Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses

Dear group members:

I wanted to post some questions and first reviews on my new equipment to
obtain some feedback from you as well as have you share your own
experiences.

This past weekend I took my new Canon 1Ds Mark II out for the first real
serious shooting session and did some tests with two lenses I purchased
along with the camera. The lenses are the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM zoom and the
EF 24mm f/1.4L USM.

I am surprised with the low quality of the images I got from both lenses. I
am coming from film cameras and used two very similar lenses with my Nikon
Pro film body. My expectations for both Canon lenses were that they would
meet Nikon's quality since they are both "L" lenses and the price is about
the same but they don't even come close. My Nikon lenses are the 17-35mm
f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S Zoom-Nikkor and the 28mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor. The performance
on these lenses is just outstanding. The zoom is an all-around great lens
that I like to take with me to places where I may want to capture a large
area and may not have the room to stand back and embrace my landscape. The
28mm is a great lens for low light situations where I don't like to use
tripod and/or flash. They are both very sharp and even with the zoom opened
to 17mm coverage, there is the natural distortion found at this type of
focal length but the image is extremely sharp.

I thought it might be just my impression and decided to check a few sites. I
couldn't really find one that had objective tests with a specific technical
protocol for testing lenses, but found several sites with reviews from other
users and photographers such as Fred Miranda's site. It seems all reviews
corroborate my initial impressions about flaws with Canon lenses. The
16-35mm is claimed to be a disappointment but many who reviewed it and the
24 f/1.4 also has its flaws including lack of sharpness.

What is the deal with Canon lenses ? I can't believe I've just purchased a $
10,000 + digital set up with what should be the best high end digital SLR
system in the market and this is the type of photos I'm getting from these
lenses. My opinion about the camera couldn't be any better. It is indeed
very well built and a work of art in terms of engineering. The lenses, on
the other hand, don't seem to even come from the same manufacturer or to
have been designed with serious photographers in mind.

One of Fred Miranda's review compares the sharp quality of Nikkor's 28mm
lens to a Leica Vario-Elmar 21-35mm zoom lens. This is how good Nikon lenses
are.

The other option of lens I had in mind for my camera was the new EF 24-105mm
f/4L IS USM lens because of its versatility and the ability to use it as the
preferred lens for those photo shooting situations where you can only take
one lens with you. After searching for this lens I found out that it has
been pulled from the market because of some serious design flaws that caused
flaring and other problems.

Canon could follow Sony's approach. Since they realize they don't have the
expertise required to design and build truly professional grade lenses, they
went to Carl Zeiss. Now that Kyocera decided to discontinue its Contax line
of cameras and is only keeping the Yashica line, Canon could very easily
approach Carl Zeiss to produce its lenses as Kyocera did in the past.

It is hard to accept that after a $ 10,000+ purchase the results I'm
obtaining are not matching those I was able to obtain from my Nikon $ 2,000
film setup. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe I was under the wrong
impression when I presumed that Canon's lenses were of similar quality to
those made by Nikon.

The bottom line is that one company gives you great lenses but still can't
seem to develop a decent body with full frame sensor that doesn't change the
characteristics of all the lenses you invested your money on. The other
produces great bodies with outstanding resolution, full frame sensor and
great overall performance but the lenses are of average rather than
professional grade image quality.

It seems that digital photography is not ready for prime time yet. Close -
but no cigar !

I am sorry for the long post - just needed to share my frustrations.

Best regards,

Joseph

---

Dr. Joseph Chamberlain
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote in message
.. .
Dear group members:
I wanted to post some questions and first reviews on my new equipment to
obtain some feedback from you as well as have you share your own
experiences.
This past weekend I took my new Canon 1Ds Mark II out for the first real
serious shooting session and did some tests with two lenses I purchased
along with the camera. The lenses are the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM zoom and
the
EF 24mm f/1.4L USM.
I am surprised with the low quality of the images I got from both lenses.
I
am coming from film cameras and used two very similar lenses with my Nikon
Pro film body.

And what post processing did you do? Did you shoot RAW, jpeg or both?

--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
http://www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm

"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote:
Dear group members:

I wanted to post some questions and first reviews on my new equipment to
obtain some feedback from you as well as have you share your own
experiences.

This past weekend I took my new Canon 1Ds Mark II out for the first real
serious shooting session and did some tests with two lenses I purchased
along with the camera. The lenses are the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM zoom and
the
EF 24mm f/1.4L USM.

I am surprised with the low quality of the images I got from both lenses.
I
am coming from film cameras and used two very similar lenses with my Nikon
Pro film body. My expectations for both Canon lenses were that they would
meet Nikon's quality since they are both "L" lenses and the price is about
the same but they don't even come close. My Nikon lenses are the 17-35mm
f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S Zoom-Nikkor and the 28mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor. The
performance
on these lenses is just outstanding. The zoom is an all-around great lens
that I like to take with me to places where I may want to capture a large
area and may not have the room to stand back and embrace my landscape. The
28mm is a great lens for low light situations where I don't like to use
tripod and/or flash. They are both very sharp and even with the zoom
opened
to 17mm coverage, there is the natural distortion found at this type of
focal length but the image is extremely sharp.

Are you comparing apples to apples? Shoot the same image, same f stop, on
both the 1Dsmk2 and a Nikon _film_ body, and print both at 13x19. Then tell
us which is sharper.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Joseph Chamberlain, DDS just lathers on that FUD:

[... blah blah blah ...]

Your entire shaggy dog story this time is just a re-hash of recent
USENET posting by the well known FUDster fruitcakes that haunt this
forum. This strongly suggests that you are a sock-puppet of one of
these fruitcakes, or, failing that, intellectually indistinguishable
from such.

My advice to you: if your story is true, you are either (a) a
photographic incompetent, or (b) clearly displeased with your
equipment. In either case, you are advised to sell the equipment. You
don't need us to hold your hand, or to validate this decision for you.
(What kind of a doctor are you, anyways?)

And if your story is _not_ true (sadly, the likely scenario):

It seems that digital photography is not ready for prime time yet. Close -
but no cigar !

.... then please feel free to drop dead, FUDster. Again, in this case,
there is no need for you to seek permission for this activity.

David J. Littleboy wrote:

Are you comparing apples to apples?

Does he even own the apple? Plausibility is being stretched far past
the breaking point with this "Doctor" and his rantings.

On 11/8/05 4:36 PM, in article , "Malcolm
Stewart" wrote:

And what post processing did you do? Did you shoot RAW, jpeg or both?

Malcom:

I have done almost no post processing. Images were taken as RAW (only; no
JPEG) and then opened in Camera Raw hosted by Bridge (Adobe's latest CS2).
Nothing was done in Camera Raw and all default values remained (the latest
version of Camera Raw comes with auto values as the default) as were. In
essence, there was no post processing done.

The problems I mentioned relate to image quality primarily around the
periphery (edge sharpness). The problems is more pronounced with 16-35mm as
should be expected.

Best regards,

Joseph

---

Dr. Joseph Chamberlain
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

On 11/8/05 5:02 PM, in article , "David J.
Littleboy" wrote:


Are you comparing apples to apples? Shoot the same image, same f stop, on
both the 1Dsmk2 and a Nikon _film_ body, and print both at 13x19. Then tell
us which is sharper.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David:

Thank you for the suggestion.

I believe I am. I not referring to issues that could vary from one system to
the other (film x digital).

The shots I took were taken both handheld and with a tripod. I varied the
aperture from minimum to maximum as a test to see how that would impact
depth of field. The problem I am seeing is a lot of distortion around the
edges, particularly on the 16-35mm when the lens is at its maximum angle of
coverage (16mm). But it in fact starts to become pronounced as soon as I
reach 24mm and start moving wider.

I didn't have this type of problem with the Nikkor 17-35mm. There was the
natural distortion to be expected mostly at the 17mm end of the zoom range.
But it was within acceptable limits. I am finding the two lenses to be quite
different.

I am going to consider your suggestion and run some more tests including the
prints from both lens. But trust me when I say that the difference between
these two groups of lenses is quite dramatic. Hopefully this will be related
to these two lenses only and not to others I still intend to purchase for my
new system.

Thank you again for the feedback.

Best regards,

Joseph

---

Dr. Joseph Chamberlain
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote:

The problems I mentioned relate to image quality primarily around the
periphery (edge sharpness). The problems is more pronounced with 16-35mm
as
should be expected.

FWIW, for subjects at infinity, my copy of the 17-40 at 17mm needs to be
stopped down to f/11 to make the corners sharp. At 24mm, the corners are
good by f/5.6 and excellent at f/8.

I've never seen an MTF chart for a wide angle lens that wasn't a disaster at
the corners wide open. Even the Mamiya 7 43 and 65mm (21 and 35mm equiv)
lenses sharpen up noticeably from wide open (which isn't very wide) to f/8.

http://www.photodo.com/nav/prodindex.html

(Click Mamiya and then the lenses, and then scroll down to see the MTF
charts.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

I think you are new to digital photography and sorry to say that. Have you
open up a Nikon raw image before processing? It may be worst than you'd
described and I'd seen that. After tweaking the raws, both Nikon and Canon
images look great but I like Canon color better because it is more natural.
There are so many things to tweak:

1. Color temperature (good color)
2. Exposure (good density)
3. Level (No clipping of highlight and shadow)
4. Sharpening (appropriate sharpness)
5. Color depth (good tonal range)

It is analogous to shooting negative film. Will you judge on the quality
based on a 4R machine print? I'll give critique only after getting the best
out from the negative by custom printing in the darkroom. It is better for
you to shoot in jpeg at this moment or you can extract a jpeg file from the
raw to see a better result. Don't worry about your investments, you'd chosen
a right choice.

"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote in message
.. .
On 11/8/05 4:36 PM, in article , "Malcolm
Stewart" wrote:

And what post processing did you do? Did you shoot RAW, jpeg or both?

Malcom:

I have done almost no post processing. Images were taken as RAW (only; no
JPEG) and then opened in Camera Raw hosted by Bridge (Adobe's latest CS2).
Nothing was done in Camera Raw and all default values remained (the latest
version of Camera Raw comes with auto values as the default) as were. In
essence, there was no post processing done.

The problems I mentioned relate to image quality primarily around the
periphery (edge sharpness). The problems is more pronounced with 16-35mm
as
should be expected.

Best regards,

Joseph

---

Dr. Joseph Chamberlain
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

David J. Littleboy wrote:


Are you comparing apples to apples? Shoot the same image, same f stop, on
both the 1Dsmk2 and a Nikon _film_ body, and print both at 13x19. Then tell
us which is sharper.

Or (easier) mount the Nikon lens on the Canon camera. The adapter
isn't so very expensive. I doubt there will be much difference.

Besides, why all this fretting about distortion? That's one of the
easiest things to fix in post.

Andrew.