Digital Dave's Ruminations

This is the place...

...where Digital Dave occasionally shares his thoughts on China, Photography, and other various and random subject-matter.

My three most recent posts will always appear on this page (unless you've arrived here via a direct link to a specific article). Use the archive links on the right sidebar to access previous posts. Most images on this blog can be clicked-on to view them in a larger size.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A few more from the 1.4

Here's a couple of portraits taken with the new AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G that perhaps will give you a better sense of how this lens does when shot wide-open than the example images I used in my earlier post comparing it with Nikon's  previous iteration of the 50mm f/1.4. These examples clearly demonstrate the improvements in the optical performance of this lens over the older version. Note the lack of any perceptible light-falloff at the edges and the  sharpness and detail of the in-focus areas of the images. (Bear in mind that at f/1.4, the depth-of-field is quite narrow. Focus was on the subject's eye.) Also note the reasonably clean bokeh (background-blur). It's not especially wonderful, but it's much more pleasing than what you'd have gotten with the older AF-D 50mm lens, which had a sort of mottled appearance.

Click to view larger image

Click to view larger image

Not bad for a lens shot at its widest aperture, where its optical deficiencies are usually most apparent.

Both of the above images were shot with the 50mm on the D700 @ f/1.4 with a shutter-speed of 1/125 of a second. ISO sensitivity was 3200. The auto-focus module on the D700 was set to 51-point 3D in continuous-focus mode. The focus-point was selected manually and placed on the subject's eye. The AF- module kept focus on the eye as I moved the camera slightly to recompose. 

Per usual, you can click on the photos above to view the larger images in my galleries.

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