keirst

<p>There may be other corrosion where you can’t see it, such as on the main circuit board.</p>

<p>I also like my 180mm/2.8 AIS ED Nikkor on my D800E. It’s a bit softer in the corners compared to the best F-mount lenses available now, but the 180mm’s results are quite acceptable for most uses. I used to have a 180mm/2.8 AF ED-IF Nikkor until our apartment was burgled in 2011, and it was good too, but I prefer the manual focus version’s out of focus character (bokeh) to the AF version’s. Thankfully insurance paid for the replacement. But if Zeiss or Nikon were to come out with a newer and better 180mm or 200mm prime, I’d be very tempted to upgrade. I know some of the 70-200mm zooms are supposed to be better than the 180mm Nikkors, but I don’t want to tote a big zoom’s weight.</p>

<p>It might need re-lubrication. Does the mirror still cycle right if you take the lens off now?</p>

<p>The Zeiss 135mm/2 Apo Sonnar is also stellar, almost as good as the new 55mm from what I’ve read on DxOmark. The 135mm ZF.2 does demand really good technique to get the most out of it though. The 25mm/2 and 35mm/2 Zeiss lenses are also very good, but the 25mm/2.8 and 28mm/2 Zeiss lenses have corner field curvature toward infinity which is not good for landscapes with close foreground objects, so I am selling mine. The AFS Nikkor 28mm/1.8 G is fantastic optically and a bargain compared to Zeiss lenses. I’ll have more money to buy paper and ink.</p>

<p>Not that is’s especially relevant, but CRIS did a fine repair job on my Pentax 645 120mm macro lens that had a screw which became loose inside. The still could have done a less than good job on cleaning a sensor.</p>

<p>Nikon’s 3T, 4T, 5T and 6T lenses were designed to be used on telephoto lenses, so they work well with 100mm-200mm lenses. <br /><br />I’ve used a Canon 77mm 500D on 85mm and 300mm Nikokkor lenses for 35mm and it works very well with those. Also the Canon 500D works very well on the Pentax 645 150mm/2.8 FA telephoto on my Pentax 645nII with a 77-67mm step up ring.</p>

<p>Test to make sure focus is accurate. I tried an F4 screen in my F3HP many years ago and the screen mismatch caused the focus to be way off. The lens to focused too close compared to what it should have done.</p>

<p>Looks like the Df has electronic, menu-controlled AI tab positioning, as opposed to the itty-bitty release button next to the tab on the AI ring of previous cameras with this feature.</p>

<p>The F4s was the last Nikon camera before the Df to have a standard flip up AI tab for using non-AI lenses, if I remember correctly. The F5 had to have a modified AI tab installed to allow the use of non-AI lenses.</p>

<p>Lloyd Chambers did observe marked field curvature toward the camera in the corners in the 14-24/2.8, which may help with detail in the lower corners of some landscape subjects (at the expense of distant or infinity sharpness at the middle of the sides of a frame or in distant upper corners). This might be quite bad for subjects where everything is equally distant, but photographic equipment always has limitations and compromises. The 28mm/1.8 G lens also has this sort of field curvature, but I find it very helpful for vertical orientation landscape photos, almost like a built in tilt for Scheimpflug effect for the foreground. </p>

<p>A 105mm/2.8 Micro Nikkor might be good too, especially for more extreme close-ups, and to give more working distance for lighting of the animation set. You might find sometimes a camera with a 50 or 55mm lens would get in the way of your lights and put shadows of the camera or lens into the set. <br /><br />50mm/1.4 lenses will be quite soft if used on extension tubes for close-ups, so they wouldn’t be a good choice if you want a sharp, rather than a dreamy, rendering of your subjects.</p>

<p>Did you check the camera serial#? Perhaps the cleaner mixed up your camera with another person’s D800.</p>

<p>Llyod Chambers (diglloyd.com) has done some quite a bit of testing with the new 58mm and shot some with a prototype Otus 55mm. It looks like the Nikkor isn’t as good as the Zeiss, but it’s better than the old Noct or the current 50mm Nikkors, especially for night photography. It has low flare from light sources in the image. The 58mm/1.4 Nikkor does suffer some focus shift rearward as stopped down. The Voigtlander 58mm/1.4 tests better in that regard, as does the Otus prototype.</p>

<p>You may need to get it serviced. Often the parts involved in problems with modern zooms are plastic gears and bearings which may get cracked or deformed over time, and thus need replacement.</p>

<p>Mr. Bond you should AF Fine Tune each of your lenses to your D600. This process corrects for variations in tolerance between Nikon bodies and AF Nikkors. Tuning can also be done for AIP or Zeiss ZF.2 manual focus lenses with CPUs that deliver metadata to the camera, but can’t be done for non CPU Nikkors. Note that with Zeiss ZF.2 lenses, Nikon DSLRS will only allow one AF Fine Tune value for all Zeiss lenses, no matter how many different ones you may use on one camera body, because Zeiss uses lens identifiers that Nikon does not fully support, so it treats all Zeiss lenses the same. I’m not sure if this is the same with Sigma lenses, but I would not be surprised if it were. With Zeiss’ precise QC this is not a problem because Zeiss manufactures to much finer tolerances on focus point/flange distance than Nikon does, and so the same AF fine tune value seems to work well for all my Zeiss ZF.2 lenses.<br /><br />Each lens has to be adjusted to each camera body and not all your lenses will need the same AF fine tune value for your D600. For example I tested my AF-D 85mm/1.4 and AFS 28mm/1.8G lenses on my D800E. My 85mm lens needed no change from the AF Fine tune default of 0, but the 28mm needed a -15 fine tune value to avoid focusing behind the selected AF point in the viewfinder. All my Zeiss ZF.2 lenses also work well at 0 fine tune value. If someone borrowed my lenses for their DSLR, they might need very different values for focus to work best.<br /><br />A good website for helping with AF Fine Tuning is http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/focus-chart, which includes a target you can print to use for calibrating your lenses.<br /><br /><br /></p>

<p>XX, With RAW files, you have a huge amount of leeway for interpreting an image. If you don’t like the default saturation and contrast, you are not stuck with it. You can easily set up presets in Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Lightroom that increase contrast, vibrance and saturation.<br /><br />If you are using Adobe Raw development, make sure you choose Process 2012 under Camera Calibration so that you can choose among the different camera calibrations available for Nikon DSLRs. For my D800E, I have the choice of Adobe Standard, Camera Landscape, Camera Neutral, Camera Portrait, Camera Standard and Camera Vivid. These calibrations dramatically affect the rendering of contrast and saturation of a file in different ways. If you are after strong saturation and high contrast, Camera Landscape or Camera Vivid will boost the color and contrast levels. I prefer to start with a more subtle starting point, then manually increase color and contrast. So I prefer use Camera Neutral. (With the Leica, the choice of calibrations is different with only two choices Adobe Standard versus Embedded). You can also create custom camera calibrations but I’ve never done that.<br /><br />I have my Lightroom 5 set up with different Presets for contrast levels for my M9P and D800E that I apply on importing into the Lightroom Catalog. The Nikon .NEF files get a medium contrast curve applied by my preset along with +10 Clarity and +5 Vibrance, whereas my Leica files get a linear contrast curve +5 Clarity and no Vibrance added because the Leica .DNG RAW files are inherently more contrasty. Both Types of tiles get a default +5 on Blacks and Shadows and -5 on Whites and Highlights from the presets to keep highlights and shadows from getting blocked up. With both kings of RAW images I do a lot of tweaking after the initial import settings before photos are ready to be printed or shared on Facebook and Flickr. No image ever seem ready to go coming out of the camera to me, but I’m rather picky about how I want them to look. I do strive to emulate the results I used to get with color negative films like Kodak Portra 400 printed on Fuji Type C RA4 paper.</p>

<p>Alicia, You might indeed consider getting some higher grade lenses for the Canon 5D mark II, good quality primes can be a big improvement over many zoom lenses. Many Canon L glass primes have excellent reputations. Carl Zeiss also makes excellent manual focus prime lenses for Canon and Nikon systems. I have the Nikon mount versions of the Zeiss 25mm/2.8, 28mm/2, 35mm/2, 100mm/2 and 135mm/2. You can even use these Zeiss Nikon-mount lenses on a Canon body with an adapter (though you lose data from the contacts and have to do stopped down metering which could be cumbersome, so the EOS mount versions would be much easier to use on a Canon body). Zeiss ZF lenses could allow you to share the same lenses in both Canon and Nikon systems, though they might not be much fun on a Canon camera. <br /><br />The Zeiss 25mm and 35mm lenses are excellent for landscape work. The Zeiss 28mm/2 is better suited to photojournalism due to its heavy, toward-infinity field curvature in the corners which make for soft foreground corners. I prefer the Nikkor AFS 28mm/1.8G for landscapes, but you can’t effectively use that lens on a Canon body even with an adapter because it has G-type electronic aperture control, and most Nikon to Canon lens adapters don’t support stopping down Nikon G lenses. <br /><br />On Nikon the 28mm/1.8G Nikkor is superb for landscapes, which often have detailed foreground and distant subjects near the middle of the frame. This is due to the Nikkor having some field curvature in the corners toward closer distances (the opposite behavior of the Zeiss 28mm/2). Paired with my D800E this lens is just amazingly good.</p>

<p>Zeiss ZF.2 lenses do have data contacts like AI-P Nikkors, which send info to AF or DSLR cameras’ CPUs. Older Zeiss ZF (without the “.2” suffix lenses do not have contacts, and are essentially the same as AIs Nilkkors. See: http://diglloyd.com/articles/ZeissZ/ZeissZ-ZF-vs-ZF2.html</p>

<p>When you open a .NEF or other RAW file in Photoshop CS6, the Camera Raw version should bin the text of the bar at the top of the window (ie "Camera Raw 8.2" for mine now). Dorothy has a Mac not Windows, but Dorothy you can still search for .NEF files on your hard drive or SD Card using Spotlight or Command-F on the keyboard.</p>

<p>Have you mounted the cards on computer using a card reader to see if the NEF files are there in the folder? Perhaps they are there but not transferring via USB camera cable? If so, drag and drop copy them to your photo storage drive. Do make sure to update to the latest CS6 Photoshop and ACR.</p>

<p>Was your D300 delay perhaps due to autofocus hunting in low light? If you still had the body I would suggest switching to AF continuous or manual focus, which would minimize any delay that were due to the AF system. I can’t comment on the D600 or D610, but the D800 is pretty good in terms of shutter delay, though its not as fast as a Leica M7 film camera.</p>

<p>Any of the Zeiss ZF or ZF.2 manual focus lenses would probably be great on this camera, as would most classic Nikon AIs prime lenses (like the 28mm/2.8, 55mm/2.8 Micro, 105mm/2.5, 105mm/1.8 and 180mm/2.8 ED Nikkors). I have the ZF 25mm/2.8 and ZF.2 28mm/2, 35mm/2, 100mm/2 Makro, and 135mm/2 Apo. All are good lenses on the D800E, though I don’t like the extreme field curvature on the 28mm/2 which can lead to soft corners in landscape subjects due to lower corners going off toward infinity. The 28mm/1.8G AFS Nikkor is better for landscapes, as would be the old 28mm/2.8 AIs lens. I think the 85mm/1.4 AFD lens would also be great on the Df. <br /><br />Don’t bother with the crappy 35mm/2 and 28mm/2.8 AF or AFD Nikkors unless you plan to shoot f/8-f/16 only. These lenses suck in the corners at wide apertures on film and D800E both, and even a less demanding 16MP sensor will show their faults. </p>

<p>There are some good samples of 58/1.4 imaging and comparisons to other f/1.4 50-58mm fast primes up at diglloyd.com. Most of Lloyd Chamber’s analysis is by subscription. The New 58mm isn’t as good optically as the more expensive Zeiss Otus 55/1.4 Distagon (which Mr. Chambers used a prototype of). <br /><br />The Nikkor does seem to have very high flare resistance, making it a good choice for night photography. Interestingly, the Voigtlander 58mm/1.4 Nokton is almost as good as the Nikkor 58mm when both are stopped down to f/2.8 or smaller. The Nokton does suffer some flare patches at f/1.4 and f/2, and curiously the new Nikkor 58mm showed a very tiny flare UFO at f/5.6 that is absent at all other apertures.</p>

<p>Toss up between Zeiss 35mm/2 Distagon ZF.2 and Nikkor 28mm/1.8G AFS Nikkor.</p>

<p>Phil, I think they would be better off with no dial at the SPAM ones place. They should have made the controls even simpler, with no redundancies. It’s not a really bad layout, but it could be improved.</p>