The Miramar Marine Corps air station had this somewhat sad small open air museum. Planes were sitting outside in the weather, collecting dust.
Bad news is that the planes are leaving San Diego. Good news is that they are going to a large Blimp hangar in El Toro, Orange county. More money to keep them in good shape and indoors.
Never paid much attention to these helicopters, turns out these are some of the last Vietnam helos. The large one in particular is THE one that took the ambassador out of Vietnam, essentially ending the war. Marines do get a sense of history.
rafaelcasd wrote:
The Miramar Marine Corps air station had this somewhat sad small open air museum. Planes were sitting outside in the weather, collecting dust.
Bad news is that the planes are leaving San Diego. Good news is that they are going to a large Blimp hangar in El Toro, Orange county. More money to keep them in good shape and indoors.
Never paid much attention to these helicopters, turns out these are some of the last Vietnam helos. The large one in particular is THE one that took the ambassador out of Vietnam, essentially ending the war. Marines do get a sense of history.
Ronny,
I have the 200mm f4 ais, the 105mm f4 ais, the 55mm f2.8 ais, the 55mm f3.5 ai, and a factory ai'd 55mm f3.5 Nikkor-P.C - and my favorite is the last one. YMMV
Jim
James Markus wrote:
Ronny,
I have the 200mm f4 ais, the 105mm f4 ais, the 55mm f2.8 ais, the 55mm f3.5 ai, and a factory ai'd 55mm f3.5 Nikkor-P.C - and my favorite is the last one. YMMV
Jim
Leighton,
For macro to landscapes - it is one of the sharpest lenses I have ever used. I know it is counter-intuitive that the oldest non-AI version is better than the newer versions (remember, this is only among three copies if you count the f2.8), but it is. Maybe when the factory AI'd the lens they did something? It does focus past infinity - so I have to chimp to dial it in, but once set it resolves detail like few lenses can.
Jim
Generally I am not a fan of circular fish-eye images but these are great.
The frame filling subject matter works really well.
Did you use fill-in flash on some of these?
Colin
Colin, these are from 2016 so I must rely on EXIF saying flash did not fire. I did not particularly like them but when I read an article about the last Vietnam ambassador helicopter being in this Miramar museum and leaving for El Toro knew I had a picture somewhere. When I took it I was playing and did not understand what I was looking at.
James Markus wrote:
Ronny,
I have the 200mm f4 ais, the 105mm f4 ais, the 55mm f2.8 ais, the 55mm f3.5 ai, and a factory ai'd 55mm f3.5 Nikkor-P.C - and my favorite is the last one. YMMV
Jim
Ronny, magnification and working distance matter to name one best over the other. I have bellows 105 4, 135 4, several 55mm 3.5 of diferent vintage, EL 50 2.8, EL 105 5.6, the 55 1.2 CRT, 105mm 4 ai, 200mm 5.6 medical. I agree the best for the money and optical performance is the 55mm 3.5. At close distances the compensating version, further away the P.C. These can be had for 50 to 150 US$.
Need to take the time to do quality photos of the lenses, like George. For now i will use what I have.
Ran a quick test of the 20mm I own: 20mm 3.5 UD, 20mm 4 ai, 20mm 2.8 ais, 20mm2.8 AF.
The 3.5 and 4 are very similar in performance, except if the sunlight hits the glass directly, where the UD flares beautifully and the 4 not much at all. The curvature of field of these two tends to keep the nearer floor in focus with the center at a distance.
The AF is good, flatter field but the best of the lot is the ais, noticeably.The prettiest is the UD.
I am just fooling around, nothing scientific here. Ken Rockwell has a very detailed comparison of the 20mm.
Here are a couple of shots, from the 3.5 UD and the 2.8 ais. There are more at 100% on Flickr if you have time to waste.
On these two samples you can see how the UD and the 2.8 extend sharpness to the ground up close into the corners, but the far sides and corners on the UD are poor, on the 2.8 decent. processing is standard profile and all settings copy paste.
rafaelcasd wrote:
Need to take the time to do quality photos of the lenses, like George. For now i will use what I have.
Ran a quick test of the 20mm I own: 20mm 3.5 UD, 20mm 4 ai, 20mm 2.8 ais, 20mm2.8 AF.
The 3.5 and 4 are very similar in performance, except if the sunlight hits the glass directly, where the UD flares beautifully and the 4 not much at all. The curvature of field of these two tends to keep the nearer floor in focus with the center at a distance.
The AF is good, flatter field but the best of the lot is the ais, noticeably.The prettiest is the UD.
I am just fooling around, nothing scientific here. Ken Rockwell has a very detailed comparison of the 20mm.
Here are a couple of shots, from the 3.5 UD and the 2.8 ais. There are more at 100% on Flickr if you have time to waste.
On these two samples you can see how the UD and the 2.8 extend sharpness to the ground up close into the corners, but the far sides and corners on the UD are poor, on the 2.8 decent. processing is standard profile and all settings copy paste.
James Markus wrote:
Leighton,
For macro to landscapes - it is one of the sharpest lenses I have ever used. I know it is counter-intuitive that the oldest non-AI version is better than the newer versions (remember, this is only among three copies if you count the f2.8), but it is. Maybe when the factory AI'd the lens they did something? It does focus past infinity - so I have to chimp to dial it in, but once set it resolves detail like few lenses can.
Jim
Interesting, I might keep my eyes open for one to try out. But in the meantime, I'll keep using my 55/2.8 ais. I love this lens. In fact, when I got back into using NMF lenses, it was the first one I bought.
The f2.8 is a more complex lens on the inside. This video shows the differences which were more extensive than I had thought.
leighton w wrote:
Interesting, I might keep my eyes open for one to try out. But in the meantime, I'll keep using my 55/2.8 ais. I love this lens. In fact, when I got back into using NMF lenses, it was the first one I bought.
Speaking of MF macro lenses. Here is another one from my song inspired photo series. This time it is Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song" which I first heard many many years ago - link at bottom. The 200mm f4.0 ais micro and the D800 were employed. Title: "I Don't Want A Pickle"
rafaelcasd wrote:
Need to take the time to do quality photos of the lenses, like George. For now i will use what I have.
Ran a quick test of the 20mm I own: 20mm 3.5 UD, 20mm 4 ai, 20mm 2.8 ais, 20mm2.8 AF.
The 3.5 and 4 are very similar in performance, except if the sunlight hits the glass directly, where the UD flares beautifully and the 4 not much at all. The curvature of field of these two tends to keep the nearer floor in focus with the center at a distance.
The AF is good, flatter field but the best of the lot is the ais, noticeably.The prettiest is the UD.
I am just fooling around, nothing scientific here. Ken Rockwell has a very detailed comparison of the 20mm.
Here are a couple of shots, from the 3.5 UD and the 2.8 ais. There are more at 100% on Flickr if you have time to waste.
On these two samples you can see how the UD and the 2.8 extend sharpness to the ground up close into the corners, but the far sides and corners on the UD are poor, on the 2.8 decent. processing is standard profile and all settings copy paste.
Thanks for these tests! I was always curious about the 20mm f4 but the performance at f8 is a bit disappointing which is good to know. Seems like the Voigtländer 20mm f3.5 might be a better option for an ultra compact 20mm in F mount (52mm filters, less than 300g)
gyoung143 wrote:
I have been tempted by the 20mm 2.8, I thought both AiS and AF were supposed to be the same optlcally, but you find the AiS better, would this be samplee variation? Or is there a design difference?
Your question made me question myself and I took some more shots today. The lenses are supposed to be the same optically and they are really so close to each other that it is my casual testing technique that creates the difference. My errors are consistent, which is interesting to me.
Very small differences in focusing all of these 20mm lenses make a significant difference to the corners and edges. If you get focusing right the images at f/8 are more than satisfactory for landscapes to me. For mechanical reasons it is harder to accurately focus the AF than any of the manual lenses.
With the extra care today I was getting better results with the AF, but no better that what I was getting yesterday with the AIS.
I cannot differentiate it anymore, they perform the same as much as I can tell. Still like using the manual focus better, but that is personal preference.
Here are the best photo from the AIS and from the AF at 2.8. Lots more on Flickr for those with idle time.
fjablo wrote:
Thanks for these tests! I was always curious about the 20mm f4 but the performance at f8 is a bit disappointing which is good to know. Seems like the Voigtländer 20mm f3.5 might be a better option for an ultra compact 20mm in F mount (52mm filters, less than 300g)
The Nikkor 20mm 4 being a 1970s lens shows. I love it as a hobbyist and like photos that are less than perfect here or there. The Nikkor 20mm 3.5 ai and ais have an excellent reputation and you may consider that one, it is only 235 grams and 52mm filter. I do not own it and cannot show photos from it.
All this talk about the 55mm macro lenses had me thinking about my 55mm/3.5 Ai and wondering how it would perform on a medium format digital back. So I decided to take a quick run out during lunch to get away from the computer screen.
I was out walking on a nearby trail after work earlier in the week and saw some Christmas ferns coming out and wanted to get back and take some shots of them.
Well as you see in the first and last shots in the series below, you should go by your gut feeling when starting out.
In the first shot, I am heading out with camera and tripod in tow. Looking at the sky and wondering if this is really a good idea
By the time I got about 1/4 of the way in, the wind picked up and it started to sprinkle. So I abandoned the idea of going further to where I really wanted to go and left the tripod stowed. But I did grab two quick handheld shots on the way back out. After the 3rd shot in the series, the bottom dropped out and my trail walk quickly became a trail run
And in the last shot below, you can see where keeping a dog poop bag in you pack or pocket can sometimes pay off big time.
So nothing really to see here and posting to move the thread along, but was an interesting outing anyway. I will try again later.
GeorgeBo wrote:
All this talk about the 55mm macro lenses had me thinking about my 55mm/3.5 Ai and wondering how it would perform a medium format digital back. So I decided to to a quick run out during lunch to get away from the computer screen.
I was out walking on a nearby trail after work earlier in the week and saw some Christmas ferns coming out and wanted to get back and take some shots from them.
Well as you see in the first and last shots in the series below, you should go by your gut feeling when starting out.
In the first shot, I am heading out with camera and tripod in tow. Looking at the sky and wondering if this is really a good idea
By the time I got about 1/4 of the way in, the wind picked up and it started to sprinkle. So I abandoned the idea of going further to where I really wanted to go and left the tripod stowed. But I did grab two quick handheld shots on the way back out. After the 3rd shot in the series, the bottom dropped out and my trail walk quickly became a trail run
And in the last shot below, you can see where keeping a dog poopy bag in you pack or pocket can sometimes pay off big time.
So nothing really to see here and posting to move the thread along, but was an interesting outing anyway. I will try again later.
I think your experiment worked well, love the tree. Both the tree and the fern remind me of Simon Booth's photography. Glad your bag didn't have any "residue" in it.
