got a new lens? check it properly

lots of new dslr owners on here. sooner or later they will aquire a new lens and i am suggesting to make sure it is not a dud. for example i got a nikon 16-85vr 2 weeks ago. at 85mm the lens was back focusing. this means it was not focusing at the point i chose it to but a few inches behind. this was the case for an item about a meter away. when focusing on a distant subject it was even worse. look at these extreme crops and you will see the difference between my 1st copy of the lens and the 3rd copy. both taken on a tripod with aperture at f5.6





i went back to the shop and swapped it for another lens. the 2nd copy of this lens i had had very poor image quality in the bottom right of the image. many lenses have soft corners especially if used at the largest aperture which in this case was f3.5. however the corners should be fairly similar and no one drastically worse than the other corners. these images show extreme crops of the bottom right corner of the 2nd and 3rd lens.





these are all extreme crops like i said just to show what can be wrong at times. sometimes these problems will go unnoticed especially to the untrained eye and may only be picked up on later when it is too late to exchange.

i just thought this info may help some dslr newbie. i have never had to exchange any nikon gear up to now and just got unlucky with that lens but now i have a perfect copy of it. in the past i had to return a tokina 11-16, tamron 17-50, sigma 70-300 and sigma 17-70 all for one or both of these faults. however in the past 6 years i must have bought over 25 lenses so for me it has been 1 in 6 that have been at fault.

sorry to bore those of you who are already in the know

Thanks for that, big differance there in those pics, but if viewing the full picture it may go unnoticed.

How're you healing up?

Originally Posted by Ed

How're you healing up?

hi ed

thanks for asking

off to specialist later today and will get an xray done so fingers crossed it is healing right. still have limited movement in elbow but physio guy wont push to hard until i get seen today. already been round the bike shop sitting on a monster 696 but dont know why i bother being unemployed

Good advice on the lens front, and keeping fingers crossed for you

[Viney]

I had issues when i bought my 50mm f1.8. It had a hair betwwwn the elements and the second one had a crack in the glass. Always worht taking your camera along taking a couple of shots and get them printed out before you walk out the store. Its what i ended up doing.

Originally Posted by Viney

I had issues when i bought my 50mm f1.8. It had a hair betwwwn the elements and the second one had a crack in the glass. Always worht taking your camera along taking a couple of shots and get them printed out before you walk out the store. Its what i ended up doing.

viney i used to order all my stuff over the web but when i started paying 800 quid for a camera i felt more comfy buying at local store. like you pointed out so much less hastle and you can be sure you are getting a good copy

Originally Posted by Filipe M.

Good advice on the lens front, and keeping fingers crossed for you

thanks filipe ... elbow healing well and can now support the dslr so no more one handed pics lol