Please help me to verify if my Nikkor 24-70 is a good copy

Arcas · Jan 5, 2012

Hi Everyone,

i just received my copy of this lens that i made as a gift to myself for christmas. It's my very first lens of this price category, and since it's one that i hopefully still will be enjoying in 25 years from now, i want to make sure that i got a good copy of it.

I understand that all lenses have limitations, including premium ones like this, but i don't really know what is normal for a lens like this and what is not - and i don't really have anything to compare it to.

So i took sample shots at different apertures and focal lengths. In some cases, there is noticeable blur in the f/2.8 shot, whereas many reviews said that it would be tack sharp wide open. But then again these might be fixed by applying a bit of sharpening in lightroom.

Well...please just take a look and let me know if it looks "normal" to you. Especially the examples of 70mm would be important to me, as they seem to be significantly less sharp than the others.

I took all shots in RAW and just converted them to JPG, i did not apply any further corrections or sharpening. i've marked the focused area with a red rectangle in each shot (i focused using live view), so please mostly look there. The rest might be blurry due to shallow depth of field as the setup might not have been perfectly orthogonal.

I took them on a D90, so the corners that you see here would not actually be the extreme corners on full frame. The light conditions outside changed a bit during taking the photos, but for judging the sharpness that hopefully shouldn't matter.

The focus field of this lens is known not to be flat, so please only check out the marked area - the rest likely is out of focus.

24mm f/2.8 center focus looks perfect, no need to check anything out there

o hey tyler · Jan 5, 2012

Unless you tripped the shutter remotely, and had mirror lockup enabled, you really didn't do a particularly controlled test. Your shutter speeds are REALLY SLOW, so in the event that your mirror slap, or finger hits the shutter button, your camera is going to move.

You should try both of those things, even mirror lockup with a 2 second timer will work just fine. Personally, I'd go outside and test, or use a speedlight on your camera to achieve a faster shutter speed.

Arcas · Jan 5, 2012

Thanks for your reply! I did use a tripod, mirror lockup and remote release, so the shutter speeds shouldn't be an issue.

Destin · Jan 5, 2012

Arcas said:
Thanks for your reply! I did use a tripod, mirror lockup and remote release, so the shutter speeds shouldn't be an issue.

Consider investing in a sturdier tripod. There is CLEAR evidence of camera shake here, most noticeable in the 70 2.8 upper left focus shot.

See how the letters dont just look soft, they look like they are all slightly ghosted to the same direction? That's camera shake.

Destin · Jan 5, 2012

Destin said:
Arcas said:

Thanks for your reply! I did use a tripod, mirror lockup and remote release, so the shutter speeds shouldn't be an issue.

Click to expand...

Consider investing in a sturdier tripod. There is CLEAR evidence of camera shake here, most noticeable in the 70 2.8 upper left focus shot.

See how the letters dont just look soft, they look like they are all slightly ghosted to the same direction? That's camera shake.

Looking again I may be wrong. I think it's the fonts playing with me. But the areas you focused on look pretty freaking sharp to my eye. Enough that I'd say you got a good copy of the lens that isn't front or back focusing.

Arcas · Jan 5, 2012

Thanks for your reply, Destin!

Destin said:
Consider investing in a sturdier tripod. There is CLEAR evidence of camera shake here, most noticeable in the 70 2.8 upper left focus shot.

See how the letters dont just look soft, they look like they are all slightly ghosted to the same direction? That's camera shake.

At first i thought the same, but then the same effect would have to happen all over the image - but it doesn't. The letters on the CDs at the right do have a similar smear, but it goes in a different direction - it goes to the lower right in the upper left corner, and it goes to the left on the right side of the photo. In case of camera shake blur, they should go in the same direction, but they instead always go towards the center. That's something i'd rather expect of a change in focal length during the exposure (which most certainly didn't happen ;-)), or as an optical defect.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17267323/Posted/Flickr Nikkor 24 70 Lens Thread/DSC_5509.jpg