dslr.ws

Yes, that’s a little weird, but it’s true. Michael Johnston of The Online Photographer used to be a big lens connoisseur. However, then they became so consistently good and less unique and interesting, and he lost some of that interest. Luckily — for him, not so much for everyone else — Nikon sent him the AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 24–120mm f/3.5–5.6G IF-ED lens when they shipped him a Nikon D700 to review. And he sure has some choice words about the quality of the lens. Check out his post, or just enjoy these highlights:

• It’s a piece of shit.
• Despite its fancy specs, this is for all intents and purposes a perfect throwback to the days when even good zooms couldn’t aspire to the performance of ordinary garden-variety primes. Its performance is for all the world like an early-’80s mid-level zoom—smack dab in the middle of the era in which zooms earned—and deserved—their still-lingering bad reputation.
• It has flagrant amounts of linear distortion not only at its wide setting but well into the middle range, and apparent perspective distortion even near the middle of the frame(!).
• The D700 could hardly focus the thing—I got more out-of-focus shots than I have with any AF lens in years
• Its sharpness is lackluster. At 120mm, I don’t think the thing gets sharp. At least, not without stopping down further than I was able to.
• The deterioration in performance toward the corners is often marked—and not just at the extreme corners, either.
• Color transmission borders on sucky (I know this from having recently used the 24–70mm f/2.8 on the D3).
• This is a very inexpensive lens that is not worth half of what it costs.
• If you innocently purchased one of these and are not lucky enough to be using it on a DX sensor, try to get your money back if you possibly can. Otherwise, stop down and avoid the extremes of the zoom range, even though they’re probably why you bought the thing in the first place.
• The VR doesn’t even work very well. It works, but it’s the least effective image stabilizing I’ve yet experienced.

So, there you go. Avoid the lens like something super scary that you should run away from, and be happy that Mike has renewed his interest in lens quality!

I’ve been reading up on long zooms because I’m considering buying one (something that goes up to 300mm or so.) I found one discussion thread comparing the Sigma 70-300 APO and the Tamron 70-300 Di, which kept talking about PF.

Now, I’ve been around camera discussions for a while, but somehow never encountered PF in any reviews before. It took a fair amount of Googling to find the answer, so I’ll just post it here in case that helps anyone else.

PF is just Purple Fringing. CA (chromatic aberration) is the more common term for that in lens reviews, but purple fringing is certainly descriptive, since that’s what you’ll see. It’s probably more accurate as well, since chromatic aberration should really encompass all kinds of image problems, even if the term is now pretty synonymous with purple fringing.

For the record, it sounds like the Tamron lens has more purple issues than the Sigma, although people seem to be fairly evenly distributed between which lens they prefer. Some find the Tamron sharper, others find the Sigma sharper. My reading of that is that, for my uses, I’m probably fine with either of them, and it probably depends more on the individual copy of the lens than on consistent differences between the two brands.

I think I’m slowly moving up the price ladder. I noticed that the Canon 75-300 III (USM or not) was available pretty cheaply used, and thought about it. But the Sigma APO version isn’t much more, and apparently gives you a pretty big bump in quality. Just in case anyone else was wondering, or was trying to research the Canon, or just trying to figure out PF.

Good old PMA. Always full of camera announcements to keep the wheels of commerce rolling along. Go commerce!

First up we have the Pentax K20D. It’s similar to the Pentax K10D, with such upgrades as a 14.6 megapixel sensor manufactured by Samsung, live view, and an expanded dynamic range function. They say that the new sensor, while the same size as their competitors’ 12 megapixel sensors, has less circuitry around the edges, and therefore larger light-sensitive areas that let them get away with a higher resolution without more noise. It’ll be interesting to see what the tests turn up when K20D reviews start to come in. It fits in the midrange of DSLR models, above the also-new Pentax K200D, their entry-level model. The K200D is an update to the K100D, getting a resolution upgrade to 10.2 megapixels. It also features a weather-sealed body, and a CCD-based anti-shake system.

Also recently announced is the Samsung GX-20, which uses the same sensor as the Pentax K20D. And is all-around very similar; the body could easily be confused for a K20D body, and the resolution and main features are all the same. It sounds like Samsung has their own firmware, and they say they have different JPEG processing than the Pentax, but presumably the RAW files would be pretty indistinguishable between the GX-20 and K20D.

Pentax also announced a handful of new lenses: a 200mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4, 35mm f/2.8 macro, 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, and a 55-300 f/4-5.8.

I didn’t even know that you could get firmware updates for digital SLR lenses, but apparently at least Olympus has them.

They just released firmware version 1.1 for the Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 12-60mm F2.8-4.0 SWD lens. It improves “focusing precision on distant subjects when using the C-AF (continuous AF) mode.”

They have a bunch of older firmware updates for other lenses as well, offering a number of interesting improvement:

• For the 14mm-54mm and 50mm-200mm, a firmware that improves exposure precision comparable to a full-open aperture setting.
• The 90-250mm f2.8 got a firmware update that fixed an issue with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1, where it was apparently reporting the wrong focal distance information in captured files (presumably both JPEG EXIF and RAW data were wrong for focal distance?)

Ok, maybe it’s just interesting to me, but chances are there’s at least one other person out there who didn’t know you could get firmware updates for lenses, and is now more enlightened after reading this post. For you, dear previously clueless reader, you’re welcome.