Which Lens for D810 Panos?

[Nostalgiczombie]

I'm investing in a D810 and various accessories. I'm about to purchase the multirow pano gimbal from RRS to go with my Gitzo tripod, but now need to think about lenses. I'm coming from Canon setup, so I don't have to much knowledge of Nikon lenses.

I will be doing multirow panoramics of scenic locations and come city locations. So I have to be concerned with distorition and sharpness. I'm not concerned about autofocus or having wide aperatures on it as I will be shooting around f/11 - f/16. I would like to shoot around 35MM to 50MM I think so could do with a few reasonable options. I have considered the 24-70 but concerned that as it's a zoom that image quality will be compromised. I will be printing large prints.

I could do with a few options

[BernardLanguillier]

I have been using the Sigma 35mm f1.4 and Zeiss Otus 55mm f1.4 for that purpose.

I also liked the zeiss 50mm f2.0 macro before replacing it with the Otus.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Nostalgiczombie]

Could the 24-70 be a viable option for me? The Otus is perhaps out of my budget here in the UK, as I have budget of £1000/$1500 dollars ish for my lens choice.

I am thinking of my options being:
Zeiss 21MM
Nikon 35MM 1.8
Nikon 50MM 1.8
Nikon 85MM 1.8
Nikon 24-70
Sigma 35MM
Sigma 50MM

I've not included the Nikon 1.4 versions as I would rarely use it and given the price would be waste of money. I've heard wonderful things about the Nikon 50MM 1.8, but I'm thinking there must be some downside given the extremely low price.

[Jim Kasson]

Could the 24-70 be a viable option for me? The Otus is perhaps out of my budget here in the UK, as I have budget of £1000/$1500 dollars ish for my lens choice.

I am thinking of my options being:
Zeiss 21MM
Nikon 35MM 1.8
Nikon 50MM 1.8
Nikon 85MM 1.8
Nikon 24-70
Sigma 35MM
Sigma 50MM

I have the Zeiss 21mm F-mount lens. It's a great lens, but I think it's too wide for multi-row panos. Maybe you wouldn't need more than one row if you used it. I don't have any of the f/1.8 Nikkors, so I can't comment on them. I do have the 24-70. It's not a bad lens, but certainly not a great one. I'm assuming that you bought the D810 because you want to use all those pixels. You won't stress the sensor with the Nikon zoom.

I don't have the Sigma 35mm, but I do have the new 50mm f/1.4 ART lens, and it is very nice. Twitchy manual focus, though, at least compared to the Zeiss F-mount lenses, but you do get most of the Otus 55mm good qualities for a lot less money.

Jim

[Jim Kasson]

I'm not concerned about autofocus or having wide [apertures] on it as I will be shooting around f/11 - f/16. I

At f/16, you won't be using the pixels in the D810 as well as at a wider aperture. You can use deconvolution sharpening in post, but it I were you, I'd try to use wider apertures. As a point of reference, the sharpest aperture of the Sigma 50mm f/1..4 ART lens is about f/5.6. You can use ISO 64, so sunny 16 would give you f/5.6 at 1/500, if that gives you enough DOF.

Jim

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Any decent lens. Stopping down beyound f/8 wastes sharpness, due to diffraction. Good lenses perform optimally at f/5.6, mostly.

Rotational panos normally make little use of corners, so they are less critical than normal photography.

Best regards
Erik

[Hulyss]

On budget, the new f1.8 Nikkor primes are just very good. Ofc there is better but for the money ... they are just excellent on 36MP.

28f1.8
35f1.8
50f1.8
85f1.8

The 24-70f2.8 is a very good lens, a perfect lens but only on the low MP nikon FF DSLR (D3,D3s,D700 and D4/Df) and eventually on modern APS-C.
Hope Nikon is planning a new one soon.

[Geods]

I just returned from a five month, nearly 16,000-mile, motorcycle trip. Most of the images taken were stitched with a D800e. I was not making just panoramas but used maosaiced-images to improve upon the poverty of neither having my 8x10-camera nor a digital Hasselblad. It is just that motorcycle logistics do not really allow a high volume of camera equipment (read large format) nor something that isn't water resistant (the 'blad). You can see some images on my 'blog: georgedstewart.blogspot.com.

The three lenses I used were:

Nikon 70-200 f/4 - It is light weight and has higher resolving power than the 2.8 version (according to DxO). It's VR is outstanding and great when using a pano-bracket on a spindly tripod in wind. It was my most used lens. Sometimes I wish I had a little more reach for stitching purposes.

Nikon 58 f/1.4 - Its a great lens that once focus calibrated is very sharp, even wide-open. I often use this lens for stitching portrait-images wide-open (narrow depth-of-field) for the look of a much faster, wide angle lens.

Nikon 24mm f/1.4 - I used this lens the least but occasionally needed what it was capable of.

This image was taken handheld with the Nikon D800e and 58mm f/1.4 stopped down to 1.8. It is composed of more than 10 separate images.

[Ellis Vener]

"Stopping down beyond f/8 wastes sharpness"

if you are going for ultimate resolution that is of course true but the demands of the real world often interfere on ideals

"I have considered the 24-70 but concerned that as it's a zoom that image quality will be compromised. I will be printing large prints."

How large wil lthe prints be ? What kind of subject matter? Will you be making single row or multi-row panoramas? How are you processing the files? For gneral purposes the 24-70mm does a good job, especially when you either carefully tune your camera's phase type autofocus system for the lens or use live view. A high quality fixed focal length lens can yield better results  but shooting circumstances ( air quality, wind, tripod and head choice (esp. with regard to vibration dampening), cable or electronic release instead of pressing the shutter release on the camera) are also factors, as is capture and output sharpening, use of "Clarity", etc. 

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

My point is essentially that there will be very little advantage of a high quality lens over a more normal lens if it is stopped down to a small aperture. What you essentially are paying for is good correction allowing large apertures.

Some lenses, like zooms may have issues with corner sharpness, even stopped down, but that should be little issue on a multirow pano where corners are not really used.

Best regards
Erik

"Stopping down beyond f/8 wastes sharpness"

if you are going for ultimate resolution that is of course true but the demands of the real world often interfere on ideals

[Jim Kasson]

My point is essentially that there will be very little advantage of a high quality lens over a more normal lens if it is stopped down to a small aperture. What you essentially are paying for is good correction allowing large apertures.

Some lenses, like zooms may have issues with corner sharpness, even stopped down, but that should be little issue on a multirow pano where corners are not really used.

Well said, Erik.

[kers]

I agree with choosing the 50mm ART lens...
It is the best lens i own and has stellar contrast - also with the sun in the image ( a standard panorama problem)
I also would use it at 5.6 - its best aperture.