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#1
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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 |
#2
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
"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 |
#3
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
"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 |
#4
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
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. |
#5
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
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. |
#6
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
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 |
#7
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
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 |
#8
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
"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 |
#9
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
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 |
#10
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Canon digital bodies and Nikon lenses
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. |
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