The Smoking Camera
New member
No doubt the Otus is special.
Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!
I agree Jack, beautiful bokeh but soft, what the hell was Nikon thinking?Joe,
Your image compositions and processing are stellar, and your eye for capturing expressions is excellent.
That out of the way, understand this comment is not about you or your images, it is about the performance of the lens only -- I hope you don't mind because the lens is new, expensive and as such draws a lot of attention: I see what appears to me as just plain soft -- images missing that sharp-edged glint, seen especially lacking on the speculars in the child's eyes. It almost appears as bad to my eyes as slight subject motion blur, or simply a poor lens. I'm sorry, just sharing what I see and it's not just your lens either. Jan posted an excellent composition and low light capture of a firetruck in the dedicated 58G thread, and I see the same lack of crisp detail -- and he was shooting at f2!
Sorry folks, I just don't see anything that turns my crank from this lens yet. In fact the only good thing I can say about it is I like the way it renders oof background highlights, and that's about it.
Sorry,
Wrong! It's very easy to make the photos above very, very sharp (try USM 70/0.5/0 on these photos), but very difficult and much more complicated to create the OOF background and the beautiful transitions during PP if the photos were taken with an inferior lens. In addition, USM can be run as a batch job in PS if large volumes are needed, while softening photos would have to be done individually for each photo.I agree Jack, beautiful bokeh but soft, what the hell was Nikon thinking?
If you have a sharp image you can make it soft but you can't make a soft image sharp
Hi Gary,You have captured lovely images of this little girl Joe. I for one don't have a talent for taking photos like these.
I have a question for those who have used the Nikon 50 f1.2 AIS lens....do you think it would produce images that are sharper at f1.4 or f2 than you've seen from the new 58/1.4 lens?
I'm thinking about getting a Nikon 50/1.2 AIS to use with my D700...until I can afford the Otus 55/1.4 and a replacement D800.
Gary