I see it just like I see testing noise on cameras without using any sort of noise processing. Software cleans most everything up, sharpens it, removes CAs, but some cameras/lenses have nuances that are very difficult to deal with even with software. That last part is what I care about - what software can not handle easily - that is the thing that really makes a difference.

TaoTeJared said:
In practical use, I don't see much difference in them except the bokeh (hexagon, circular) […] The ones I usually use with film I really don't pixel peep at all but are all more than good enough.

Well said. There's many examples of tack-sharp looking images of the f/1.4 lenses (at 1.4) on the web, and also the example here in the thread. Back in the film days, I used to never care about lens sharpness, it's the digital pixel-counting age that made this (seemingly) important. I guess it's the same way that people want fast cars for: You can't really drive fast anyway, but it's the feeling that you COULD if you had the opportunity that sells these cars.

Anyway, there are some issues (like the better LoCA and haze behavior that I mentioned earlier in this thread) that make me prefer the cleaner f/1.8G over the others. Everyone has to realistically figure out if these things actually matter for their own photography at that focal length or not.

I'm not sure if I still have them anymore. Might be on my flickr page. I let the "pro" expire so many images are dropping off. Most stuff like that I post and then dump. I'll take a look.

I have a bunch of 50s that I should do a comparison to see. In practical use, I don't see much difference in them except the bokeh (hexagon, circular) and the lack of sharpness is usually due to missing focus or me swaying forward or backward - that is all it takes at that shallow of DOF. The ones I usually use with film I really don't pixel peep at all but are all more than good enough.

Thanks for the feedback, argonzero, good to know that it's of use to someone. Speaking of which:

golf007sd said:
Chris tests reminds of all those tests you did a while back TTJ.

Does anyone have a link to those tests TTJ made?

Thanks,
Chris

I would just like to add that this has been a very informative post, and although there have been many 50mm 1.4g vs 50mm 1.8g posts online they did not go in depth on sharpness at f/1.8 (they would measure at 2.0, ect) and LoCA's. I had the 1.4g in the past and now have the 1.8g and from what I could remember before the 1.4 was soft and had high amounts of LoCAs which made me think twice to use it at f/1.4. I was still debating to swap back to the 1.4g, but reading your experiences reminds me of the headache I had before trying to cope with the softness, LoCA's, loss of contrast, and slow AF speed, I'll stick with the 1.8g. I also have the 85mm 1.8 and that's just amazing wide open, so I don't see why a 50mm from Nikon couldn't deliver something near that performance. Once again, thanks everyone who contributed!

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!"

This is where Focus Peaking would be handy.

R8R, with my vision, that might be the only way I am getting a MF lens to hit the mark. ;- )

spraynpray said:
I find that without the old focusing aids of a film SLR (split prism, fresnel ring etc.) that MF lenses are not too useful in many situations.

Nah... just stick the darn DSLR in continuous mode and fire off 10 frames while slowly turning the focus ring. Repeat. Then spend 4+ hours in LR4 finding the good ones.

:)

spraynpray said:
I find that without the old focusing aids of a film SLR (split prism, fresnel ring etc.) that MF lenses are not too useful in many situations.

Had exactly the same experience! Plus, the "new" focusing screens that you can get (at least for Canon) have tiny split image circles which are completely useless. I recently picked up an old (cheap) Yashica SLR dunnowhat, the split image plus fresnel ring was huge, and manual focusing was a breeze. Well, Nikon at least always has the focus confirm light in the finder, but I already tried using that and it's just too slow and un-precise as opposed to AF.

I find that without the old focusing aids of a film SLR (split prism, fresnel ring etc.) that MF lenses are not too useful in many situations.

Godless said:
Have you tried the Zeiss 50mm f/2 Makro-Planar yet?

Ah, thanks, that's a good tip – although the manual focus is not my thing and I wouldn't spend so much money on a MF lens. I tried a lot of those lenses with my canon, for very little you can get excellent optical quality, but I tried it for a while, I just need AF in too many shooting situations.

tcole1983 said:
Lol the OCD comment was meant as a joke. You can "use" your time however you wish :)

Sorry, I'm new here :-)

chris_weinert said:
On a side note, I'd actually look into more expensive alternatives, too, if they were better, but it appears there aren't really that much.

Have you tried the Zeiss 50mm f/2 Makro-Planar yet? Although useless as a macro (too short for proper macro work IMO), that one is capable of impressive resolution figures. I dare say it wipes the floor with most normal 50mm lenses.

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).

Lol the OCD comment was meant as a joke. You can "use" your time however you wish :) I just think there are tons of reviews of these lenses and not sure it is necessary. I personally have no experience with the 50's though...I always figured I would get the 50 F1.8G since I am happy with my 35 F1.8G...and for the price they seem to be the best deal.

Geoff_K said:
At 1.4 the sigma looks sharper to me. My imgination ?

Thank you for the showing the tests. I am half wanting a fast 50.

I don't see a pic in that last post for the Sigma @ f/1.4. But Yes, it is a sharper lens. I have had three Sigmas (different platforms)and one 50/1.4G and each Sigma was sharper than the Nikon up to about f/3.2.

Sigma 50 @ f/1.4 & D800E

100% Crop

At 1.4 the sigma looks sharper to me. My imgination ?

Thank you for the showing the tests. I am half wanting a fast 50.