[Leica] 16-16-15 lens comparison

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Barrel distortion, the heartbreak of BD can be easily remedied now a days in
Photoshop. You can not read a lens review anymore without the guy, Thom H,
or Ken R. telling you the exact coordinates to punch in to take out the
barrel distortion that a new nikon zoom will have at a certain focal length
(FL).
The time will come soon that lens designers will just say "we'll just let
them fix the rest in software" and go home for dinner and give you a CD or
URL so you can more easily punch them in. or they will be punched in
automatically as part of the way the raw file thing works.


I just shot a thing which came out today in the NYTimes in which I used
instead of the blissful no stress 12-24 f4 zoom I'd been using for 5
different things. I used an:
AF NIKKOR 14mm f/2.8D ED

Quite a chuck of high tech glass. Leica priced almost.
http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/lens/af/wideangle/af_14mmf_28d/index
.htm

:
Hybrid aspherical lens elements and ED glass elements for high-resolution
and high-contrast images
Used as 21mm (converted to 135 format) wide-angle lens when attached to the
Nikon DX-format digital SLR's
RF (Rear Focusing) system for fast and smooth optical performance


I think it made a difference. It doesn't even look all that wide angle at
all in many of the shots I've been repeatedly told I assume since it was so
well corrected.

I wonder if the fact that it was meant to work well as a 14mm lens and then
we're chopping off the outside 1.5 edges of it to make it a 21 is a big plus
in its performance. Like a baseball batter swinging with two bats then
taking one away and stepping up to the plate.
Its a heavy lens. A TCP Tunnel Carpel protagonist.
A Tylenol is needed before and after heavy use.
And or well placed helium filled balloons.
Gary Fong makes one I think. A frosted one you can flash through. And
lightens any load.
LumiQuest makes one with a built in pump works with Hydrogen if you know
where to get it.

Pump it up too big on a windy day and watch your camera fly over a tree and
get caught in a telephone wire.


My spell checker suggested "LumiQuest" was really "Cumquats" just now.

I'd call that fuzzy logic.
>From the fuzz in someone's navel.






Mark William Rabiner
markrabiner.com