85mm F1.4G - Rubbish.....

.....on my D800E.......at F1.4........until.......I found the perfect fine tune......I had to go all the way to -20.....and now getting 8/10 in sharp focus....stopping down to F2.8...it's almost macro like in quality.

Only got the lens on Saturday and I can see this being a favorite lens along with my beloved 70-200mm F2.8 VRII.

Not to sound like a broken record, but this is the primary reason I will never own any autofocus lenses. All of my lenses are manual focus and with the microprism/ground glass screen I have in my D700 I always know when the image is in sharp focus. And my government issue eyeballs are a far more discriminating than any autofocus module dim light.

Not to sound like a broken record, but this is the primary reason I will never own any autofocus lenses.

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You can also manual focus on auto focus lenses . Then, on the rare occasion when a UFO or something flies by, you can switch to the auto focus burst tracking 3D whatever mode to get your shot.:encouragement:

GameOfMoans said:

.....on my D800E.......at F1.4........until.......I found the perfect fine tune......I had to go all the way to -20.....and now getting 8/10 in sharp focus....stopping down to F2.8...it's almost macro like in quality.

Only got the lens on Saturday and I can see this being a favorite lens along with my beloved 70-200mm F2.8 VRII.

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I'm finding that a lot of my lenses seem to need nearly the maximum AF fine-tuning that I can accomplish in camera. I just read on a blog that if the AF fine-tune needed is more than +/- 10, the author sends the lens back with a note saying as such. He indicated that he's seeing more such issues with Nikkor lenses than he used to. I wish I had read that before I had purchased four of the lenses I now own.

STM said:

Not to sound like a broken record, but this is the primary reason I will never own any autofocus lenses. All of my lenses are manual focus and with the microprism/ground glass screen I have in my D700 I always know when the image is in sharp focus. And my government issue eyeballs are a far more discriminating than any autofocus module dim light.

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Who installed your screen, and what brand is it? Would you recommend it to someone buying it now, and will AF still work with it installed?

WM

Whiskeyman said:

I'm finding that a lot of my lenses seem to need nearly the maximum AF fine-tuning that I can accomplish in camera. I just read on a blog that if the AF fine-tune needed is more than +/- 10, the author sends the lens back with a note saying as such. He indicated that he's seeing more such issues with Nikkor lenses than he used to. I wish I had read that before I had purchased four of the lenses I now own.



Who installed your screen, and what brand is it? Would you recommend it to someone buying it now, and will AF still work with it installed?

WM

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The focusing screen I have is one I got from focusingscreen.com. They have expanded their Nikon inventory considerably since I got mine. It is actually a modified Canon microprism/ground glass screen. It took me maybe 5 minutes to install mine with the tools that were provided. Before you get one, make sure your camera can accommodate interchangeable screens. Although I cannot say for sure as I have no autofocus lenses, I see no reason whatsoever why they should not work with autofocus lenses. The one I have is brighter than the original D700 screen.

When it comes to manual focusing, the screens in modern DSLR's SUCK. I say that because they are not nearly discriminating enough for critical manual focus be because they are simply not designed for it.

STM said:

When it comes to manual focusing, the screens in modern DSLR's SUCK. I say that because they are not nearly discriminating enough for critical manual focus be because they are simply not designed for it.

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IMHO, they are worse than that! It's as though the manual focus process in a DSLR is to turn the "lens focus thingy" until the little green dot lights up steady. I haven't had a single bit of good fortune with manual focus other than when I can set the focus to infinity and let it stay there.