Ultra Soft - D90 with 18-200mm

tijuana taxi said:
Looks to me like a bit of camera shake combined with a do it all lens that isn't the sharpest of the bunch.

Know how annoying this can be, had it myself a while back and just called it a day in the end before I spent all my time analysing everything.

BIt of praise too for the young lady who is having her face examined in every detail,reckon you owe her a box of choccies for all that modelling work :).
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Indeedy, it does look like camera shake, even if the VR should more than compensate for a shot at 1/200th. How about the shot in post 3 taken at 1/1000th?

As to the young lady, haha - it could be fair to say that I am not being showered with praise for plastering her mug all over the net for others to pore over! I think it may well take something more costly than a box of chocs to make up for this one :crying:
 
How about the shot in post 3 taken at 1/1000th?
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That does look a quite blurred shot for the shutter speed, noticed you focused and reframed, is it possible it also re-focused? one of the reasons I now use back button focusing.

it could be fair to say that I am not being showered with praise for plastering her mug all over the net for others to pore over! I think it may well take something more costly than a box of chocs to make up for this one
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Dead right too, spoil her with something nice, reckon she has been a very good sport with all this unexpected coverage
 
Ta for the info Scott. My experience with Nikon VR is with the 70-300 and the new 24-120 f4. Both seem to work extremely well - thats not to say that the VRII on the 18-200 is working correctly.

I think from reading that both versions of the 18-200 actually have VRII, and the major difference between the two is the lock switch that mine has to stop the lens creeping.

I'm still scratching my head at how a shot at 30odd mm taken at 1/1000th could have camera shake though - and the shot in post 3 certainly has a similar look and feel to those that could have been compromised by faulty VR.

There's a chap who works with me, whos opinion I value quite highly (http://www.steverobertson.co.uk). Will see what he makes of it today, if he's in the office.
 
tijuana taxi said:
That does look a quite blurred shot for the shutter speed, noticed you focused and reframed, is it possible it also re-focused? one of the reasons I now use back button focusing.

Dead right too, spoil her with something nice, reckon she has been a very good sport with all this unexpected coverage
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On the one shot at 1/1000th, I half pressed the shutter with her face bang on the central spot for getting focus (camera is set to single point centre focus), keeping the shutter half pressed and then re-framed before depressing the shutter fully. Same technique used for a good year on the D700 without any issues.

I will also take your advice and try the back button to get a focus lock, and see if that helps - will run some tests today at the office if I get chance. Some of the later shots in the thread have no re-framing though, and still look soft.

Spoil her with something nice. Haha, she was on a 3 day spa break at a hotel. Granted, it wasn't perhaps as good as where we should have been, but nonetheless, for a beggars option it was fairly opulent!!
 
braddersmd said:
Ta for the info Scott. My experience with Nikon VR is with the 70-300 and the new 24-120 f4. Both seem to work extremely well - thats not to say that the VRII on the 18-200 is working correctly.

I think from reading that both versions of the 18-200 actually have VRII, and the major difference between the two is the lock switch that mine has to stop the lens creeping.

I'm still scratching my head at how a shot at 30odd mm taken at 1/1000th could have camera shake though - and the shot in post 3 certainly has a similar look and feel to those that could have been compromised by faulty VR.

There's a chap who works with me, whos opinion I value quite highly (http://www.steverobertson.co.uk). Will see what he makes of it today, if he's in the office.
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where did you see they both have vr 2 also maybe try some with the vr of hand held.
 
scottthehat said:
where did you see they both have vr 2 also maybe try some with the vr of hand held.
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Saw the quote on the much derided website of Ken Rockwell, as follows...
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/18-200mm-ii.htm
It's mentioned in the introduction part.

On the assumption that this is factual, and not a statement of opinion, I assumed it to be correct - otherwise, I would expect Nikon would have asked him to alter it.

His site was one of the sites that I read that the lens is sharp throughout also - he says of the original (note, no difference on the branded VRII version)..."My 18 - 200 is as sharp on my picky D200 as my more expensive and exotic lenses. It looks great. It doesn't go soft at either end of the zoom range or wide open".

One of the reasons I was expecting so much more from the lens - even though his info is often mocked.

Will have a go handheld with the VR off also, to see if that makes a difference, although I will need to be wary of the reciprocal rule - maybe bump up the ISO to accomodate.
 
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Scott, it states on Nikons website for the 18-200 v1 that it has VRII.
I think the distinction should have been more obvious that the two lenses are really the 18-200 VRII and the 18-200 VRII 2.

Mark a couple of other things to consider:
When re-composing do you move quickly, thic can cause the VR gyros to kick off and compensate, also do you allow the gyros to settle?

Do you have the VR on Normal or Active? Apparently active is super sensitive and is pretty much for shooting from moving vehicles, could this be too sensitive, I remember reading that one should pretty much leave it on normal.

Nick.
 
braddersmd said:
His site was one of the sites that I read that the lens is sharp throughout also - he says of the original (note, no difference on the branded VRII version)..."My 18 - 200 is as sharp on my picky D200 as my more expensive and exotic lenses. It looks great. It doesn't go soft at either end of the zoom range or wide open".
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Ken Rockwell shoots in "Small Basic Jpeg" though, so he probably won't see any softness :p
 
Grumpy_Git said:
Scott, it states on Nikons website for the 18-200 v1 that it has VRII.
I think the distinction should have been more obvious that the two lenses are really the 18-200 VRII and the 18-200 VRII 2.

Mark a couple of other things to consider:
When re-composing do you move quickly, thic can cause the VR gyros to kick off and compensate, also do you allow the gyros to settle?

Do you have the VR on Normal or Active? Apparently active is super sensitive and is pretty much for shooting from moving vehicles, could this be too sensitive, I remember reading that one should pretty much leave it on normal.

Nick.
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Nick, VR was always set to normal, not active. On re-composing, not overly quickly - but certainly something I will have another play with to see if that is it. Still puzzled that the 1/1000th shot would be OOF though - unless the VR settling could mess with the image so badly to affect a shot at such a high shutter speed.

Also, still puzzled by the ones I did not re-compose - as seen by the other example in the thread.

I was expecting to get sharp results like this one, at wide open on the Rockwell site again... http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/18200/examples/images/KEN_0718.JPG, Shot at 52mm f4.8 on a D200 - granted a different body, but that's one hell of a crisp looking shot - although I will say that's without knowing how much sharpening he has applied.

As with other shots in this thread, and also looking at examples on Flickr using the lens, the quality of shots using it, even wide open, far exceed what I am seeing.
 
redddraggon said:
Ken Rockwell shoots in "Small Basic Jpeg" though, so he probably won't see any softness :p
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Haha - OK - valid. Will have a play around shooting JPEG to see how much of a difference that makes also.

Interestingly, I use Lightroom most of the time, and it applies sharpening to all the shots from RAW before export as standard - and I still cannot get the ones I've shot sharp at the point of focus.

Few more suggestions to try here today though. Will report findings back later.
 
Can I just put my head above the parapet and say I think there is far too much pixel peeping going on here?!?

To me, the uncropped and slightly sharpened shots from the lens look absolutely fine to me (eg, the shots of the lovely lady in the woods). Its not until the 100% crop comes into play that it deteriorates, and that looks like sensor noise to me. The first shot you posted was indeed poor, but I think this was a likely combination of a missed focus point and camera movement - we've all had shots like that!

When you sit down and view your photos for enjoyment, do you ever look at them at 100% (Ok, excluding daugirdas!)?

I think if you shoot raw, use normal sharpening, saturation and contrast methods the end results will be more than acceptable, and probably rather good.
 
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braddersmd said:
The lens has VR, which was switched on. Nikon claim 4 stops advantage for the VRII system, which this lens has. Real world everyone says 2 to 3 stops advantage. Shot with the VR system switched on all day as we were out for a walk, and all shots were hand held. Could be that the VR is faulty? I could hear and feel it working though.

That's why this is so puzzling to me. It really shouldn't have been down to camera shake, even though I agree that it looks like it.

What do you think of the benched tripod shots (VR off)? Aside from the pointless comparisons I took - do you think these look overly soft with too narrow a sweet spot?

(EDIT to add) : What are your thoughts on the shot in post 3? This was at 1/1000th. Is this simply down to the wide aperture, and being so far away from the sweet spot discovered on the indoor tests?
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The benched shot in post 47 does just look like softness but looks a lot better than the outdoor shots, if I looked at only that shot I'd probably be happy enough.

Don't know what to say about the 'sweet spot' tests as I'v never tried this before. It does seem to deteriorate pretty quickly though.

The shot in post 3, I'd say that yeah it was a combination of wide aperture and the lighting which is pretty drab and looking at the snow, I'd say your models face was in shadow which won't help.

The results posted remind me of what I was getting shooting my 50mm f1.4d wide open on my D200, I thought my images looked like they had the diffuse glow filter in PS applied to them. Stopping down even just slightly seemed to sort this out.

I also have to say that going by the images posted the D90 seems to have pretty horrendous levels of noise even at iso 200.

Strangely the images posted by Scotthehat in post 43 seem to have similar noise levels and one was shot at iso 2000 and one at iso 250 and that was on a D300 I believe?
 
The chap at work has had a good play around with the gear today - inside in our studio and outside. We checked it inside using studio lights at f5.6 and f11 70mm 1/200th ISO200 with VR on and off - all handheld.

We also checked it outside, ISO 640, f11 at 1/125, 70mm.

We also ran comparative tests using a 70-300mm same other settings. Granted this is again not a superzoom, but the only other lens I had left to test against.

Steve, whose site I linked to earlier has been in the game for many years, and indeed earns a living (currently part time while he also does work for us) in photography.

He believes the lens is soft. Comments that there is very little difference between VR on or off (which may be contributing to the camera shake effects commented upon), but that the D90 appears to be fine.

I will now pop into Leeds tomorrow, to ask Dale Photographic if I can borrow one of their identical lenses to run a comparative test against - a true comparison. Hopefully, the shop will not be too busy to help out. I should then have my final answer.
 
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Bradders I sympathise and I commend all the tests you have done- you're now in
a place that the lens will never be sharp in your eyes, but I might add I think it is very soft, you don't need to go past scottthehat's pics to see a massive difference, I would be delighted with scots and like you very dissapointed in yours- I think your doing the right thing and letting a tog shop have a look.
Good luck and hope you get it sorted as I know how you feel
 
cherokee1111 said:
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Bradders I sympathise and I commend all the tests you have done- you're now in
a place that the lens will never be sharp in your eyes, but I might add I think it is very soft, you don't need to go past scottthehat's pics to see a massive difference, I would be delighted with scots and like you very dissapointed in yours- I think your doing the right thing and letting a tog shop have a look.
Good luck and hope you get it sorted as I know how you feel
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Thanks for your comments Cherokee. To be honest, I thought I was going gaga as so many commented that they thought it OK, yet didn't see the differences from this to scottthehat's images.

Hoping that tomorrow will nail it once and for all. Have asked the seller to consider a refund, but that's a decision outside my hands.

One other thing that came out from testing today was it appears to be sharper behind the focus point - so if you shoot a head, and aim at the eye, the hair towards the back of the head seems to be sharper than the eye area. Another oddity was that shots from closer range seem sharper than standing a little further away - a face at 2m is less soft (but still soft) than one from 5m.

Looked back at the sellers post, and it mentions that the lens was only 2 months old, but he'd not taken shots with it, so I should definitely have asked for examples buying "blind" so to speak - an error on my part. So, it should still be in warranty and may have to go back to Nikon failing a refund, although I've not got a purchase invoice to go with it.

You are probably correct in the comment that I will never see it sharp in my eyes though - even if I end up with it back from Nikon and sorted. A lot like the mindset of a new car getting bumped and not feeling new anymore even after a perfect repair, I guess - strange lot, us humans, eh?
 
The saga now appears to have reached a positive conclusion.

Had the lens checked by Dale Photographic against an identical model they had in the shop. Stephen commented that my lens was noticably softer than his copy shooting the same scene with the same settings. He also commented that although he could hear the VR working, his could see no difference in the resulting shots.

The seller has offered a full refund delayed until after Christmas - I have agreed to accept this. So fingers crossed, and all being well, this should be cleanly resolved for me, if not the lens itself, sometime early in the New Year.

Thanks for all the help and advice.

Cheers, Mark
 
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good(y) I, like you, thought it was obvious but surprised at how many thought it was ok:puke:
Happy Christmas:D
 
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I still think pixel peeping is bad for your health!! Glad its sorted (y)

But why the wait until after xmas??

EDIT - Ok, just remembered its a private sale! Still...
 
In fairness to the vendor, and I hope I've been seen that way throughout, he has purchased a replacement lens with the money I paid, and it is an expensive time of year in other regards.

I am happy enough to wait until the New Year to get the refund. In the meantime, I will be collecting a 16-85mm tomorrow, so at least I have something to stick on the body. I will be trying it out in the shop first though!
 
I read this thread with interest. Used to have this lens, bought secondhand after reading what a great walk-around it was. I took it to Rome with me for a week and used it almost exclusively. I don't think I got one good picture with it, many down to user error no doubt, but many were soft. I didn't think mine was defective at the time, just wasn't impressed with it, and I sold it on. It wasn't a patch on the 16-85 I subsequently had, which took fantastically sharp pictures despite (as I found out out only when selling it) having defective VR! I remember reading somewhere at the time that there was a lack of consistency in the quality of this particular lens (the 18-200), with a few duff copies around.
 
braddersmd said:
In fairness to the vendor, and I hope I've been seen that way throughout, he has purchased a replacement lens with the money I paid, and it is an expensive time of year in other regards.

I am happy enough to wait until the New Year to get the refund. In the meantime, I will be collecting a 16-85mm tomorrow, so at least I have something to stick on the body. I will be trying it out in the shop first though!
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Well, it's now been 6 days since my last post, and when the vendor agreed to take the lens back early next year. Since then, I have sent several PM messages without reply, simply asking if we could confirm a date for the refund / return of the lens.

I think I've been pretty fair throughout this, but I am beginning to feel somewhat ignored. I am aware that the member has been on the board, as recently as 18th December. Most strange.....

Cheers, Mark
 
very interesting thread, and i have learned a fair bit from it so thanks to mark for posting it up for discussion etc. when i got my sigma 70-300 recently(second hand) i thought after taking a few shots it was soft but after taking several shots of the same thing with different settings i realised it was me shaking or had the camera set up wrong making it not as sharp as it could be.

hope you get this resolved mark.
atb
 
Looking at what I assume is the original sale thread, the vendor is well-established here on TP with a very high number of positive trades - I'd be very surprised if he didn't honour it.
 
braddersmd said:
Well, it's now been 6 days since my last post, and when the vendor agreed to take the lens back early next year. Since then, I have sent several PM messages without reply, simply asking if we could confirm a date for the refund / return of the lens.

I think I've been pretty fair throughout this, but I am beginning to feel somewhat ignored. I am aware that the member has been on the board, as recently as 18th December. Most strange.....

Cheers, Mark
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That's it, get suspicious. It's a sure way to get the seller to co-operate. :shrug:
 
a lens with such a focal length range!
Looks like you were near wide open too.
 
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