Nikon 14-24 - Bad Images

On Apr 3, 9:21 pm, frederick wrote:
How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?

Because most photographers have no eye. The dog, the kid, a flower, a
"street scene."
Ho f------ hum.

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C J Campbell wrote:
| On 2008-04-03 18:21:09 -0700, frederick said:
|
| How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
| prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
| are total schlock?
| Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
| It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa
| zoom lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me -
| at least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty
| good aesthetically.
| What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
| don't think that's it.
| Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
| lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
| dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.
|
| Most of the bad shots seem to lack a foreground element, or they are
| simply devoid of an interesting subject, or they are shot in bad light,
| or they try to make the lens shoot a wide landscape with a mountain in
| the background and the mountain looks like a pimple or the sun looks
| like a pinhole.
|
| I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
| wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make the
| same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak Brownies
| and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject because of
| an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with a complete
| lack of understanding of perspective.
|

A curious by-product of using wide angle lenses is the magnification of
poor composition.

- --

from Douglas,
If my PGP key is missing, the
post is a forgery. Ignore it.

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C J Campbell wrote:
On 2008-04-03 18:21:09 -0700, frederick said:

How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa
zoom lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me -
at least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty
good aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

Most of the bad shots seem to lack a foreground element, or they are
simply devoid of an interesting subject, or they are shot in bad light,
or they try to make the lens shoot a wide landscape with a mountain in
the background and the mountain looks like a pimple or the sun looks
like a pinhole.

I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make the
same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak Brownies
and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject because of
an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with a complete
lack of understanding of perspective.

Yes. I agree with that generally. My opinion is that the very best
(Ultra) wide angle images have relatively simple composition - they have
a very "uncluttered" look, but perhaps still "thirds" composition,
sometime not.
That's not easy when the lens "takes in" so much. I think that explains
something else about the lens. There was a lot of bleating in forums
about the lack of f2.8 UWA zooms for APS-c. Now there is a really good
one for full-frame (and Tokina have one even for crop-sensor), and a lot
of poor photographers have gone out and bought the nikkor. They didn't
understand that while f2.8 might have some good advantages, subject
isolation at ~15mm by using wide apertures for shallow DOF really
doesn't work compositionally. At best they end up with a photo that
looks like of a nice piece of salami on a dropped pizza - but the piece
of salami has to be truly outstanding for the photo to work. There's
probably also a tendency for these "photographers" to want to include
detail on the edges of deep DOF shots, just to show how good the edge
performance of the lens is. I don't think my observation about falling
average standards of composition, despite the best equipment ever now
being available is coincidence.
As Rita said:
"WOW! Seems like pbase is loaded with a lot of people that don't know
how to use a lens/camera. I can only hope they quickly get disgusted
with the 14-24/2.8 and start listing them on eBay for insanely low prices."
I hope so too, but I think unfortunately that there are plenty of
photographers who make good images with much lesser equipment, who could
use a 14-24 properly, and would love the opportunity to upgrade at less
than the new price, that demand for any used 14-24 will keep prices
quite high for a long time yet.

On 2008-04-04 14:29:23 -0700, frederick said:

C J Campbell wrote:
On 2008-04-03 18:21:09 -0700, frederick said:

How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

Most of the bad shots seem to lack a foreground element, or they are
simply devoid of an interesting subject, or they are shot in bad light,
or they try to make the lens shoot a wide landscape with a mountain in
the background and the mountain looks like a pimple or the sun looks
like a pinhole.

I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make
the same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak
Brownies and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject
because of an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with
a complete lack of understanding of perspective.

Yes. I agree with that generally. My opinion is that the very best
(Ultra) wide angle images have relatively simple composition - they
have a very "uncluttered" look, but perhaps still "thirds" composition,
sometime not.
That's not easy when the lens "takes in" so much. I think that
explains something else about the lens. There was a lot of bleating in
forums about the lack of f2.8 UWA zooms for APS-c. Now there is a
really good one for full-frame (and Tokina have one even for
crop-sensor), and a lot of poor photographers have gone out and bought
the nikkor. They didn't understand that while f2.8 might have some
good advantages, subject isolation at ~15mm by using wide apertures for
shallow DOF really doesn't work compositionally. At best they end up
with a photo that looks like of a nice piece of salami on a dropped
pizza - but the piece of salami has to be truly outstanding for the
photo to work. There's probably also a tendency for these
"photographers" to want to include detail on the edges of deep DOF
shots, just to show how good the edge performance of the lens is. I
don't think my observation about falling average standards of
composition, despite the best equipment ever now being available is
coincidence.
As Rita said:
"WOW! Seems like pbase is loaded with a lot of people that don't know
how to use a lens/camera. I can only hope they quickly get disgusted
with the 14-24/2.8 and start listing them on eBay for insanely low
prices."
I hope so too, but I think unfortunately that there are plenty of
photographers who make good images with much lesser equipment, who
could use a 14-24 properly, and would love the opportunity to upgrade
at less than the new price, that demand for any used 14-24 will keep
prices quite high for a long time yet.

Well, I got a chance to use the 14-24 at WPPI. It is not that
impressive on a D300, of course. But I also tried it out on a D3
(though I am so physically weak these days that I can barely lift the
thing). This is a good lens, reasonably balanced enough so that even I
could probably handle it. And you gotta love the view through that D3
viewfinder...

Speaking of the 12-24mm lens, I have always rather liked this pictu

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo866091.htm

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

C J Campbell wrote:

On 2008-04-04 14:29:23 -0700, frederick said:

C J Campbell wrote:
On 2008-04-03 18:21:09 -0700, frederick said:

How come, with arguably the best ultra-wide lens ever made (zoom or
prime, any format), nearly all of the "sample photos" posted in forums
are total schlock?
Are no-hopers lining up to buy this fantastic thing for bragging rights?
It seems much worse than when the Nikkor 12-24 and third-party uwa zoom
lenses made UWA digital shooting possible for po' folks like me - at
least then a reasonable proportion of samples posted were pretty good
aesthetically.
What's happened? I could be just getting much more critical, but I
don't think that's it.
Yeah - someone will post a link to some *great* shots taken with this
lens - they certainly exist and I've seen some beauties. It's the
dropping "average" that seems to be the problem.

Most of the bad shots seem to lack a foreground element, or they are
simply devoid of an interesting subject, or they are shot in bad light,
or they try to make the lens shoot a wide landscape with a mountain in
the background and the mountain looks like a pimple or the sun looks
like a pinhole.

I have believed for a long time that snapshooters do not really need a
wide angle lens. The wide angle lens encourages snapshooters to make
the same mistakes they made when snapshooters ran around with Kodak
Brownies and Instamatics -- a complete inability to choose a subject
because of an overwhelming desire to include everything, combined with
a complete lack of understanding of perspective.

Yes. I agree with that generally. My opinion is that the very best
(Ultra) wide angle images have relatively simple composition - they
have a very "uncluttered" look, but perhaps still "thirds" composition,
sometime not.
That's not easy when the lens "takes in" so much. I think that
explains something else about the lens. There was a lot of bleating in
forums about the lack of f2.8 UWA zooms for APS-c. Now there is a
really good one for full-frame (and Tokina have one even for
crop-sensor), and a lot of poor photographers have gone out and bought
the nikkor. They didn't understand that while f2.8 might have some
good advantages, subject isolation at ~15mm by using wide apertures for
shallow DOF really doesn't work compositionally. At best they end up
with a photo that looks like of a nice piece of salami on a dropped
pizza - but the piece of salami has to be truly outstanding for the
photo to work. There's probably also a tendency for these
"photographers" to want to include detail on the edges of deep DOF
shots, just to show how good the edge performance of the lens is. I
don't think my observation about falling average standards of
composition, despite the best equipment ever now being available is
coincidence.
As Rita said:
"WOW! Seems like pbase is loaded with a lot of people that don't know
how to use a lens/camera. I can only hope they quickly get disgusted
with the 14-24/2.8 and start listing them on eBay for insanely low
prices."
I hope so too, but I think unfortunately that there are plenty of
photographers who make good images with much lesser equipment, who
could use a 14-24 properly, and would love the opportunity to upgrade
at less than the new price, that demand for any used 14-24 will keep
prices quite high for a long time yet.

Well, I got a chance to use the 14-24 at WPPI. It is not that
impressive on a D300, of course. But I also tried it out on a D3
(though I am so physically weak these days that I can barely lift the
thing). This is a good lens, reasonably balanced enough so that even I
could probably handle it. And you gotta love the view through that D3
viewfinder...

Speaking of the 12-24mm lens, I have always rather liked this pictu

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo866091.htm


Beautiful composition, perfectly suits an ultra-wide.

Also perfectly illustrates your point.

On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:12:41 -0700, C J Campbell
wrote:

Speaking of the 12-24mm lens, I have always rather liked this pictu

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo866091.htm

I haven't seen that site before. Thanks for the link. This one will
give you quite a few nice pictures taken with that lens:

http://www.trekearth.com/photos.php?cat=lens&id=4235

Gives me some inspiration to get out there and use mine.

Steve

Pboud wrote:
Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Rita Berkowitz wrote:

Nikon's incredible

You are, literally. Nikon isn't.

Actually, Nikon is an *outstanding* name in photography, both for
quality and reliability.

And in addition, Nikon is credible.

-Wolfgang

Steve wrote:
On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 19:12:41 -0700, C J Campbell
wrote:

Speaking of the 12-24mm lens, I have always rather liked this pictu

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo866091.htm

I haven't seen that site before. Thanks for the link. This one will
give you quite a few nice pictures taken with that lens:

http://www.trekearth.com/photos.php?cat=lens&id=4235

Gives me some inspiration to get out there and use mine.

Yes, those are some nice shots. I like this one:
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo787046.htm

On 2008-04-05 01:57:07 -0700, "Rita Berkowitz" said:

C J Campbell wrote:

Well, I got a chance to use the 14-24 at WPPI. It is not that
impressive on a D300, of course. But I also tried it out on a D3
(though I am so physically weak these days that I can barely lift the
thing). This is a good lens, reasonably balanced enough so that even I
could probably handle it. And you gotta love the view through that D3
viewfinder...

How are you managing with the 400/2.8?

Better, these days, as I am learning what it takes to get sharp
pictures with it. That thing is not very forgiving, is it?




--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On 2008-04-05 19:13:23 -0700, JT's Ghost said:

Rita Berkowitz wrote:

C J Campbell wrote:

Well, I got a chance to use the 14-24 at WPPI. It is not that
impressive on a D300, of course. But I also tried it out on a D3
(though I am so physically weak these days that I can barely lift
the thing). This is a good lens, reasonably balanced enough so that
even I could probably handle it. And you gotta love the view
through that D3 viewfinder...

How are you managing with the 400/2.8?

Better, these days, as I am learning what it takes to get sharp
pictures with it. That thing is not very forgiving, is it?

Especially with a 2X TC. If you're shooting handheld that front-to-back
motion can quickly show its head since you are talking about a very shallow
and thin DoF.


Would a mono-pod help to stabilize the lens, and thereby eliminate the
motion? It could also double as a sort of walking stick... Relatively
inexpensive (as opposed to a tripod) and more mobile.

Not having ever used anything over 200 mm I'm guessing that with the
lens (400 mm) one isn't panning shots from say left to right...

- JT
just asking

For me, given my physical condition, for now shooting hand-held with
such a lens is an impossibility. I am stuck with tripods and gimbal
heads.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor