I missed these shots earlier, Daniel. Very nice! How do you find the lens? I am thinking of adding a 200/2 or 300/2.8 to my kit, and am a little undecided. If I have to come anywhere near new prices, I would probably get the 200/2, since I don't need a super-long, so it would be more flexible with a couple of TCs, but these older 300/2.8 lenses sometimes go for much less, which is also an option. I would use it mostly for portraits or zoo-type duty, but also a little light-duty landscaping.
P.S. how many different muscle cars have you owned in the last, say, 5 years?
The close up performance of this lens is pretty remarkable. I believe the cross photo was shot at f/2 or f/2.8. No higher. It was handheld at 1/25s too.
Those are nice! I just got a new one too. The Nikkor AF 85mm F1.4D - and this is my first experience with a lens that renders colors like this! Holy cow! At first I though someone was messing about with the saturation on my monitors or something. It's a very lively and vivid lens! It's kinda like getting a new box of crayons. It's nice getting results like this without having to process for it.
It's like that at 100% too. I did sharpen the scales but I had to bring the amount way down from normal as it wasn't doing much other than adding halos. I think I finally settled for sharpening with a radius of 0.3 at 40% to 60% after scaling and no pre-scaling sharpening added at all. This is definitely my new favorite lens. Here's some more from the same set.
The amazing thing to me is that it's doing this in low light. Overcast at around 1pm to 4pm and this time of year at Japan's latitude on the planet the Sun always looks like it's about 2 to 2.5 hours away from total sunset - it never climbs very high in the sky and the days are short. Noon looks about the same as 4pm and 9:30 am.
The Nikkor AF 85mm 1.4 D is known for it's sharpness and color saturation,not to mention excellent contrast.The older 85mm 1.4 AI-S was an extraordinary lens,but the AF D version out performs it at wide apertures.
BTW I usually do much of my flower shooting in the early morning or just before dusk,or on an overcast or squally day for vivid color saturation....rather then having the sun blow out the saturation and consequentially the detail.
The above images aside (which I gather were sharpened via PP), the 85/1.4D is a bit soft wide open, except perhaps for the absolute center of the lens. As Photozone's testing showed on both FX and DX (but particularly FX), the lens is very soft outside the center at wide apertures. On FX, it's hideously soft. Of course, as a portrait lens, that's not really a problem.
The 85/1.4D has major issues with flare and purple fringing, which the nano coating of the G helps deal with to some extent. It doesn't track moving subjects well, and certainly not as well as the G version.
Having said all that, it's still a very nice lens, and I own it myself . Have taken many a good photo with it. It just isn't the incredibly sharp lens some people make it out to be. If you stop to think about it, it wouldn't make sense for it to be that: if you're taking portraits of people, sharpness isn't always a good thing.
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