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Mosaic Comparison Notes

Shooting notes for 24/28/35/50/70/85/120 comparisons

Focus was on the two pink flowers near center. The Nikon D3x with mirror lockup and a remote release was used at ISO 100, in 14-bit lossless NEF. Light was steady with no variance.

Images for sharpness comparisons converted to 16-bit TIF using Adobe Camera RAW with sharpening set to extract maximum details using sharpening parameters for deconvolution (see Making Sharp Images). Noise reduction off, lens corrections off.

Avanced sharpening makes an inferior lens look better than it is; although sharpening is applied equally to all images, the worst quality lens benefits the most in a perceptual way.

The variance in overall lens brightness, as well as vignetting and distortion made perfect matches in framing impossible. I used the as-marked focal lengths on each lens. Although the scene appears slightly tilted (corrected for the distortion comparisons), this is the best that can be done with either a bubble level or visually or with the D3x virtual horizon feature; all within 0.5° of level, and none more accurate than that.

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Diglloyd DAP is DSLR-oriented, but also contains workflow and other topics. Much of the focus is on Canon and Nikon but also Pentax and Pentax medium format.

Special emphasis is placed on lens evaluation, focusing on Canon and Nikon and Sigma lenses, but with a few others like Rokinon/Samyang.

  • Make better images by learning how to get the best results right away.
  • Save money by choosing the right lens for your needs the first time, particularly some of the new Sigma Art lenses vs Nikon and Canon.
  • Workflow discusses image organization, raw conversion and post processing. Many examples show processing parameters for direct insight into how the image was converted.
  • Jaw-dropping image quality found nowhere else utilizing Retina-grade images up to full camera resolution, plus large crops [past 2 years or so].
  • Real world examples with insights found nowhere else. Make sharper images just by understanding lens behavior you won’t read about elsewhere.
  • Aperture series from wide open through stopped down, showing the full range of lens performance and bokeh.
  • Optical quality analysis of field curvature, focus shift, sharpness, flare, distortion, and performance in the field.

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The test scene (Nikon 24-120 @ 24mm)

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