Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
Just saw this posted on Nikon rumors . 75 million lenses made to date. Figure 1 percent are bad and that's a low number 750,000k. Wow
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Heads together please guys...
- Thread starter tashley
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Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
Problem is people complain about mass production than 3 seconds later complain about a small manufacture not getting product, service or whatever. Yea I know we get the screws. Lol
Oamkumar
Member
The problem is clearly visible in the picture and wonder why Nikon service people could not figure it out. Have you tried to focus the right hand side manually?
I felt Nikon do not train the service people properly. I had a bad experience. I had oil spill on the sensor in my D800E and contacted the authorized service centre at kochi - India. The Service rep looked at the image and said the spill is not on the sensor but on the lens. I asked him, If it is on the lens, how can it be so sharp edges and all other lenses having the same problem? Then he tried to clean the sensor and the oil was smeared all over the sensor. It was visible on the picture. I told him about that and he asked me to bring the cam next day. I was afried to give the cam to the same guy again, so I went to a friend of mine who runs a camera service centre and done a sensor cleaning. Now it's fine.
I felt Nikon do not train the service people properly. I had a bad experience. I had oil spill on the sensor in my D800E and contacted the authorized service centre at kochi - India. The Service rep looked at the image and said the spill is not on the sensor but on the lens. I asked him, If it is on the lens, how can it be so sharp edges and all other lenses having the same problem? Then he tried to clean the sensor and the oil was smeared all over the sensor. It was visible on the picture. I told him about that and he asked me to bring the cam next day. I was afried to give the cam to the same guy again, so I went to a friend of mine who runs a camera service centre and done a sensor cleaning. Now it's fine.
Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
Old rules apply buy 3 test all send back 2 keep the good one. It's been a Nikon , canon tune for so long now.
Well, have you tried to take a picture like they (Nikon service) do?
A white wall? A brick wall?
I bet there will be no visible distortion like that shown in the picture in the main post.
So what shall they find?
So, try it and post the pictures, maybe at several focal length.
A white wall? A brick wall?
I bet there will be no visible distortion like that shown in the picture in the main post.
So what shall they find?
So, try it and post the pictures, maybe at several focal length.
jonoslack
Active member
Nothing like enough :ROTFL:
I remember someone saying that they had a whole pallet of lenses delivered to choose the best one (one of those Nikon gurus - Thom Hogan? no Scandinavian guy? - can't remember his name)
I think it was the old 17-35 f2.8.
Costly to do that with the Leica 50 Apo Asph!
AreBee
Member
Where in the frame did you acquire focus?
If you look at the distant buildings you can tell from perspective that you did not shoot perpendicular to the quay. Therefore, the zone of DOF will not be parallel to the quay, and sharpness will be equal on the LHS and RHS only at an unequal distance from the camera.
DOF at f/5.6 should be sufficient to envelop the buildings, but I dare say it depends on where you acquired focus, hence my question.
For what it's worth, I doubt this is the explanation for the issue, but I figure it's worth mentioning.
AreBee
Member
Bjørn Rørslett
jonoslack
Active member
That's the one - Great guy, I used to read him avidly - I think (but I'm not sure) that it was him with the pallet of lenses!
If they produce that amount of lenses why can´t they simply take that one back and give a new one? They can resell it as refurbished again. I believe it wouldn´t matter that much for them.
I agree with you. We have that discussion here a lot. "All is too expensive, we have to save our money...", bla bla bla... but when they come back from shopping they complain about how bad things are. But in the first run they all were proud about how less money they have spent...
jonoslack
Active member
In my experience that's exactly what they do - cheerfully and without complaint
Shashin
Well-known member
It matters a great deal. Margins are thin and returns are costly. Just check about any of these manufacturers annual reports, this is not a great business for profits. Which is why many of these companies sell other products that make them money. And if you think these companies will stand a division that can keep losing money, go look for a Contax, Minolta, Konica, or Bronica camera at B&H that are not in the used section.
tashley
Subscriber Member
Actually, it doesn't matter: I've shot that scene a thousand times with tens of lenses and at 35mm and focussed dead centre, you can afford to be a little off with the perpendicular. In fact this shot was made as part of a series with several other cameras, including the RX1, all on the same tripod at all at f5.6 and the tripod and head were entirely static throughout. The other shots were all perfect though of course only the rx1 was full frame 35mm. The DOF has slight lack of perpendicular perfection covered. I was leaving on a trip so shot this lens only three or four frames but it looks just like the other copies of the lens on this and other d800 bodies. I severely doubt that every scene I ever shot with this one lens only has been off perpendicular by just enough to make the RHS always weaker... But in fact I do plan to run some more extensive tests before getting back to Nikon, when I get home. I know what the results will be though!
I'm probably the least knowledgeable member answering this topic, but just can't help myself. Could it be just that the manufacturing tolerances achievable with a product like prosumer lenses today are so wide that a camera like your 36 megapixel Nikon is bound to show where the lens begins to fail. It's within accepted tolerances at Nikon and they're happy. It's not what you expect and you're not happy. Slight decentering on both lenses is my guess.
I'm a bit later to the party (having just seen this thread)...but Tim, I've encountered this more times in the last 35 years than I care to remember. It's especially prevelent with zooms, whereby a slight change in focusing distance, focal length or combination of the two can result in a shift of which side is sharper than the other or some other easily recognized anomoly. It's usually not in the design of the particular lens as other samples will behave differently. As stated by others, there are moving groups of elements which have varing degrees of shifting around and each resin poured aspherical element thats contained in the design of the lens, will almost always have different optical properties than the next.
The best one can generally do is test multiple samples and hope that one comes close to performing near the ideal level that the manufacturer had in mind when first designing the lens. Depending on the marketing level of lens (price, intended target group etc.) as well as the complexity of the design, factors such as these and more will often have an impact on just how much sample to sample variability is found.
*** I'll mention one other thing. Often when one side of the frame is softer than another with regards to a given sample of lens...how much the manufacture's service department can correct the issue greatly depends on what the actual problem is causing such asymetry. There is a limit what they can do/adjust short of providing another sample. I once even had a pricey (for that time) a Pentax 15mm f3.5 SMCT lens which was at the forefront of optical technology at the time of manufacturer. One side of the frame was serverely distorted and blurred. It was sent back to Japan twice, and the best they were able to do, is eliminate about 50% of the blurriness/distortion. I suspect they didn't want to switch out single elements at a time to correct issue, but instead adjusted the cams to the extent they could. They ultimately realized another sample was in order.
Dave (D&A)
The best one can generally do is test multiple samples and hope that one comes close to performing near the ideal level that the manufacturer had in mind when first designing the lens. Depending on the marketing level of lens (price, intended target group etc.) as well as the complexity of the design, factors such as these and more will often have an impact on just how much sample to sample variability is found.
*** I'll mention one other thing. Often when one side of the frame is softer than another with regards to a given sample of lens...how much the manufacture's service department can correct the issue greatly depends on what the actual problem is causing such asymetry. There is a limit what they can do/adjust short of providing another sample. I once even had a pricey (for that time) a Pentax 15mm f3.5 SMCT lens which was at the forefront of optical technology at the time of manufacturer. One side of the frame was serverely distorted and blurred. It was sent back to Japan twice, and the best they were able to do, is eliminate about 50% of the blurriness/distortion. I suspect they didn't want to switch out single elements at a time to correct issue, but instead adjusted the cams to the extent they could. They ultimately realized another sample was in order.
Dave (D&A)
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Steen
Senior Subscriber Member
jokes apart
In this case it is not the customer being nitpicky, the frame represents a clear case and any photography enthusiast or brand representative would immediately be able to zoom into the frame and see that there's something wrong on the right side.
If the Nikon service folks claim otherwise, they are either lying or they are incompetent.
Going back to film has taught me that resolution and sharpness isn't everything, but I wouldn't want to shoot a lens with such a clearly asymmetric behavior or I would find myself spending far too much time looking for it.
As it doesn't show with other lenses we can rule out any sensor or mount misalignment.
It has to be either (1) the lens design or (2) the two specific samples of the lens.
(1) So do we have some other owners of this lens who would be willing to shoot a similar target at the same focal length and aperture, just to find out if it's the lens design ?
(2) And if it is not the design I would definitely ask Nikon to take the lens back and then try to buy a good copy via the internet so that I could easily return any bad sample without further explanation.
... any other owners of the latest 24-120mm ?
.
In this case it is not the customer being nitpicky, the frame represents a clear case and any photography enthusiast or brand representative would immediately be able to zoom into the frame and see that there's something wrong on the right side.
If the Nikon service folks claim otherwise, they are either lying or they are incompetent.
Going back to film has taught me that resolution and sharpness isn't everything, but I wouldn't want to shoot a lens with such a clearly asymmetric behavior or I would find myself spending far too much time looking for it.
As it doesn't show with other lenses we can rule out any sensor or mount misalignment.
It has to be either (1) the lens design or (2) the two specific samples of the lens.
(1) So do we have some other owners of this lens who would be willing to shoot a similar target at the same focal length and aperture, just to find out if it's the lens design ?
(2) And if it is not the design I would definitely ask Nikon to take the lens back and then try to buy a good copy via the internet so that I could easily return any bad sample without further explanation.
... any other owners of the latest 24-120mm ?
.
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I'm sorry, I didn't want to give that impression. My point was that the manufacturer may well be satisfied with larger tolerances than their customers.