Sonny said:

Let's stay on topic... I had a question that was bugging me for a few days and that is if the older 50mm 1.2 is any good on D800. I was planning to get the 50mm as my "last" lens in a few years but I just want to know if the 50 1.2 is something to consider if I find one for a good price. Also I found something about "coma" and Im not sure if this applies to this lens but if so then it's probably not that useful to me.

I have an early 60's 50mm 1.4 and I use it fine on the D800. Technically the newest lenses produce better photos but when you use older lenses or the 1.2, you are going for a "Look" not technical perfection.

Of the 1.2s probably only the newest version (that is still made) would take the most advantage of the sensor. MF is hard to hit and anything off, you will see it.

Yeah I probably get the 50 1.8G anyway... It seems to me like a very good lens for the price.

Sonny said:
Let's stay on topic... I had a question that was bugging me for a few days and that is if the older 50mm 1.2 is any good on D800. I was planning to get the 50mm as my "last" lens in a few years but I just want to know if the 50 1.2 is something to consider if I find one for a good price. Also I found something about "coma" and Im not sure if this applies to this lens but if so then it's probably not that useful to me.

I can't answer that, don't own that lens. I do have an ais 50f1.4 and 50f1.8, the AFD 50f1.4 and the new AFS 50f1.8. I've accumulated these over the years because there was a time when a 50mm seemed to be sold off with every SLR on the secondhand market or maybe it was just me. Of all those lenses the AFS 50f1.8 is the best, I tried the AFS 50f1.4 at the same time but it weighed a lot more was only a little bit faster and cost a lot more. I stop down to f5.6 or f8 most of the time anyway so it was no contest. The new 50f1.8 is a no brainer it's brilliant, light good IQ. I bought the new one when I decided to go all primes.

As for the 1.2, it's only a tiny bit faster, it costs a lot more, it's manual focus only (ok by me). I have read there is a coma issue but its a really old lens design. Can't imagine why a tiny bit faster is worth it, the 1.4 is pretty good.

This topic is old I already got D800 and a Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 tripod so I think i'm golden there... :)

Sadly I can't upgrade everything at the same time (I wish I could but that would not be that much fun)

rortmanns said:
All those quoting Ken, he's a tosser. There are much better sites.

"one who suffers from chronic masturbation" ... I'm not very sure if urban dictionary helped me with that one. :)

Let's stay on topic... I had a question that was bugging me for a few days and that is if the older 50mm 1.2 is any good on D800. I was planning to get the 50mm as my "last" lens in a few years but I just want to know if the 50 1.2 is something to consider if I find one for a good price. Also I found something about "coma" and Im not sure if this applies to this lens but if so then it's probably not that useful to me.

If you need 36MP in actual resolution, which really requires you to use a tripod, mirror lockup etc, then you will want a very good lens to fully resolve this. In the Nikon literature that comes with the D800 there is mention of lenses they recommend but I bet they only considered current lenses. Nikon have a vested interest in trying to sell their 24f1.4 etc. When I do landscapes I do use a tripod etc and I go for my best lenses. I have also tried my 75-150E lens on my D800e and the results are stunning, are they as sharp as my 85f1.4 at f8, well no but they are still stunning quality if you take care. There is much more to a sharp image than a sharp lens. Most people don't need to resolve all 36MP, I like to get max sharpness and res for my landscapes and I've slowly migrated to all primes for that work. If I shoot a portrait, I am happy with the 75-150 hand held, the D800 is a stunning camera and out resolves the D700 even hand held.

Buy a D800 use old lenses and be happy you get 20MP in res or whatever but when you do use the best lenses you'll get the best results possible. It depends on your work if you really need that quality.

All those quoting Ken, he's a tosser. There are much better sites.

Wataru said: (There, now I have promised to use the lens and post pictures!)

Please do :) Im still not really sure what wide angle to get but i guess all i will be shooting with it will be landscape and startrails.

Wataru said:
Wide angle lenses (I use the 24 mm all the time) are glorious with FX sensors.

Yaaay :)

Sonny said:
What a fool I was. Now that I own D800 14-24mm is the lens I pretty much want right now. ...

I bought one with funds from a client at the beginning of the year. My client elected to use the 17 to 35 lens for his application instead so I got to keep the 14-24.

I haven't used it yet, as it is not something I use for work, and I have never used a lens wider than 24 mm before. I will try to take some pictures with the widest of angles on my holiday trip to Nikko next week and post them on PAD. (There, now I have promised to use the lens and post pictures!)

Wide angle lenses (I use the 24 mm all the time) are glorious with FX sensors.

Sonny said:
I WASN'T planning on getting 14--24 mm f/2.8G ED, 24 mm f/1.4G ED or 35 mm f/1.4G

What a fool I was. Now that I own D800 14-24mm is the lens I pretty much want right now. :)

I understand davideanastasia wants to use 18-35mm or something like 20mm 2.8D on D800.

I can't help you with 18-35 but I personally use 24mm f/2.8D until I get cash for something better. :) It's a good lens that's pretty sharp for the price. Quote "It is as sharp as the $1,800 24-70mm AF-S" Quote -Ken Rockwell
Im not sure about the 20mm 2.8D but I think it's not bad either just don't look in the direction of a 28mm 2.8D and you will be good.

msmoto said:
New member (davideanastasia) was asking about

old Nikkor 18-35 on D800?

Any thoughts?

Should work fine just fine short of something being wrong with the lens. From what I can tell it is an AF lens so there shouldn't be any issues at all with it.

New member (davideanastasia) was asking about

old Nikkor 18-35 on D800?

Any thoughts?

rookieshot said:
Always liked borrowing my friends DSLR and looking to purchase my own camera, so my question to all the intelligent and experienced members, should I just buy a SLR because it will teach me more about getting a good shot or a is that crap and just get a DSLR, thanks guys!

It's crap - Buy a DSLR and you will learn 1000 times faster. Film you have to wait for 2-3 days to see what you messed up on - DSLR you just wait 1 second then adjust and try again. Instant feedback is what DSLRs moved the whole game forward.

Always liked borrowing my friends DSLR and looking to purchase my own camera, so my question to all the intelligent and experienced members, should I just buy a SLR because it will teach me more about getting a good shot or a is that crap and just get a DSLR, thanks guys!

Gitzo said:
I give up ! When I posted this, for some unknown reason, it came up double. Then I tried to delete the bottom "copy", highlighting it and pressing the "delete" key; (didn't work) then, I just held the "delete" key down (for about 5 minutes), and it DID delete the text, but not the rest of it.

Does anyone know of an online "how to use a computer" course ?

This is what mods do.... makes us feel like we are really doing something :-)

I give up ! When I posted this, for some unknown reason, it came up double. Then I tried to delete the bottom "copy", highlighting it and pressing the "delete" key; (didn't work) then, I just held the "delete" key down (for about 5 minutes), and it DID delete the text, but not the rest of it.

Does anyone know of an online "how to use a computer" course ?

Before I found NRF, I was "accustomed to" a web site where everything was written in about the last 24 hours or so; here, "threads" go on for "years and years" ! But I will say this.........for the most part, the "people" here are MUCH nicer !

Now.......back to page 1 of this thread. A member, "Pavlov" (I believe), was talking about (three years ago) a subject that I have seen discussed many times, in various places..........how best to get our years and years of color slides onto our hard drives. My son gave me a perfectly good Nikon film scanner a few years back, (before I got around to "going digital"). ( I never "got around" to using the scanner either.)

But there IS a "better way" to do it; anyone who used to shoot a lot of reversal film will remember "slide copiers"; I have a very nice one lying about someplace, but alas, it was for Canon FD lenses, and I don't use any of them any longer.

Anyway, I believe it was on another forum where I read a very good post someone had made, about using a slide copier to hold the slide, while photographing it with with a macro lens and a D SLR; the fellow writing the post reported getting excellent results with this method, (much better than scanning the slides), which ALWAYS has problems with dust. )

My question is.......has anyone tried this ? Like most people, I have a huge collection of slides that I would LOVE to go through and digitize some of the better ones. If anyone has had any experience with photographing slides, I think there's a huge number of people that would be very interested in hearing about your experience doing it.

While I'm on this subject, I've noticed a few people mentioning shooting B&W. Years ago, when I first started shooting 35mm film, I used to shoot a lot of Kodak's VERY fine grain Panatomic X; (ASA 25) at the time, Kodak sold a "direct-positive" processing kit, and you processed the Panatomic X just like any other negative film, but then you re-exposed it with a #2 photo-flood lamp, (or am I getting this mixed up with processing Anscochrome and Super Anscochrome color reversal film ?) we used to do both, but it's "been awhile" ! It developed "positive" rather than negative, then you cut each image apart, and mounted them in cardboard "ready mounts"; the results were far sharper than almost any Kodachrome slides. Again, does anyone remember this, and has anyone ever had any experience doing it ?

All of these posts about shooting large format..........at one point, a friend and I had a fine old Crown Graphic 4X5 camera; talk about "beautiful, sharp images"! (and hours and hours of time spent, not to mention it took an hour to take 2 or 3 pictures, what with all of the "loading" film carriers, inserting the "dark slide", then doing everything over again, in reverse order, to take a picture!)
I seriously doubt that I'll ever get "hooked" on doing "large format" again ! ( and I can only imagine doing all of that with 8x10 film, (or even larger) !

kyoshinikon said:
Grain can be faked in digital but the effect is not the same. Film has a softness to its grain wheras digital grain is akin to the static screen on tube televisions with stark blacks and whites amiss the grain...

I am still a bit baffled by the terminators disappearance... Maybe we will see him in the future...

Yes, on the grain...The "effect" of natural grain in film is due from the thickness of the emulsion I think. And this is difficult to reproduce.

In view of the suddenness of NikonDoby disappearing, I can only think it was either a severe medical event which has prevented computer use or the final day and Niko is no longer with us. Niko remains a legend on NRF. All of my investigations have been for naught. Niko's email does not reject the messages but I get no response.

I have been shooting with a minigraphlex as of late and was surprised to discover that it can facilitate 120 film... More choices!

Grain can be faked in digital but the effect is not the same. Film has a softness to its grain wheras digital grain is akin to the static screen on tube televisions with stark blacks and whites amiss the grain...

I am still a bit baffled by the terminators disappearance... Maybe we will see him in the future...

msmoto said:
So, what I have seen after my first ever attempt at introducing grain,

I use the Nik Silver EFX Pro software for B&W conversion. Much better results than ding it all manually in my view.

In another thread, you can see I said I am about to start on a CLA type project on a 120 film camera (its even a bellows/folder type). Lord knows if it'll work and I'm even less sure about not breaking it. Not worth sending it away as it is worth about $50 to $75 or so...

I am with you bjrichus... Got to playing around with an image taken with a little P & S. Here is the image:

And the 2000 pixel where on can see the difference:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fantinesfotos/8136281499/sizes/o/in/photostream/

So, what I have seen after my first ever attempt at introducing grain, is, the image resolution with digital is IMO much higher when the digital image is recorded. I believe this is due to the aspect of the sensor having no depth or thickness while B & W film has a thickness which in effect causes a loss of resolution. OK, so this might get something started... and as our beloved NR Admin stated at the opening of this thread "There will be blood in this forum... please keep it civilized. Thanks!"

NikoDoby said:
I still prefer using E6 film but now mostly only in 120. The newest Portra 160 and 400 films from Kodak are amazingly good though!

Re-directed here by MsMoto ... only to discover that our beloved Nikodoby is now well into Lomo toy cameras. At least we now know why he isn't here anymore!

(It's a joke - I know he wrote 120, not Lomo and all the other reasons why MF film is better etc or not better etc).

Wataru said:

....BTW, I don't know if the D600 has the option to program in non-CPU lenses the way the D800 does. I have my most used non-CPU lenses programmed into the D800 so when I put one on the lens data goes to the metadata. It is a neat feature....

I just checked the D600 manual and yes, it is possible to program in up to 9 non-CPU lenses into the D600. I use my Ai-converted Nikkor-S 50 1/1.4 from 1971 on my D800, and it can not only be used on a D600, but the lens information can be written to your metadata. How cool is that! I really am pleased that the D600 came out at the price it did. I am thinking second body now...

Thank you guy's for all those great responses. Something did smell fishy on this subject so I thought I will ask you.

Wataru is right about the demands in pixels vs film and I am a little angry I didn't think of that myself. :D

And I fully agree with donaldejose with his outstanding well put point. :)

Thanks again Nikon guy's you never fail.

May your images be well framed and never need a crop.

There is a very great thread at the Fred Miranda site for those using manual focus Nikon glass with (mostly) digi bodies.

The thread started two years ago, Aug 2010, and now extends to 1930 pages - yikes !!

Many D700 users exhibiting samples, and now D800 pix are showing up, plus D7000, etc. Lots of chat about various MF lenses plus availibility, sources for purchase, etc.

Starts at:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/929565/0

Currently ends at:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/929565/1936

Cheers,

Mick
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68039985@N08/

Sonny I wouldn't say that all older lenses yield poor results on the D800/D800e, just a few limit the potential of the new bodies. I loved the D700 because no matter what you used the results were always excellent. The pro glass like the 14-24, 24-70 etc were outstanding. Both look good on the D800, but I have found that Nikon's newer releases like any of the new 1.8 G lenses for example, outperform certain D lenses like a 50 or 85. Not by much, but enough especially considering the price and reasons for using a 36mp body.

Having said this I loved the look the old 24mm 2.8 D has with the D800 as well as a few cheap 20 year old zooms like the 24-85mm and 12 year old 28-85 G. Basically, a person shouldn't cheap out on lenses for 36mp body if its at all possible. However, if you have older glass try it out and see for yourself. I am currently a student so my funds are limited and I have not been able to use the whole potential of my D800e yet even though I've had the body since April and have reached 18,000 actuations now. The best is yet to come in April when finish my post grad work! Lens time :)To date, my favourite camera of all time still remains the D700.

TaoTeJared said:
...Photographers realize the unique characteristics of lenses and are not obsessively focused on pixel peeping test charts.

TTJ, as usual, you have made another very important observation, which has cut me to the quick. I am guilty of owning too many lenses and not mastering any of them. Henri Cartier-Bresson used a 50 mm normal lens almost exclusively, and really KNEW what that lens was capable of. I really don't know my lenses as I should.