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| A Quick? Lens TestNikkor 18-105 for IR and a 16mm Fish Eye | Rate Topic |
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| Posted by Robert: Thu Sep 14th, 2017 16:24 | 1st Post |
| At long last I have obtained another Nikkor 18-105mm due to my original and much used lens being so scratched and battered I felt it's IQ must have been suffering, in fact it's one of the reasons I haven't done much IR photography, coupled with a lack of time. My original 18-105 has had a rough life, I bought it to go with my D3100 which I used in the workshop to document my car building activities, not wanting to expose the D200's to the rigours of angle grinders and other nasty, dirty tools. The front element has two severe gouges, numerous scratches and the zoom ring seal keeps popping off. It's currently held in place with some black gaffer tape. This is an exposure taken with the D200-IR using the original damaged lens. Nikon D200-IR 700nm: Nikkor 18-105mm, 38mm, 1/90sec @ f16 ISO200  This is taken with the new lens. Nikon D200-IR 700nm: Nikkor 18-105mm, 35mm, 1/125sec @ f16 ISO200  I can't see anything wrong with either image. When taking exposures directly towards the sun I get some extra flare in the image, but that's all. This is another image with the new lens at 105mm.  No sign of a hotspot, even wide open. Slightly oddball: Some time ago I bought an EL Nikkor 105 f5.6 for my UV photography, this is the first image I have made with it! It's mounted on a helix mount and can easily focus well past infinity, really intended for UV. Nikon D200-IR 700nm: EL Nikkor 105mm-f5.6, 1/125sec @ f5.6 ISO200  This is the damaged lens.  I have hankered after a 16mm Fisheye since I went to the D5/D500 launch day at Manchester. Using one on a D5 was impressive to say the least. I am hoping it will be good for star trails and possibly 360º panoramas if I can master the technique! Here is a test exposures with the D3. Nikon D3: Nikkor 16mm Fisheye, 1/800sec @ f8 ISO200  Same lens with the Nikon D300S: Nikon D300: Nikkor 16mm Fisheye, 1/1600sec @ f4 ISO200  There was ¾ of a gale blowing while I conducted these tests, it must have caused some camera shake despite my using my heaviest tripod well spiked into the ground. In the two last photographs I selected the images with the fastest shutter speeds because the gusts were blowing the grass and bushes about so much they were badly blurred at slower speeds.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Eric: Fri Sep 15th, 2017 04:31 | 2nd Post |
| I think this proves that you can get away with a lot of defects on the front lens provided there isn't any stray light....and that protection filters on the front only protect your investment....and not necessarily your image. The 18-105 was a good all round lens. The only problem I encountered was getting sharp focus at 18mm in certain situations. For the life of me I can't recall what they were, but after discussing with David at ACS he told me it was down to the lack of infinity overrun (or something like that) which consumer lenses don't have, if you look at the 17-35 when focused on infinity the lens can still be rotated a fraction more with no change in focus. This is to allow heat expansion in the larger size glass of pro lenses. The lack of this , can cause a small degree of soft focus with IR at certain extreme settings. Well that's what he told me ....if only I could remember the settings when it occurred. Incidentally, you said the lens was even hotspot free when wide open....wasn't certain if you meant focal length or aperture? In my experience the more stopped down, the more obvious the hotspot....so I wouldn't expect any distinct hotspot evidence if the aperture was wide open.. I also found that the longer the focal length, the less obvious the hot spot. When having to use some of the Fuji lenses that had hotspots (as they were all I had with me) I was constrained to using apertures of f3.5-5.6 rather than the f8 I preferred for IR landscapes and zoomed into 35mm rather than the 18-20mm I also preferred. The other arguement is that although the hotspot is more obvious with smaller apertures, it's smaller and more easily removed, whereas larger more diffuse hotspots are harder to correct as they influence more subject areas. Ps I likeed the colour shots with the 16mm lens...it's about the right width to get expansiveness without distracting distortion. I often used my 14-24 lens at no wider than 16mm for that reason. .......I do however think your lawn needs cutting. 
____________________ Eric |
| Posted by Robert: Fri Sep 15th, 2017 12:06 | 3rd Post |
| Am posting from my iPhone so I will try to be brief 😀 I am very impressed with the cloud rendition from the 16mm fish eye the Sigma 10-20 on dx caused strange distortion of the clouds where the fisheye the clouds seem much more natural. I think the comparison between DX and FX means 16mm compares with the 10mm sigma. It's much less extreme than the Sigma. I meant to take a set of exposures to make a 360 panorama but in that wind I was glad to get inside again. I want to try out PT stitching software, before I decide to buy it or not. For ordinary panorama stitching Lightroom is good enough but for 360 degree I think it needs dedicated software.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Eric: Fri Sep 15th, 2017 16:13 | 4th Post |
Robert wrote:Am posting from my iPhone so I will try to be brief 😀 I use PTGui for panoramas. 
____________________ Eric |
| Posted by jk: Fri Sep 15th, 2017 17:12 | 5th Post |
| 16mm doesnt look like it makes fisheye so maybe it should be termed as a wideangle with possible edge distortions.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Sat Sep 16th, 2017 03:59 | 6th Post |
Eric wrote:I use PTGui for panoramas. I have the free demo and have used it a bit with the watermarks, it works well and provides a workflow which allows intervention to avoid some of the automated Adobe shortcomings like poor alignment and lens corrections which can cause wobbly straight lines in very wide single row panoramas (PTGui provides for pinning fixed alignment points in adjoining images and more). However, I feel that it's priced somewhat high for just a 12 month licence, I know it's apparently perpetual but they only provide updates for 12 months. With the current advances in (Apple) Mac OS's, 12 months isn't long. One OS update could cause the PTGui to lose some functionality, fail to open, or become unstable as a couple of my third party applications are at the moment. Necessitating an upgrade, not to mention keeping up with desirable advances in the PTGui software itself. I have considered the lower priced option but I think there are perhaps three functions included in the full package which I would feel are needed for 360º spherical pano's. Perpetual licensing without perpetual updates isn't a sensible arrangement theses days, if it ever was? I much prefer the subscription model where you always have the latest software with little or no risk of incompatibility, than having to purchase updates periodically at half price. I scarcely notice £7 per month for the Lightroom - Photoshop bundle but I baulk at £163 lump sum with prospect of £81.50 updates thereafter for minor software which is already partly available in the Adobe products, the Adobe stitching works remarkably well for 'flat' panoramas, especially for say two or three images to cover large subjects like the Kelpies which are difficult to frame in one exposure and keep the reflections.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Robert: Sat Sep 16th, 2017 04:18 | 7th Post |
jk wrote:16mm doesnt look like it makes fisheye so maybe it should be termed as a wideangle with possible edge distortions. Not sure what's going on in that image JK but if it were architectural you would definitely see a quite extreme fisheye effect. I think this works in reverse with an ultra wide rectilinear which seems to distort irregular things like clouds but retains straight lines in architecture. Horses for courses! Will try to get some architectural examples soon. Perverse as it may seem I am forming the opinion that fisheye is more natural and it's actually the rectilinear which has the distortion. Our eyes and our vision are very clever, we see things which our brain corrects, sometimes getting it spectacularly wrong of course! Optical illusions and false colour.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Eric: Sat Sep 16th, 2017 12:13 | 8th Post |
Robert wrote:jk wrote:. I think you have been living next to the sea for too long Robert.
____________________ Eric |
| Posted by Eric: Sat Sep 16th, 2017 12:22 | 9th Post |
Robert wrote:Eric wrote: My version was acquired before all this monthly licensing silliness. I've not encountered any loss of functionality through several operating system changes ....but of course that's Windows.
____________________ Eric |
| Posted by Robert: Sat Sep 16th, 2017 17:37 | 10th Post |
Eric wrote:I think you have been living next to the sea for too long Robert. Becoming 'fish eyed'? Honestly, looking back at some of my Sigma 10-20mm images with clouds, I wince at the elongated streaked clouds which fill the corners. The above picture taken with the D3 and the 16mm Fisheye the clouds seem very natural. Will try to find an example.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Robert: Sun Sep 17th, 2017 03:29 | 11th Post |
| This is an example of the strong effect it can have on clouds and condensation trails. Taken at 8am in Sept. 2014. During the day it's hard to take any photographs without them with such a wide lens. We seem to be situated directly under a major flight path, the M6 of the skies! I have 282 images I took with the Sigma 10-20 and no doubt some went in the bin. Nikon D3100, Sigma 10-20mm f4/5.6, 10mm, 1/160sec @ f6.3 ISO 100  Another taken at Mallory Park, June 2008. D200, Sigma 10-20mm f4/5.6, 14mm, 1/2500sec @ f4.8 ISO 400 
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by Eric: Sun Sep 17th, 2017 09:51 | 12th Post |
| What focal length was actually used on those? When I used that lens I rarely used it wide open....mostly at 14mm. I suppose strictly speaking 16mm isn't fisheye. I thought they were ultra wide lenses above 10mm?
____________________ Eric |
| Posted by Robert: Sun Sep 17th, 2017 17:17 | 13th Post |
| The first at 10mm the second at 14mm, I usually tended to keep away from the 10mm end to avoid the extreme extortion. The 16mm is officially a FX full frame Fisheye, it has noticeable barrel distortion. It's just in that location which has few straight lines, it looks good. The 8mm and below produce a circular image in the middle of an FX frame, just reaching the width (24mm) of the frame. Those lenses have much greater distortion and have very limited application.
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Sun Sep 17th, 2017 17:48 | 14th Post |
| My Sigma Nikon fit 12-24 FX lens (I got it from Eric a while back) is pretty good wrt to distortion but is soft at edges at 12mm. Om my Fuji I have a Samyang 8mm that is excellent. Low distortion despite being sold as fisheye and very sharp edge to edge. However it is APS-C as it is for the Fuji.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by highlander: Thu Sep 21st, 2017 09:28 | 15th Post |
| The best ultra wide I ever found was the Tokina 12-24. Sharp the whole way, but only works on DX
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| Posted by Robert: Thu Sep 21st, 2017 20:08 | 16th Post |
| I'm well jarred off, I just spent an hour and a half making exposures with the 16mm fish, only to find they were out of focus. It's hard to tell in the dark. I did check that the lens was on infinity but I must have misread the scale. The D3 focus indicator had both arrows showing but no confirmation dot... Anyway I did take some with the 20mm f2.8 just for comparison. Here is the best one, it was pretty cloudy. Polaris is the brightest star in the top right quarter. D3, Nikkor 20mm f2.8, 20sec at f3.5 ISO 1600 
____________________ Robert. |
| Posted by jk: Fri Sep 22nd, 2017 02:42 | 17th Post |
| Good image, I like it even with the orange sodium glow. Now we see the effects of pointing a wideangle upwards with striaight lines in the edge of the image. Falling over house! And that is with the 20mm, not the 16mm.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
| Posted by Robert: Fri Sep 22nd, 2017 03:40 | 18th Post |
| Thank you JK, the brickworks have a variety of lighting, I hope one day to be able to wander around the works, last night I was on the boundary. I was trying to establish where Polaris was in relation to the chimney. I had a fanciful idea of placing Polaris just above the chimney and having star trails around the chimney top. To achieve that I would have to locate myself on the main roof... NOT feasible I suspect. The falling over building adds another dimension! LOL About a mile away there is a brand new building made of special steel, unpainted, it has been constructed completely leaning and twisted on purpose. That's in my sights for a star trails photo too. It's called the Red Hut. If I get it one way I might straighten it, the other way it will make the lean worse... Perhaps with the fisheye, in a corner? FUN
____________________ Robert. |
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