Originally posted by deadwolfbones That's a great book, Jay. One of my favorite reads of recent years.
Oh, nice lens comparison, too.
The Metaphysical Club? Yes, it's a tremendous book, changed my thinking in a couple ways.
Originally posted by rparmar Is that text shot for real? Looks like a DOF/focus issue with the Nikon. Even despite that, I prefer the Pentax look overall, and not by a little. Thanks for doing this little test!
Quote: Originally posted by brucestrange
My favorite Pentax lens is the 35/2, but I've found the Nikkor 35/1.8 to be sharper wide open. I've never used the DA35, so I can't speak to that as much, though I will say side by side comparisons always have their caveats. For instance, the first shot of the Carcassone box is not the same framing with both, so it's hard to compare text crops, knowing the focal point is also probably different, as well as the angle of the camera with respect to the box (affecting the apparent depth of field of the crop).
The cameras were both sitting on a table in the same position and angle to the box. The nikon sit's a bit 'higher', but both were focused (AF) on the same line - the line at the far left of the crop (contains "prize-winning".) The box was at an angle as you can see.
But the situation could have been even more controlled, these were pretty quick & dirty and do show the differences both from MP, focus, and resolution, at
least as far as AF can take it.
Quote: In any case, Photozone found the Nikkor 35/1.8 to be sharper at 2.8 than the the DA35 at 2.8, and it found the Nikkor to be a little sharper in the center than the FA35 at 2.8 while it found the FA35 to be slightly sharper in the borders at 2.8. Photozone found the Nikkor to be sharper at 1.8 than the FA35 at 2.
This I find confusing - as I understand it, results from different manufacturers can't be directly compared using photozone's metrics - I'm pretty sure I read that from Klaus himself. Were you comparing something I haven't seen, or maybe I misunderstood?
Unfortunately I don't have the FA any more to test, but I'm finding that my copy of the DA 35ltd wide-open is pretty much just as sharp if not sharper than the 35G 1.8 at f/2.8. I should do some more bracketed MF tests to verify that, though.
Originally posted by Igilligan A couple of quick questions... Did you do any comparison shots where you attempted to match the exposure 'look' of the D90 to the k20? How much do you need to comp it to keep it from blowing up some of the highlights and get the darker output of the K20d?
No, not really, but that is the next thing I want to test.
Quote: Also the DA 35 is a macro lens, is the Nikon a macro too? How close can you focus with it?
Could the flatter field of a macro lens explain some of the differences we are seeing?
The Nikkor's not a macro, and can get about 7 inches from the front element. It does show a bit of distortion that you don't see in a macro lens like the DA 35.
Quote: I would like to see a comparison at equal 'brightness' even if you have to bump shutterspeed up a bit on the nikon keeping Ap and ISO equal... As the bright areas are killin' the detail
Thanks for posting these... The cheap primes in the Nikon lineup are a draw for me... PS have you shot any shallow dof video yet? I would love to see it if you have.
Yes, I don't think flickr can host video, so I'll have to figure out a way to share those. You'll be able to see my little guy bobbin' in & out of the DOF!
I'll be testing more standard shots also and will plan to post the tests here.
The Nikon is a great, quick little lens, but I find it just a tad inferior to the FA 35.
All variables like AF point, exact AF lock in a particular shot, precise angle of view, etc, tend get mitigated over the course of 1000's of shots, and you start to 'see' the strengths and weaknesses of lenses compared to each other. It's hard sometimes to point that out in a couple shots linked in a thread like this, because with a small sample size any little variable gets talked about as much as the "results" (which is understandable.) So, that being said, these images represent what I've been seeing from these lenses/sensor combos in my everyday shooting pretty well.
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