D610 lenses

[wayn0i]

Hi guys and girls,

Ive taken the plunge by upgrading my D90 to a D610. As you would expect I'm now clearing the bag of DX lenses and working out my best FX options.

I have two FX lenses but they cross over almost entirely (Tamron AF 28-300 3.5 -6.3 and a Nikkor AF-S 70-300 4.5 - 5.6)

I enjoy astral, landscapes and general portrait type shooting at the moment.

Im thinking of a wide angle and maybe a fast 50mm prime and letting the Tamron go.

I'd like to get a wide angle which enables filters on the front end.

Anyway, I'd like to hear you advice, Im sure many of you have and continue to wrestle with the questions of which lenses to put in the bag.

Cheers

Wayno

[I @ M]

You are spoiled with choices really when it comes to suitable lenses for your D610 Wayno, the only limiting factor will be your budget.

From Nikon in the wide department you can source 3 lenses that will fit the criteria and they are the old ( in model years ) 17-35 F/2.8 and then the newer 18-35 F/3.5 - 4.5 and the 16-35 F/4 VR. They all accept 77mm filters. Then you could also have a look at the Tokina 17-35 F/4 that uses 82mm filters which can be pretty pricey. If I was setting up a new body as you are I would head straight for the Nikon 16-35 F/4 which is an excellent lens. If you don't see the need for VR then I would look at the Tokina and put the savings from the Nikon towards dedicated filters.

Once again you are left with many choices when looking at 50mm lenses. As of today the current 50mm offerings from Nikon and Sigma can give excellent results and if the figures for the just announced but possibly not readily available Sigma 50mm F/1.4 art series lens are anything to go by it will be right at the top of the auto focus selection for pure resolution. The 50mm focal length is not really my cup of tea but if I was looking for it I would sit on any choices at the moment until some real world samples of the Sigma art series lens become available.

[wayn0i]

Andrew,
Thankyou for your comments.

Ive never even considered Tokina. I find it difficult separating one lenses from another objectively, even comparing images from different lenses seems impossible to me unless its the same subject with same viewpoint and settings etc.

Is there an easier way? a website that does credible comparisons or should i be looking at images of line pairs or similar?

Thanks again for your comments

Regards

Wayno

[arthurking83]

Don't get hung up too much on absolute resolution from UWA lenses .. otherwise you end up losing sleep and hair over all the details .. and forget what it was you wanted from the lens in the first place.

Unless your printing murals, the detail rendering of individual blades of grasses 100 meters off into the background of an image shot at 15, 16 or 17mm doesn't make a photo better!
Whether you get the Tokina, or the Nikon UWA lenses really comes down more so to what features you want(or ca do without).

They all have there strengths and weaknesses, so no matter which lens you choose, you almost invariably wished you got the one you didn't at some point.
Personally, I'd go for the Nikon 16-35VR, even tho it's supposedly has softness and distortion at the very edges of the frame on Fx. Very few observers will be looking at the edges of the photos and criticizing them for having strangely distorted gum leaves, or blurry clouds, or whatever. My reasons for the 16-35VR is simply for the option of VR .... for when it's handy to have.

But like Andrew said tho, if you save some money in getting the Tokina 17-35/4 and this allows you to purchase other peripherals that help you to capture better images in some way .. then all the better.

Lens review sites can be good, and I use them often myself too .. but don't get hung up on their results.
Almost all of them will have tested the lenses on charts which usually have less relevance to the sort of use you may have for a lens.
The sort of results I generally tend to look for from review sites are more around how contrasty(hazy or clear images), chromatic abberations, and stuff like that. MTFs and line pair resolving numbers are usually lower down the list of things to look for, unless the lens is specifically for capturing better detail rendering(eg, macro).

[wayn0i]

Thankyou arthurking83.

I spent last night reviewing a couple of sites and their technical reviews of the Nikon 50mm primes and the Nikon UWA lenses and your bang on. Theres a lot of information and every lens seems to have its strengths and weaknesses. Ive ordered a Nikkor 50mm 1.4 af-s so thats sorted.

As to the UWA Im undecided between the Nikkor 16-35 VR and the 18-35. The results look comparable and theres a fair $$ difference, but theres this little birdie in the back of my head going, you get what you pay for.

Thanks for your post

Regards

Wayno

[arthurking83]

If the 18-35 AF-S were just a hundred or hundred and fifty dollars cheaper, I'd have one a while ago.

it seems to be a good lens, just for the occasional wide angle shot here and there, but I think for what it is, it's just a tad expensive.(more like a $500 lens than 700-800 or so)
Having got the D800E a while back, the virtue of VR(or any stabilisation) has been realised to it's full extent.

While I'm not a habitual cropper, I've realised that my technique isn't as good as I'd like it to be when images are viewed at magnified levels.
Don't tell anyone this, but a lot of my recent images with the D800 haven't been as sharp as they could have been(or I'd like them to be), mainly due to my failing technique.

In some ways it matters .. but for general purpose viewing, because the web versions of images shot at 36Mp are reduced in resolution to viewable proportions it's not a huge problem.
It's only if I ever capture an image I'd like to view large, (eg. very large print) or even crop heavily, is where the shaky issue can become a factor.

This is why I've sort of decided that VR(for me) is almost imperative now. The bonus is that you don't have to use it .. it's an option that could be useful if needed.
I generally have the VC on my Tammy 24-70 set to off, but have shot with it set to on, almost as much as I have it off.
70-200 lens is now much less usable as my Tammy doesn't have it. (plan to get the updated VC lens one day too).

In the end, I started my Fx lens lineup at the UWA/wide angle end with the Sigma 12-24 II.
I had the money to get the Nikon 14-24, but decided to get the 12-24 as a cheaper alternative, so I could accommodate the 16-35VR in my 'budget' too.

ps. I don't actually have budgets as I generally ignore any preset notion of them anyhow .. budget to me is something along the lines of 'as long as it doesn't cost TOO much!

Would have loved to have the 14-24 as well as the 16-35VR, but it'd have been a bit of a waste(for me), as I know once I have both a UWA, and a WA lens(such as the 16-35VR) one would get used less than the other.
So I thought that having the 12-24(being cheap) was handy in that it goes down to 12mm if ever needed .. knowing that one day the 16-35VR is going to be my main wide angle (ie. landscapey) lens.

Your experiences and environments will dictate if stabilisation is needed tho.
I'm sure that if both lenses are shot at say f/8-f/16 or so, you wouldn't be able to see any differences in the resultant images.

Ken Rockwell once said that VR is a good replacement for the clumsy clunky tripod, which for a comedian makes perfectly good sense!
But! I have on a few occasions found that in some instances a tripod was close to useless, not because it wasn't allowed, many places don't allow them but out in the middle of nowhere no one can stop you.
The last situation was on a gantry that only just allowed two people to squeeze past each other. The gantry had a steel mesh type surface so leg placement would have been limiting anyhow .. but I couldn't open the legs anyhow. Had set the legs short and splayed flat across and on top of the gantry hand rails. The problem was that I didn't want to block others passage, so had to wait for some people to pass before I could set it up like that.

The other aspect of VR is that it's going to be a bit of insurance into the future.
For now 36Mp cameras are the top of the (common)digital food chain, and 20-24Mp is almost all pervasive.
In the years to come, 50Mp may be the norm(D600, D3300 type cameras) and it's not too far fetched to think of 100Mp cameras as easily achievable either!.
Lenses generally last many more years than camera bodies, so at some point in the next 5-10 years, it's likely that you, and more likely I will end up with a camera with more resolution(than we currently have).

I'm hoping that one day Nikon will see the issue that high resolution cameras will entail, and forgo any reluctance to have camera/sensor based stabilisation in any future generation camera.
While it's generally accepted that having both in lens and in camera stabilisation doesn't work, systems can be set so that one form can cancel out the other, or warn the user of having both systems enabled at the same time, and so turn one or the other off.
While my thoughts may sound far fetched, just think that 5 years ago, no one would have thought that 36Mp 135 format cameras were going to be easily achievable too.
The presumption back then was that it'd have been in the realm of big $ D4/1D type cameras .. not D800(kinda cheap) or Sony A7r(actually very cheap!) type cameras.

Sorry for the long post, but I think that if you're in two minds(as I usually am), maybe it's best to delay the purchase until you have thought it through a bit more.
if there is something of commonality in my thoughts to your way of thinking, then waiting(and just using what you have) is a better way to go .. so that you don't make the wrong choice.

if you can accommodate the 16-35VR in your budget, don't even think about it. While the 18-35 may be a nice lens(and I have used it, and it's quite good) .. the 16-35 is better(but heavier .. and it feels heavier).
I can assure you that you wouldn't really differentiate much difference between one image from either lens(on the same camera).
At the camera show last year, I had a quick couple of shots with a few lenses, to compare IQ differences. Not so much just is one sharper than the other .. just to see how similar/different they look.
In many ways the 14-24 is a fair bit better, but again limited in many ways so it's a different genre lens. I just played with that one too, more as a reference point.

[glennb]

Ive only skimmed through that what everything has been said but I have the 18-35 g ED and love the lens if you get on my fickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/93300173@N08/with/13710666393/ , look at my wide angle landscape pictures, they should be taken with that lens. (not the earliest ones) Im getiing this one blown up too 1mtr wide and I will let you know how it looks. this one here https://www.flickr.com/photos/93300173@N08/13911056106/ I will add I use this lens on a tripod most of the time.

[wayn0i]

Arthurking83 & glennb,
Thanks for your comments lads.

Ak what do you mean about improving your technique to achieve better focus, are you talking about using MUP? And I'm not across camera imagine stabilisation and lens VR conflicting, can you explain this mate.

Gb mate that second image is a cracker, what was the sspeed, that's a nice amount of cloud movement. I've noticed a few people on AP use Flickr, how do you find it?

Cheers

Wayno


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[arthurking83]

Improving my technique for sharper images, not so much focus. Focusing I'm happy with, but with 36Mp I'm a lot more shaky than I was with only 12Mp! :D

For cameras that have built in image stabilsation when lenses that have stabilisation as well are mounted the IS is usually disabled, or recommended to be disabled by the manufacturer.
Apparently the two systems conflict in some way.

Some manufacturers have camera based stabilisation, and others prefer lens based stabilisation, but each manufacturer won't do both.
eg. Nikon does it in lens, Pentax does it in body. Nikon don't make cameras with IS, if they also accept other lenses.(in fact I think even their P&S cameras all have lens based IS)
Pentax doesn't make lenses with IS as all their cameras(AFAIK) have sensor based IS.

BUT you can get third party lenses with stabilisation, which can be mounted to something like the Pentax(among other brands) which also have IS.
I'm not 100% sure but if the IS isn't automatically disabled, the third party manufacturer recommend you disable one or the other.
Some of those manufacturers of stabilised lenses also make non stabilised versions of a stabilised lens for a particular mount, like Pentax(which already has in camera IS).

[wayn0i]

Thanks arthurking83, you know Ive been taking photos for twenty odd years and didnt know that. I guess thats the value of forums like this, share the knowledge.

Much appreciated.

Regards

Wayno

[kevin301]

thought I'd chip in with my 2c :)

My usual lens combo for a trip is 16-35VR, 50/1.8, 105VR macro w tripod and filters
As you can see, it is rather limiting in terms of focal range. I don't have anything longer than 105mm, but for what I like to shoot, this combination suits me just fine :)

Opinions: the 16-35VR sees most action for me. I would say 85%. I use it with my screw-on ND filters. It's been to some hot and dusty environments, and been bumped around, and it's still going strong.
Sharpness is definitely more than sufficient for me on my 24MP D600. I tend not to print very large, nor crop heavily.

My 'nifty fifty' (AFS 50 f/1.8G) is useful for happy snaps indoors with some bounced flash. Nice bokeh and sharpness. Really like it for the low weight (and price) vs performance.

[Cage]

If you want a UWA lens the Samyang 14mm f2.8 is one of the sharpest out there, but, and isn't there always a 'but', it has some pretty severe barrel distortion, However if you frame your shots with this in mind you can usually work around it and then tidy up in PP.

And, as a result of reading this thread I've just discovered that Samyang have released a filter holder that takes Cokin filters. Thank you !

For a walk around lens I suggest you have a look at the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 with VC. It's tack sharp.

[glennb]

Arthurking83 & glennb,
Thanks for your comments lads.

Ak what do you mean about improving your technique to achieve better focus, are you talking about using MUP? And I'm not across camera imagine stabilisation and lens VR conflicting, can you explain this mate.

Gb mate that second image is a cracker, what was the sspeed, that's a nice amount of cloud movement. I've noticed a few people on AP use Flickr, how do you find it?

Cheers

Wayno


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Cant complain about Flickr, its free a 1 Terabyte of space and easy to link to forums. That picture was 101sec, you can see all the meta data info of the image if you scroll down on the right after comments, it will say 18-35mm f3.5 to f4.5 ,that is the lens that your considering. you can see lots more info on Exif data by clicking "show all exif"

[wayn0i]

Glennb,

Mate I can't see those capture details, maybe it's an iPad thing.

Thanks for the info I'll sign up when I get a minute, at least it's a good backup plan.

Cheers

Wayno


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[glennb]

Glennb,

Mate I can't see those capture details, maybe it's an iPad thing.

Thanks for the info I'll sign up when I get a minute, at least it's a good backup plan.

Cheers

Wayno


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Sorry yes I was referring to PC. On iPad or iPhone, once you click on the picture you should find an (i) button, press that and it should come up with all the info. On my iphone it's lower right but the iphone has a new update site so could be in a different spot on the Ipad.



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[GlennSan]

I notice you list the 14mm Rokinon in your signature line. I've been toying with the idea of getting one of the 8mm Rokinons for some fun. How do you find the 14mm?