ulrikft wrote:
I agree with Francois! Why not make it 0.1-0.2cm larger in all directions and just give us a 35 1.8 FX prime with af-s? :/
It is sorely needed.
Well, as the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 shows with its bulk, simply covering the edges isn't always enough. I don't know what edge sharpness looks like near those vingetted areas but I'd hazard a guess that Nikon wanted to produce a great DX lens with good corner sharpness - hence the excellent coverage on a FX sensor - and didn't want to invest enough to make it a great FX lens. Extending it a small amount might have made it an adequate FX lens, but then you would have had the people screaming about how the edge sharpness was poor on FX...
Often in projects, from a marketing/PR perspective, you have to scale something back to make it great for what it is, rather than simply satisfactory in another category. Plus, even small price shaving in this price range is significant. Nobody cares if you shave $50 off a $1200 lens, but $50 off a <$300 is a lot.
Gosh darn it, it looks like this thread has sold me on the 35mm 1.8, I was hoping there would be some fatal flaw that would push me away, but it looks like it is everything I had hoped (except maybe AF speed).
This looks great...I love the effects with fx. I really want to try my 30 siggy on fx, but I don't have a 35 camera that that will let me adjust aperture
This looks great...I love the effects with fx. I really want to try my 30 siggy on fx, but I don't have a 35 camera that that will let me adjust aperture
Unlike this lens, the Sigma 30 is noticeably (and not in a good way) vignetted. It was designed 100% with DX in mind. I tried mine on my old N50 (F50 for you Non-US Nikon fans), and it was visibly vignetted in the viewfinder, and the prints were very much affected (also, I only had manual focus, as the N50 can meter with, but not focus using AFS/HSM lenses).
It seems, however, that this 35mm f/1.8 may produce usable (and good) results on FX... I'd like to see it in a wider variety of settings before picking one up (future FX compatibility in mind, in my case). I'm having problems with my Sigma 30mm f/1.4, and have been debating between the new 35mm f/1.8 or the AF-D 35mm f/2.
I noticed no vignetting in the finder whatsoever. I'm going to either borrow this guy's copy today or go pick up one of my own and I will do a lot of shooting between this, the 35/1.4S and 35/2D on the D700. I'll post the results here.
So after searching all day we found on more copy locally and ISO1600 picked it up. After examining the lens further, I think a slight baffle modification will make the lens vignette A LOT less on FX. Once I pick up a copy, the first two I found where both for friends, I'll pull the thing apart and grind the baffle down.
TWoK wrote:
So after searching all day we found on more copy locally and ISO1600 picked it up
So I shouldn't even bother burning gas looking for this...huh? Hope it wasn't the kitamura between kadena and courtney, was out there for a bit getting my car fixed today. Ima be mad if the lens was not even 5 blocks away while I waited
Zachs wrote:
This looks great...I love the effects with fx. I really want to try my 30 siggy on fx, but I don't have a 35 camera that that will let me adjust aperture
I just tried my friends Sigma 30/1.4 on my D700. It really doesn't work if you don't want to crop.
Would stopping down make the image circle larger due to lack of mechanical vignetting? Unfortunately not.
Infinity @ f/16 (yes, I moved a few meters between the shots):
When focusing closer, the image circle gets larger because of the whole lens package moving away from the sensor plane. Not far enough for total coverage though.
Closer @ f/4 (that's me by the way! ):
This little lens is totally awesome on DX, if you get it to focus properly. I owned one when I got my former camera; the D200. But it focused everywhere but where I wanted it to, and thus I sold it.
Check out the bokeh! It is just as good as the Sigma 50/1.4, but in fact it gives a larger image circle relative to the sensor format, and therefore the bokeh is better in the corners on DX than what the 50 shows on FX.
Edit: I guess it could be quite usable on Canons 1.3x crop sensors.
