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Oldies but Goldies - part 3 of 1 2 3

Published 01/04/2011

Overall then, in the absence of hard data, we have to resort to a narrative verdict!

The 43-86mm lens was unusable at the edges of the frame and still a bit soft in the centre; it will not be going out on jobs of any description ever again! At 50mm the prime MF lens was the sharpest of the bunch. At 24mm the MF prime lens was sharper than both the modern zoom lenses.

At 105mm we could not differentiate between the modern and older lenses.

Despite this it is worth saying that everything other than the 43-86mm lens was creating a usable image. Although we made full-sized prints we could not differentiate the results; different sharpening levels were having more influence than the particular lens on test. To determine the differences we had to blow up the images on screen and then search and ponder quite hard before we could reach a conclusion.

Overall

The only loser in the tests was the 43-86mm zoom which was awful at the edges! The results were gratifying; we have established that we can use the older lenses with a degree of confidence although we would miss auto focus for all moving subjects (the eyes are not what they used to be!). It was really rather nice to use manual aperture settings and have an engraved barrel on which to set focus distance once again, much faster than moving the focus spot about in-camera and trying to remember to press the focus lock. Please recognise that we did not test any of the superb new zooms such as the Nikkor 14-24mm G AFS ED f2.8 which have a considerable and deserved reputation.

TOP: The 12mm lens only employs 117 pixels along the length of the destroyer.
MIDDLE: Slightly better, we can now just about make out the bow gun.
BOTTOM: A 160x160 pixel crop from a 105mm image. There are now enough pixels to reveal a crew member, but little else about him; a 300mm lens for example would enable us to see that he was armed.

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1st Published 01/04/2011
last update 09/12/2022 14:57:05

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