Nikon creates waves for Canon at the wide end

Hey all,

I thought you might find the SWA shootout that occurred in London last Friday interesting. The new Nikon 14-24/2.8 is sending shock waves thru the Canon community.

But Mark from 16-9 has created a Nikon/EOS adapter that will allow die hard Canon shooters the best of both worlds.

http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/canon14l2_nikon1424/nikon1424_canon14l2_a.html
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/594820/0
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1029&thread=26062524

I guess I am a die hard Canon user. But with Mark's adapter the Nikon 14-24/2.8 looks very interesting, especially for the new higher resolution sensors (eg - Canon 1DS III, 5D II). That one lens could be used in place of the Canon 14L II, Zeiss 21 and Canon 16-35L II (from 16-24 of course). I have got to give credit where credit is due. Great job Nikon!

Competition is good for consumers. Hopefully Canon will eventually respond.

It's interesting that you posted this today, because I just received my 1DsMkIII today. This is something I'll keep my eye on even though I don't shoot a lot on the wide end.

Don,

I know what you mean. 14-24mm is pretty wide on FF cameras. Congrats on the new camera BTW. It looks like you got it in time for your trip right?

Something you may want to check out as well is the Alternatives forum on Fred Miranda here:
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/55

Many of the guys/gals there do incredible work with Canon bodies and Zeiss, Leica, Zuiko, etc... glass. I just picked up a Contax Zeiss 35-70 and a Contax/EOS adapter.

- Derek

The Nikon's sharpness is quite spectacular, but what really gets my heart racing is that their lens gets rid of chromatic aberration. The comparisons between it and the Canon 14mm should be very humbling to Canon's lens techs. CA has been the biggest drawback to going digital, IMO, or it has been with my experience with Canon lenses. I got so tired of shooting a grove of pine trees against a blue sky with the supposedly spectacular 17-40, and then seeing color fringing around every frickin' branch. If somebody can solve that, I'm a happy camper. Judging by this test, looks like Nikon might've done so.

Todd, I know what you mean. Those 14-24 shots just look spectacular in terms of detail and the lack of CA. You may also want to check out some of the other alternatives at the mid-longer end as well by Zeiss, Leica, Zuko and Nikon.

One of the benfits of the EOS bodies is that they have the largest number of available adapters for other mounts. And some of the older manual lenses are really good.

- Derek

Todd if you are using PS3 and ACR4.x you should be able to mitigate that CA to near nothing using the Lens tab. Give it a try, you will be surprised at the improvement. The ACR in PS3 was worth the upgrade price alone.

Craig

I've been following the FM thread and will keep my eye on that adapter-lens combo. I'm not sure that I want to go the alernative lens route - especially when the differences are significantly reduced at f/8. But, after the first batch of adapters ship, it may be a good time to re-evaluate.

Lightroom also has the CA correction that Craig mentions.

Interesting. The CA fixes in the past have seemed to drastically softened edges. Is this not the case w/CS3? I guess I should try it and answer my own question.

I have also noticed adverse effects to color in other parts of the image when using various CA fix tools. If for example an image has any of those colors that will be removed from the CA then it eliminates that color in other parts of the photo as well. Since most colors are a mixture of primary colors this can change things across the frame upon closer inspection.

I hear a lot people claiming how easy it is to remove CA for them. So I guess I need to experiment with various tools again (PTLens, ACR, RawShooters, etc...). Maybe the tools have improved lately.

Then of course there is purple fringing which some differentiate from CA and which isn't always an easy fix.

I guess the main Q. I have is does your current CA fix of choice really not effect the color spectrum of the rest of your image upon critical examination?

Thanks,

- Derek

CA is purely a lens artifact. I've found that fixing CA actually has the effect of increasing apparent sharpness in the image as the channels are realigned. And I haven't seen any problems with color after applying CA (which I do in Lightroom).

Purple fringing is a sensor artifact caused by "blooming".... near specular highlights the photons bombarding the sensor are strong enough that the charge from one photosite "bleeds" over onto another. In Lightroom, the new "Defringe" setting addresses this.

Note that when fixing either CA or fringing you should do it with all sharpening turned off.

Nat,

Thanks for the clarification. Does ACR in have this same functionality? I am still on PSCS1. maybe it is time to upgrade.

Although I do like other RAW converters better. Hmmm...

Derek - yes, ACR includes CA adjustments... I'd say you definitely should upgrade to CS3. The recent versions of ACR are much improved.

If you want to process/convert your image in another raw converter, you can still import it into Lightroom afterwards just for CA (or whatever else). Lightroom treats all the supported file formats the same (with minor white balance exceptions). So you can render a TIF in your other converter, bring it into Lightroom, make any further adjustments, and save a new TIF out of LR.

Alternatively, if your raw converter will read and write DNGs, that would be ideal (but most won't write to them, only read.) This way you could apply your adjustments and save them as metadata in the DNG - nondestructive at its best. Or, if you have a sidecar xmp file, LR will read that data too.

Kind of a lot of steps, but if you prefer another raw converter it may be good to know you can still get the best out of LR as necessary.

Personally - after using and testing most of the raw converters made in the past 5 years - I'm very happy with Lightroom and ACR. Whatever tools you choose, it's a matter of fine tuning (and understanding) your conversion settings to get the best results possible.

Derek, I have used the CA option in ACR 4.x. I'm not at home at the moment, but I believe I use the "along high contrast boundaries" in the pull-down. I have not noticed any adverse affects on the remainder of the image. The new version of ACR is a vast improvement on previous versions, so I'd say upgrade PS and get ACR to boot.

Craig

Thanks guys. I have been planning on upgrading to CS3. But it has been lower on my list of things to get. Maybe I should bump it up. With my luck CS4 will come out right after upgrading to CS3. I am not quite sure where Adobe is in their current release cycle. But it does seem like a pretty short cycle when compared to other software vendors.

Derek, Adobe normally release Photoshop upgrades on an 18 month schedule. I forgot when CS3 came out, but it was less than a year ago (I'm thinking it was Apr/May timeframe). You could verify that with a google search I guess.

Craig

Man would I love to be a beta tester for CS4 which will then probably come out next Fall.

- Derek