Kian's Photography: gear review

Showing posts with label gear review. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2017

This is the fastest current production Nikon lens in the market and has been around for decades. When I first hold it, I was amaze by its build quality which makes me wonder, why lens nowadays are not like that. My desire to own this lens starts after I got my hands on my Nikon F3, which I do not own any lens that can be use with it. Yes, there are a lot cheaper options, but I want the widest possible aperture to allow me to shoot in low light situation, since the common film speed is around iso400 equivalent.

9 bladed bokeh monster.

The large front element is rather good looking with its 9 bladed aperture. I stare at it the whole night after I bought it used online. My copy of the lens have smooth focus ring, the aperture clicks firmly and the optics are relatively clean.

I use it to shoot some landscape as well

Besides using the lens on my F3, the lens can be used for my Nikon D600 as well. However, you need to do a setup on non-cpu lens. This is because the lens does not have any electrical contact to transmit lens information such as focal length and maximum aperture to the body. To learn how to setup non-cpu lens on Nikon body, click here to see video from Matt Granger. However, you still need to dial your desired aperture on the lens manually.

Does it keep you going?

Oh, did I tell you this is a manual focus lens ONLY? Who the hell still use manual focus nowadays? At f/1.2, this lens is incredibly hard to focus. At least for me, my successful rate for stationary subject is around 10%, not even considering the amount of time taken. From the camera view finder, it’s very hard to judge if your subject is perfectly in focus. There are possibility the camera body have slightly inaccurate focus confirmation that you normally get away with the smaller aperture lens. Perhaps I have bad eyes.

At 1.2, the contrast is not that good. The bokeh however, is rather creamy.

The sharpness for this lens at 1.2 however is rather poor, the contrast is low, and in combination with the thin depth of field, most of the scene seems not in focus at all. At f/2, I would say it’s sharp enough to my liking. Further down will only increase the sharpness and contrast until eventually the diffraction kicks in.

When is the better time to get it?

The only benefit I could see in this lens is also related to its weakness. With f/1.2, you can get very shallow depth of field with this lens. Since the contrast is low, it may be suitable to create dreamy look portrait shot where you don’t need too much sharpness to emphasize the subject skin complexion.

My best photo from this lens ever, at f/2 with Nikon F3

The bokeh or quality of blur is smooth, not outline/or edgy to its cheaper counterpart. As a result, the look of the photo can be very pleasant.

The beetle just melted into a pool of bokehness...

I always stop down for better sharpness and hit rate.

Stop down again for sharpness

Shot wide open, the focus off

Another wide open shot, the focus off to the right edge of the glass

This lens is very prone to flare, unless stop down

This is a very good lens if you can justify the cost and know the sweet spot to get great result. Of course, you only have manual focus with this beast. However, I don’t shoot film often and I use my 24-70 on my DSLR most of the time. It just stays in my drybox most of the time. After few months owning it, I have decided to sell it to fund my wide angle. My replacement for it would be a 50mm e-series pancake lens which is significantly cheaper and smaller than this legend. Beside the focal length, they are totally different. That’s all my review with Nikon 50mm 1.2 ais – The gem I don’t deserved.

Monday, December 15, 2014

I have sold my Tokina 12-24mm f/4 DX lens in order to trade for this FULL-FRAME compatible lens for its wideness. I have a mix feeling on getting this lens. Before I talk more about it, lets show you some lens images, and general specs.

First of all, I'm only tested the Nikon mount, which is the ONLY mount that I've been told to have auto exposure (AE), and focus confirmation (not auto focus!!!). You can tell by looking on the mount, where it contains electronic contact points in order to communicate with the body. This means you can use Program, Aperture Priority, and Shutter Priority modes, where as, the rest of the mount you can only use manual and have to judge the exposure using live-view. Another advantage is you can control aperture value from your body command dial, rather than fiddling the aperture ring. The EXIF value is stored automatically into the photos as well. This thing is 550g and its the most affordable full-frame ultra wide angle, fast aperture wide angle in the world, but only with some drawbacks - no autofocus, and no electronics contact for non-nikon mount.

Compared to the Nikon 50mm 1.8 G, the barrel is slimmer, but the front element is significantly bigger. It does not takes any screw-in filters.

The big front element makes any screw in filter not possible, and the hood is build in and can't take off.

This is how its look by mounting to D600 body. It is well balanced on the body, and yet is not too bulky. However, the big vulnerable front element makes you want to cover it with hood all the time.

The top down view.

As you can see, if you set the aperture value to f/22 marked with red, then you can adjust the aperture value directly from the body aperture command dial. You can overwrite the aperture value by twisting the aperture ring any time (useful during d600 video mode). The focus ring is smooth but super long to focus from 0.28m to infinity (about 240 degree turn).

Front view

Side view.

Compared with Nikon 50mm f/1.8 G

Comparing the front glass element of both lenses.

First I would like to point out the barrel distortion about this lens. It has a very pronounce and complex barrel distortion.

Notice how the distortion bend the cabinet in the middle but the sides are ok.

The same image I have applied the profile correction. It does not completely fix the distortion but it is still better than original.

I use Adobe Lens Profile Downloader to get the Samyang lens profile here. Follow the instruction and after install, search for "NIKON D700 (Rokinon AE14.0 mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC". There are profile for crop sensor as well, namely "NIKON D7000 (Rokinon 14.0 mm f/2.8 AE)". Once you have install the required profile, when you are editing photos in Lightroom, you can now check the enable profile correction and it does all the distortion and vignetting correction for you.

Just checked the Enable Profile Corrections

Next I would like to talk about flare. This is extremely vulnerable to flare due to the big front element and relatively poor coating. If you are careful enough, and not picky about it, then you may consider it. Otherwise is a deal breaker.

Worst case scenario with flare. It produce 6-points flare on moderate aperture.

Last I want to talk about image quality and usability. Image wise, wide open at f/2.8 the image is generally soft when you zoom in, not much detail but its all right if you look on a wide perspective. However, generally ultra-wide angle, if you use moderate aperture such as f/5.6 or f/8, everything "seems" to be in focus anyway. I use the word "seems" because the photo will appear to be in focus, but when you zoomed in, the details is just not there. I focus usually between 3meters and infinity on the scale. Unless I'm doing some intentionally close-up. Otherwise I would not fiddling with the focus too much. I would say for the price, the sharpness is adequate.

This is the first outdoor image I captured as soon as I step out from the camera shop. The wide-ness really amuse me.

You can create dramatic scene by exaggerate the distance between subject. This is what ultra wide angle do best!

You would not really notice the distortion unless you are shooting straight horizontal line closely.

I almost fell into the pond because I recompose while looking in the view finder. It appears further than it really should be! DO NOT MOVE AROUND BY LOOKING INTO THE VIEWFINDER!

Wide Open Close Focus. Sharp enough for you?

try look-up for more dramatic effect with ultra-wide angle.

matrix!

The new IOI City shopping mall Christmas decoration.

Mid Valley Centre Court

with care, you can use it on portrait. Manual focus and shooting toddler is difficult!

I try my best to exclude my own feet when look down, but My feet still appear at the bottom right! Its that WIDE!!!

Last but not least, the wide aperture means you can use it for astronomical purpose. Since now its not the milky way season yet, it will come back with better picture next time!!

the shy milkyway above the horizon

UPDATE:

KLCC, Tallest building in Malaysia

Milkyway with Samyang 14mm

To conclude, this is a lens meant for advance amateur and leisure use only. You never see professio4nal using this funky lens. Yet, the performance is sufficient to satisfied a lot of audience, especially the lower budget people. If you only shoot crop-sensor, and did not plan to upgrade to full-frame any time soon, I would not recommend this lens. Get the awesome Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 with autofocus, used for about the same price. For me, I would ONLY recommend this lens for Nikon, Full-Frame and if you can accept all the drawbacks I mentioned, such as complex distortion, flare and so on. For me, this lens is incredibly "FUN" to use!

Monday, November 3, 2014

I got a used film camera from Mudah earlier when I decided to try out film for the first time. It's a Nikon FG with a 50mm E series lens. The previous seller not sure if the camera was working so I went on and get a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 to try it out.

My Nikon FG feat Fujifilm X100s

Loading the Kodak Tri-X B&W film...

I was feeling kind of mysterious and insecure as you are using this camera to take photos, you can't see what you get immediately. The joy came after you have develop and got back the jpeg. I'm feeling like a kid opening the Christmas present! Although the image looks grainy and not really sharp (due to my bad focusing), the camera basically works!

I shoot in Aperture priority (that's was among the first entry level SLR that offer this feature!, Beside the professional F3), and it got the exposure all right most of the time. The only things I din't do is to take down the exposure details when I took these shots.

Many thanks to Bang Bang Geng @ Publika for developing the film, scan and emailed to me. I'm definitely going to visit them again! Here are some of the images I got from the camera.