Nikon 14-24 - Bad Images

How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

On Apr 3, 7:21*pm, frederick wrote:
How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? *I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. *It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.



Most photographers ARE average!

frederick wrote:
How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

Some more shots with that lens:
http://www.pbase.com/cameras/nikon/af_s_14_24_28g_ed
Random Nikkor AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED Samples from 479 available Photos
OK most are as you describe:
http://www.pbase.com/image/92961525

here's a few with some spark though:
fla
http://www.pbase.com/image/93893687
depth of field:
http://www.pbase.com/image/93432098
not depth of field:
http://www.pbase.com/rbfresno/image/91443035

This shows how it works trying to use such a wide angle to document a town:
http://www.pbase.com/dierk/los_llanos
-too many to sort out but probably some good stuff.

On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:58:36 GMT, Paul Furman
wrote:

frederick wrote:
How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

Some more shots with that lens:
http://www.pbase.com/cameras/nikon/af_s_14_24_28g_ed
Random Nikkor AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED Samples from 479 available Photos
OK most are as you describe:
http://www.pbase.com/image/92961525

here's a few with some spark though:
fla
http://www.pbase.com/image/93893687
depth of field:
http://www.pbase.com/image/93432098
not depth of field:
http://www.pbase.com/rbfresno/image/91443035

This shows how it works trying to use such a wide angle to document a town:
http://www.pbase.com/dierk/los_llanos
-too many to sort out but probably some good stuff.

Let's face it:
those water reflection artifacts in the foreground of
D3A_4710_06_07_08_09_tonemappedCapitol1.jpg
are HORRID.

It looks like someone put a match to a film slide and burned holes
through it.

Is that your equipment? Or the photographer? Or both? Or
post-processing? Whatever it is, lose it.

Lg

On 2008-04-03 18:21:09 -0700, frederick said:

How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

Most of the bad shots seem to lack a foreground element, or they are
simply devoid of an interesting subject, or they are shot in bad light,
or they try to make the lens shoot a wide landscape with a mountain in
the background and the mountain looks like a pimple or the sun looks
like a pinhole.

I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make
the same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak
Brownies and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject
because of an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with
a complete lack of understanding of perspective.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

C J Campbell wrote:

Most of the bad shots seem to lack a foreground element, or they are
simply devoid of an interesting subject, or they are shot in bad light,
or they try to make the lens shoot a wide landscape with a mountain in
the background and the mountain looks like a pimple or the sun looks
like a pinhole.

I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make
the same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak
Brownies and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject
because of an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with
a complete lack of understanding of perspective.


Eloquently - and accurately - put. Thank you.

On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 05:19:54 -0700, C J Campbell
wrote:

I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make
the same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak
Brownies and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject
because of an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with
a complete lack of understanding of perspective.

I've used my wide angle lens to take "snapshots" when the subject was
too big to fit in otherwise. Even though the example shots below
aren't particularly creative, they are "snapshots" that illustrate
what I mean. These are shots where my movement was constricted (i.e.,
I couldn't back up any further) but still wanted to get most of the
subject in the frame. Here's some shots at 12mm (the limit) where it
would have been nice to be able to go even wider because I just
couldn't quite get it all in:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...75266/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...88303/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...73146/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...87000/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...88102/sizes/o/

I never would have been able to get snapshots of those subjects
without a wide angle lens.

But then here's a couple at 24mm (the other limit) with the same lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...78214/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...93065/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...03771/sizes/o/

And a some "in betweens" with the same wide angle zoom lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...90441/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...73568/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...92273/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...84938/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...00495/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...85668/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sss_udv...04882/sizes/o/

There's plenty more "snapshots" with that lens on that flickr page.
Sure, none of them will make any "best of" pages for the Nikon 12-24mm
DX zoom lens. But then, I wouldn't have been able to capture the
essence of the subjects without a wide angle.

Steve

"Rita Berkowitz" wrote in message
...
frederick wrote:

How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging
rights? It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and
third-party uwa zoom lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for
po' folks like me - at least then a reasonable proportion of samples
posted were pretty good aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

We've discussed this before. You're forgetting most of the pictures you
see
are from diehard Canon shooters that just switched to Nikon. Nikon has
incorporated a "Canon Intermediate" mode into all their new dLRs that
allow
them to make the transition from Canon to Nikon as smoothly as possible
without the trauma of sensory overload caused by looking at crisp and
clear
images. When the Canon shooter's mind gets acclimated to Nikon's
incredible
images they can switch this feature off and start enjoying razor sharp
distortion free images that don't have that "plastic" look.


You don't half post some utter ****e. I vaguely remember you contributing
something semi-worthwhile once... what went wrong?

Rita Berkowitz wrote:

Nikon's incredible

You are, literally. Nikon isn't.

-Wolfgang

Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Rita Berkowitz wrote:

Nikon's incredible

You are, literally. Nikon isn't.

-Wolfgang
Actually, Nikon is an *outstanding* name in photography, both for
quality and reliability. So's Canon, of course, but this seems to be
something the holy war can't seem to accept as a reasonable statement.



P.