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Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 Review

Dec
16
2011
December 16, 2011
By 6 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the new Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 CX pancake lens, also known as “1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8″ that was announced on September 21, 2011 specifically for the new Nikon 1 system, together with three other lenses and the new Nikon V1 and J1 cameras. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8

The Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 is a consumer-grade pancake lens designed for the new Nikon 1 camera system. Designed to be an ideal companion for the compact Nikon J1 and V1 camera bodies, it is currently the smallest and the lightest lens from Nikon. With a fixed focal length of 10mm on the Nikon 1 CX sensor (2.7x crop factor), its coverage is equivalent to a 27mm lens in full-frame format.

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Nikon 1 10-30mm VR Review

Dec
13
2011
December 13, 2011
By 14 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the new Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens, also known as “1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6″ that was announced on September 21, 2011 specifically for the new Nikon 1 system, together with three other lenses and the new Nikon V1 and J1 cameras. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6

The Nikon 1 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 VR is a general-purpose consumer-grade lens designed for the new Nikon 1 camera system. It is bundled with the Nikon 1 V1 and Nikon 1 J1 cameras as a standard kit lens and cannot be purchased separately. With its focal length of 10-30mm on the Nikon 1 CX sensor (2.7x crop factor), its coverage is equivalent to a 27-81mm lens. The variable aperture of f/3.5-5.6 means that its maximum (largest) aperture changes between f/3.5 to f/5.6, depending on the focal length. It is a very lightweight lens, and similar to interchangeable lenses from other compact mirrorless camera manufacturers such as Olympus, the lens is collapsible, which also makes it quite compact for travel and transportation.

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Nikon 50mm f/1.4G Review

Nov
14
2011
November 14, 2011
By 89 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of one of my favorite prime lenses – the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G, which was announced in September of 2008. For many years the focal length of 50mm lenses was considered a “standard” or “normal” focal length, because it closely resembles the perspective of the human eye. These lenses were widely popular on film cameras and the focal length was ideal for portraiture and everyday photography. As digital SLRs and zoom lenses started taking over the market, popularity of 50mm primes also decreased. The smaller size of APS-C sensors made the field of view of 50mm lenses narrower, while the flexibility of zoom lenses and their low price drove the demand towards convenience. Now that full frame digital cameras are getting more and more affordable, the once forgotten 50mm lenses are regaining their popularity among many photographers. In this review, I will provide a thorough analysis of the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens, along with image samples and comparisons against other 50mm lenses from Nikon and Sigma.

Nikon 50mm f/1.4G AF-S

The Nikon 50mm f/1.4G is a professional-grade lens for enthusiasts and pros that need a high quality lens for portraiture, food and everyday photography. Its large aperture of f/1.4 is great for low-light photography and the shallow depth of field helps isolate subjects from the background, beautifully rendering background highlights, also known as bokeh.

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Nikon 40mm f/2.8G DX Review

Oct
22
2011
October 22, 2011
By 64 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the new Nikon 40mm f/2.8G DX macro / micro prime lens that was announced in July of 2011. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

Nikon 40mm f/2.8G DX

The Nikon 40mm f/2.8G DX, also known as “AF-S DX Micro-NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G” is a consumer-grade lens for photo enthusiasts that need an affordable macro lens with good performance characteristics. In the current line of macro lens offerings from Nikon, this lens comes at the lowest price point and shortest focal length. With the former being good news, the latter can be a problem in some situations, specifically when approaching subjects very closely (read more on this issue below). With the current great fast aperture prime lens line from Nikon such as Nikon 35mm f/1.8G and Nikon 50mm f/1.8G, one might wonder what the Nikon 40mm f/2.8G DX has to offer that the other primes cannot accomplish. How does it differ from other affordable primes? In this review, I will talk about the capabilities of the Nikon 40mm f/2.8G DX and provide a detailed report on its strengths and weaknesses, along with a summary of thoughts about the lens based on my two month experience with it.

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Nikon 400mm f/2.8G VR Review

Oct
10
2011
October 10, 2011
By 44 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the Nikon 400mm f/2.8G ED VR lens that was released in August of 2007, along with Nikon D3 and two other exotic super telephoto lenses. In this review, I will not only provide general information about the Nikon 400mm f/2.8 VR and its performance, but also how it works with all current Nikon teleconverters (TC-14E II, TC-17E II and TC-20E III) and how it compares to other telephoto lenses such as Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II, Nikon 200-400mm f/4G VR, Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S, Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II and Nikon 500mm f/4G VR. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear. The Nikon 500mm f/4G VR was kindly provided by Pro Photo Rental – a great lens rental company based out of Boulder, CO.

Nikon 400mm f/2.8G ED VR

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Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Review

Oct
3
2011
October 3, 2011
By 37 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM prime lens that was announced on March 18, 2008 for Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony and FourThirds DSLR cameras. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM

The Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM is a professional-grade lens for enthusiasts and pros that need a high quality lens for portraiture and everyday photography. Its large aperture of f/1.4 is great for low-light photography and the shallow depth of field helps isolate subjects from the background, beautifully rendering background highlights, also known as bokeh. Unlike cheaper DX lenses, the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 is designed to work on both APS-C / DX and full-frame / FX sensors from many current DSLR manufacturers, including Nikon and Canon. The lens rivals other fast 50mm primes such as the Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM and Nikon 50mm f/1.4G and with a price point of around $500, it is one of the few third party lenses that is actually more expensive than branded versions. Is the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 better than other Nikon 50mm primes? How does it perform wide open and when stopped down? How does it handle? In this review, I will do my best to answer these and other questions you may have and will show you samples from the lens, with comparisons against the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G and the new Nikon 50mm f/1.8G lenses.

Sigma Sample #10

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Nikon 50mm f/1.8G Review

Jul
31
2011
July 31, 2011
By 225 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the new, much anticipated Nikon 50mm f/1.8G prime lens that was announced in April of 2011. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

Nikon 50mm f/1.8G

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Nikon 24mm PC-E Review

Jul
2
2011
July 2, 2011
By 39 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of Nikon 24mm f/3.5D PC-E, a special purpose wide-angle “Perspective Control” lens designed for architectural, commercial and nature photography, also known as PC-E Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED. The lens was kindly provided by B&H – the largest photo reseller in the world that I use more than any other to buy my photography gear.

Nikon 24mm f/3.5D PC-E

The Nikon 24mm f/3.5D PC-E is a very specialized wide-angle lens specifically targeted at three groups of photographers – architecture photographers, landscape photographers and macro/product photographers. Architectural photographers often work with a lot of straight, often converging lines both indoors and outdoors and the “Perspective Control” or “Tilt-Shift” lenses (from this point on I will refer to them only as “tilt-shift”) give the ability to avoid the convergence of parallel lines by shifting the lens upwards or downwards. Landscape photographers need to be able to get everything in focus – from the closest foreground object to distant landscapes. While proper lens and camera techniques, along with good post-processing skills can help in getting sharp images for both foreground and background objects, normal lenses have certain limits landscape photographers have to work around with. For example, stopping down lenses beyond f/11 results in diffraction, which can impact the sharpness and overall quality of an image. With perspective control/tilt-shift lenses, landscape photographers can change the angle of the focus plane without having to increase aperture, putting both closest and furthest objects in focus. The same goes for commercial/product photographers that photograph jewelry and other items for product showcases – everything from the front to the rear of the object must often be in perfect focus. Again, stopping down does not always work and unless angles are changed and subject is on the same plane, there is no easy way to get everything sharp without focus-stacking images in post-processing software like Photoshop. By using tilt-shift lenses, photographers do not have to worry about lens aperture limitations and can achieve the desired effect with minimum effort. One other use that has been gaining popularity lately is to use tilt-shift lenses for portrait photography. Due to the ability to apply selective focus on a particular part of the image via lens tilting (also known as “anti-Scheimpflug“), portraits can appear more interesting and creative. Distant subjects can even appear “miniaturized”, although the effect can be easily reproduced in Photoshop through various plugins.

Sample #10

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Our Gear Page

Jun
30
2011
June 30, 2011
By 5 Comments

You might have noticed that the secondary navigation menu of our site now contains “Our Gear” page. I created it for four reasons: a) our readers constantly ask both Lola and I about what camera gear we use, b) I want to centralize all questions regarding camera gear to one single page, because replying to comments in many different articles is becoming unmanageable, c) some readers just want to see a quick review of a product rather than reading my long full camera and lens reviews and d) I can receive and test more gear when you buy through affiliate links on our site and “Our Gear” page contains links to our affiliates. Please bear in mind that the amount of money we receive from our affiliate program is very little – we typically give it back to our readers through our giveaways and various contests. That’s because we do not run any advertising and post very few links to external websites to not annoy our readers. Perhaps in the future, if the revenue from the links on our site grows, we might be able to use that money to pay for hosting and other expenses. As for now, I am just asking you guys to buy from our links to be able to keep the partnership with our affiliates and sponsors like B&H.

As for “Our Gear” page, while it has been there for several months now, I only had some text links to what we use, without much info on the gear. Today I updated the page with some short reviews of the camera gear we are using and finished the “Cameras”, “Camera Accessories”, “Lenses” and “Teleconverters” sections. I will soon update the page with a lot more content and provide more information and links to other tools we use, so please check back the page later.

If you have any questions about camera or computer gear, please ask them in the gear page rather than other articles. I will be checking this page more often and replying to your comments as soon as I can. Also, if you have been sending some case studies to me, please be patient, as I just have not had much time to work on them.

I am currently finishing up with the Nikon 24mm f/3.5D PC-E lens review and will soon start working on reviewing the new Nikon 50mm f/1.8G lens, along with the Nikon D5100 DSLR. Stay tuned!

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Nikon TC-20E III Review

Jun
20
2011
June 20, 2011
By 86 Comments

Overview

This is an in-depth review of the new Nikon TC-20E III teleconverter that was released in December of 2009, along with an updated version of the Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II lens. The Nikon TC-20E III is a major update to the existing Nikon TC-20E II teleconverter, sporting a brand new optical design with an aspherical element, which delivers better performance with many specialty telephoto lenses. The purpose of teleconverters is to increase the focal length of lenses, in other words to get closer to subjects, and the TC-20E III is the biggest and the longest teleconverter manufactured by Nikon – it doubles the focal length of a lens. While this teleconverter works with any professional Nikon lens that can take teleconverters, it is specifically designed to work with fast prime lenses with an aperture of f/2.8 and larger. The Nikon TC-20E III is targeted at sports, wildlife and other types of telephoto photography where the photographer cannot physically approach subjects.

Nikon TC-20E III

It was not easy to obtain the Nikon TC-20E III because of high demand/short supply and after waiting for a few weeks, I decided to just rent it for a couple of weeks instead. My objective was to try the Nikon TC-20E III specifically with the Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II and with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II to see how it truly performs in an outdoor environment when photographing nature. It is one thing to shoot test charts with a lens sitting on a tripod, and another to get out and do some real shooting. Some lenses look great on paper and on test charts, but cannot perform equally well when used in an outdoor environment, especially with fast-moving subjects like birds. The primary reason is autofocus, the performance of which depends on many different factors. Teleconverters generally negatively impact autofocus performance, due to a considerable loss of light and contrast and the 2x TC is the worst in this regard. Adding a teleconverter slows down lenses and the Nikon TC-20E III slows down by two full stops. What this means, is that when the teleconverter is mounted on an f/2.8 lens, it slows down to f/5.6 and as you may know, autofocus performance on small apertures beyond f/5.6 is unreliable even in broad daylight conditions. Nikon clearly points out that autofocus does not work beyond f/5.6, so if you have an f/4.0 lens, forget about autofocus – you will have to resort to manual focus.

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