Deteriorating NIKON
This Nikon Z7 is only about one year in my hand. Camera is functioning normal (like other camera such as D850, A7R4 etc) though, this camera started to show its own deterioration. = such as covers of the connecting points expanded and no longer works as a seal cap (Photo above left). Its skin started to fragmenting (Photo middle) and the cover for the memory card chamber started to expand the size (Photo right) = may not work for dust or water seal any more.
I reported this to Nikon asking their help more than 10 days ago through their web site though, no response at all. = it seems the most serious deterioration Nikon is having is their system / communication / customer care.
I don’t know whether their move of the office from the Richmond to Surbiton was for a cost cutting or else, cutting the meagre cost of plastic material couldn’t make much savings, I think. The one thing clear was, like any other camera manufacturer, Nikon’s financial position is very bad too = may be as such bad try to save a penny from the price of plastic.
By the way, don’t forget, I’m not talking about their cheap toy camera, but it is the 3,000 pound made in Japan camera. = I should be treated with a suply of bit higher quality plastic.
The decent quality plastic should last many many years — the plastic cover on D850 or EOS still keep its shape perfect (after 3 years, 5years) —– is the Nikon quality became a myth now ?
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Sony vs Nikon
This is rather repeated subject = compalison of Nikon 50 mm and Zeiss 55 mm lens and the Image Sensor of each 46MP and 62MP.
On this test Nikon Z7 ４６MP image sensor performed almost as good as Sony. The Pentax 110 Auto 24 mm lens performed very well on both Nikon and Sony body. (hence this tiny lens is the most well used lens on my gajet)
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Leitz 50 mm-vs-Zeiss 55 mm
Casually I called Leitz Elmarit lens I used on the Nikon Z in the previous post, a homemade though, glass itself was a serious Leitz product. Hence, having a proper optical quality as we expect. —– ? was it ? = was that quality, within a normal standard ?
—– So, I made a comparizon.
This is the test image taken by the Leitz Elmarit P 50 mm F2.8 at F2.8. With the focus peaking. (Photo right was a part enlargement of the centre = the top of the tree) —– the small twig still maintain its detail though, is this fuzziness normal ?
So, to have a close comparizon, Zeiss Sonner FE 55 mm F1.8 lens was mounted to the same Nikon Z7 body and had the test shot on the same tree, same condition. (since Zeiss / Sony lens has a funny habit = keep move the focus, so that, click the shutter when focus was peaked) In the photo right, some leaves on the tree were coloured red = may be an effect of the chromatic aberration. Was it ? Wait a moment = this is not a £1 junk projection lens but a genuine Zeiss / Sony lens costed hundreds of the pounds. (Even though it was made in Thailand)
Then, I gave yet another test = Zeiss Sonner lens was mounted on the Sony A7R body and had exposure of F1.8 and F8. (manual focus) —– F1.8 image (photo above middle) was the sharpest among all the photos in this post. (Though, strangely F8 image = photo right, was soft —– very difficult to make a precise manual focus on this A7R camera)
Since the same Zeiss lens showed no chromatic aberration on the A7R body here, there is a possibility of either (1) Sony has correction program built into their image processor to compensate lens’s own aberration. or (2) The lens’s obstruction = keep moves its focus when the lens was not mounted on the Sony body = moves only a small part of lens, only to destruct the clear image, hence making big chromatic aberration on the Nikon Z body.
Yet those photos here showed very different strory. The photos were taken same as those photos above.
= Zeiss lens on the Sony A7R body. Exposed on F1.8 and F8. —– But here, F1.8 image (photo middle) showed funny chromatic aberration (red leaves)
—– the correction program of Sony Image Processor may be working erratic. (still, how to make only some leaves red on the Nikon Z and on the Sony A7R as well looks too strange = In fact, the culprit mast be the Lens, not the camera, though, how this Zeiss FE lens can put the red color to a selected part of the image ? === this phenomenon needs to be investigated further !
This is a problem of the “Soft controled digital imaging” = it would make a pretty picture though, it may work, may not work like a Beauty App. That why I hate those artificial images. (Still, film photography can create strange phenomena too —– but, as I didn’t have an experience to enlarge a 35 mm color photo to 1.5 m big and examin the details, may be I was not aware )
Here, they are the shot to finish-off this argument (of Red Leaves) made by Zeiss Sonner 55 mm ZE lens. = The lens was tested at F1.8 if it showes chromatic aberration of red and green fringe on the roof pattern. = The result was as you see. (When the lens was fore-focused, the image has green fringe — photo above right)
And I found a very interesting bokeh pattern on the tree behind. The question is, is this the quarity of the lens which says “Sony / Zeiss Sonner” ? ? ? ( 55 mm is not special, neither F1.8 is difficult to design)
So, how about the chromatic aberration of the Nikon 50 mm F1.2 (photo middle) and F2.8 (photo right) —– a lots of red leaves seems to be here too ! = We shouldn’t be surprised. —– Otherwise we need to pay thousands of £ for a lens which shows no aberration on fully opened iris. === Only the question IS, why we need such perfect image ? ? ? (May be the obsession.) = If you want to see the perfect image, come down to the tree and see it close)
The reason why we don’t see such Chromatic aberration everyday, —– (1) We don’t use maximum F-aperture often, except in the very dark situation. And if it was dark, we can’t see such color fringe in the dark details. (2) In those lenses (Zeiss 55 mm, Nikkor 50 mm) when we stop down two or three stops, the aberration would be disappeared = hence we don’t became aware its existence. (3) We don’t enlarge the image to such big size. = so that, in the small print, the color fringe (even if it’s there) would be buried in the details. (If you are seeing the enlarged tree top photos in this post on a PC screen, it is the equivalent of seeing a 36×24 mm size photo enlarged to the 120 cm x 80 cm (43″x32″) and giving a close look.
The aberration is an optical phenomena, when the light was not converged into the focal point and spread to the surroundings as well, make the image fuzzy. Among the cause of such problem, if it was coused by the way how the light was bend differently by its color (= wave length) it was called Chromatic Aberration. As you might remember to see the rainbow 7 colors made by a prisome, when the light go through the glass they bend according to the wave length (= color). To solve this problem, converging lens which bend the red light more to outward and the diverging lens which bend the blue light more to outward were combined together to conpensate each other to the light concentrate to the same focal point (so to make a sharp picture). —– While making the light bend inward and outward, still make them to converge to the same focal point, optical designer use the fancy technique and special glass etc etc = that’s why good lens is using 10 or more glasses inside of one lens. (= making such lens hugely expensive) —– Sigh 😀
—– Still, it is rather rare to see such prominent Chromatic Aberration like the red leaves here, —– in most of the case, the fringe color appeared only on the edge of the details and make the picture just a bit soft. (Hence the most of the people doesn’t became aware such things ever existed in his lens. )
And in this point, why the Leitz projection lens I’ve talked on the begining of this post showed such character become clear, = the projection lens showes the 35 mm slide image hugely enlarged therefore the chromatic aberration would become quite visible yet, a bit soft image wouldn’t be much of the trouble as the larger the projected image, people view it from the larger distance.
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It seems, the battle between the camera, lens keep going on. 😀
The late Cherry (or Ex-Cherry ?)
It’s not nice to say “used to be cherry” —– so, Ex-Cherry ?
A woman said it’s not fair, they got a full bloom every year —– m m m, rather tricky to say any word here.
(Those photos were taken by a lens from a toy camera on Nikon Z7 —– It was a single plastic lens, equivalent of 28mm, F13, fixed focus )
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First Reiwa (令和) Sky
So, this is the sunrise (over the roof) 1st of April 2019 06:18 ( = British Summer time 07:18) by Zeiss 18mm F3.5 on Nikon 850
And this is the same sky but a minuets before of the top photo, taken by 110 Pentax 24mm on Nikon Z7 (It seems Zeiss lens showed much clear image —– of course, 110 lens costed me only few pounds as a junk, in contrast Zeiss was £800 even for a second-hand = be humble, don’t expect too much) 😀
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PS : Looking around the Net-sphere, it seemed that the news of naming the new era in Japan took so much attention from all over the world. The tradition to name the Era originally came from Han dynasty of China though, like most of the culture in China it ceased to exist under the communist rule. (So that the young Chinese except Taiwanese, even can not read their own classic literature like Laozi 老子, Confucius 孔子 — let alone to understand them) Yet still, as nearly 1/4 of world population is Chinese, some of them might have studied classic, hence able to read the “Chinese” character 令和 of which the meaning is more or less the same to us . (Some character’s meaning is quite different between Chinese and Japanese = such as for flowers, Chinese use 華 , Japanese use 花 but for Chinese this letter 花 mean mor like a lot of mess, therefore 花子 in China mean a beggar wearing tattered rug. — without knowing this, quite few Japanese girl got their name Hanako 花子 ! )
The meaning of the character 令 is “telling or announcing” = so that, with an additional 金 (metal) to its left hand side, like this 鈴 it’s become “Bell”
And the 和 mean “come together or harmonize” so that a word 平和 mean peace ( 平mean “flat or plain”) = Everybody come together in harmony” is a Peace.
Therefore, 令和 Rei Wa mean, Calling a Harmony or Telling, be in Peace”. (May be not as strong as “Shut-up, you the Devil”) 😀 (By the way, officially Reiwa starts on the 1st of may, coinciding with the new Emperor to take the throne. This, one month ahead schedule was for the people to prepare such as for printing the calendar.)
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Few more photos of last Heisei days
I’m living in England though, still it is the last moment of Heisei Era for me.
I’m a Japanese, yet I’m more like a spooky kind than an Anime generation. And never be a Gamer of Gandam kind.
Or a dirty old man ? —– It’s quite a questionable.
Then I found, the local Iceland shop was closed. —– I don’t think it’s anything to do with the end of era in Japan. (Don’t you think, this is THE good lens = instantly giving 50 years old atmosphere to the picture !) 😀
And found that the Small White Elephant Cafe was also closed. (Before the end of financial year ?)
Those photos were taken by the homemade ZM2 lens or Pentax 110 24mm F2.8 lens on the Nikon Z7.
On the end Japan got their new name of the era as Reiwa (令和) —– long live to them. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Fuji-Fun lens
In the 80s, before this country got money from the North sea oil. And it was long before the digital revolution, in fact even before the Walkman not mention any digital sound, the Disposable / One-time use camera was very popular. Simply the people haven’t got the money to buy proper camera. Anyway, even with an expensive camera, the use of the camera / film was as such, in one film, it started with Xmas and finished with next Xmas kind. So that, to buy Disposable camera on each occasion was not such bad idea.
And local chemist taking care of all those photographic business = sending the film to a lab and giving back the printed pictures to the customer. Shop people take a film out of those disposable camera and send only the film to the lab = its mean, the left over carcase of those disposable camera filling their bin. So, I got those discarded camera from their bin, while thinking “One day, I’ll use those plastic lens in somewhere else.”
The lens to film (sensor) has to be 30 mm, Nikon Z’s frangeback is 16 mm, leaving 14 mm to maneuver. In order to manage this 14 mm, I used a helicoid extension ring 12~17 mm and M42 to NEX adaptor both from China. With this helicoid, the lens can give a focus from infinity to 0.3 m close-up. (Since the lens itself has NEX mount, it can be used on Sony A7R as well.)
The most of lens of those disposable camera is just one plastic disc. Optically they are very well designed aspherical lens and together with its built-in small iris, the camera can give a omnifocus effect. (In any distance, the picture would be reasonably good on 3×5 print = Basically, this lens can produce pretty good image with its designated small F-aperture. But to use this lens in such a way has no point for me = If so, why not use the camera as it was intended = as in an original form )
But I’m using this lens without its small iris therefore the out of focus blurred image, together with its halation is masking the decent image. And instead of having deep depth of field by its small F-aperture, I used a helicoid focus. On the end, the lens produces rather funny image = they are not sharp but not necessary soft image like an old Zeiss lens or Kodak Vest Pocket Lens. So, I’m not sure what is the advantage of this lens. —– and I got, yet another 12 more of them ! I’m having rather absurd life. 😀
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