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nielsm posted:F3 is the king of Nikon manual focus SLRs. Does AE. (There is also F3AF which has an early AF system. It's rare.) The Nikkormat series are great too. They're "amateur" bodies compared to the F, meaning they don't have the system-camera features like interchangeable viewfinders, bulk backs, etc, but they're built to the same work-of-art standard and are still nicer than any of its contemporaries. Mine's a FT2, and the Nikon Twist is the quaintest thing.  Gotta get a FM one of these days.I don't get the love for the FE, it never struck me as a particularly nice camera. The ME/Super is loved for its enormous viewfinder and low price, the FE's is normal sized and for the same money you can get a F3. Parts are low enough that you will have trouble getting it repaired. See also, FG. Gotta chime in on the Nikonos love too. Bad weather makes good photos and the Nikonos can survive being dived to 200 feet, a rainstorm is nothing. The 35mm lens is really good, a classic they resurrected from their original Nikon rangefinder lineup. You do have to scale focus it, it is a viewfinder camera not a rangefinder, but with a wideangle lens this is pretty easy. The later models (IV/IVa/V) are temperamental, the electronics will occasionally freeze up and the camera will need to be "rebooted" by switching to M90 and back. Don't buy them without a warranty. The rest of the Nikonos lens lineup isn't that great either, the only other amphibious (above/below water) lens is a 80mm which would be pretty hard to focus. I think people use the (underwater-only) 28mm above water without significant issue as well. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Nov 21, 2012 |
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Nov 21, 2012 19:48
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FISHMANPET posted:So I stumbled across this lens at mom's as her and her boyfriend are going through stuff to sell: It will be a little clunky since you don't have a prosumer body, but the Micro Nikkors are great. They're sharp and will get you macro capabilities.
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Nov 24, 2012 23:29
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Reichstag posted:On a Nikon, yes. Canon digis will let you shoot Ap though. I don't get why Nikons wouldn't. Sure, the camera has no idea how much the lens will stop down, but why can't it aperture-priority meter the wide-open aperture at least? Or do a Pentax green-button style metering? (I know, they want you to buy the nicer cameras)
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Nov 25, 2012 21:23
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krooj posted:Anyone here using a Zeiss 35mm f/1.4? I'm looking for opinions on the lens, as that focal length seems to be my sweet spot for most city shots, and it's not as expensive as the Nikkor 35 f/1.4 (why is that lens so much?). I am also still contemplating between a good general zoom (24-70 f/2.8) and a high quality wide prime. I do a bunch of low light shooting so having a sharp lens wide open is nice, but that additional range from the zoom is nice to have on hand... If you want manual focus, buy a Samyang/Rokinon/Bower 35/1.4. If you want autofocus, wait for the Sigma 35/1.4. Both of those outclass the Nikon at a fraction of the price point.
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Nov 29, 2012 17:36
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krooj posted:it's not as expensive as the Nikkor 35 f/1.4 (why is that lens so much?) Oh, and the reason 35/1.4s are so expensive is that they are much more complex lenses optically. It gets harder to control all the various abberations as you go wider and even harder to do it at superfast speeds. Your standard 50mm f/1.4 has six elements and they are all conventional glass. The Sigma has 13 elements, one is aspheric, two are super-low-dispersion, and one is ultra-low-dispersion. That's a lot of fancy glass. The Sigma 30/1.4 is just a scaled-down 50mm to cover smaller APS-C sensors and not really comparable, although it does have an aspheric and an super low dispersion element I guess.
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Nov 29, 2012 18:44
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krooj posted:I went to a local shop to compare the build quality of a Samyang to a Zeiss, and there's no question: the Zeiss is built better. The focus ring on the Zeiss is much finer and smoother than the Samyang, which felt as though it had play in it. No question at all, Zeiss has the edge in build quality. But the Samyang is 1/4 the price of the Zeiss for similar optical performance. If you're super concerned about it then I'd try and wait for the Sigma, it might have a higher build quality. It's also possible you could take it to a local repair guy who might be able to shim some of the slop out of the focus drive, although that's dumb to have to do on a new lens. As for fast prime vs fast zoom, they fill a similar but different role. The fast 35 is going to let you get a shallower depth of field, higher resolution, and lower ISO for your given focal length. The zoom loses you two stops of depth of field and light, but offers you the ability to zoom, obviously. That's totally a matter of which you prefer or need. The AI-S Nikkor is at this point just an inferior lens. It was a great lens for the 70s but modern computer-optimized lenses with modern low-dispersion glass and aspheric elements just blow it out of the water. It just doesn't have anything like the wide-open performance of the Samyang, Zeiss, Sigma, or AF Nikkor variants. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 15:19
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1st AD posted:As for the 35mm 1.4 AI-S, it's true that it is not as sharp as any modern 35mm lens. Wide open, it is all sorts of hazy. However, once you get to f2 it cleans up really nice, by f4 it performs well. I used this lens primarily on a GH2 so I was kind of immune to how lovely the corners were wide open. It's a problem with coma, not with sharpness. It's a circa-1970 all-spherical superfast lens, that's not surprising. But at this point I think he'd be better off buying a 24-70 since the first couple stops don't really buy him much usability. I really don't get why it goes for $500 on KEH, that'll buy you a new Samyang plus a Franklin left over. I think it's worth maybe half that, on paper it seems like just an easier-to-focus 35/2.
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Nov 30, 2012 20:09
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nielsm posted:Re. the Samyang 35/1.4, someone posted a test of the new Sigma 35/1.4 from a Korean site some days ago (I think it was on IRC I saw the link), and the same site also had some comparison shots with the Samyang 35/1.4. The Sigma was much better pretty much everywhere, but particularly in the corners. I'd be interested in seeing this since the the Samyang bested the Nikon and Canon L-series 35/1.4s in Photozone's test (they're my go-to for honest, rigorous testing). Lenstip had similar findings on the Sigma. All four of the lenses are excellent, modern lenses, the gains from going from Nikon/Canon to Samyang/Sigma can only be described as modest (not a whole lot of room to go up, they're all super-sharp across the whole field), and the differences between the Samyang and Sigma have got to be marginal given that. Maybe if you are shooting a D800 or something like that you're starting to see the difference, but it's still got to be pretty close. I'll be real curious to see what Photozone has to say about the Sigma. Maybe they got a lovely copy or it got dropped in transit or something that hosed it up.
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Nov 30, 2012 20:16
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Moon Potato posted:It really shouldn't be that stiff.  It happens. I have a Micro Nikkor 55/2.8 that's really, really stiff. Must be something about the grease they used, it's nearly as bad as some of the Agfa green glue grease. I think the Micro Nikkor must be particularly bad because of its long helicoid, I can barely turn it and I'm honestly afraid of snapping the lens mount apart.
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Dec 5, 2012 20:09
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That 70s Shirt posted:A 16mm lens on a DX camera would look the same through the eyepiece as a 24mm lens on FX. Correct. The more technical way to put this is, focal length only has meaning with regard to sensor size. The maximum sensor size that can be used is called the "coverage" (measured in degrees/angular coverage or in mm of image circle). If a 50mm lens will only cover APS-C, then it it has a maximum field of view equivalent to a 75mm lens on FF. If a 50mm lens will cover a 6x7cm negative, then it has a maximum field of view equivalent to a 25mm lens on FF. From within that image circle, you can take as large or small a crop as you want. If you take more than the image circle, you will get vignettes. If you take too small a crop (Pentax Q, Nikon 1, I am looking at you), you will run out of resolution as well as potentially suffer from flare from all that extra coverage getting reflected around the inside of your camera.
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Dec 13, 2012 22:17
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Legdiian posted:I guess I phrased my question incorrectly. I have an 18-55 kit lens on my DX camera. The 24-85 lens on a FX camera is going to give me a wider angle shot correct? And on the other end, when zoomed all the way in I will get roughly the exact same field of view? The 24-85 will give you a slightly wider range than the 18-55 on DX. DX has a 1.5x crop factor, so 1.5 x 18mm = 29mm equivalent field of view on the wide end. The 85mm end will be slightly longer than your 18-55 on DX since 1.5 x 55mm = 82.5mm equivalent field of view.
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Dec 13, 2012 23:01
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Look bub when you inevitably get tired of your puny "full frame" sensors and move up with the big boys you're going to need to understand the relationship between coverage, focal length, and field of view 
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Dec 14, 2012 00:09
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krooj posted:I kinda, sorta want Nikon to release non-junk mirrorless bodies that take regular F-mount, akin to the X-series from Fuji. It would be doubly awesome if they could get a 20MP+ FX sensor in such a body, and I doubt it would harm their DSLR business. Sony's going to get to it first if they don't. Sony just released what's basically a full-frame X100, and supposedly there is going to be a mirrorless version coming out in a year or two. You wouldn't get auto-stopdown and stuff, but that's par for the course on the NEX.
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Dec 14, 2012 01:28
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Nikon rangefinders aren't in F-mount
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Dec 14, 2012 16:17
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powderific posted:Anyone here have experience with the 85mm f2 AI? They're pretty cheap on KEH and I was thinking of picking one up. Assuming you're OK with manual focus lenses (and your body will meter non-CPU lenses!) then the question is basically just whether you like the focal length. Nikon didn't really put out any short-tele prime lenses that I'd consider dogs, and that lens (along with the 105/2.5) goes way back - literally as long as Nikon has been making cameras (back to the early rangefinder days). Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 24, 2013 23:21
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FistLips posted:My brother has one of these: http://forum.mflenses.com/panagor-auto-wide-angle-f2-35mm-t41867.html In all honesty you will be best off just going out and buying yourself an equivalent Nikon lens. You'll spend $20 for the adapter, bare minimum, and it won't give you infinity focus. You can find lots of off-brand Nikon-mount lenses cheap if you look around.
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Apr 25, 2013 03:02
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junto a la luna posted:So I am off to Iceland in September, for 10 days of walking around what I hope will be some amazing scenery. I bought a D3200 in February, with just the kit lens. I also have an old 50mm lens from an F301, though the AF doesn't work on my D3200. What are your criteria for "good for landscapes"? How wide are you capable of shooting? I can't really use more than about 28mm equivalent effectively, and I generally think 24mm is about as wide as most people can really do. You need a good subject in the foreground to minimize the foreshortening effect. Also, how far do you want to stop down? A lot of the UWA zooms are pretty trashy in the corners wide open but most people stop down to f/8 or below for landscapes. Even the kit lens is going to do pretty well stopped down to f/8 or below and shot off a tripod. I mean if you want to buy something, I would look at the Samyang 14/2.8 (or the 8mm if you want to do the fisheye correction). It's as good as it gets for a cheap UWA prime. That's probably too little to buy a real zoom, but you could rent one.
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May 8, 2013 23:48
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PFlats posted:My family has a bunch of old F mount Nikon glass. Nikkormat old. You need to buy a prosumer body. A DX00. Make sure whatever body can handle a custom focus screen as this makes it much easier to focus. Also consider buying a film body or having anything you have cleaned. The Nikkormat has a really nice large screen. It is hilariously overengineered for the price it sells for in the rabbit-ear or AI editions.
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May 17, 2013 06:40
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My AI-S 105/2.5 is razor sharp wide open and does well on portraits too. It's definitely one of their classic lenses.
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May 20, 2013 16:33
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echobucket posted:the VR gets you anti-shake which means you can handhold at lower shutter speeds. The key being the "hold" bit, as VR does not help at all with subject motion.
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May 23, 2013 19:58
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red19fire posted:It's something like the internal focus mechanism slightly moves the focal plane on the sensor/film as you zoom in and out. I think what this means is the lens is slightly varifocal rather than a true parfocal zoom. The actual focal length is changing which results in the focal plane moving relative to the sensor a bit. It should be a problem on film too.
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Jun 8, 2013 19:45
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Miko posted:Moving from iso200 to 1000 would be a little bit more than 3 times more sensitive to light. So you've got 3ish stops more of light in your exposure. For the record you shouldn't do part-steps. Most camera systems can't actually vary the sensor continuously, only in single-stop steps, so 1000 is really "ISO 1600 pulled 2/3 stop" with all the noise that entails.
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Jun 24, 2013 18:56
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SoundMonkey posted:Seriously though, who would make a custom bokey filter for the front of their lens that's just crazy ta- I really don't know why no one has shot porn with dong-shaped bokeh. It's like a watermark, only instead of putting big ugly letters everywhere you're just covering your background in dicks. It's both tasteful and unique.
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Jun 26, 2013 00:43
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Platystemon posted:That’s not the whole story. No, this is incorrect. Depth of field depends on the magnification, not the aperture or f-number or subject distance. For equivalent magnification (eg standing closer with a wide angle lens or farther away with a telephoto or farther away with a wide angle lens and cropping) and equivalent aperture and equivalent sensor size then there will be equivalent depth of field. http://toothwalker.org/optics/dof.html quote:Background blur   
Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 19:23
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Standing in one place is a constraint you didn't add before and one that was implicitly denied in the original explanation.Mightaswell posted:While keeping your subject the same size in the frame, the longer focal length "magnifies" the background. The result is out of focus areas appear even more out of focus as there are less background elements in your shot, even though technically the background elements are not "more" out of focus at the same aperture. The statement you were attempting to rebut was 100% correct, you just decided to arbitrarily change the question from "keeping the same magnification" to "what if I change the magnification" in your response, which obviously results in different depths of field. Again, for a given magnification (subject size is the same in the frame) then a 50mm lens cropped to 100mm and a real 100mm lens will have equivalent depths of field.
Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 20:00
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Platystemon posted:If I shoot something 2.5 m away with a 14 mm lens at f/8, I know from experience I’ll have depth of field all the way to infinity. Under your definition, I somehow wouldn’t, because if I had backed up to 70 m and taken a photo of the same subject with a 400 mm lens at f/8, objects would start to blur less than 5 m past the plane of focus. Assuming you keep equivalent circles of confusion, that is. If you enlarge the background detail of the 14mm shot to be the same size as the 400mm shot (practically speaking, you are increasing the CoC because the image size is smaller while the viewing distance remains constant) then the details will have the exact same amount of blur. code:
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Jun 26, 2013 21:20
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Fart Amplifier posted:How are these statements not contradictory? You are saying that DOF does not depend on aperture or f-number of subject distance, and then saying that equivalent DOF requires equivalent aperture and a subject distance inversely proportional to focal length. What am I missing? DoF depends on magnification, which is a function of focal length and subject distance and image size (relative to sensor size). If you increase the focal length, you need to increase your subject distance to maintain equivalent magnification for equal subject size and sensor size. The key is understanding that as you enlarge the wide image to match the long image, you are effectively increasing the circle of confusion. Circle of confusion essentially controls where the "out of focus" areas begin, essentially the same thing as increasing the sensor size. Thus, if you magnify a background detail in a wide image, you will be able to see the blur that was actually there all along, but it looked "sharp" to you at first because you were looking at it squished down real small. Any image is "sharp" if you squish it down far enough, and there is no hard photographic threshold as to where an "out of focus area" begins - only acceptable thresholds of visual sharpness measured by the circle of confusion. To put it real simply, wide angle lenses fill the frame with foreground (foreshortening), which is in focus, and shrink the background down small so it appears sharp. Long lenses fill the frame with background, which is out of focus. However, for a given magnification, with the feature of comparison enlarged to equivalent size, and with equivalent viewing distance, the depth of field is equal. An interesting side track is that there is a "natural" size for prints for a given field of view. Theoretically you want the size of the print to match the natural field of view at your normal viewing distance. Thus, if you shoot with a 28mm equivalent lens and you intend viewers to stand 6 feet away, the natural print size equals 7.71 feet or something like that. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 21:30
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Fart Amplifier posted:No. Sensor size is what affects crop, because it is literally cropping the image. The iphone has a much larger DOF than a full frame camera because you're taking a small crop of a short focal length. I assumed we were holding sensor size constant since that's what the given example was, but fair enough, I guess I should have said "focal length and sensor size determine angle of view (assuming that the image circle is sufficient to cover the sensor)" 
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Jun 26, 2013 21:46
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Just a reminder that there's literally no reason not to buy a 105/2.5 unless you are a chump.
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Jul 26, 2013 23:49
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Moon Potato posted:No F-mount is a shortcoming when you own an array of F-mount lenses and no Canon/M43 lenses, and a roughly M43-sized sensor that resolves to 1080p (give or take) isn't really suitable for still photography. I already co-own a RED with a business partner, but I would like to be able to spend days in the field tracking endangered animals without carrying 30lbs of camera, rigging, lens and batteries. The D800 works very well for this. F-mount has a longer register distance than EOS and M4/3 is much shorter than that. Allow me to resolve your dilemma.
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Sep 5, 2013 20:56
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McCoy Pauley posted:So I was digging through a closet and found my father-in-law's old 35mm Pentax camera (a K1000), which has an "SMC Pentax-M 50mm F2" lens on it. It also had stored with it a 28mm/2.8 and a 135mm/2.8, both of which are Sears brand, and say they are made in Korea (I dunno who actually was making these for Sears). The 135 mounts on the Pentax, but the 28mm has a slightly smaller mount and doesn't fit on the Pentax -- I'm not sure what it was used for (and the fact that it was in the same box in our closet doesn't mean much). You could but honestly glass adapters suck. You could get a glassless adapter but you won't be able to focus past a certain distance. You would be better off buying an AI Nikkor 50/2 and 28/2.8 or something if you wanted to play with manual focus, assuming that those meter on the D7100. If not either play with manual metering (not hard with a rule-of-thumb) or just buy a 35/1.8 DX and a 50/1.8 and be done with it.
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Oct 4, 2013 02:26
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McCoy Pauley posted:Thanks. I have Nikkor 55/3.5 and 105/2.5 lenses that my dad gave me from his old 35mm Nikon, and I've been playing around with those, so I don't really have a pressing need to use the Pentax lenses (or whatever other weird Sears lens this 28mm is), but I figured if the adapters were decent it could be worthwhile. The issue with glassless adapters is you can't focus to infinity, right? The issue with glass* adapters is that they crop and degrade the image. The only way to extend the register distance optically is to use a teleconverter. That magnifies the image a little (adds focal length), and because it's a cheap lovely little piece of glass (or even plastic) that was never meant to be in the optical system it adds optical defects. This forum doesn't even recommend you use a lovely plastic UV filter, this is 10-100x worse because it's in the rear of the system. I meant this, it's one of the old manual focus lenses that is pretty popular (along with the 105/2.5, which loving owns, and all of the 55mm Micro Nikkors, which are all pretty great, so good on your dad). It's like a wide-normal on a crop body. 24mm is also a really nice equivalent on crop, 35mm equivalent is probably my favorite all around focal length. Don't pay too much if there's an AF equivalent available, but at the same time you can definitely pick up some awesome lenses for cheap if you're willing to deal with manual focus. Consider purchasing a split prism focus screen if you enjoy it, they vastly improve your focus accuracy. Again, probably an order of magnitude or two more accurate, and if you can swap the focus screen on that model the $15 ebay specials do fine. *glass, not glassless Do be aware that some of the early models had compensating Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Oct 4, 2013 |
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Oct 4, 2013 03:21
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A friendly reminder that many old flashes have very high trigger voltages on the flash shoe. You shouldn't use anything with >250v on anything modern. Some cameras are lower, like the X100 is 50v max. It is entirely possible to burn out the flash circuit with prolonged use.
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Oct 11, 2013 18:52
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powderific posted:I guess I should clarify and say that I've seen adapters that claim to focus to infinity from Rainbow Imaging and Fotodiox, but I don't have any first or secondhand experience on whether they actually work. They're probably optical adapters, they have like a 1.1x teleconverter built in to get infinity focus. The register distance of Retina Reflex is 44.7mm, the register distance of Nikon F is 46.5mm, so the answer to whether Retina Reflex can be mounted on Nikon with infinity focus is a straightforward "no". http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/mounts-by-register.html e: SybilVimes posted:Might be hit and miss depending on whether the lens has much spare focusable range at the infinite end, but the deckel mount that the reflexes and voigtlander used were 44.7mm FFD, which shouldn't focus to infinity on the 46.5mm of the F-mount (the only mounts that can are OCT-19 and most of the medium format - good luck finding adapters though). Ding ding ding. Winner.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:16
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For that kind of money I think I'd go fill a freezer full of real film and enough alcohol to finish scanning it. I mean you can get a FM2 lookalike, or you can get a Mamiya 7 and also a high end Nikon film scanner for the same money. $2k would be a lot more realistic price.
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Oct 23, 2013 21:25
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Mr. Despair posted:Good cameras don't have shutter speed dials. I have no idea what you're talking about, tactile controls own, touch screens and tons of fiddly joysticks and electronic poo poo suck. Y'all are taking the "retro styling" a bit too seriously. I can't imagine the internals will actually be mechanically timed, at the absolute most it will be an electronically controlled mechanical shutter (like the EM/FA or Pentax ME), meaning if Nikon has a lick of sense they will let you have aperture-priority mode (plus probably P and A modes too I guess). It's almost certainly just a compact form factor DSLR. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 01:04
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powderific posted:I'm bit saying your wrong on the adapter bit being workable, but the two adapters I looked at were clearly not optical. The descriptions must just be wrong about maintaining infinity focus. That was Amazon, right? Could be, a lot of that data is pulled in in bulk by random third-party vendors on Amazon and they gently caress it up a lot on obscure poo poo no one buys. I once bought a random Chinese "intervalometer" that was just a cable release. Wrong picture, wrong description. They probably just imported some electronic factory's catalog and there was a mistake. Yeah, something is wrong here, either the register chart, the description, the picture, or it's sticking into the mirror box a bit.
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Oct 24, 2013 01:09
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Mr. Despair posted:The me super has a pair of buttons for shutter speed To be quite honest the buttons are harder to get used to than an actual knob (or the dial on the ME). And the meter is usually pretty drat accurate at 1x anyway. What I'm saying here is man up, you don't need buttons unless you're trying to trick a ME into going faster than 1600 or boost exposure in extreme low light. 
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Oct 24, 2013 01:36
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1st AD posted:I guess they're trying to go for the old school FE look, but my black and beat up FE looks way cooler than this camera. The real problem is that it's even smaller than consumer-sized bodies yet has just as many controls. Yeah, it's great that they're finally getting DSLRs back down to a reasonable size, they finally figured out that people do want manual controls on the top deck, but there's like fifteen loving buttons/controls crammed onto that back panel. I'd really like to see it with the manual-style topdeck, with maybe the LCD and two or three buttons, with a primarily-touchscreen interface. Or just no LCD and no buttons and you have to go back home to see what you've got.
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Nov 4, 2013 20:13
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I have to confess I had the exact same thought only it was a GX680. If you're going to do this, do it in style. The problem with both ideas is that there aren't any full frame 6x8 or 6x9 backs. 
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Nov 5, 2013 01:33
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