hubsand wrote:
The capture is 16.2mb (always a good sign!), so it may not have finished uploading when you asked for it.
Yep, that's what happened. The file I downloaded before was only 9MB, and I was thinking, hmm, that's not a lot of detail then! I've got the file now and wow, thanks for putting it up. Looks great!
This lens is really dispiriting. I have to confess that over the last five years or so I've grown quite comfortable with my middle-aged grouchiness over the lack of wide angle options for 1 Series digitals, and my life had a motivating 'questing' quality to it as I searched high and low for the Holy Grail of aberration-free ultrawide performance . . . and all of a sudden, it's over.
I've just been testing the Nikon 14-24G on a fine tuned adaptor, and it has credibly sharp corners at 16mm / f2.8 – at minimum focus. With the camera just resting on the kitchen worksurface. How on earth have they been able to do that? I'll update the site later today with samples . . .
It just makes every other wide angle lens redundant. And it's just the perfect, perfect match for a two lens 24-105 / 70-200 shooting kit. Three lenses to do everything perfectly: what is the world coming to?
And it's a brand new lens with a warranty! I still think the Zeiss 21 will beat it in terms of microcontrast, but I'd need to see some side by sides. That Zeiss look is very special. But that's only at 21mm, the long end of the Nikon. This just doesn't make sense and yes the sky is falling.
Anyway, Nikon is looking more and more attractive by the minute: superb wide angle, ZF lineup, etc. All they need now is a FF half body with some pixels in it and I'm gone from Canon...probably.
16-35II? 14L? Haven't seen any samples from the latter yet, but I'm not expecting miracles. Canon should be embarrassed.
I've held off upgrading my 16-35L to MK 2 status because my Mk 1 is a pretty damn good sample. I may go for this instead. Despite the relative merits of the legendary 21mm Ziess - it has 2 disadvantages for me - it's hellish expensive and rare these days and it's only one focal length. Whatever the micro contrast gains ( or whatever ) the 21mm has the ability to frame exactly your scene in camera to the maximum extent of the sensor without cropping will in most circumstances make up for the difference.
D'accord: The 14-24mm seems to be a breakthrough in WA engineering.
But I really wonder about Mark Welsh's optimized shooting kit (an explorative man who saw everything weird (the superwide Heliar cramed into a 5D) and alternative) based on the 24-105 f/4 for the most practical field of applications:
Starting just before the classic focal lenght of 50mm this lens degrades to an exceptionally bad long end. I guess this is beyond controversy. At 50mm it is clearly worse than Canons f/1.8 and much worse even than about every one of the cheap alternative 50mms.
I recommend very much the undervalued highly standardized tool at the-digital-picture.com, where you can comfortably compare any EF lens at every aperture and every focal lenght. You will easily detect the sharp quality decline of the 24-105 following its outstanding resolution performance around 30mm (and you will also be able to recognize the fact, that Canons 70-200 f/4 may really substitute a lot of the beloved Leica and Zeiss glass in this area. Here Hubsand is right.)
(The most useful and historically inevitable new topic at the moment I would like to see here at this forum would be a formalized poll where everyone with solid testing experience recommends his idea for a most rational and radical quality driven 1Ds III lens armament. Let's say five categories: SWA, WA, Std., Portrait, Macro. (The rest of the teles is self-evident.)
p.3 #10 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
Mark. Thanks for this. The lens looks awesome. Before I get my order in, can I ask please, what's the bokeh like?
I read a review of the Nikon D300 in AP last week. The article carried a boxout where the reviewer stated she encountered a problem with the new 14-24 on both the D300 and a Nikon F100. Quote:
"The overexposed sky has a harsh edge instead of a smooth graduation because of bad bokeh...my tests with colour negative film indicate that it is more of an optical problem than a digital one."
Would be interesting to get your feedback on this.
p.3 #12 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
i certainly agree this is probably one of the best WA lenses out there, but comparing to cz 21mm? I'd love to see the detailed test on these two lenses.
p.3 #13 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
StevenPA wrote:
Anyway, Nikon is looking more and more attractive by the minute: superb wide angle, ZF lineup, etc. All they need now is a FF half body with some pixels in it and I'm gone from Canon...probably.
Agreed for all your reasons, but still no 24mm shift option for the nikon which is a big plus for any interior / architecural shooters.
Marc
Edited by marcwilson on Dec 08, 2007 at 08:59 PM GMT
p.3 #16 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
Arianne Dubois wrote:
D'accord: The 14-24mm seems to be a breakthrough in WA engineering.
But I really wonder about Mark Welsh's optimized shooting kit (an explorative man who saw everything weird (the superwide Heliar cramed into a 5D) and alternative) based on the 24-105 f/4 for the most practical field of applications:
Starting just before the classic focal lenght of 50mm this lens degrades to an exceptionally bad long end. I guess this is beyond controversy. At 50mm it is clearly worse than Canons f/1.8 and much worse even than about every one of the cheap alternative 50mms.
Re-reading my hastily pecked post, I didn't really clarify what I meant there, Arianne: I'll be updating my 'best of the best' list at 16:9 later. But I would stand by those three lenses as the closest thus far available 'go anywhere, shoot anything' kit – partly because of the synergy between them. Somehow 24mm seems to me to be the dividing line between wide and really wide . . . if I need to go wider than 24mm, I'm likely to need to be there for the whole job. So the 24-105L picks up from there, and proves to a near-perfect walkabout lens, with IS, and credible performance at f4 in the 24-70mm range. At 70mm, the 70-200 kicks in sweetly just where the 24-105L degrades, and loves it all the way to 200mm, and even works well with a 1.4xTC. If I'm packing light, these three lenses give me truly uncompromised 1Ds III performance from 14-200mm (even 280mm, perhaps).
But are they all the lenses you'll ever need? Does the Pope take ablutions in the woods? On top of that, I have the 24L, CZ50/1.4 and 85L II for low light (must get round to re-buying the 35 and 135Ls), plus a short 50mm macro for max. DOF, plus a full tilt and shift kit that consists of a Mirex TS adaptor + 24mm Fisheye + 55mm + 120mm Macro, and an Olympus 35mm shift lens. Plus a top notch 28mm prime (presently torn between the Leica and the Zeiss). And a 300mm IS. And a CZ35-70 as an alternative hiQ walkaround with 35mm 'macro' facility. Oh, and a home made pinhole. And a converted EF-mount Holga lens. And a f0.95 Navitar 50mm. I've really slimmed down the kit list.
p.3 #18 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
We are talking about a very wide and fast zoom lens here that doesn't cost that much if you had to buy fast primes in this area. It's not going to be perfect and I'll happily put up with some moderate CA that can be easily fixed in software if it means resolution is good right to the corners. BTW my 24-105 was junk - horrendous distortion and vignetting at the wide end and nothing stellar about the resolution either. My Tamron 28-75 ran circles round it at every focal length.Maybe I had a bad sample but others have commented on the distortion and vignetting as well.
p.3 #19 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
Don't get me wrong, this is a very usefull lens, in fact it is one that I will continue to use frequently. That said, the CA is somewhat more noticeable on the Ds3 (in the corners folks) vs the Ds2. On a 5d, it is not visible at all. It could be that the higher pixel densities simply resolve the CA, whereas the the 5D does not.
I have very limited experience with Nikon lenses on my 1Ds2; basically the 17-35mm, and my results did not mirror Mark's, so there is obviously lens to lens variability, just like Canon. Evidently, the new Nikon 14-24mm has a new coating, it will be interesting to see how it performs on the Ds3. Based on my experience with all three bodies, I would say that extrapolating performance from the 5D to the 1Ds3 is a very big assumption...
p.3 #20 · Nikon 14-24mm tested on Canon 5D/1Ds III
I can see obvious ( and acceptable) CA on the 5D sample Hubsand has posted. The 17-35 Nikon I had for a while had a blue CA in the far corners on my 5D and this is not your usual mismatch of the RGB channels - it's only in the corners and conventional CA software that adjusts the relative size of the RGB channels does not work. This was one reason I sold this lens - the other being it was no better than my 16-35L. As for extrapolating between a 5D and 1Ds3 - true but then again if it's no good on a 5D it's not going to suddenly work with higher resolution and if it's good on a 5D it's at least promising as few lenses in the wide catagory are able to outresolve the edges of even this sensor.
