Well, I took my trusty d100, a memory card and my 17-55 2.8 lens into my store.
Loaded the card into a d300, d700 and of course the d100.
Stood chatting at the counter and ran off a series of shoots using a 105 2.8, 85 1.4 and an 85 1.8 and of course the 17-55. Ran the major focal lengths with the zoom and the major fstops will the other three lens. Of course as we talked I had a serious brain cramp and did these shots of a wall of memory cards, especially useful for DOF testing. Lol
So back today, with memory card and no camera and no 17-55 as I had enough information to give me a headache.
This time I shot the d300 and the d700 with the 105, 85 1.8, but someone bought the 1.4 later in the day (yesterday) and that was the last one in stock until next week sometime.
I also made a wise decision to go outside this time and took a series of images of a stonewall and enough street in the background to actually see some DOF (brain cramps are such a pain)
The differences between the two 85’s were in size as the 1.4 is huge in comparison, very well built, but am clueless about the DOF, since a flat wall is useless here J The 1.8 wasn’t shabby, nor did it have a plastic feel but it doesn’t have the same number of elements so it is smaller and of course the price difference is huge.
I found the 105 lovely, but it does react in a strange way, at least in these test, (which remember are not benched marked) just outside in the real world. There is a blur at first and the image seems to “snap” into focus. It was an interesting experience but I don’t know how scientific.
Really like both of the focal lengths . Probably need to rent one for a weekend to really get a better feel. Years ago, before zooms , my favorite lens was a 105 2.8 and so old habits die hard. The micro feature could come in handy, but is not a feature that lead me to thinking about this lens.
The wall it’s self look great, nice and sharp and terrific contrast .Of course to speed up the process we used jpeg files rather than RAW as I didn’t want to convert all these images and CS3 won’t recognize the d300 or 700 so using the bridge was not an option.
There was a difference in the cameras decisions making process with the 300 being a bit contrastier and about a 1/3 of a stop darker. Both of these cameras came right out of the box with only the ISO and the file size being the same, no other adjustments for sharping, etc.
The biggest pain is the clear obvious difference in the d100 and what has taken place with new technical advancements. It took about 30 secs to see the differences on my monitor, and I didn’t even have to look at the metadata
So perhaps it is time to consider upgrading bodies to match my lenses. As my vendor said, “you have all this Ferrari glass and are driving a KIA
I knew this day would come, but I suppose I was secretly hoping the d100 would die and make the decision easier, or at least make more sense. However, now I have a decision about which direction to go, and perhaps I need to decide on which body before the lens.