I got my D800 on Friday and took it for a spin that same night. Below is a shot that I captured with the camera and a Nikon 14-24 Lens. I have also attached a 100% crop. I am liking what I see so far and can't wait to use it for my landscapes:
I've been using a new 14-24 on a d800 the past several days shooting high ISO star photos at f3.3 and f4 at 14mm and am getting quite a bit of distortion and CA/angel wings in the corners. I used to shoot a d700 with a different 14-24 and did not notice the same issues. Are these issues related to a bad lens, or do they just show up that much more on the higher-res sensor? I don't have another 14-24 around to compare with. Thanks for any thoughts...
Tim Ernst wrote:
I've been using a new 14-24 on a d800 the past several days shooting high ISO star photos at f3.3 and f4 at 14mm and am getting quite a bit of distortion and CA/angel wings in the corners. I used to shoot a d700 with a different 14-24 and did not notice the same issues. Are these issues related to a bad lens, or do they just show up that much more on the higher-res sensor? I don't have another 14-24 around to compare with. Thanks for any thoughts...
Hi Tim,
I haven't seen any CA or distortion that was worse than what I saw on my D700. I will test some more over the weekend and let you know.
Thanks Nikhil. I've seen elsewhere online (http://www.kadamsphoto.com/nightphotography/) that this lens does suffer from the "angel wings" issue in the corners when used at night for pinpoint stars, so I guess my lens is normal. It just shows up more with the higher-res sensor of the D800.
<<The 14-24 does suffer from a fair amount of coma when shooting wide open. Coma is the inability of the lens to focus off-axis points of light correctly. In general photography, you’d never notice it, but when you shoot a night-sky photo, it can be obvious when you magnify the image. Stars at the edges of the frame look like little snow angels instead of pinpoints of light.>>
Tim Ernst wrote:
<<The 14-24 does suffer from a fair amount of coma when shooting wide open. Coma is the inability of the lens to focus off-axis points of light correctly. In general photography, you’d never notice it, but when you shoot a night-sky photo, it can be obvious when you magnify the image. Stars at the edges of the frame look like little snow angels instead of pinpoints of light.>>
Thanks for the link Tim. Good read. I found another good article on lensrental.com. The link is:
I had not thought about body alignment Nikhil (LensRentals does have some great articles!), but since this lens shows the angel wings equally on both upper corners, the alignment is probably OK (a good test would be to shoot just stars with no land at the bottom and see if it has angels in the bottom corners as well - I'll do that the next clear night). It will be interesting to see if the new Zeiss 15 has angel wings - wish I could get one right now to compare. But yes, indeed everything is going to be an order or two more critical with the higher-res camera, and a lot of folks will be surprised to learn their techniques may not be quite good enough to produce desired results, especially if they are just used to shooting 35mm.
Tim Ernst wrote:
I had not thought about body alignment Nikhil (LensRentals does have some great articles!), but since this lens shows the angel wings equally on both upper corners, the alignment is probably OK (a good test would be to shoot just stars with no land at the bottom and see if it has angels in the bottom corners as well - I'll do that the next clear night). It will be interesting to see if the new Zeiss 15 has angel wings - wish I could get one right now to compare. But yes, indeed everything is going to be an order or two more critical with the higher-res camera, and a lot of folks will be surprised to learn their techniques may not be quite good enough to produce desired results, especially if they are just used to shooting 35mm. ...Show more →
The new Zeiss looks great Tim - I will definitely rent it to see if it's better than my 14-24 (which is stellar in its own right). My only concern with that is the heavy vignetting in some samples and also how much worse would the vignetting be with filters added. Will have to see.
