Zooms or primes
- Thread starter lobster
- Start date
Robster970
Pay homage to Global Bob
Dr_Herbz said:
UR Galaxy?
Robster970 said:
No, my mate ordered them for me from Chinaarts and they sent them to his address in the UK so he had to post them here...
Don't talk to me about UR Galaxy, I'm still waiting for 2 lenses I ordered from him 3 weeks ago, he's a nightmare.
Have you had dealings with them?
Robster970
Pay homage to Global Bob
Dr_Herbz said:Don't talk to me about UR Galaxy, I'm still waiting for 2 lenses I ordered from him 3 weeks ago, he's a nightmare.
Have you had dealings with them?
Yeah - got some pocket wizards which turned up fine. Recent lens purchase didn't get shipped until 2 weeks later. He was ok in telling me what was going on and roughly when it would ship. Still 2 weeks late though. I'm quite philosophical about it all really though. A 2 week wait vs a £300+ saving is ok for me.
I finally got a DHL tracking number from him, almost 3 weeks after paying for them. I emailed him a couple of times to find out what was happening, first time he said customs had "bounced" the package and he would have to put a different company name on it. Second time, he did actually give me a tracking number but when I tried to track it, it had been sent back to him because of incorrect shipping info. I'm just hoping it'll be third time lucky.
He does seem to be cheaper than most people on ebay but I certainly wouldn't recommend him to anyone who needed something in a hurry.
I think what he probably does is take orders for lenses and when he has enough orders, he buys a bulk lot and gets discount. Either way, when he says he ships next day and doesn't do it for 2 - 3 weeks, i'm not a happy bunny but there's not a lot you can do once you've parted with your dosh except chalk it up as experience.
He does seem to be cheaper than most people on ebay but I certainly wouldn't recommend him to anyone who needed something in a hurry.
I think what he probably does is take orders for lenses and when he has enough orders, he buys a bulk lot and gets discount. Either way, when he says he ships next day and doesn't do it for 2 - 3 weeks, i'm not a happy bunny but there's not a lot you can do once you've parted with your dosh except chalk it up as experience.
lobster
Well-Known Member
Dr_Herbz said:Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't this the case with all lenses?
It depends on the price range of the lense, the cheap consumer ones that come free with the entry to pro-consumer slr suffer from many artefacts most notable Chromatic Aberration also they apertures are at most 3.5.
The nikkor 28-70 f2.8 for instance should be sharp at 2.8 at any mm, that lens is over a grand. I got a tokina of that a few years back, it does get noticeably softer the wider the aperture but for 1/3 of the price i cannot complain. Post processing can generally sharpen it out. It does not suffer from chromatic aberration, its a pretty heavy lense and quite pleased with it.
http://www.xbpro.com/u75/river.jpg,
I presume that is taken with Nikon AF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G Dx VR Lens ?
Personally that's a lot room in one lense, i can see chromatic aberation in that lense.
lobster said:
I agree with everything you say, you get what you pay for and this is definitely the case when it comes to Nikon lenses.
The thing is, most people don't have a few grand spare to throw at lenses so they look for a good all-rounder and IMO, there is no better all-rounder than the Nikon AF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G Dx VR.
Of course, if you have the spare money and can justify the cost of much more expensive lenses, then you are going to achieve better results but for most people, 400-500 squid is about as much as they can justify and to get better results and without going to the extremes of using primes you'd need a minimum of a 28-70mm f/2.8 and a 70-200mm f/2.8... that's gonna knock you back about £1200-£1300 and you're still missing the 18-28mm range so throw in a 17-55mm f/2.8, and you're looking at over 2000 squid to replace a £500 lens.
Of course, you do get what you pay for but most people can't justify £2k+ on lenses and that's the absolute minimum you can get away with in reality.
I really shouldn't have posted that picture of the river, it's crap but it was just an example of the VR capability of the lens... not a very good example I admit but every other picture I've posted was taken without a tripod on the 18-200mm f/3.5 DX VR and to be honest, I can't really complain about the quailty but of course you can't expect it to perform well at both ends of the focal length and if it did, it'd be 4X the price.
I'm gonna jump in the car shortly (if the weather holds out) and try the D200 with a couple of primes to make a few comparisons. I know I'm going to get better results but how much better... I have no idea.
Is there some sort of in-camera default sharpening going on there? The cat's right ear (on the left of the picture) has a bright line of background around it rather reminiscent of the use of Unsharp Mask. It being a jpeg is not sufficient to give that effect surely?
