luni, 29 noiembrie 2010

old architecture

narrow street
snowing in the schoolyard
two ways of measuring time
school entrance
 

promenade




joi, 18 noiembrie 2010

portraits

















 


a few portraits shot with the 180mm F2.8 and 50mm F1.4 Nikon lenses.


duminică, 7 noiembrie 2010

pine tree forest in autumn and spring

here are a few pictures taken on the Lempes hill. Some of them are in spring and some of them in autumn. I think it's interesting to see the different colors of a forest that doesn't change the leaves from one season to the other.
nikkor 35-70 F2.8 D @ 35mm f6.3
nikon 18-105 F3.5-5.6 @ 18mm f4




nikon 18-105 F3.5-5.6 @ 18mm f5
nikkor 35-70 F2.8 D @ 35mm f6.3
nikkor 35-70 F2.8 D @ 35mm f6.3
nikon 18-105 f3.5-5.6 @ 18mm f4

luni, 1 noiembrie 2010

short review of nikon AF 35-70 F2.8 D


The lens is amazing. It is a push-pull design. At F5.6 it is very sharp from corner to corner.Auto focusing is really fast.


At 35mm at F2.8 all the corners are blurred, but they get sharp at f8. At 70mm it performs much better. Even at F2.8 the corners are just a little soft. At F5.6 it is very sharp throughout. The center of frame is always very sharp starting from f2.8.

It has also macro feature at 35mm, but I find that at this range with macro you have to get to close to the subject to get a clear picture. This makes it impossible to photograph insects for instance. Also sometimes you will find the shadow of your own lens spoiling the picture. Personally I prefer a longer range macro. At macro setting the lens doesn't have AF any more, but this is ok as for macro you'd probably want to manual focus any way.
The bokeh is really nice and smooth too.

here are some pictures in macro mode and also a 100% crop of each of them.






 On a DX format camera  the lens doesn't feel wide enough for landscape photography. Anyway this is first of all a portrait lens.

The build quality of the lens is great. It is all metal and glass. You could probably beat someone with it and still take good pictures with it after-wards - only joking :) . It has rubber grip for focusing and zooming. The only plastic is the aperture ring. This makes for a quite heavy lens and you will feel the difference in weight if you add this lens to your camera bag.

All in all the lens is a great performer. One drawback would be that it has a somehow short zoom range and that the macro is at a too short range. On the good side it is capable of taking very sharp pictures. According to the tests I've done it beats the Nikon 50mm F1.8 lens at any setting. It has also a constant F2.8 throughout the range which is great and makes for nice portrait photographs.

some pictures taken with this lens are here and here.     

amazing light and colors of autumn





All pictures shot with the nikon AF 35-70 F2.8 D