to digital they completely disregard the concept of quality. Ooh, yippee, I don't have to process my film anymore. Who cares if its noisy and filled with puky dots, at least I don't have to spend any more on development. Ooh, and looky, it shows up right on my screen!!

 

I just bought a D300, and maybe I have a little more refined sense of quality than the rest of you, but at ISO 400 and above it is completely unusable. I sold my Canon 5D and it could at least shoot at 400 ISO. I can hardly wait to sell this thing and buy a D3. Hopefully I can get at least ISO 800 out of that. I can't believe anyone of you would shoot something at ISO 6400 and call it a photograph. Shame on all of you.

 

I bet your were excited to find out that your D3 could shoot all the way up to ISO 25,000. Score! now is your chance to do some surveillance work. Good luck trying to recognize someones face out of those three inch long pixels, or whatever you would call noise bits.

 

Come on people, I'm not even old school, I'm 24. Am I the only one who appreciates good old fashioned quality. Go to a fine art gallery or something. Geese.

I just sold my 5D so I could get better flash results from Nikon as I heard they were far superior when in comes to flash. It turns out they were right. Canon flash sucks. Its extremely inconsistent. I definitely would dissuade you from going that route if you plan to use flash. I had a Canon 5D with the new 580 ex II. Crap. Now I have the D300 and the SB-800. Much better. However as far as the camera goes, the D300 is crap compared to the 5D when it comes to image quality. Apparently Nikon shooters don't care about image quality unless they just switched to Nikon from Canon after the release of the D3. I am saving up for a D3, which will give me quality and excellent flash. The best of both worlds. For now im stuck with the D300. When I say quality I mean low noise. Only large sensor cameras (D3, 5D, 1Ds) can give you quality above 200 ISO because their pixels are so much bigger. For web stuff, you can get away with shooting at 1600 ISO on a D300, but certainly not if you want to print anything at that speed. Im digressing. My point is, don't get a Canon if you use flash, and only use the D300 in limbo until you can afford a D3 unless you are only publishing on the web.

 

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