Oh yeah forgot... funny how I only remembered comments about leaving Canon for Sony. Maybe I have early onset Sonyle de-Minolta?
Such "rubber" zoom lenses never come w/o strong distortion, either on short or long focal lengths (most probably at the wide angle end). I think all manufacturers of such extreme wide angle to tele zooms rely on a heavy-sided in-camera correction of all sorts of distortion, vignetting, and aberrations to keep weight, size, and price within tolerable limits. Personally, I therefore prefer dedicated tele or wide angle zooms (if not primes anyway) with much more properly designed optics. Even Canon's new long RF 200-800 mm zoom was surely much easier to design with quite well-corrected optical aberrations - vignetting seems to be a bit pronounced but that's not a real issue.
Germany and/or Europe seems to be much less attractive for Japanese camera makers than it still was a decade ago, so we are the last ones to get new lenses - okay, people living in Tierra del Fuego may have to be even more patient, I guess.I think they used this one
Isn't the idea to make one lens so you never need to change it? I can understand people who might want this option, but lately, I'm thinking about The Three-Body Problem, one of those harnesses to hold two and one holster on the hip...Such "rubber" zoom lenses never come w/o strong distortion, either on short or long focal lengths (most probably at the wide angle end). I think all manufacturers of such extreme wide angle to tele zooms rely on a heavy-sided in-camera correction of all sorts of distortion, vignetting, and aberrations to keep weight, size, and price within tolerable limits. Personally, I therefore prefer dedicated tele or wide angle zooms (if not primes anyway) with much more properly designed optics. Even Canon's new long RF 200-800 mm zoom was surely much easier to design with quite well-corrected optical aberrations - vignetting seems to be a bit pronounced but that's not a real issue.
Btw I still wait for my RF 200-800...
Given Nikon's quality issues harsh reality will make such MTF data very theoretical anyway:
Well, many users of ILC cameras just have only one zoom lens attached, that was typical back in the days of film SLRs. That's very okay, but in fact a fixed lens (bridge) camera would do the same job then. I sometimes use my EF 24-105mm STM when I want a lighter but versatile gear or no disturbing AF motor noise when I shoot video with an external mike. But then it's clear that the wide angle images need some in-camera correction or post-processing - at least when straight lines are part of the composition.
While I can't dispute your point and it's source can't be ignored, it is so long ago. Let's hope they've improved by now....Given Nikon's quality issues harsh reality will make such MTF data very theoretical anyway:
The Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Test: Or Why I Don’t Test Just One Copy
As most of you know, we generally test multiple copies of a lens when we evaluate it, simply because we are so aware of copy-to-copy variation. But I got caught between a rock and a hard place this week. We received exactly one copy of the new Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR lens and [...]www.lensrentals.com
This was not a downward outlier at the beginning of the production of that particular 300 mm lens. More than ten years ago, a thorough and rare lab test of superteles in a German photozine showed that Nikon teles from 300 to 500 mm suffered from decentered lenses. Consequently my wife, a Nikonian, decided to buy a Sigma 500 mm f/4.5 because that lens outperformed optically Nikon's actual 500 mm f/4 back then.
We had so many issues with our Nikon gear, with several digital cameras, lenses from different years, that I can only comment on Nikon's products in a sarcastic way, in particular as an ex-Nikon user. Really, my Canon gear proved to be so much more reliable in particular tough and raw environments, when shooting wildlife, that this can't be just lucky incidence. I would wish Nikon that they get their quality issues better controlled, but I am skeptical. There is a solid reason why Canon products are often more expensive that Nikon's comparable products since about 10-15 years, before it was the opposite. Canon still makes at least all prosumer and pro cameras and lenses in Japan, not in Thailand.
Getting a bit off topic: On my pc, the distortion correction is much faster than denoising for photos (I almost never make a video). Is it the same in your experience for both photos and videos?
