Opticallimits

This very beautiful weekend in autumn I took my old 14-24/2.8 Nikkor and the much less older Sigma 14/1.8 Art with me to try and see what happens to both in front- and sidelight. I knew the Nikkor is not good in handling flares, what i didn't know was, "is the Sigma although wider open, better in avoiding flares?"

 

It's no problem to provoke the Sigma showing bits of flare. These are just not as rainbow-colours as the one from the Nikkor.

 



 

This kind of flares I find hard to deal with in post production.

 



 

1 ½ stop faster and less issues at f/5.6, cool.

 

But that's only one bonus (and to be expected from a prime this size and weight)

 

The other is the combination "close-up, wide open"

 

... to be continued

 



 

This one was wide open at f/2

 

Here's a crop:

 



 

What I like with this kind of lenses is the possibility to show a hint of a lot of background and melt it away in nice blur, while something pops out of the picture just because it's much sharper than the rest.

 

Like this foliage - the colours would be enough

... and the third and last one

 



 

Again f/1.8

 



 

And the last one is a focus stack, handheld at f/2.5

 



 

It's not perfect, parts of it I should have cleaned better - but I was amazed that I just could sit next to the rail, keep the camera sort of steady and start a 30 frames focus stack.

      Nice shots through the leaves at sunset JoJu!.........

         

 

 

I will have to do a comparison with my Samyang 14mm F2.8 to see how the lens performs bokeh wise, as soon as my D750 comes back from Nikon for the shutter recall.....

 

   

 

    ...........though I will say that the third and fourth image bokeh look somewhat busy.....

Actually, bokeh is not a gaussian blurr to even out all nervousness 

 

It was a field with a lot of different plants and a lot more bees, so these were beesy to do nervous bokeh  :lol:

             Ah!!  got it....

 

                             .........busy bees............busy bokeh!    

Yeaaah, that's how we do in showbeeeeezness  ^_^

Some really nice shots, JoJu. I love wide open close up with ultrawides.

 

The 30 shot focus stack is a clear demonstration how useful is to have such gimmicks easily accessible from the camera body too. Now you know you can get away with a quick and dirty stack so you won't refrain from it the next time you see an opportunity. Good to know . 

I came home with 4 stacks: 10, 20, 30, 40* pictures each. That's the thing with unfinished (imo) software-options: A finished option would ask me "tap closest distance" ok "tap farest distance" - ok, "with aperture f/2.5 you need 28 shots. Push shutter release to start."

• No messing around with steps between 1 - 10, 
  
• freedom to close aperture and need less shots, 
  
• also to make the transition between out of foucs areas and first and last shot more smooth
  
• no need to tap start in the menu
  
• Helicon remote control can do this since 5 years, just saying...
  

 

All the menu options come in landscape orientation. Going to portrait orientation = turn head 90°. Yawn... Nikon, just look at PhaseOne, they do know their stuff.

 

But you're right, it's such an advantage to have this kind of DoF enlargement onboard.

 

*10 being not enough, I guessed 20 - also not enough, then I had the glorious idea to check the distance scale. With 30 shots, it ended up close to âˆž, but I did a 40 shot row just to be sure. 30 were enough. I think it took a bit too long to find out. Next year with Arsenal I gonna see if they have a better usability concept. At least, they merge the stack in-camera, if i want.

 

Thanks for the compliment, wide open at close distance still is not overly in use. It's worth to face the challenge of focusing.

Had made one just yesterday. Missed the critical focus though, should've stopped down slightly or actually checked the shot before eating the rest of the subject .

 

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This was a lucky shot that came out of nowhere. I was there, shooting some trees until my friend noticed what's on those trees. Took a bite, noticed how cute it looks, made a shot to send to the gf, noticed how good the shot turned out but only after subject was fully consumed.