Having this lens about a week and play with DF and D810.
The lens should be used at around f1.8 for very close distance. After 2M, the lens is sharp enough WO if your body can nail focus. Because of strong under corrected sapphire aberration, The lens can trick body to miss focus, often. And D810 is noticeable better than DF, especially under lower contrast or lower light. I am not totally sold with this lens yet But still this lens indeed with character...
Zhangyue: I found this lens has a steeper learning curve than most I've used. Call it imperfections, aberrations, character or whatever you like but it grows on you.
I bought it for the sole purpose of photographing my newborn but I've found it to be a great street and landscape lens too.
I've also found f1.4 at MFD tricky but if you manage to nail focus then the results are superb.
I haven't seen this mentioned much but I've found only the centre focus point to be really reliable once I have the focus micro-adjust dialled in. I think this must be something to do with the field curvature. As a result I've even found focus and recompose using the centre AF point a bit better than using the peripheral points which is what I normally do. But more so than any of the other lenses I've used, I've had to limit my composition of close subjects more centrally than usual.
Chris Dees wrote:
What kind of AF do you guys use? I'm having very much problems getting sharp images.
I have a D810 and use most of the the AF-C and Dynamic 9
On my D750 I am using AF-C with dynamic 51. This is for both stationary and moving subjects using back focus button. The lens is AF tuned to +13.
hijazist wrote:
On my D750 I am using AF-C with dynamic 51. This is for both stationary and moving subjects using back focus button. The lens is AF tuned to +13.
Have AF tuned your lens Chris?
Yes, -4 at about 3 meter.
According to the green and purple fringing it has a hair back focus. So I could dial in -6
Both samples are at 100% and wide open, standard LR processing. Sharpnes seems ok to me.
swifty168 wrote:
Zhangyue: I found this lens has a steeper learning curve than most I've used. Call it imperfections, aberrations, character or whatever you like but it grows on you.
I bought it for the sole purpose of photographing my newborn but I've found it to be a great street and landscape lens too.
I've also found f1.4 at MFD tricky but if you manage to nail focus then the results are superb.
I haven't seen this mentioned much but I've found only the centre focus point to be really reliable once I have the focus micro-adjust dialled in. I think this must be something to do with the field curvature. As a result I've even found focus and recompose using the centre AF point a bit better than using the peripheral points which is what I normally do. But more so than any of the other lenses I've used, I've had to limit my composition of close subjects more centrally than usual. ...Show more →
I think the mis focus is mainly because of out side AF point has no as strong process power as center one but not because of field curvature. Field curvature usually require off center focus than focus recompose, as off center is on different plane than center.
Actually, this lens has very minimal field curvature. Shooting at WO infinity, this one is better than any nikon 50ish lens cross frame resolution wise. It still has coma but less than Famous Noct f1.2 Nikon. This lens is originally designed for night photography even in Nikon's literature.
Chris Dees wrote:
What kind of AF do you guys use? I'm having very much problems getting sharp images.
I have a D810 and use most of the the AF-C and Dynamic 9
For long distance say 3M with good light, you might come away with this setting OK.(As DOF covers it.) But I recommend you use single point AF-C. (AFS for unmoving subject) Lens designed like this has its quirk I think. That f1.8G family is a lot easier task for Camera's AF.
Because its poor definition of focus plain,(even at longerish distance, it has resolution, but still low contrast) AF engine is very difficult to decide correct focus plain. With 9 or 21 point, it will cherry picking the better one (more contrast) it thinks. This can be very easy to verify AT LOW LIGHT. Have an object with size cover by 9 or 21 focus point, but having slightly different focus plain, use AF-C, 9 points, focus 10 times with this lens, you can see focus can be random in the zone. DF is behave poor in this test, but D810 also has failed.
I haven't verify this myself, but I think this lens may prefer focus from close to far away than other way around, as I usually get back focus once it is mis focused. (I check with my AF fine tune, at +10, it is fine. )
I use a lot manual focus, the basic idea is very similar between AF and MF by eyes. For lens has strong SA, your eyes are hard to decide focusing, at low light, same apply. AF behave the same here.
Thanks for all the suggestions to try AFC with center single point. I've always been using 9-point focus (been using that for years) and results haven't always been accurate with this lens. I really noticed this with my 28mm 1.9 so I'm going to work on my focus and recompose.
chuhsi1 wrote:
Thanks for all the suggestions to try AFC with center single point. I've always been using 9-point focus (been using that for years) and results haven't always been accurate with this lens. I really noticed this with my 28mm 1.9 so I'm going to work on my focus and recompose.
Rule of thumb for me is if I'm shooting faster than f/2.8, switch to single point. If I'm slower than f/2.8, switch to 9pt.
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