Disappointed w/ my fancy Nikon zoom

Huss said:
So for the purpose of scientific testing, I acquired a D750 and tested the lens.
It is very sharp on the D750 which tells me that there is some processing software at play, that obviously is not available with film cameras.

So... remember how the conventional wisdom is that digital cameras need much higher quality lenses than film cameras? Well, it seems that this is a maybe..

This 24-120 VR4, latest version, is not great on film, but is excellent on digital.
Click to expand...

It appears that the term "lens" is now a catch all for "everything that happens to the light between the subject and raw file being written". So, yeah, they need better "lenses" it's just that most of the "lens" is no longer made or an optically transparent material...
 
Back when I had a Nikon DSLR kit, I used their 35-70 f2.8d macro zoom from the nineties/2000s and absolutely loved it, despite it being a "dust pump" design. It wasn't the best lens I have ever used at any given focal length, and it wasn't the best macro lens I've ever used, but it was good at every focal length and it was fine for macro in a pinch, despite only being macro capable at 35mm. You might be a lot happier with one of those.
 
Merkin said:
Back when I had a Nikon DSLR kit, I used their 35-70 f2.8d macro zoom from the nineties/2000s and absolutely loved it, despite it being a "dust pump" design. It wasn't the best lens I have ever used at any given focal length, and it wasn't the best macro lens I've ever used, but it was good at every focal length and it was fine for macro in a pinch, despite only being macro capable at 35mm. You might be a lot happier with one of those.
Click to expand...
I agree 100%.. The 35-70 is one of the lenses from the film era that still stands its ground today. Despite its limited zoom factor, I regularly use it on the D750 because of its image quality and focusing speed. Of all the screwdriver AF lenses that I've ever used, it's by far the fastest.
 
Another vote for the AF Nikkor 35-70 f/2.8 D. Great lens. Big & heavy, but very good images throughout the range. The reasonable macro is frosting on the cake.
 
Just realized the flaw in my initial conclusion. I have yet to get my film test roll back where I shot with the VR turned off at speeds above 1/250. My not so sharp shots had the VR turned on all the time, even though the shutter speeds were high.

What I know so far is that it is sharp on digital.
 
Sharp on digital:
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This lens is very very sweet on the D750. What I did notice was that very noticeable changes were made to the image when using the lens profiles in LR. W/o this there would be lots of distortion.
This could be why it is not very good on film. There is no raw data saved for LR, so LR does not know what aperture or focal length was used, so cannot apply any corrections.

Bottom line , the 24-120 VR4 G is most excellent on a digital body.
 
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