crappyjones123

I still remember the first time I had sushi at the meet you hosted, Gene. Was a weird texture but I've come to love it since then.

Zeiss 15/2.8. Set it to 3ft and f/8 and shoot away. Fastest AF too

I understand it from a business point of view (somewhat) but seems very off-putting. Felt worse when the Chicago Sun laid off all their staff photographers. Something to be said for the quality of work and loyalty. Handing the journalists an iPhone and telling them to take pictures to support whatever they write isn't going to lead to the same quality of work as by a Pulitzer winner.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/229078952/of-places-and-people

Finished The Wire on Amazon tonight. Great show. Better than Breaking Bad/The Killing? I don't know. Certainly not for me. Maybe better than The Killing but Breaking Bad sits very comfortably in first place for me. Except for the fly episode, I don't really remember there being a bad/slow Breaking Bad episode. There were a couple of very slow Wire episodes.

Out of curiosity, do you still prefer the L glass to sigma art, Jeff?

Went to a Ben Howard concert in Miami with Julie. Had been looking forward to it since late last year when I had purchased the tickets. Don't know if he was having a shitty day or was upset at the show not being sold out but he literally said 3 words to the audience besides the actual songs - "good evening Miami." At the end of the set, everyone just walked off stage. Lights came on. Everyone thought there was more to come so no one moved. About 5 minutes later we saw the sound guy pack up for the night so we took that as our cue to leave. He was no where close to being as enthusiastic as I had seen him in other concerts on youtube. Might just have been an off night. Might not have had as reverent a crowd as he is used to playing for in Europe. I enjoyed it as much as I could. Julie left very underwhelmed.

Yup played with the individual sliders as well. It decreased the width of the bands ever so slightly but not by an appreciable amount.

Hey now. I don't have anything against Jeff...

SOOC. Holy green and purple fringing. I've gotta have the worst luck when it comes to the 85/1.8G. Tried shooting some portraits at f/1.8, f/2, f/2.8, f/3.5 and all I got was a bunch of blurry crap. From f/5.6 and above its fine but begs the question, why not just use a shitty 85mm lens if I am just going to use it at f/5.6... Ps. The image is starting to grow on me but I can't get rid of the fringing. Lightroom's remove CA button doesn't do shit. Any advice on how to deal with it?

Revisited one of the images from 2 summers ago.

Id get the 135 apo before I got either of the otus'

I fear the D800 sensor will be left wanting more with the 24D

I can shave with the sigma 50 wide open. I doubt the nikon 50 will give me the same performance wide open or even close to it but I don't use that focal length enough. I took it with me to NYC this past winter break and hated lugging it around with the D800. It really got very annoying after a while to the point where I switched it out for the 85 even though I missed a lot of shots due to the lens being very long. Back when I had the sigma 35, I got the nikon 50/1.8D which is ok from around f/5.6 for like $80. In a pinch, I could just use that if I really needed a 50mm lens as it has just been sitting on the shelf this entire time. I used it with the Nikon F5 before I realized the sigma 50 and the nikon 85 worked on the F5 as well. All this talk is making me realize I don't NEED the sigma 50. Its a beautiful lens and great to have around but far too heavy for me. Most likely it'll end up on FM shortly... I had the zeiss 135 briefly and loved the focal length. Makes for tight quarters when trying to shoot indoors but the subject isolation was to die for. The 85/1.8 is good but I feel like I don't get nearly enough isolation that I could with a 135. I tried the 105DC a while back and it suffered from some very serious CA under f/4. The same was the case with the 135DC which was too expensive and heavy of a lens to carry to just shoot at f/5.6. Half the time I forgot what DC setting I had set it at. I actually grabbed a Rokinon 35/1.4 upon your suggestion a long time ago with a D7000 but I don't think the viewfinder was appropriate for a manual focus lens. The D800 is much better when it comes to that and makes it a lot easier with longer lenses where the transitions are more pronounced. I enjoyed the build quality - it was a hefty lens. I picked up a local rokinon 14/2.8 a while back but it was so decentered I sent it back to the seller. He initially denied any issues but I sent him images taken with the lens and he finally gave me the money back. People have spoken very well of the 14/2.8 and for the price I would have picked it over the nikon 20 in a heartbeat if I didn't have to go through 10 copies to find one properly aligned. And then there is the issue of the infinity marker being absurdly inaccurate. Just not a good set up for astrophotography.

Sorry, was thinking of the zeiss 18. All these numbers are starting to mingle. =/ The astrophotography argument is one I like for the extra stop. I just never really thought there was any semblance of shallow DOF with a lens that wide. Always figured everything would be in focus unless one were shooting something very up close. It certainly is climbing up the list of lenses very fast. I might trade my sigma 50 for the nikon 20. For portraits 50 is too wide, and for landscapes the 50 is not wide enough. I rarely have enough time to go walk around and shoot so might be time for the 50 to go. Depending on how things turn out with the new rokinon 135, i might grab that in favor of the nikon 85 but we shall see. With Rokinon you really have to get very lucky to get a good copy.

Very interesting suggestion Peter. Didn't know that lens was already released. The zeiss 15/2.8 is available used around the same price but the filters are very expensive. 77mm filters should be available more readily. I know you love the 14-24. Any thoughts on how it holds up against that lens? I don't really care for the extra stop as I am not going to shoot a 20mm lens at f/1.8.

Very cool images and article. I was surprised I could read the whole thing without having to pay for it.

Couple of updates... Bay Photo is partially sponsoring all the printing for the project. An awesome photographer from Texas, Keith Young, graciously donated a very cool poster - Stay Up and Make Something, to the cause to be auctioned off with proceeds going entirely to the project. You can read about it here... https://ello.co/keithdavisyoung/post/6OqCnIUI6cMfZD1FDHvBfw We just have a few more days to go and would greatly appreciate donations or loans of any kind.

Thanks Gene. It's been a fun morning. Lots of med students from my own school have been coming around to take a look. Even the admitting physician last night didn't believe that I blew out a joint from a sneeze. They thought I got hit with a baseball bat or something but couldn't find any evidence of blunt force trauma. Spoke with the on call psych lady and they finally let me sleep once they realized I wasn't battered. Apparently case like mine only appears once in a blue moon.

Been sick as a dog since Wednesday. Last night I sneezed so hard, I took out a costochondral junction (7th left rib in the process). Not damaged/dislocated enough to require surgical intervention but bad enough to get some heavy happy pills in the ER. Whatever they gave me somehow irritated my insides and caused a gi bleed in the process. Good times. Good luck Chris.

I meant to say that I was shooting raw but the colors were something I never had to touch. They had the perfect vibrance and saturation. I had to play around with sharpening and what not but rarely colors. It was long before I knew about custom white balance but I have the same LCD calibrator now. Works great. My Screen looks extremely yellow compared to before but the prints come out looking exactly like I see them on my screen which makes up for the overly warm tone. I can get the colors to where I want them to be sometimes but never straight from the camera. More often than not I take the cowards way out and convert to black and white but I seem to prefer the medium anyways. I have a sneaky feeling it was a matter of the ever elusive synergy between the lens and the body. I really wish I could afford a proper m mount digital. Leica glass is great and all but I prefer Zeiss lenses in that mount. At least to the few Leica lenses I've tried. The Zeiss 35/2.8 zm remains the best lens I have ever used. The Zeiss 135 apo takes the cake for the sharpest and technically the best but the 35 just gave me exactly what I wanted.

Is that with the 300/4 they just released, Jeff?

For a lens as wide as I am considering, I don't care about AF. Rather, I will not be using it at all. I am planning this to be a lazy road trip up the Irish coast with no scheduled stops along the way. I have an itinerary in mind but want this to be a "oh that looks pretty, lets stop and take a walk/take pictures/climb that hill" kind of trip. I've had quite a few Sony cameras but I don't think any of them really made me happy like the Nex 5 did with the zeiss 35/2.8. Maybe it was because it was my first real camera. But even now when I look back at the pictures I took with it, the colors look better than anything I have gotten since (even with the D800 and Fuji XT1). I am considering grabbing that combo again for general walk about shooting and renting the A7II + lens or a lens for the d800 for landscapes exclusively. No need to switch out lenses that way either.

So I might be going to Ireland for 10ish days this summer. I am thinking of dumping the Sigma 50 as I get closer and either picking up a zeiss 15/2.8 or the nikon 14-24. The zeiss 15mm is easily (expensively) filterable. The nikon 14-24 can be filtered as well but holy crap those things are expensive. An entirely different avenue would be to rent an A7II (probably out by then) and a canon ts-e 17mm. This combo has resulted in some fantastic landscape images but I have never used a tilt shit lens before so will likely not know what to do when I do get it. Another option is the fuji xt1 with a 14mm but this combo doesn't inspire as much confidence in me.

No snark sensed. I know nothing of them but know plenty people who use it as a streaming server. I didn't know if the processing power was enough for your needs but suggested it in case you hadn't considered it.