April 2020

[Fons Baerken]

April 22

Df - 105mm f/1.4

[Birna Rørslett]

Spring has, finally, arrived in my neighbourhood as well.  I have a very restricted action radius and need to be well away from other people, but my little red car can deliver me at favourite spots nonetheless.

I was shooting false-colour infrared emulated "film" today, and snapped this documentation of the setup. The lens is the 200-400 mm f/4 ED Nikkor AIS (not IF), which is one of my favourite landscape weapons of all times. The main point I'd like to underscore here is that I used the Rodenstcok XR-Heligon 100 mm f/1.6 lens on my Z7 to capture this. On the Z systems, this former "exotic" lens becomes almost mundane as it focuses from near to infinity just like any ordinary lens.

[Frank Fremerey]

I went shopping to support local small businesses

[Birna Rørslett]

That bow tie really suits you, Frank. Nice to see such a happy smile as well.

[Frank Fremerey]

That bow tie really suits you, Frank. Nice to see such a happy smile as well.

These images on my shoulders ... are they real?

[Frank Fremerey]

Spring has, finally, arrived in my neighbourhood as well.  I have a very restricted action radius and need to be well away from other people, but my little red car can deliver me at favourite spots nonetheless.

I was shooting false-colour infrared emulated "film" today, and snapped this documentation of the setup. The lens is the 200-400 mm f/4 ED Nikkor AIS (not IF), which is one of my favourite landscape weapons of all times. The main point I'd like to underscore here is that I used the Rodenstcok XR-Heligon 100 mm f/1.6 lens on my Z7 to capture this. On the Z systems, this former "exotic" lens becomes almost mundane as it focuses from near to infinity just like any ordinary lens.

the separation is extraordinary

[John Geerts]

A late magnolia...

Z6  55/1.2 Ai

[John Geerts]

Spring has, finally, arrived in my neighbourhood as well.  I have a very restricted action radius and need to be well away from other people, but my little red car can deliver me at favourite spots nonetheless.

I was shooting false-colour infrared emulated "film" today, and snapped this documentation of the setup. The lens is the 200-400 mm f/4 ED Nikkor AIS (not IF), which is one of my favourite landscape weapons of all times. The main point I'd like to underscore here is that I used the Rodenstcok XR-Heligon 100 mm f/1.6 lens on my Z7 to capture this. On the Z systems, this former "exotic" lens becomes almost mundane as it focuses from near to infinity just like any ordinary lens.

Very clean shot with a very nice bokeh

[ColinM]

These images on my shoulders ... are they real?

Well the boy's hair looks like it was very windy, so I'm surprised your hat stayed on.
(unless they aren't real....!)

[Erik Lund]

Last evening shot seen from my house in Kristiansund, Norway, with the lighthouse of the island Grip. Df and Nikkor 400mm ED-IF AI f/3.5, f/11.

Very nice smooth tonation, very saturated
Framing is very straight on, could have been off set more I believe but that is personal opinion

[ColinM]

If you're lucky enough to be able to walk along country lanes, the ones in the UK have a lot of "Jack by the Hedge" (Alliara petiolata) in full growth at the moment.

I believe this plant is treated as an invasive pest in the USA.
The upside is that the leaves taste of wild garlic and mustard & go nicely in a salad

This ladybird seems to like the taste of them too

[Ethan]

This is a test shot to illustrate the actual difference between a very expensive lens ($5000 +) and another, very cheap one which I paid less than $30 for. Captures are 100% crops from the peripheral parts of the frame, where the performance differs the most.

UV done with my modified Z6 and the Baader U filter. Illumination by 2*800 Ws studio flash and exposure is the same in both cases, thus the UV response level-wise is about equal. Alas this was to be the only comparison shot as one of my flashes literally exploded soon thereafter with a bang that made me deaf for hours. All fuses blew of course. It must be the condenser that failed. Until the studio flash is repaired I have to postpone other testing, or wait until I can break my C-19 quarantine and seek the big outdoors.

It is easy to see the difference here, but do keep in mind the enormous price difference and the fact that also the cheap lens was almost parfocal visible to UV, which is a feature very rarely observed apart from the expensive specialist UV lenses. In case one wonders, yes the infamous UV striping of the Z6 is present as I did not run the NEFs either through a dedicated plugin (Topaz) or a raw converter capable of dealing with the issue (RawTherapee). This was done in Photo Ninja.

I keep the lens identities under wraps for now. Suffice it to say I paid more for the dedicated adapter for it to Z6 mount than for the lens itself

Why is one image 255mb and the other one 140mb?

[Birna Rørslett]

No idea where you got those numbers from? Images taken with the Z6 which is 24MPix and delivers approx. 140 MB TIFs (16 bit).

Oh, I see now where they are from: the presentation images are cropped slightly differently, as I did keep the perspective with a stationary camera. As there was signs of moiŕe on the image taken with UV 105, this means that lens had higher resolution and the slight adjustment in cropping didn't remove that. impression. My main focus was to show how close the cheap lens came in practical terms. The periphery does show the Petri has field curvature, coma, and spherical aberration not seen with the UV-Nikkor. Given the enormous price difference, not surprising.

I still fail to see the relevance for the intended comparison.

[Fons Baerken]

April 23

It is all about distance

Z6 - zf28mm f/2

[BW]

Taken two days ago. We tried to cross the ice with snow scooter to our cabin 10 km away. Had to check roof to see if all the snow had made it collapse. But the ice would not let us. 30 cm of slush proved that the scooter is not amphibious...
But the coffe was equally good at the starting point.