Camera and Lens Sharpness

Do you Google lens and camera reviews before buying them?  Do you look at some sample photos from the camera and lens you are interested in buying?  There are many things to consider.  How will you use the camera and lens (portraits, family, travel, sports, etc.)?  Will you want the camera to have a fixed lens or interchangeable one?  Do you want a zoom or fixed focal length lens?  What's the smallest or largest f stop that you would want? How much do you want to spend (there can be a huge difference in price between "professional" and "consumer lenses, perhaps thousands of dollars)?  There are some of the questions you may have.

Showing the results with one lens and camera may help give some insight into some of the above questions.  I'll be using the Nikon 28-300 f3.5-5.6 VR (Vibration Reduction to reduce or eliminate camera shake) lens, which is rated as a consumer lens - as opposed to a "professional" lens.  It is meant for full frame Nikon cameras, such as the Nikon D600/610, which has a larger sensor than cropped frame sensor cameras.  A full frame sensor generally means that you'll be able to shoot in lower light levels (higher ISO's) for better results and less noise.

So, how good or bad is this lens?  It is a bit subjective.  According to one reviewer, "Contrast is quite poor wide open, but gets better at f/5.6 and beyond. During field tests, I shot over 1000 images at various apertures and shutter speeds and overall, the lens is not bad, but certainly nowhere close to the sharpness and contrast of pro-level lenses like Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G or Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II."  If you shoot in RAW and use editing software, contrast should be no problem.  How about sharpness?  This is why I said it depends on how you will use it.  As I am always available to pose for myself, ha ha, I shot the following using this lens.  The photo on the left is the full image from the camera, the one on the right is from that photo, cropped.  It was shot at f10 at 48mm, 1/3 second with the camera on a tripod with window light.  If there is any unsharpness, it's probably because of the slow shutter speed, although I think I stayed pretty motionless.  As always, if you click on a photo, you can see them all in a larger size.

The next 3 photos are full-size followed by two crops from that photo to show the sharpness.  These were shot at f5.6, 82mm, 1/60 second with flash on camera, just as a test.  Are these sharp enough?  Does it matter that with a zoom lens the corners will be a little less sharp?  Not at all - in fact, you would probably want the edges to be less sharp to focus on the subject more.

And now that you're tired of looking at me, here is a scene from the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook.

It was shot at f10, 100mm, 1/1600 second.  

One last photo at Ballona Creek of a Sea Lion, shot at f10, 300mm, 1/1250 second.  

And a crop of the above photo to show that it is sharp.

All things considered, I'm very happy with the sharpness of this lens and the quality of the photos.  In the lens reviews, they talk about distortion (can easily be fixed with post processing software), lack of sharpness (perhaps at some f stops), it's not a "professional" lens, it loses quality over 200mm (which is why I included the sea lion), etc.  The photos posted here show what this lens can do depending on what settings are used.  

I had been looking at two lenses.  After reading the reviews, I took a chance with this one.  I had a 24-85 Nikon lens that I wasn't happy with, so sold it on Amazon.  Normally I wouldn't buy a used lens from a private listing, but through Amazon or Ebay I've had good luck in the past.  When I saw the lens advertised for a lot less than all the other listings, ordered it immediately.  When I received it, it looked new, plus had a filter covering the lens.  It is a bit of a gamble to order this way, but it can save a lot of money.  It does exactly what I wanted it to do - better images than the 24-85 lens, and much better than my Panasonic FZ200, which I also sold on Amazon.

Does it have limitations?  Of course.  I wouldn't be able to get the below results (background out of focus by that much), which I had shot between f1.4 - 2.8.  For those, I shot with a prime lens, probably the Nikon 50mm f1.4 on my old Nikon FTn.

Hope you found something useful here.