J enea
Established
3 years ago I found in my dads old telescope boxes a new unused 50mm 1.8 E lens still in its box. took it out, hooked it up and it had oil on the shutter blades, and wouldn't open/close without me pushing the app lever on the lens. i was wondering if it was worth it to get it fixed, as I can almost buy a new 50mm 1.8 d lens for the cost to have it fixed.
I do have 2 50mm lenses already, a 1.4 ai-s and a long nose 1.8 ai-s, so not sure what I gain by fixing it.
I do have 2 50mm lenses already, a 1.4 ai-s and a long nose 1.8 ai-s, so not sure what I gain by fixing it.
xayraa33
rangefinder user and fancier
Oil on SLR aperture blades on lenses with auto stop down is a regular feature for Kiev SLRS, 35mm or 120 cameras. So it helps to learn to clean the aperture blades yourself, as these Kiev lenses are not worth much and certainly ain't worth the price of a professional camera tech working on them, same for that Nikon series E lens these days.
JoeLopez
Well-known
I'm with him
The quality of the shapes in the out of focus area. Soft = more appealing to the eye than sharp/edgy.
Steve M.
Veteran
Bokeh, bokeh, bokeh! There, I just wanted to get that out. I have NEVER heard anyone on this forum refer to bokeh as defocused anything because it isn't defocused at all, or blurry.
Gee, I never thought of myself as a wonk, a bourgeois or overblown ( and let's not forget film twit which never got mentioned, and I like very much, but then I'm a film twit, so I would). You kind folk have saved me a fortune on bills for a therapist!
Bokeh is part of the photograph unless you're shooting something stopped down intentionally, like a landscape or something. Like anything, it can be overdone, but I much prefer overdone bokeh to busy "bokeh" (which does not deserve to be called bokeh, it's just nervous noise). A smooth and pleasant background is what you want for portraits and for a lot of other stuff photographically. That's why they sell all those fake smoothish backgrounds to studio portrait photographers. But w/ a good lens you can have your own private studio wherever you and your camera go. For someone like me that only works w/ darkroom prints, bokeh is a big deal. Especially w/ Nikon lenses, which are sharp but often exhibit an ugly, edgy background, the H 50 2 lenses being the rare exception.
Film choice, developer choice, wet printing paper and toning, these are all fundamental parts of photography that influence image characteristics. Bokeh is as important as sharpness. I would argue that it's much more important because a lot of people seem to be able to make inexpensive sharp lenses, but a lens w/ good bokeh is always priced at a premium.
Gee, I never thought of myself as a wonk, a bourgeois or overblown ( and let's not forget film twit which never got mentioned, and I like very much, but then I'm a film twit, so I would). You kind folk have saved me a fortune on bills for a therapist!
Bokeh is part of the photograph unless you're shooting something stopped down intentionally, like a landscape or something. Like anything, it can be overdone, but I much prefer overdone bokeh to busy "bokeh" (which does not deserve to be called bokeh, it's just nervous noise). A smooth and pleasant background is what you want for portraits and for a lot of other stuff photographically. That's why they sell all those fake smoothish backgrounds to studio portrait photographers. But w/ a good lens you can have your own private studio wherever you and your camera go. For someone like me that only works w/ darkroom prints, bokeh is a big deal. Especially w/ Nikon lenses, which are sharp but often exhibit an ugly, edgy background, the H 50 2 lenses being the rare exception.
Film choice, developer choice, wet printing paper and toning, these are all fundamental parts of photography that influence image characteristics. Bokeh is as important as sharpness. I would argue that it's much more important because a lot of people seem to be able to make inexpensive sharp lenses, but a lens w/ good bokeh is always priced at a premium.
mcfingon
Western Australia
I have read that the optics are identical on those two lenses. Halfway down the page on Ken Rockwell's site:
https://kenrockwell.com/nikon/cheapskate-lenses.htm
Benjamin Marks
Veteran
I am with Steve on this one. I think the term caused a stir because camera nuts in the West were obsessed with sharpness, resolution, lines-per- mm etc. Those measurable criteria were the subject of all the lens reviews, such as they were. And here it turned out that Japanese photographers were looking at the whole picture, not just the subject, and had come up with a vocabulary to describe what they cared about in a photo.
I think the photographer is responsible for everything in the frame, and so encountering the term was, for me, a revelation. I was one of those camera nuts who thought that subject sharpness was the end-all.
I understand the dismissiveness in Nick's post above - I did the same thing in a post here about bicycling with a camera yesterday. It comes, in my case at least, with impatience with convention. But I think the OP's question is a fair one -- after all not all 50's are created equal on this score, and why wouldn't a photographer want the input of other actual users of a particular lens before purchasing one? I believe it is not just the elements of lens design, but also the aperture shape that matters here.
I think the photographer is responsible for everything in the frame, and so encountering the term was, for me, a revelation. I was one of those camera nuts who thought that subject sharpness was the end-all.
I understand the dismissiveness in Nick's post above - I did the same thing in a post here about bicycling with a camera yesterday. It comes, in my case at least, with impatience with convention. But I think the OP's question is a fair one -- after all not all 50's are created equal on this score, and why wouldn't a photographer want the input of other actual users of a particular lens before purchasing one? I believe it is not just the elements of lens design, but also the aperture shape that matters here.
Benjamin Marks
Veteran
Steve: Here are some pix taken this morning so you can make your own judgment about things. I put three Nikon lenses on a D3/tripod and aimed them at a railing post devoid of artistic merit. The lenses were the 50/1.8 E lens (I assume this is the pancake lens you are talking about), a 1990's 50/1.4 AF lens and a 40/2.8 GN (which is actually a pancake lens).
Here's the 50/1.8 E lens wide open and then at f:5.6:
f:5.6:
Here's the 1990's 50/1.4 AF at f:1.8 and then f:5.6:
f:5.6:
and here's the 40 at those same apertures. I had to move the tripod back a bit as the 40 doesn't focus as close as the 50's.
f:5.6:
As I said: devoid of any artistic merit. You can even see a shadow of yrs. truly hunching over the tripod.
Hope this gives you a sense of what that lens does with OOF areas when pointed at a busy background. Seems a little busy to me, but not too bad.
ChrisPlatt
Thread Killer
gavinlg
Veteran
Salty, meaty and delicious?
retinax
Well-known
No, everyone's product needs it but talking about it is either done fanatically or dismissed in various ways, little middle ground.
The in focus parts...
retinax
Well-known
That article simply isn't consistent in its use, from the first sentence: "the term bokeh represents the quality of the magical out-of-focus blur". Sure, the usage like in the headline and general gist of the article exists, what doesn't on the internet. These articles are written for beginners and if the terminology is a little mangled, maybe it doesn't matter that much. The discussion here on RFF usually takes this knowledge for granted. OP knows how to get blurry backgrounds. Do you really think the OP wants to know which of various 50s of nearly the same max aperture gives blurrier out of focus backgrounds?