RodluvanII
Senior Member
It's sharp enough, but lacks the contrast and punch of newer better coated lenses imo
C&C welcome.
C&C welcome.
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Micro 3.5/55 Ai portraits and scene
- Thread starter RodluvanII
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photoad
Leading Member
Excellent stuff. Clearly No 1 is a winner here.
I have one of these but rarely take it out, pretty much replaced it by the 60AFS, but with an adapter really handy for slide copying,
I have one of these but rarely take it out, pretty much replaced it by the 60AFS, but with an adapter really handy for slide copying,
Doug Pitts
Senior Member
...excellent acuity...I have several of these lenses...you can always "pump " them up in post....
Looks very nice to me. I have the 55 f/3.5 pre-AI that I had AI'ed and I love that thing. My lens is superb closer in, very good in the middle and only good for longer distances. But it has a very similar rendition to what you have posted here.
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Catallaxy
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Catallaxy
RodluvanII
Senior Member
For all your replies.
Wes Syposz
Active member
if you want more color saturation just process the file in "vivid" or "landscape" mode, either set it on the camera or if you shoot RAW, do it in the Nikon View NX
Wes
Wes
Djordje Jevtovic
Senior Member
Excellent images, specially no.1. Nothing is wrong with this lens.
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http://www.pbase.com/jevtovic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djordje72
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http://www.pbase.com/jevtovic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djordje72
RodluvanII
Senior Member
Yeah, and I would've lost most shadow details and blown the highlights.
"Punch" is not easily mimicked in post.
jhinkey
Veteran Member
I guess before saying that it lacks contrast/punch I'd do a direct side-by-side comparison with something like the 60/2.8 to see just now much difference there is (if any that's noticeable).
John
I have a 55/3.5 AIS and I guess I could compare it to my 50/1.8 G - that's as close as I have in focal length in a prime anyways.
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John
I have a 55/3.5 AIS and I guess I could compare it to my 50/1.8 G - that's as close as I have in focal length in a prime anyways.
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Wes Syposz
Active member
I only have experience in RAW and there are a shadow and highlights protection controls that you can control the lost of the details, anyway, I like that old fashion low saturation lens and is also one of my favorite, I use it also on the architecture photography due to its high resolution and low distortions
Wes
I concur with you .
RodluvanII
Senior Member
That is theoretically correct, alas not in practice. I always shoot RAW and edit in CNX2, and have done so for years, so I have some experience with using the DLight stuff. Saving shadow detail/data works quite well, but highlights are impossible to save in a usable fashion. Aperture is for one, way - waaay, better at that.
When you clip the highlights detail is lost . No amount of post processing can bring out the detail . One should always keep the photo between the boundries of the histogram in order to be able to recover detail in highlights .
RodluvanII
Senior Member
The histogram is based on your jpg setting (alas 8bit). More data is stored in the RAW file.
But rule of thumb as fas as I know for digital, expose for highlights, i.e. the reversed from film.
Thats right...expose for the highlights to the right but not to the degree as to clip the highlights . In digital the main problem is noise levels which are much more evident in the dark portions of the photograph because that is where there is less data .Being that as it is we should expose to the right in order to avoid noise levels being evident in the photo.
Towards the right is where most of the data is . Not only that but the noise level at the bright portions of a photo are higher then at the darker areas but the ratio between noise and data is much larger at the bright sections of the photo so the data is so large as to mask the noise to the eye.
That is the main reason you should always expose to the right of the histogram but not to the degree as to surpass the boundries of the histogram that in any event you would be losing information and detail and believe me when I say no amount of fiddling with your post processing program will be able to recover that which was lost in clipped highlights .
To tell you more there is an increasing petition to camera manufacturers to design a metering system for digital cameras that might automatically funtion as a means to expose to the right of the camera avoiding at the same time clipping the highlights in order to preserve detail . Metering system in present day digital cameras are based in the same metering system we had in analog cameras which was design decades ago and they don't work as efectively with digital cameras as they did with analog .
What you say about raw is correct . Not only that but the amount of data in a raw file compared to the jpg is very large , especially in a 16 megapixel camera as the D7000 with it's large almost 20 MP raw files . But the fact remains that all the data in the original raw file that was clipped is still clipped.
Clipping means that the amount of light received by the pixel exceeds that capacity of the pixels to pickup light photons . When this capacity is overdriven no data is recovered . So no matter if its raw or jpg clipped highlights destroys any data in that area and no amount of pp will be able to recover it . This clipping is analogous to the clipping of an amplifier where clipping is going above the capability of the amplifier to amplify a signal with all of it's inherent distortiion involved .
Ed/Chicago
Well-known member
The micro-nikkor non ai or ai'd 55 3.5F Nikkor is a sweet lens.... Now that cameras have live view it is terrific.... actually always great... if you have it, enjoy!
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