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Hazy Low Contrast with Nikon 17-35 @ f/2.8
While shooting the mosaic comparison series with the nine different lenses at 17/21/24/28/35mm, I observed that the Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 was more of a challenge to focus wide open at f/2.8 using Live View because of ultra low contrast, an effect I’ll call “haze” or “hazing”. For that reason, I focused at f/4, which helped, but did not banish the haze.
The haze is/was visible in all crops at all apertures, though the sharpening applied for presenting the mosaic crops masks the effect to a significant degree, by increasing the contrast.
It’s no mystery to see it in the final images, because a Live View gives real time look at the effect, and also proves that it’s not a focus issue, because there was no better focus or contrast to be had.
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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.
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Click to view at actual pixels at f/2.8 and f/5.6