The rule of thumb is that you can safely hand-hold the camera down to a shutter speed of 1/(focal length).  This is a 35mm rule of thumb, and it’s the 35mm-equivalent focal length that matters here.  So for a 200mm lens on a full-frame DSLR, the safe shutter speed (by rule of thumb) is 1/200 sec. Or, with VR, about 1/30.

The following test photos are small crops from the center of the frame, containing the focus point. They were all shot hand-held, free-standing (I wasn’t leaning against anything).

1/15 VR on

1/15 VR on

1/15 VR on

1/20 VR on

1/15 VR on

1/15 VR on

1/15 VR on

I score that as 1 and 2 acceptably sharp, the rest not.

And now some examples shot with VR off.

1/15 VR off

1/15 VR off

1/13 VR off

1/13 VR off

1/13 VR off

1/20 VR off

1/15 VR off

1/20 VR off

None of the VR off examples are acceptably sharp.

So; the VR off case certainly works as expected, no hope. The VR case produced two acceptably sharp photos a full 4 stops below where it should have been okay by rule of thumb. And a lot of failures, but I was seriously pushing the limits here.

Next post will be another run, a bit more careful, with 10 shots of the same test subject for each series. But this is getting long enough and ugly enough as it is.

A previous round of test shots when I first got this lens is here.

And why am I testing this when I’m leaving DX and about to sell it? Well, I needed to test my old 28-70, and I decided I should include other lenses as sanity-checks, so I’m looking at more than one set of results.

12mm f/4

Tokina AT-X124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 12mm, f/4, center

Tokina AT-X124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 12mm, f/4

Tokina AT-X124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 12mm, f/4, corner

So not so shabby really, I don’t think.

12mm f/8

Tokina AT-X124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 12mm, f/8, corner

Tokina AT-X124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 12mm, f/8, center

Tokina AT-X124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 12mm, f/8

There really isn’t anything much wrong with this by f/8.

24mm f/4

Tokina AT-X 124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 24mm, f/4, corner

Tokina AT-X 124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 24mm, f/4, center

Tokina AT-X 124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 24mm, f/4

The 24mm end is pretty fuzzy in the corner too, at f/4.

24mm f/8

Tokina AT-X 124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 24mm, f/8, corner

Tokina AT-X 124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 24mm, f/8, center

Tokina AT-X 124 Pro DX 12-24mm F4 at 24mm, f/8

Pretty nice, especially in the center. Possibly better than the Nikkor at f/5.6, even.

Nikkor 24mm f/2 AIS corner at f/5.6

Nikkor 24mm f/2 AIS center at f/5.6

Nikkor 24mm f/2 AIS full test image

I’ve had this since the Australia trip; is that 1983?  I’d gotten out to 28mm with the Vivitar Series 1 28-90 zoom, and was finding myself using the wide end of that a lot (I’d previously had a 28mm for my Miranda Sensorex, which I never liked and rarely used; I might have had one in the Pentax system too). It’s an old manual-focus lens, but it was thought to be very good at the time.  How will it stand up on modern digital?

These are somewhat cluttered — the wall wasn’t really wide enough (I guess I should have walked in closer really), so there’s stuff overlaying the bricks in the edge shot. Try to ignore the out-of-focus foliage!

And I clearly wasn’t considering this carefully, because I only shot an f/5.6 test of this one.

The results aren’t stellar; definitely soft, even at f/5.6, even in the center. Well, it’s only one test image, perhaps I focused badly or held unsteadily. Or not. On the mental list for consideration.

So.  Had definite haze on the inside of the glass on the bed of Oleg’s old Scanmaker 4, needed to clean it.  The question is, how to get at the glass?  Turns out the scanner is designed to make this easy, though it wasn’t completely obvious to me at first glance.

First, we take off the lid.  The “hinge” is very clever—solid molded parts on the lid fit into molded holes in the plastic case, ending up being quite a good hinge.

The round holes at the outside of the base are where these bits come out (and go back in later).

Flatbed, lid open

You need to open the top slightly more than straight up, and then lift it straight up.  Fiddling with angles slightly helps the hinge thingies come out of the holes.

The hole in the base

The hinge thingy (on lid, shown upside down)

And with a little fiddling the lid comes off very nicely.

Look, Ma, no lid!

Now we turn our attention to the center hole. Turns out there’s a springy plastic bit at the bottom of that hole which, when pushed down, releases the top plate to slide back about half an inch.

The hole leading to release catch

Cleverly, it’s somewhat too small for many fingers (certainly for mine). However, a somewhat skinny pen does the trick nicely (a screwdriver would work fine too).

Using a pen to release the catch

Really the pen should go in straight down.  And a skinnier pen would work better.  You have to press a bit harder than seems obvious, and there’s no clear indication by feel on the pushing pen when it’s enough.  But, when it’s enough, you can slide the top plate (with the glass in it) back about half an inch.

Top plate slides back about half an inch

(Shown at the front left corner).

At this point you can lift the top late, with the glass, straight up and it comes right off. It’s moderately heavy, that’s a solid sheet of glass in there.

Top plate removed

And now you can turn it over, clean it, do other stuff inside if you can think of anything.

To reassemble, put the top plate on in the position you lifted it from, and it should drop right down into place.  Then slide it forward, and it’ll lock in.  Finally, put the lid back on (hold it vertical or slightly past, put the balls into the  holes, wiggle cleverly until it drops down pretty easily, and then it will close normally).

When I finally looked closely at the scanner, I figured this out in about a minute, so maybe nobody really needs this.  But I searched for info on how to do this first, and if I’d found instructions it would have saved me a bit of time before I just started looking for things to push, slide, or unscrew.

Looks like it has mis-identified some matches, and I’ve probably tried to cover too big an area.  I shot some more down at Carleton later today, will be interested to see how those come out.

Fascinating toy!

I’ve just been reviewing (and responding to comments on) an LJ post where I brought this up, and I found myself thinking this several times last night while photographing at a party, and it occurred to me that I might as well get it down solidly on my record.

It’s amazing how often my best shot seems to be just a foot below eye-level.  Or else just about 3 feet off the floor.

I apparently don’t have my registered Focus Magic on this laptop.

I don’t appear to have the Photoshop plugin for Noise Ninja on this laptop at all.

I didn’t have Photo Mechanic on this laptop (thought I had the demo). Got the registration info off my server via ssh once other things got working.

Would have been nice to have a lightstand; but it needs to be in a portable light kit with a good bag to carry it in, or it’s too much trouble. I kept having to put the slave flash too far away and not high enough.

Not being able to put tags on the raw files on this laptop is a pain; means that doesn’t happen until late, and that the early postings to the snapshot gallery are mostly missing that information (and sometimes those postings are all that ever happen). (Thumbs Plus won’t put IPTC data into NEF files currently; Photo Mechanic will put the data in sidecar XMP files but I don’t believe Thumbs Plus doesn’t pick that up. Attaching it just in the database means it’s lost when I transfer the files from the laptop to the desktop. If I had permanent connectivity to an SQL database I could share a database between the two, and then do the transfer in a way that kept database info, but that depends too much on net connectivity, plus might have performance issues. Maybe Thumbs Plus 8 will do better with NEF, or understand sidecar files.)

On the plus side, I not only brought a swimsuit, I used it (in the hot tub).

And there may not be a lot more photos coming; haven’t been shooting much since closing ceremonies.

And, from closing ceremonies…the death of the President for Life rapidly approaches.

(Main gallery here)