I have a lot of deep sunsets from 1989, was there something in the air that year?

That's delicious Peter! leave it as it is

This kinda fizzled out Amin, what were you going to say about the K7 af speed?

I was at a bicycle meet here in Plymouth yesterday and gave up with AF on cyclists coming towards me. I just used manual.
But my biggest problem after a day of shooting is my own (very close range) panning skills. This is the only shot out of a 4gig card that I consider worth keeping. BTW, this was the 16-45 whoohoo! at soaking range ha ha.


There was a pro there next to me at one point in the woods, with 4 Nikons and an assistant. She was very good (9 years practice at bike events) and very helpful - I learnt so much in just 10 minutes.
Significantly, she had disabled the machine gun setting Nikons default to and just took one perfect shot after another (from what I saw).

Just to get a slightly better comparison I set my 16-45 to about 35mm and shot some closer houses.
As with all my tests these are JPEGs totally untouched.
These two 100% crops were on the tripod like all the others but the first is without mirror lock-up. Quite a difference!
But both pretty murky and 'orrible




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By the way nothing in the rest of the image is any more in focus.
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[edit] just tried getting a really nice shot at f8, 1stop exposure comp and processed properly.... It was softer than f4 (even the JPEG) !!... I give up.
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Thanks Doc,
Really good of you to take the time.
You do appear to have a better copy of the lens.
I can see how your scene might fool the exposure but I can't see any excuse for mine. (it was set to spot metering and focus)

Not sure how PSE works but in PhotoShop, just marquee any section and keep an eye on the 'Info' to check you haven't gone over 800px then copy it into new file or go - 'Image - Crop'

Photoshop can also set the rectangular marquee to a fixed size (something under 800px) then you can just click anywhere to grab your 100% crop.

Cheers
M

te he..
how bizarre

Your uncropped version is beautiful lidy. I like the foreground and I think it balances the image well.

edit: actually it looks good which various crops. removing the dark triangle helps but makes a less pleasant frame, cropping until the horizon is bottom third also looks very striking

For what it's worth I like sananjana's last one, but not the others.

Here are some shots taken this morning after making sure the camera was focusing properly. Both the 16-45 and fa50 needed the same debug tweak to stop them focusing behind. You'll notice the 16-45 shots are also underexposed - this happened consistently so I saw no reason to compensate for this test.
My 55-300 also does this.

FA50mm 1:4 at f4
full image -


100percent crop -


16-45mm 1:4 at f4
full image -


100percent crop -


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By the way, the 16-45 hasn't shown any sign of refusing to focus today.
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Te he, ah, if only it was 6mm wider

Must get some work done, but maybe we can do some comparative tests?

Ha ha ha....oh Lidy, you don't know me very well yet

I had another copy (documented here) and had it replaced as it was all wobbly and the focus kept dropping off.
This one is much tighter but the image quality is still a bit marginal. in the studio it is good for kids because it focuses fast, but even at f8 the Fa50mm 1:4 is leagues ahead in terms of sharpness (but that lens is really slow to focus).

Since dropping it (really, an innocuous little tumble onto the grass) it has started refusing to focus at infinity, stopping the camera from firing. it just makes a little noise like it's having a go but can't do it.

I'll try and find time to show you later.