A tale of two lenses
Oct. 26th, 2020 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqWhile I was updating the firmware in my camera and lenses today, I paused to consider that not that many years ago the idea of fixing issues or adding features to a camera or lens via a software push would never have occurred to me.
I dug out and dusted off my old DX 50mm lens and slapped it onto my camera with the adapter to play with it a bit. My camera does not support the autofocus in this ancient lens, but everything else still works.
On a whim, I set my camera on full manual ISO, shutter and aperture (which I set at 1.8 on both). Then I swapped out the old and new lenses, using each to take a picture of the other. I then took the raw images and gave them identical processing and cropping.
The old lens still works fine - after a fashion. It would probably be okay for distance shooting, though as a crop lens it would likely function more like an 85mm lens than 50mm.
On the other hand, trying to focus on things up close is very fiddly with the old lens. I don't get a split view when focusing, but my camera gives pretty good feedback on that front. Even so, with the lens wide open, the depth of field up close is about 1mm. Fiddly indeed!
I dug out and dusted off my old DX 50mm lens and slapped it onto my camera with the adapter to play with it a bit. My camera does not support the autofocus in this ancient lens, but everything else still works.
On a whim, I set my camera on full manual ISO, shutter and aperture (which I set at 1.8 on both). Then I swapped out the old and new lenses, using each to take a picture of the other. I then took the raw images and gave them identical processing and cropping.
The old lens still works fine - after a fashion. It would probably be okay for distance shooting, though as a crop lens it would likely function more like an 85mm lens than 50mm.
On the other hand, trying to focus on things up close is very fiddly with the old lens. I don't get a split view when focusing, but my camera gives pretty good feedback on that front. Even so, with the lens wide open, the depth of field up close is about 1mm. Fiddly indeed!
