Anyone remember the buffalo nickel?

The coin was minted from 1913-1938, but many were still in circulation when I was a child, and occasionally one will turn up today. For this series of images I wanted to create a patriotic theme by introducing the colors of the flag.

Nikon 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G ED lens: Hands on review

One of my favorite lenses of all time has been a 20 or 21mm focal length super wide angle. I use if for landscape and travel photography and find it particularly handy to integrate the foreground and background or for creating frames for composition. Nikon makes a 20mm f/2.8 prime. I used this lens when I shot film, ever since it was introduced in 1989, but I never found it adequate for newer digital sensors, and I kept waiting for Nikon to update it. The recently introduced Nikon 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G lens with ED glass may be as close as I am going to get to my wish for the time being.

At first I was skeptical about Nikon's claims for corner sharpness in such a relatively inexpensive lens. My skepticism was quickly dispelled, however, as soon as I began my tests. The lens fulfilled the promise of all that was claimed for it.

A new Nikon 18-35mm lens shown on a Nikon D600 with my old favorite film lens, the Nikon 20mm, in the rear.

This zoom is light weight (13.58oz or 385grams), relatively compact, and best of all is the sharpest wide angle Nikon super-wide zoom I have tested except for the 14-24mm. The biggest weakness of these super wides with digital sensors is their lack of edge and corner sharpness. The 14-24mm is the only super wide zoom I know of that maintains corner sharpness, even wide open. Enter the new Nikon 18-35mm, where for a fraction of the cost ($747 versus almost $2000 for the 14-24mm), you have a lens that achieves acceptable (not perfect) corner sharpness wide open, and excellent sharpness once stopped down to a customary working range of f/5.6 or -- better yet -- f/8.

This lens out performs the two other Nikon lenses in its class, the 16-35mm f/4 and 17-35mm f/2.8 -- both of which cost considerably more. Furthermore, the new 18-35mm is lighter and more compact -- much easier to carry.

So what do you give up for the lower price? For one thing, you give up a fixed aperture. In landscape or architectural photography where this focal length is often used, the lens is mostly used stopped down anyway.  So the variable aperture really doesn't matter much in any negative way. The other drawback, no vibration reduction control, is also rather inconsequential because a tripod is often used for the normal shooting purposes of this focal length. In other words, for travel, landscape, or architectural photography, you sacrifice nothing and gain the added edge sharpness this lens has to offer.

The focal length of this lens is perfect for relating foreground to background or framing your subject.

The lens does suffer from barrel distortion and vignetting, but so do most other lenses of this focal length including the famous Nikon 14-24mm. The good new is that these distortions, along with much of the chromatic distortion that appears on frame edges where there is high contrast, are easy to deal with automatically in post-processing. The latest version of Nikon Capture NX2 software already has a built-in correction for this lens.  Photoshop does not as yet, but probably will in the near future.  In the interim, I have found by trial and error that the lens correction for a Nikon DX 18-55mm lens in Photoshop works well as a good approximation fix with only some minor tweaking.

The two images below illustrate the distortion correction for this lens. The top photo shows the barrel and vignetting distortion at the 18mm focal length. In the bottom photo it has easily been auto corrected by software.

The two images below illustrate how I would typically use a super wide angle lens for travel and landscape photography. Neither of these photos were not take with this lens. I include them to illustrate the qualities I am looking for while I am reviewing a lens of this focal length. You can readily see from these two illustrations why edge sharpness is such an important consideration.

If the lens is not sharp in the corners, then the tile work in the ceiling would not be in focus. A tripod was used for this photo and the one below so the lens aperture could be closed down.

In landscape photography I am looking for a super wide angle lens that can focus on the foreground and provide sharp detail that enhances the overall scene.  In a situation like the one about the lens must be sharp in the corners or the foreground detail at the bottom of the image would be unacceptably soft.

The 18-35mm lens can focus very close at about 11". This is perfect for photos where the focus in on the foreground detail. The close up of apples below shows practically no distortion and is unusual for such a wide angle.

This close up of apples is sharp over all. The main focus was on the apple with the leaf, but at f/11 everything is in focus. Note that there is a lack of distortion in the apples on the lower right. Normally with ultra wide angle lenses they would be subject to a distortion called volume anamorphosis, which would cause them to stretch out of shape and become elongated towards the corners of the image frame.

While this is considered a consumer grade lens, I think it will find its place in many a pro camera bag once its optical qualities are discovered. Plus, its 77mm filter size will accept the same filters as the other pro Nikon lenses.

I have waited a long time for my favorite 20mm focal length to be updated. That still has not happened, but this lens is the next best thing, and for sharpness and compactness in one package it can't be beat.

A subject like this with high contrast windows along the edges and corners is very susceptible to chromatic aberration (color fringing). Fringing was present here, as anticipated, but it was easily eliminated using a lens calibration in post-processing.

Creating a nightclub scene in the studio

The nightclub atmosphere for the photo of the singer below was put together in our studio using nothing more than some tungsten lights, a black background, some canned smoke, and a relatively easy Photoshop post-processing technique. We chose to use tungsten instead of strobes so the lighting would more closely mimic the lights of an actual music concert. Several small lights were set up in the background as stage lights. One 750w lamp was set off to the left rear to serve as a hair light. The main light was a 1000w lamp used directly with no softening from the front right. An assistant released canned smoke in the background to create atmosphere. At an ISO of 400 we were able to achieve a shutter speed of 1/640 second, more than sufficient to stop the action with just a touch of blur to make it look real. As a final touch in post processing a star burst image was added as a "screen" lay in Photoshop. This added some color and further hazed the image.

The model was moving very fast and tossing her hair. It takes a really good camera/lens combo to consistently follow the action and deliver sharply focused images at an aperture of f/2. I was using the Nikon D4 shooting at 10 frames per second with Nikon 85mm lens, a perfect combo.

Manufacturing a sunny day

As you saw from yesterday's blog, it was raining heavily at my studio. One photo we had planned was of a model with out-stretched arms against a clear sky. Since we didn't have the sky, we photographed the model in the studio against a white background and put the sky in later. This actually worked out better because I was able to harmonize the color of the sky with the color of what the model was wearing, and also control compositional placement of the clouds. Gotta love digital photography!

The model was lit from the area she is facing with a single, very large umbrella. A second light from the left rear lit her hair. The camera was a Nikon D600 with 70-200mm lens. When putting together photos like this it is important to match the lighting to the background scene. The 6' softened umbrella gave a good approximation of daylight, while the smaller hair light was set to a lower exposure, just enough to add some punch to the hair but not so much as to indicate another light source.

A rainy day in the studio

It rained hard yesterday and was quite dark, not the best circumstances for shooting in our daylight studio. At the end of the day I asked one of the models to move close to a window and I went out on the terrace to take this moody photo of her with the rain drops on the window.

I used the Nikon D4 and 105mm macro portrait lens, and asked the model to stay close to the window. I placed the focus on the rain drops. At f/2.8 she is softly out of focus, but my keeping her close to the rain drops there is still sufficient detail to render a soft nostalgic look to the shot.

It began with a simple sunrise

Yesterday the early morning sky was clear and the colors bright, changing from yellow to blue. I photographed it with a 200mm lens with the intent of combining the photo later as a background for other images. I began playing with it that night and here are some of the results.

You may recognize this model. I photographed her last week and used her in a blog post. For this photo I included her image but changed the Photoshop layer mode to "screen". This eliminated the dark background and allowed her face to integrate smoothly with the sunrise background. I deepened the sky colors simply by darkening a levels layer.  Adding the tech look of digital dots and star burst finished it off.

This is another example of blending where the eye photo was included as an "overlay" layer in Photoshop to merge it into the background and digital dots.

Thinking of outer space

Over the weekend I assembled some images in Photoshop using photo elements I have on file. The idea was to reflect outer space concepts.