New Nikkor zooms pano abilities

[BernardLanguillier]

Dear all,

For all the Nikon FF users interested in doing panoramas.

I have done a first round of rough measurements this week with my D3 + 14-24 f2.8 and 24-70 f2.8. I am sorry to report than the nodal point of both lenses is located very far towards the front of the lenses, about 110 mm in front of the lens mount.

My D3 RRS L bracket just showed up this morning, and I will do more accurate measurements in the coming days, but the results will basically stay the same.

So far, I only measured at 24 mm on the 14-24, 50 and 70 mm on the 24-70.

Such a front heavy location of the nodal point is often a problem because it results in very long cantilevers that typically are pretty unstable in windy situations.

Cheers,
Bernard

[MatthewCromer]

Bernard,

What will happen if I try to make a pano using a simple tripod level, expose, rotate, expose, rotate, expose, rotate with these lenses and a normal head?

[bob mccarthy]

Bernard,

I would have assumed that would be the case. These new wide zooms have very strong retrofocal design/bias to get around the mount/microlens issues.

I'm still using my D2x with the PC nikkor lenses for most of my stitching. I would think a D300 would be a superior stitching unit over the D3 as more shift can be used while staying in the sharp zone.

I only wish the CA removal aspect of the new cameras were available for my D2x through a firmware upgrade, but it probably needs the uber power of the new in-camera processor.

I would think the new version of NX would provide the same benefit, but for the fact that it crashes badly on Leopard. (bad Nikon!!) I don't know yet.

merry xmas,

Bob

[bob mccarthy]

Bernard,

What will happen if I try to make a pano using a simple tripod level, expose, rotate, expose, rotate, expose, rotate with these lenses and a normal head?
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You will do fine if everything is fairly far from camera. Don't include any foreground subject, if you like sharpness in these objects.

Bob

[BernardLanguillier]

I'm still using my D2x with the PC nikkor lenses for most of my stitching. I would think a D300 would be a superior stitching unit over the D3 as more shift can be used while staying in the sharp zone.
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Too early to say really, the corner to corner sharpness of the 2 new zooms is really outstanding, and there is little light fall off at typical landscape apertures if any. Distorsion is also very well controlled.

Cheers,
Bernard