Friday, 7 February 2014

Upgrade All The Lens!

My new lens arrived yesterday. Nothing too exciting, a NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8G, the full frame equivalent of the DX NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8D I've been using on my D7000. I've bought it in preparation of moving up to a full-frame body. In the interim, it works as a 75mm f/1.8 on the crop-sensor D7000. I'm sure I'll do an update about the lens itself before to long but what I wanted to write about today is the the process of piecemeal upgrading from the one system to the other- replacing my DX lens with an FX equivalent and the decisions about each. Here's my current gear and the options I'm considering for the upgrade:

Body:
Current (DX): D7000
Considered (FX): D610, D800
I've already written about delaying buying a D600 until the dust/oil issue was resolved and, now that the 610 has arrived, I've still got some reservations about that model. Namely, it's central clustering of focus points compared to the handsome spread on the D7000. Now, I understand that this is a problem generally on full-frame digital cameras but the 600/610 has it worse than many. Ideally, I'd really like to wait for the next iteration to see what happens there but I have some once-in-a-lifetime type travel plans coming up in a few months and I think I should have the full-frame for that hence I have to choose from what's available. Having pretty much committed to staying with Nikon (already picked up a couple FX lenses) my options are for the D610 or the D800. The D800, despite having a slightly better focus point spread, is larger and heavier and I do a lot of travel photography so I'd ideally like to keep things light where I can. Also it's virtually twice the price of the 610 and I don't think I'd see the benefit for the extra outlay.

Telephoto zoom:
Current (DX): Tamron 18-250mm
Considered (FX): Nikon 28-300mm (purchased)
I wrote about deciding on the Nikon 28-300 from the available options. It's also one of the reasons I chose to stick with Nikon rather than taking the opportunity of switching systems to try Canon- the Canon equivalent is far outside my price range. Is it the sharpest? Hell no, but it's a decent lens for a decent price and it provides the flexibility I was looking for from this piece of my kit.

Portrait prime lens:
Current (DX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8D
Considered (FX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8G (purchased)
This was an easy decision, standard cheap 50mm f/1.8 DX prime has straight equivalent for full-frame bodies. £150. Job done.

Super wide-angle lens:
Current (DX): Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Considered (FX): Tokina 16-28 f/2.8, Sigma 10-20 f/4-f/5.6, Nikon 14-24 f/2.8
The Nikon equivalents of the Tokina wide angle are crazy expensive (for a hobbyist, anyway). I had a brief panic where I thought that Tokina's FX model wouldn't offer an equivalent field of view to the DX equivalent and I'd be stuck but it turns out the 16-28 gives a maximum 107° vs. the 11-16's 104°. So it seems that the Tokina 16-28 will be a definite, the only alternatives being stupid expensive or f/4 max. I've taken a look at Tamron and Sigma's offerings in this space but Tamron don't do ultra-wides for full-frame cameras and the closest I can find from Sigmas is a 10-20 f/3.5 which offers 102°. So likely going to be the Tokina but shout up if you know of a good F-mount super-wide.

This was far, far longer than intended.

No comments:

Post a Comment