andrewd01 wrote:
What are you guys using for a lens hood? When Santa brings my lens I think I will use it with one of my vented metal lens hoods (around $5 on Ebay).
How about writing a couple of words about what you are linking to? Like "Christopher Frost review of the 40 f2"?
I think the video does a good job showing the compromises taken with this lens - similar characteristics to old nifty fifties, but sharper over more of the frame wide-open.
fjablo wrote:
How about writing a couple of words about what you are linking to? Like "Christopher Frost review of the 40 f2"?
I think the video does a good job showing the compromises taken with this lens - similar characteristics to old nifty fifties, but sharper over more of the frame wide-open.
Good point, I'll pay attention to it next time.
Thanks for worrning me!
And now for the most uninteresting photos in the entire thread!
As to comparisons with the more expensive and larger 35/1.8 and 50/1.8 the MTF charts and reviews all agree that those lenses are a bit sharper. I do an "acceptance" test on all my incoming lenses to check for major defects and now have all three lenses to compare. This consists of shooting a large Siemens Star target from a good distance (200 times the focal length in this case) with the star shot in the center, the middle of each edge and each of the four extreme corners. Focus is not adjusted between shots but the camera is moved such that it is equivalent to shooting a virtual flat field target about 16 feet in height (a spreadsheet computes the necessary distance to move the camera for each location in the frame based on the focal length being tested).
Anyway, without further ado here's how the three lenses look on this test shot with a Z7. These are each composite images with a 250x250 pixel crop of the target in each of the nine locations in the field tested.
Nikon Z 40mm F/2 @ F/2
Nikon Z 40mm F/2 @ F/4
Nikon Z 35mm F/1.8S @ F/1.8
Nikon Z 35mm F/1.8S @ F/4
Nikon Z 50mm F/1.8S @ F/1.8
Nikon Z 50mm F/1.8S @ F/4
Oh, and probably ignore the vignetting differences. I'm not 100% sure that the camera was set for the same vignetting correction on each test (the 35 looks like it probably had vignetting correction turned on).
So what all does this tell us? Well, very little we didn't already know. Indeed the 35 and 50 are a bit sharper, both in the center and the corners wide open. That said the 40 is still plenty sharp at the center wide open, enough to generate moire on a Z7. The corners suffer a bit which is not a surprise. By F/4 the differences are quite reduced.
The 40mm is reported to be a bit softer when shot on close targets and this test tells us nothing about that as the target is quite far away.
This is only testing the lenses for sharpness in the plane of focus and I think most of us will often use the 40/2 with out of focus edges and so really bokeh quality is probably more interesting than this kind of flat field sharpness test.
Anyway, I had the test images laying about so I thought I'd share them as uninteresting as they are!
And now hopefully the thread can return to more interesting sample images...
kwalsh wrote:
And now for the most uninteresting photos in the entire thread!
As to comparisons with the more expensive and larger 35/1.8 and 50/1.8 the MTF charts and reviews all agree that those lenses are a bit sharper. I do an "acceptance" test on all my incoming lenses to check for major defects and now have all three lenses to compare. This consists of shooting a large Siemens Star target from a good distance (200 times the focal length in this case) with the star shot in the center, the middle of each edge and each of the four extreme corners. Focus is not adjusted between shots but the camera is moved such that it is equivalent to shooting a virtual flat field target about 16 feet in height (a spreadsheet computes the necessary distance to move the camera for each location in the frame based on the focal length being tested).
Anyway, without further ado here's how the three lenses look on this test shot with a Z7. These are each composite images with a 250x250 pixel crop of the target in each of the nine locations in the field tested.
Oh, and probably ignore the vignetting differences. I'm not 100% sure that the camera was set for the same vignetting correction on each test (the 35 looks like it probably had vignetting correction turned on).
So what all does this tell us? Well, very little we didn't already know. Indeed the 35 and 50 are a bit sharper, both in the center and the corners wide open. That said the 40 is still plenty sharp at the center wide open, enough to generate moire on a Z7. The corners suffer a bit which is not a surprise. By F/4 the differences are quite reduced.
The 40mm is reported to be a bit softer when shot on close targets and this test tells us nothing about that as the target is quite far away.
This is only testing the lenses for sharpness in the plane of focus and I think most of us will often use the 40/2 with out of focus edges and so really bokeh quality is probably more interesting than this kind of flat field sharpness test.
Anyway, I had the test images laying about so I thought I'd share them as uninteresting as they are!
And now hopefully the thread can return to more interesting sample images......Show more →
Some great samples here. Particularly like the night streetscapes from Colin. This is exactly the kind of shooting that I'm hoping to do more of with this lens.
