nitin10

Hello everyone

Recently i bought a Nikon D750 with 24-120 f4 VR kit lens. I am learning to use it. Previously I had D5300 and a point and shoot camera. Yesterday it snowed in NJ. Yup in March and one more to come on Tuesday! The snow covered tree, just next to my apartment, was looking beautiful, so I thought let me get out in my balcony and photograph the tree. Suddenly out of nowhere a cardinal came and sat on the railing. He seemed to be unafraid of me being few feet away. I started snapping his photograph and he still sat there. I took few shots at 1/80s and f11 and f8. I thought 1/80s should be ok as it is a VR lens. But when I zoom 100%, I am not satisfied with the sharpness. I had the focus point on his eye. Although the tree pic seems to be ok. I am not sure if the technique used was wrong, may be i need to bump up the shutter speed and open up the aperture for cardinal. Or is it something wrong with the lens? Or am I expecting too much out of my lens and the pic is perfectly fine? Please suggest. Your valuable advise will be highly appreciated. I am attaching both tree pic as well as cardinal pic with exif data. Please download and review.

Thanks

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cfbudd Loc: Atlanta, Georgia

The cardinal seems not to be in focus. If you look at the railing, it seems it is in focus not on the same plane as the cardinal's eye. This might be a fine-tuning problem, and I suggest that you check the focus of your 5300 with this lens. (I assume the 5300 has fine-tune capability.)

Also, 1/80 is way way to slow to expect sharp images. VR can help camera movement but not subject movement. I have this lens and I consider it to be tack sharp.

cfbudd Loc: Atlanta, Georgia

PS: I checked the focus point, and it is behind the cardinal's eye on the back of his head.

nitin10

Thanks cfbudd! Even I thought so, 1/80s is slow for this shot. But I had the focus point on its eye. So if it is going behind the head of cardinal I guess the lens needs the fine tuning. I took it on D750 though and yes it has option to fine tune. I will check on fine tuning the lens.
I was wondering if f8 should have helped bring more in focus.

Thanks again cfbudd!

nitin10

I just read somewhere that 24-120 is not that sharp at 120mm. So I took this photograph fully zoomed!

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Birds move, even a slight bit of movement at the head will put the bird out of focus. I shoot a lot of birds and I always shoot as fast as possible, even when they are sitting "still," which is really never. I think you should shoot all animals at the fastest possible shutter speed if you want to get them sharp. The snow right at the bird is in focus, although I did not check a focus point. But I do not think it is the lens; the red boxes show the sharpest part of the photo.

nitin10

Thanks for your suggestion. I just checked as well, the focus point is just behind cardinal's eye, so my hand might have moved. Although the very next pic in my camera has focus on the eye(attached) and again same problem. So I guess I should have kept the shutter speed high. Missed the chance !

Although I don't shoot birds but planning to do so in future. I will try to keep the shutter speed as high as possible. But when you shoot birds what is your preferred aperture? Since they are generally far away, is f5.6 or f8 good enough?

Thanks

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jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

I think it's not bad. That's probably about as good as it's going to get with your choice of lens. Someone said that the focus point was the back of the cardinal head. Nothing wrong with that. At f/11 you have great DOF and the focus is not the problem. If anything, it's movement that is the problem. But personally, I think the photo is fine considering the light you have and that there's no catchlight in the cardinals eye. If you were to have opened up the aperture from f/11 to f/4 that's 3 stops and your shutter could have been 1/640 and at that distance you would have had plenty of DOF and it might have been slightly better, but not much.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

although the new 24-120 is much improved over the olf 24-120, it is still not
what you would call a sharp lens, especially when zoomed all the way out.
1 over twice the focal length is about the slowest you would want to shoot
and F8 is certainly better than F5.6
Throw some seed out, he will be back with his mate and you can bag them both.

LoneRangeFinder Loc: Left field

IMO the focus is a bit further back on the bird. The easiest place to see this is on the vertical slats of the fence"'. The most in focus slat is the one running down right where the tail meets the body of the bird.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Your lens does not need to be tuned.

This image was shot at f/8 and the focus distance was 2.37 meters, zoomed to 120mm. The traditionally calculated DOF is almost 10 inches! Even if you choose to narrow that to where "acceptable sharpness" is over a 5 inch range, every part of the bird is in focus! Motion blur does not mean something is not in focus.

There are two technical problems (i.e. operator errors) with the image. First all zoom lenses lose sharpness at maximum zoom. For best results stay less than perhaps 100mm, rather than shooting at 120mm. Frankly the difference is not great, this image is fine, and the only way to actually improve in that area would be to use a significantly longer focal length lens. A 70-200mm f/2.8 would have been very slightly better, while a 200-500mm f/5.6 would have been a significant improvement. But those are not practical if you don't have them...

The real problem was setting ISO to 100 and shooting at 1/80 of a second. With a D750 there is no reason to stay at IS0 100 when you can get a higher quality image using ISO 800 or 1600. With ISO 800 the shutter speed could have been 1/640, or twice that fast with ISO 1600. (With a D750, if you absolutely nail the exposure, using D3200 would still be noiseless.)

One item in the Exif of note is that while using Manual Exposure mode you did adjust the exposure for essentially a +0.8 EV bias (exactly the same that Exposure Compensation would have accomplished). That resulted in a very nicely exposed image! ISO 3200 would have been fine!

nitin10

Thanks jeep_daddy. That is what I thought too. After taking the shot, I realized that I was at slow shutter speed and could have opened up a little. Lesson learnt will recalculate stuff in my mind before taking a shot rather than contemplating later.

nitin10

I do constantly feed them, but it was surprising to see them get used to me and perching so close by.

nitin10

Thanks Apaflo. I do think, I could have done better. And you are right, D750 is very powerful and I could have bumped up the ISO or opened up a little to go with higher shutter speed. Thanks for your valuable feedback. I was unnecessarily worried of fine tuning my lens.

Thanks again.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

That is not an accurate perspective. The previous Nikkor 24-120mm f3.5-5.6G was widely accepted as one of the worst lenses that Nikon ever sold. The current 24-120mm f/4G is a gold ring Professional quality lens, listed by Nikon a good enough to use on their 36 MP cameras like the D800, D800E and D810.

Note that all zoom lenses are less sharp at the maximum zoom range. That is not something unique to the 24-120mm f/4G. What is unique is a 5x zoom range that Nikon ranks as a professional lens, because there are only a couple others that have ever made that distinction, such as the current 80-400mm AF-S lens.

You will note that among advanced photographers who have a need for focal lengths from 24 to 120mm that lens is commonly touted as being a "go to" choice.