A decent wide for landscapes

[Jack]

Exactly Bob , I felt no guilt at all twisting your arm on 429 dollars. ROTFLMAO

Actually I am pretty sure it was me who put him over the top LOLOLOLOL!!!

Seriously, for $429, the little Samyang is STELLAR! Kind of cheapish build quality and distorts like crazy, but PT Lens corrects it and focus action is nice and smooth. It is surprisingly sharp even wide open in the corners, and by f5.6, it is pretty freaking sharp corner to corner. Seriously great little lens for the coin.

 

[Jack]

Tim,

I found my 24PC-E better than the 24/1.4G I compared it to in the corners, and my 24PC is not perfect there. So my .02 would be go for the 25/2 ZF.2 since you'll probably have better luck overall...

FWIW/

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Actually I am pretty sure it was me who put him over the top LOLOLOLOL!!!

Seriously, for $429, the little Samyang is STELLAR! Kind of cheapish build quality and distorts like crazy, but PT Lens corrects it and focus action is nice and smooth. It is surprisingly sharp even wide open in the corners, and by f5.6, it is pretty freaking sharp corner to corner. Seriously great little lens for the coin.

Yea but who twisted your arm. ROTFLMAO

 

[Guy Mancuso]

You have to be careful here, as I understand it, Live View on Nikon is What you see, is what you get. So in low light you may have to open up the lens a good bit to focus, and get around the nonbuffered noise that tends to show up. So example in low light I will open up the 24mm all the way or to at least 1.8 as it makes a huge difference in ability to focus, but I know that for the shot, I need to be at F6.3, so here you may get some focus shifting if the lens has the problem. If you try the other angle, staying at F6.3 and then dialing down the shutter speed to where you get enough light to foucs, it's again hard as the live view is reacting to the slower shutter speeds. At least this is what I have found in practice. In normal light the Nikon solution seems better to me now as I like the what you see is what you get.

Here is where Canon figured out a way to buffer out the noise in the lower light focusing, i.e. late at night, early morning etc. You can have exposure problems here too if you don't look at the metering display as the live view shows most times even exposure even if your current settings are not. But again it's a bit easier to me for the night work, and lower light work.

I really never realized all the benefits to liveview for focus until I started working with Nikon where it seems to be very critical at times.

Paul

Paul good trick here get off AF mode go to manual mode and stop down to working than just open shutter dial until you start seeing your image. This way you can stay on working aperture. Okay you do need some light for sure and in low light it maybe really freaking hard to see. Interesting I had my 18mm on with a 7 stop ND filter which you cant see through but I went down to 25 seconds in daylight and i could see perfectly at my working aperture. But yes it does have its limits for sure as you mentioned but have to say this is pretty damn cool.

 

[tashley]

Tim,

I found my 24PC-E better than the 24/1.4G I compared it to in the corners, and my 24PC is not perfect there. So my .02 would be go for the 25/2 ZF.2 since you'll probably have better luck overall...

FWIW/

Interesting... I can't work out if I have an indifferent copy or poor technique! If I choose a hillside about 3/4 mile away and focus using live view at F5.6, 8 or 11, I can get the centre in focus or the edges in focus, but not both at the same time, though when the centre is in focus, the near foreground on the left and right will also be in focus but the horizon line at the edges won't be. Grrr! Methinks this is classic field curvature. I am sure that if I go and do a real controlled experiment on that hillside at all main apertures and with careful focus bracketing, I will find a way but really, I want a flatter field lens with less guesswork involved!

 

[robsteve]

Is the Bower 14mm the same as the Samyang? They look like the same lens. When did camera gear get as cheap in Canada as it is in the USA?

BOWER 14MM F2.8 WIDE ANGLE LENS NIKON SLY1428N

 

[danielmoore]

Yes. Samyang is AKA Rokinon, Pro Optic and others. And speaking of decent wides, we may have another from Samyang within a couple months, the 24 T/S. Wouldn't that be nice.

 

[Jack]

Yea but who twisted your arm. ROTFLMAO

Good point, touché!

 

[BenH]

I did a double take on this one Guy. I am at Zion now and the first outing brought me to the site of this tree. It was just begging to be photographed. I will try and post one of mine on the Fun with Nikon thread.

Ben

Yea I trust there opinions but results are what counts and they seem very good.

Here are some Zeiss 25mm F2 lens shots

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Love to see them.

 

[johnnygoesdigital]

Why not just shoot with hyper focal technique and be done with live view? Wide angle landscapes are not the best subject for live view IMO.

 

[tashley]

Hyperfocal doesn't work with distant landscapes and lenses with field curvature. Used it on MF with Schneider 35XL very happily but any glass with FC on the d800 is a pig if you want distant centre and edges sharp. Depending on shape of subject, distance, degree of FC and aperture there may or may not be a focus setting that works but it's unlikely to be found by shooting blind!

 

[johnnygoesdigital]

Good points, I've been using hyper focal with my 58XL and a viewfinder (film) and always achieve good DOF across the frame. Wavy field curvature can be interesting on the D800, but helps if you know the lenses sweet spot. And then it's a matter of placing the most important subject matter in that sharp area and going from there. Perhaps these new designs will put an emphasis on more flatter FC, as sometimes the lens with the crappy MTF, do better on a shoot location.

 

[tashley]

I find with my 28mm F1.8G that the best approach with far landscape is to set the camera to F8 and then to focus using live view at the far left or right of the frame... this pushes the forward-curving plane of focus backwards, bringing the edges into focus but keeping the centre good too. It's boring but it works!

 

[Jack]

To be honest, I've found that most lens anomalies and image softness we can easily see at 100% view with 30, 40, 60 and 80MP cameras rarely shows up as significant enough to be deleterious to even a large print.

Stated differently, from an academic POV I totally understand. Chasing image perfection is fine and can even be fun, but there is definitely a point where it gets in the way of creating art; and my art improved significantly when I let it go.

 

[robsteve]

I came to the conclusion years ago that with digital it is more important that you get the lens focusing at infinity properly and let the DOF cover the closer stuff. The rational is that the very fine details off in infinity like the leaves of the trees on the mountainside will not be in focus enough for the sharpening actions to make them any more in focus.

I am referring to general big picture landscape photos with normal wides, not superwide shots with driftwood in the foreground or similar shots.

I haven't done enough shooting with the D800E yet to see if it still applies, but basically if you want something critically in focus, you need to focus on it and not rely on DOF.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

For me it's just to natural to actually focus a lens. Just part of the whole process. Besides I trust very little in guessing at things. I'm old school and mostly everything I do is usually on manual and also I do not like a lot of automation when shooting. It's a control thing I guess but I never stress over it either, I'm out to create art so I do like to enjoy it. For instance live view right now is fun for me as it is different since it is something I never really had in a cam. I shot in Zion pretty much in live view the whole time. I actually got a kick out of using it. For me I always like new challenges in photography as it keeps me from burning out to often. After 36 years you need to keep yourself fresh and not get into patterns or boredom really sets in. As a Pro that is like death. I also like to nail things down and not second guess myself.

 

[tashley]

I get that - and for 90% of my work it doesn't matter a jot: in fact I often prefer to have softness over much and sometimes all of an image. But hanging on my wall, delivered yesterday, is a 1.5 x 2m Burtynsky and it is sharp edge to edge, as is a 1 x 1.3m shot of my own hanging nearby... for some kinds of image, especially when you are charging a lot and printing very large, extreme resolution is part of the image and is part of the appeal to those willing to pay up! So whilst I am very happy using a variety of optics with varying characteristics, I want, for wide, normal, portrait and tele, lenses that let me make (from the D800) images a metre on the long side and possibly larger. It is do-able but if it doesn't look good enough at 50% on a 100ppi screen, it won't look good enough in print...

 

[tashley]

Just an update: I ordered the Zeiss 21mm f2.8 because I thought that given the 28 f1.8G I have already, and that with careful focussing at F8 (focus using live view on the extreme edge of the lens on a far scene element) I can get so close to what I need that with a small local sharpening brush on the side at low level, it's 'good enough', I would go for a notably different focal length. The 21 2.8 has a good if not perfect reputation on the D800 and it's a FOV I like for certain kinds of landscape so, I'll 'suck it and see'.

Thanks for all the advice and thoughts during the process. I will let you all know how it goes.

EDIT: Truly this is a New Glass Piñata: I just ordered the Samyang 14 too. I looks too much fun to resist!

 

[D&A]

I came to the conclusion years ago that with digital it is more important that you get the lens focusing at infinity properly and let the DOF cover the closer stuff. The rational is that the very fine details off in infinity like the leaves of the trees on the mountainside will not be in focus enough for the sharpening actions to make them any more in focus.

I am referring to general big picture landscape photos with normal wides, not superwide shots with driftwood in the foreground or similar shots.

With regards to what you mentioned above, most assume that if you get a lens to focus correctly at or near minimum distance (especially across most of the frame), then focus at longer distances will be covered, since the depth of field is greater at longer distances. It doesn't though always work this way, especially with regards to certain lenses. If a wide angle lens has quite noticable/extreme field curvature, then achieving edge to edge sharpness in a distant tree lined landscape (for example) will often be difficult unless lens is well stopped down. So personally I find it can often be dependent on the optical characteristics of a given lens and trying to compensate/adjust for its characteristics. Sometimes compromises have to be made when shooting certain subjects with regards to these lenses.

Dave (D&A)