I do not know much about lens design. I went through all existing Nikon lenses and could not find any similarities. Of course such images are not difficult to be photoshopped.
Those are supposed to be the lens constructions for the upcoming Nikon 24mm f/1.4, Nikon 35mm f/1.4 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses:
Nikon 24mm f/1.4
Nikon 35mm f/1.4
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8
Click on the link for more:
For reference/comparisson, here are the corresponding Nikon lenses from the current line-up:
Current model Nikon 24mm f/2.8 AF
Current model Nikkor 35mm f/2D AF
Current Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 model
What do you guys think? Do those lens designs make sense from technical perspective?
NR probability rating: 70%
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109 Comments
My Leica days I shot with M and R bodies. But about 80 percent of what I shot was with the 35mm 1.4 Åspheric. Unbelievable lens.
A Nikkor 35 mm 1.4 would be my #1 investment. I will order on the day it’s announced. I already have every mm covered from 14 to 200 at 2.8. So I would go with the 35 first. I have a 24mm 1.4 Canon at work and find it great, but a bit wide for my shooting style with the 1Ds Mark II and 5D Mark II.
… waiting for a AF-S 24mm f:1.4G such a long time…
+1
I think you might mean 70-200 2.8 although I wouldn’t mind having a go with a 70-200 1.4
you would mind after going with it for less than a minute though
yes, I corrected it – sorry
35 f/1.4 DX with better bokeh than that 1.8 version would be nice…. FX prob too large and heavy.
Not at all. The AI-S 35/1.4 is a neat little 52mm thing
OK, thanks – didn’t know about that. Well, let’s hope then. The “-S” shouldn’t take that much space…
Cheers,
Martin
The Nikon world has been waiting for updated the wide, prime FX line for a while (20mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm).
Would be nice to see some updates in that area.
If a new 70-200 isn’t announced in 2009, I’d be shocked.
I’m missing two ED-elements in the front group of the 70-200 zoom, CA-correction is less optimal with design like this. In my opinion it’sfake. There is also no indication of a super-ED-element in the frontgroup like the AFS-200 F/2 ED VR .
Ok, I’ll bite, it’s “supposed to be”, not “suppose to be”, and as mentioned earlier, that’d best be a 70-200 f/2.8 not 1.4….though if they miraculously squeezed out another 2 stops with some special ‘jesus glass’ I wouldn’t complain!
I would not mind a few pieces of jesus glass either.
Could you imagine trying to patent “Jesus Glass”? Lol, that made me smile this morning. I wonder if the lens has an etheral glow…
Yeah, but, you’d probably have to sacrifice a lot to get a lens with ‘Jesus Glass’ in it.
And it would be expensive too. Any lens with “Jesus Glass” would cost 30 pieces of Silver.
Well, the Jesus glass would be fine, you just have to waste one hour of your weekend every Sunday to shoot with it.
No miracle glass would create such a thing.
a 70-200/1.4 would have to be a HUGE thing about 2x heavier than the 200/2. Even with 100% transmission glass.
The glass itself doesn’t matter, this is a size question, 200mm at 1.4 is a 14cm opening, v.s the 7cm on the f/2.8 version… it is about 2x in a linear measurement, which is equivalent to a 8x diference in weght!!! Taking the current 70-200 as an example, the f/1.4 version would weight 11.7kg!!!
it depends on where diaphragm is, can be (and usually is) smaller then if it would be in front of the lens. reason why fast glass is big is mainly because it is simpler to make it good with big glass.
optics is nice science
but if you make it smaller you negate part of the short DoF effects, and it is more complicated to control f-stop accuracy and image quality, and you don’t want to compromise that in such a PRO lens.
DOF level have nothing to do with used glass or optics, it’s quality (bokeh) yes, but not the level.
Actually not that many compromises need to be, it just makes no sense. Glass is now lot better then in old days, there is however problem that you can have:
1) affordable
2) good
3) reasonably sized
pick two
The size of the front element has nothing to do with where the diaphragm is. A 200mm f/1.4 lens needs a front element that is AT LEAST 200/1.4 (=143mm) in diameter.
my editor has the day off again…
A 1.4 70-200 ? I wish ! If that ever happened, it would be a huge/heavy monster lens considering the size of the current 200mm 2.0VR. Will settle for a new 85 1.4 & 135 2.0.
at least the 70-200 blueprint is different from the current one:
http://www.microglobe.co.uk/cimages/Nikon_70-200mm_lensconstruction.JPG
I doubt the 35mm. The current FX AF 35mm is the onlyone faster then 2.8, and some people who got the DX 35mm might be pissed, as they would rather have invested in a new 35mm FX design than in a DX.
The 24mm seems to be a lot more needed. There isn’t really anything fast out there in this field. A lot of my co workers still carry the AI-S 24mm f/2 with them, because it’s faster than the AF version, and focusing is not that critical at 24mm.
I really hope the 24mm is not a hoax.
for me DX format is fine
only the qulity of the 1.8 is not so fine.
“people who got the DX 35mm might be pissed”
ha ha let them be pissed. they deserve it for buying DX lenses
its a $200 lens I think they can deal with it. They could probably sell it for what they paid.
On the other hand, I’ve had the 35mm 1.8 since the day it arrived in the shops in Norway. And been able to shoot with it from day one. If I had been waiting for the 35mm 1.4, I wouldn’t have had a normal prime at all.
The price is also a real issue. $199 is no problem, $399 or more and I have to tell the wife…
An FX 35/1.4 AF-S would be at least $1200. Why would someone who paid $200 for a 35/1.8 be upset about that? If you can afford the former, why would you care about $200 to have had the 35/1.8 in the intervening year?
Unless they’re from a reliable source (Notice NR admin likelyhood is 70%) I wouldn’t put much weight behind these – as mentioned easily faked.
Although a strange thing to try to fake.
those are from a new source, that’s why the rating is only at 70%
Ah – I was suggesting that 70% was relatively high…
The correct thing to do would be to measure success rates from the past for different sources and base your future predictions on this.
So if new sources have only been 10% accurate in the past then this should be given a 10% likelihood. You could even condition your likelihood based on the type of evidence (hearsay, photo, diagram, text) provided with the rumor.
A little knowledge of statistics and an excel spreadsheet would be all you need
Ps. Yes, I know this approach has been rejected in the past, by NR admin… but I think it’s still worth trying.
The lens profile is different for this “new” 70-200 than the current 70-200. Smoother edges, particularly near front of the barrel where the focus ring is.
Also note that the front elements are not using ED glass (but more of the rear elements are) compared to the current 70-200.
But why the lack of ED elements in the front group in the supposed 70-200mm zoom lens?
If you ask me, it’s a 70-200mm f/4 (or maybe even f/3.5-4.5), not f/2.8 lens … even the old 80-200 lenses have front ED elements … The only reason for the lack of ED elements I can think of, is Nano coating being so good it can actually replace EDs … But is it?
The current 70-200/VR Nikkor has 21 elements in 15 groups and the image you posted, suggests 18 elements in 13 groups. That could result in less flare, but I don’t know about other benefits of such a design …
Nano coating is for anti-reflection. ED glass stands for extra-low dispersion, two totally different things.
you can’t really draw much conclusions from these drawings or even glass compositions. A better design may account for less need of ED glass. “work smarter not harder”.
Thats an extremely good point funny.
I agree, this diagram looks more like a f4 lens when compared with the 2.8.
The point about drawing conclusions from diagrams is sound though – everything is just speculation for now. They might look different merely because they’re fake.
In a word, no. I don’t think those are realistic designs. I see at least the following problems:
1) The 24/1.4 is too simple a design and lacks ED glass. That diagram shows a 10 element/10 group design with 2 aspherics. The Canon 24/1.4 L II is a 13/10 with 2 ED and 2 aspherical. I’d expect the new Nikon to have a similar element count and to use ED glass.
2) The 35/1.4 design looks wrong. The thick, cemented second group is a feature I haven’t seen on any other SLR lens.
3) The 70-200 has the ED glass concentrated at the back of the lens, which is completely wrong. The big gun telephotos always have large diameter ED elements concentrated in the first few groups because that’s where it does the most good. The element count and ED element count is also down from the current lens, which seems unlikely for a major upgrade.
mistrer expert you dont have an idea…..anyway if you look closer the elements are strange…lets say a bit misalign….so definitely cs3 work…
Looks fake to me, but for the opposite reason!
More elements are not a sign of good lens design. Every element in the lens means more light loss and another surface for internal reflections. I would expect Nikon to do a better job than Canon and deliver the specs without so many elements.
To do that I would expect a Nikon fast wideangle to make use of the massive bulging front element glass that they can make and Canon cannot.
The diameter of the lenses in the 70-200 is completely wrong. Nikon are having difficulty with falloff on the FX format. They are trying to keep the filter size small. Take a look at the front element and it is clearly bogus.
The blocky element in the rumored 35mm design is reminiscent of the Asymmagon lens of the Gigapixel Project:
http://www.gigapxl.org/technology-realized.htm
Here is a cutaway diagram of the existing manual-focus 35mm f/1.4 Nikkor:
http://www.camerarepair.com/Used-Cameras/Nikon-MF-SLR-C3/Lenses-C9/35mm-f1.4-Nikkor-P33/
Note that it also has a second group that is blocky and cemented.
It’s blocky and cemented, but it’s a cemented positive-negative, with most of the negative power coming from the cemented surface. This is a negative-positive design. I can’t put my finger on precisely why that seems wrong to me, but it does.
some lenses may looks similar to existing designs, but it isn’t a requirement. Look into nikon’s history and you’ll see all sort of wacky designs. how they compare to what you think they should look like has no real relevance on how they actually need to look like.
If there were one odd design out of the three, I would think that Nikon’s engineers were just trying something new on the third design. But when there are suspicious things about all three designs, it makes it seem much more likely that they’re just a bunch of fakes.
“2) The 35/1.4 design looks wrong. The thick, cemented second group is a feature I haven’t seen on any other SLR lens.”
That’s the one that caught my attention. If you told me it was a 105mm micro I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but as a 35mm it looks pretty odd. I’m not an expert tho…
i do agree with you, the lens scheme is quite meaningless on all 3 lens, i think that is all fake.
Like I said; either it’s not an f/2.8 zoom, or it’s fake completely or a front ED element is not yellowed, which is unlikely.
Nevertheless, would be a dream come true with regards to 24mm, my favorite focal length (in film). Still missing a 12mm or 14mm 1:1.4 DX prime! That would be something.
14 1:1.4 DX would be a waste IMO. should Nikon ever make a glass with these specs, it better not be DX.
a 14 1,4 it crazy. but a 12 or 14mm 2.8 DX would be the best money spent. small light fast and able to mount filters? sounds like a dream lens to me.
A 35mm 1.4, YES, but I won’t be able to afford it anyway :\
if it’s true, it’s interesting how they reduce the use of glass for 70-200/2.8 update and reduced the use of ED glass too.
What is also surprising in this “design” is the total absence of Nano Coated elements. One would have thoughts that such high end lenses would include it now as the 105 micro, 14-24 and 24-70.
Although it is a rather weird thing to fake, I would suspect they are.
Particularly since the great engineering challenge with a fast wide is the sagital coma flare…
one of the huge rumors is that there will be Nano too, why wouldn’t you in that lens?
its amazing what can be done in cs3/4
I told this to the admin a few weeks earlier (that this lens would be replaced this year, probably around september – october) but, here’s something that happened today.
As a loving user of the 80-200 IF-ED on a D3 for years (with a strong vignette problem tough. But I don’t care since it’s easily fixed with the internal correction of the D3), I was considering a 70-200. As I’m tired of waiting, I phoned today to a good friend of mine (wich is the only NPS dealer in the biggest town of my country) to check if this lens was in stock. It was in stock but he told me this ; “do not buy now, you’ll thank me very soon”.
So I guess I’m gonna wait a bit (more) then…
Hope this helps !
maybe someone can use a software to simulate how does light path look like on them.
Impossible I’m afraid – you’d need much more information. Even if you were able to work out full geometry data from these images, you’d also need to know the refractive index of every different bit of glass…
My 1st impression was these look too good to be fakes. But on close inspection they don’t look right.
Roger Moore above nailed the zoom, ED glass is usually at the front. It also has ED exposed at the back, something they avoid because it’s easy to scratch.
The 24 has an extreme concave surface after the aperture stop. That should require the next lens to be larger, but it’s not.
That said, these may be Nikon innovations. Hopefully, I’ll be proved wrong.
Actually one of the advantages of ED glass over flourite is that it is NOT softer than other optical glasses.
ED glass can be used anywhere in an optical design, unlike flourite which is so soft that repairers are told the only way to clean it, is to dunk it in ether.
ED glass may be harder than fluorite, but it’s still soft enough that Nikon avoids using it as the outer most element in any lens. Just look at the lens diagrams on their web site. The big telephotos always have at least one non-ED element in front of the first big ED element, either a real refractive element or one of their meniscus protective lenses. The shorter lenses usually have the ED as internal elements, and never as the rear-most element.
Sorry but I didn’t see any source…
As for lens design.. well, Zeiss lenses (35 mm and others) have thick lenses in them, but I’m prone too to think that the 70-200 is very strange without any ED glass in front of it.. Plus, we should see both the VR and/or the N coating somewhere… ???
The lack of VR and nano coated information bothered me, too. Then I double checked with Nikon’s web site. It looks as though they’ve removed that same information from the diagrams there. So if they’re fakes- and I think they are- at least they’re reasonably careful ones.
One other minor point on the 35/1.4: it doesn’t appear to have a seal around the mount. Nikon’s diagrams are clear enough that you can see it on a lens that size, and I can’t imagine that they’d leave it off a top-of-the-line lens.
Take a look at the front configuration of the 70-200 and look at the difference in diameter of the first and second lens groups on the real and the phony.
The real 70-200 has ED glass at the front but only a small reduction in diameter for lens group 2. The phony has no ED glass but somehow manages to make do with a much smaller diameter second group. I don’t think that very likely.
But ED means “low dispersion”, so you cannot break down to a smaller diamater that fast, which is more likely possible with at high dispersion lens. Still I also think the second group is too small, even if the front element is high dispersion.
I think you misunderstand the idea of low dispersion. The property that controls the strength of a lens is its index of refraction, not its dispersion. Dispersion describes how much it tends to induce chromatic aberration. The whole point of ED glass is that it has a fairly normal index of refraction, so it can make strong lenses, while having a lower than expected dispersion, so it doesn’t introduce much CA.
a plane front lens element on a 35/1.4 seems pretty unrealistic to me. I believe these are not Nikon lens design graphics, but the fact that these lenses are likely to come out sooner or later is a different subject.
all fake .
especially the 70-200 which is in fact not even a zoom , it is more like a 300 f/2.8
Sigma has their nice 28mm f/1.8, I think Nikon needs something in this area to compete. A wide, fast prime… Yes, please.
Like teir existing 28mm f/1.4 for example
http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/technology/nikkor/n28_e.htm
(and look at the optical diagram)
If I was Nikon Inc, and I wanted to track down the source of a leak, here’s what I’d do: create a series of fake but plausible diagrams or documents, each one slightly different in subtle ways. Store or distribute them within the company, but keep track of who has access to each document. When one surfaces on the web, see who had access to that document and flag them for further investigation.
Yup, Nikon need to learn how Apple kept their product development in a real hush hush situation
why bother? it builds up interest to the product and probly increases demand whn it just released
that is what they do with movies. they use something called a watermark
I love this site but the black background against the yelloow and white type is BRUTAL!
I have mentioned this before – this is the next project I am working on: user will be able to choose its own background. Sorry, everything takes time.
I’m more than happy with the colors of the. It is also more ecological this way (really, think about all the people who visit this site, the time they spend and add that up).
much more valid for CRT than for LCD:
http://www.seanmichaelragan.com/html/2009-03-26_Power_use_of_white_vs_black_screens_in_LCDs_and_CRTs.shtml
I don’t think these are real, and 70% is probably a real stretch, but if you look at the 35/1.4 Ai design, then it becomes obvious that this big, fat second lens group in the 35/1.4 wouldn’t be without precedent…
I vote false, The ed glass colours seem to be on the wrong elements.
I want that 35mm 1.4!
I believe the last one is not the 70-200 but a prime telephoto lens… maybe the 400mm f5.6 many people are waiting for
This is definitely a zoom configuration. The 2nd lens group (#4-6) is smaller and immediately after the 1st (#1-3). That a classic zoom in its shortest focal length. The 2nd group moves away from the 1st as you zoom in. Notice how in this configuration not all the light hitting the 1st group will enter the 2nd. Also the 1st group is positive and the 2nd is negative, a standard zoom configuration.
I find this very peculiar as a fake (which I think it is) as it has correct general features, so someone knew a little, but it’s missing the ED glass in front.
Note the 1st 3 elements are almost identical to the 80-200 without the ED.
To be honest, a 35mm f1.4 would be nice. It would be very nice indeed! Same goes for a 24mm f1.4
I’ll start saving right away!
i have my doubts on the 35 1.4
I’m REALLY leaning towards the 24 1.4 G (same design philosophy of the 50 1.4G) simply because they have ALREADY released a 35 1.8 (yes DX, but. . ..) this year. . . .
I think the 24 1.4 will have a significantly higher price point than the 35 1.8 did – I’m assuming around $899 or $999 or maybe as high as $1199??
Look at the price of the Canon equivalent than add 10-15% because it’s nikon….
that would be $1689 + 10%??
I could get the 14-24mm for that!!
Nope – I think this prime will fall between the 10-24mm and 14-24mm in terms of WA options. . .which means, $899 – $1800
How many lenses does Nikon sell for less than the Canon equivalent? If Nikon ever releases a 24/1.4, it will be $2k. Personally, I’m not sure they’ll ever do that, since they never sold enough of the 28/1.4 at $1800.
It is serious poor blog form to open everything with a question. Just state fact like “Potential Future Nikon Lens Designs Emerge”
Not “OMG LOL is this new Nikon Lens??? you tell me- oh MY!
you sound inexperienced. You are the rumor leader. Act like it.
two reasons:
1. I do not know if those are the next set of lenses from Nikon. Different from other blogs/sites, I do not give my own opinion – I just present you what I got.
2. A question mark triggers a discussion and this is one of the most valuable aspect of running a blog – otherwise I could just have a static site, like back in the 90’s where I do not have to do much work.
Rumor leader? I like that
1. thats why we say “potential”
2. we know what to discuss. We are super smart.
keep up the good work
oh yeah and I forgot – MacRumors is doing it, then it must right
The 70 -200 is fake, don’t know about the others. All of Nikon’s longer pro lenses use ED glass in the front element grouping to correct CA. Note that the 180, 200, both 300’s, 400, 500, 600, 200 Micro primes and the 80-200, 70-200 and even the consumer 70-300 employ ED elements in or near the front groups.
Also, in reference to the 70-200 being F2.8, not by that lens design, at best F4 to F4.5.
Thats what I first thought as well when I saw the 70-200 – the outer barrel design is different and the elements look smaller in general than the current 70-200, so maybe this is a constant f4 zoom (something which has been lacking for quite some time now…). It definately is not an f2.8 lens, if it is real. I’d be happy with an f4 70-200 VR lens (though it does not appear to have VR either).
i want this 24mm 1.4G, wish its sharpness at 1.4 should be like the 14-24 at wide open.. WOW! time to save more…
OK, I tried an experiment with optical design software on the 35mm 1.4. Using the F-mount flange (44mm) as a basis for measurement from the diagrams I estimated the radius and spacing of the elements. I then plugged the numbers into OpTaliX. For refractive index I guessed elements 3, 4 and 6 as flint glass (a WA lens needs a lot of refraction on the positive elements), the rest as crown. I expected the rays to not pass though the system and let alone converge. In fact they do, including off axis rays. And comes (very) approximately to focus at the right place. Not bad for guess work.
The conclusion is if someone faked the 35mm, they managed to create at least a rough approximation of a retrofocus WA lens. Someone would need to know something about optics.
Excellent work, thanks a lot!!
Thanks for your experiment! Hopefully this 35mm f/1.4 is the real deal. The existing manual-focus model dates to 1970 so it would not surprise me if a (hypothetical at this point) new model had significantly different optics. We need some more fast AF-S primes (FX-format) from Nikon.
astrophotographer, thank you, super job!
I’m still waiting for my every day walk-around 14-200/f1.4 lens… and max weight 1Kg
did you hear that Nikon?
yes, yes, we heard you Miky.. will be the senzor of half size of the smallest compact enough to you?
what’s the source?
the outer casings of the new lenses dont even look like nikon casings…more like sigmas or something along the likes.