Nikon autofocus (conspiracy) theory

A few year ago I was talking to a fantastic Czech photographer who documented the Czech insurrection against the communist. He told me that at the time (1968) he had to work almost a year to afford a camera, which cost the equivalent of a few salaries.
I immediately assumed he had bought himself a Leica, but he told me he had a Nikon. I was very surprised, so I asked him "Why not a Leica". His answer was "at the time, they cost almost the same".
I found that bizarre to say the least. Being a Nikon user myself, and being very conscious of the evident lesser sharpness of Nikon cameras, I started inquiring into the thing.

My current setup is a Nikon F100 and a Nikon F80.

At first I thought it was the fact that I was using a cheap camera, the F80, so I switched to the F100 - same results.
Then I thought it was the lens, a 50mm f/1.4g. I rented a noticeably sharper lens, the 85mm f/1.4g - same results. At this point I was really not amazed - an F100 started selling at $2,160 (in today's dollars), an N/F80 sold for $700 (in todays dollars), so a $1,100 setup (F80 + 50mm) gave me the same result as a $3600 setup (F100 + 85mm)? How absurd is that?

Then people on this forum started telling me it's the technique, so I actually photographed a girl in summertime, full sunshine, with my F100, and the rented sharper lens, at 400 iso - same results. Not bad, but never Leica level.

All things being equal (in that analog cameras obviously cannot focus on-film, so slrs and rangefinders focus both indirectly on something which is on the film plane), what changes today (very important) between a nikon and a leica is the autofocus, and more specifically, the fact that a leica's rf system can be recalibrated, while a Nikon's can't (provided that is was not slightly off to start with, which i don't think it was - by design).

I am more and more convinced that, after introducing autofocus, Nikon cameras lost sharpness, and Nikon accepted that fact knowing that lowering the price of the cameras would make them sell more cameras. Even on top cameras like the F6, they accepted the loss, knowing that other features would make the camera sell anyway.

There is also some Occam's razor here: how could Leica be still in business with their manual cameras if Nikon had found the holy Graal, the autofocus? Leica knew that excellent autofocus was very difficult to obtain and wisely staid manual.

How much sharpness did they lose? Not much, but photography is about exactly that little amount that got lost, which makes a Leica setup go for 10k$+ and a Nikon setup go for 100$+.

Let's look at some images.

Leica here: https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=leica m6&view_all=1&sort=interestingness-desc

With a Leica, a sharp photo like this is not an exception:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/99399141@N03/49453293573/in/pool-50823336@N00/
Most Leica photos have a biting sharpness to them.

Nikon F6:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/nikonf6/pool/with/49002487511/

Close, but no cigar...the biting sharpness is just not there.

Now, something crazy: let's look at a pre-autofocus Nikon, the FM2:

https://www.flickr.com/groups/nikonfm2/pool/with/49550257902/
They are sharper than F6's.

Let's look at another pre-autofocus, the F3:

https://www.flickr.com/groups/nikonf3/pool/
Same story...

So, yes, Nikon AF cameras make perfectly acceptable photos - just visibly less sharp than Leica.

on AF SLRs, it is common for the autofocus to go out of adjustment. I think that's your problem. The camera body has an AF calibration, and so dos each lens. You cannot do it yourself, the camera must be hooked up to software Nikon uses for that purpose. Have the camera serviced.

I shot with an F4 and an F3 for years and never saw a sharpness difference when I focused manually, but the F4 AF over time went out of adjustment and gave less sharp images. This did not affect manual focus though. Try shooting with manual focus and see if it improves things.

Well, first we must rule out a few aspects:

1. Photos must be taken on the same medium (same film);
2. Photos must be printed and then scanned, or just scanned, at same parameters;
3. Photos must be not of some random scenes, but since you appeal to "sharpness", then a specific chart which would give us the overall idea of sharpness. All of these will give us equal conditions for testing. Only THEN we can talk about the fact that AF lenses require calibration after years of use. But most of all, I found this phrase rather amusing:

piero2019 said:

How much sharpness did they lose? Not much, but photography is about exactly that little amount that got lost, which makes a Leica setup go for 10k$+ and a Nikon setup go for 100$+.

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I never knew photography was about sharpness. It's like taking all the creative part and focusing solely on math... Never knew that lens designers and manufacturers were true photographers And no, sharpness is not the only thing that makes Leica expensive. It's product serviceability, support from the company and quality of manufacturing. And last but not the least, years and years of high reputation. What makes Rolls Royce a Rolls Royce? More than half of it is its name, right now, since it's owned by BMW and to me it's just a luxurious BMW that has a different name tag. Pretty much like Porsche Cayenne is a VW Touareg wearing an expensive tuxedo

When you compare film pictures on the internet, the bottleneck is usually scanning. That's the great leveler. With the usual scans, it isn't possible to see differences in sharpness between lenses except where they perform really bad.
It's possible that people who put a lot of money in a Leica setup also get better scans, on average.
If you're unhappy with sharpness you get, investigate your scanning, or start wet printing, and make sure to exclude camera shake and focus errors, and possibly stop down a bit, which helps with both lens sharpness and focusing.

chriscrawfordphoto said:

on AF SLRs, it is common for the autofocus to go out of adjustment. I think that's your problem. The camera body has an AF calibration, and so dos each lens. You cannot do it yourself, the camera must be hooked up to software Nikon uses for that purpose. Have the camera serviced.

I shot with an F4 and an F3 for years and never saw a sharpness difference when I focused manually, but the F4 AF over time went out of adjustment and gave less sharp images. This did not affect manual focus though. Try shooting with manual focus and see if it improves things.

Click to expand...

Thanks Chris but - I have owned three F80s, and they gave me equal results. Agreed, I did not have them serviced, but then I should suppose that the thousands of Nikon AF owners on flickr all/mostly got their cameras not serviced, and the other thousands Leica owners on flickr all/mostly got their Leicas serviced - Occam's razor would cut me then.

Or, second option, we can say that Nikon AFs reliably go out of adjustment, and Leicas reliably do not go out of adjustment, which implies that I have to spend a lot of time in the shop. I'd rather cough up the money and be done with it at purchase time.

EDIT - or rather NOT cough up the money for an f4/5/6 and get a Nikon MF camera, like your F3.

grain elevator said:

When you compare film pictures on the internet, the bottleneck is usually scanning. That's the great leveler. With the usual scans, it isn't possible to see differences in sharpness between lenses except where they perform really bad.
It's possible that people who put a lot of money in a Leica setup also get better scans, on average.
If you're unhappy with sharpness you get, investigate your scanning, or start wet printing, and make sure to exclude camera shake and focus errors, and possibly stop down a bit, which helps with both lens sharpness and focusing.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your answer.

it isn't possible to see differences in sharpness between lenses except where they perform really bad.
Well, I suppose I must have special glasses on, because I clearly see it, check out the flickr links.

It's possible that people who put a lot of money in a Leica setup also get better scans, on average.
If you look at the exifs of the pictures, in both cases they are on average the same scanners.

M-88 said:

Well, first we must rule out a few aspects:

1. Photos must be taken on the same medium (same film);
2. Photos must be printed and then scanned, or just scanned, at same parameters;
3. Photos must be not of some random scenes, but since you appeal to "sharpness", then a specific chart which would give us the overall idea of sharpness. All of these will give us equal conditions for testing. Only THEN we can talk about the fact that AF lenses require calibration after years of use. But most of all, I found this phrase rather amusing:

I never knew photography was about sharpness. It's like taking all the creative part and focusing solely on math... Never knew that lens designers and manufacturers were true photographers And no, sharpness is not the only thing that makes Leica expensive. It's product serviceability, support from the company and quality of manufacturing. And last but not the least, years and years of high reputation. What makes Rolls Royce a Rolls Royce? More than half of it is its name, right now, since it's owned by BMW and to me it's just a luxurious BMW that has a different name tag. Pretty much like Porsche Cayenne is a VW Touareg wearing an expensive tuxedo

Click to expand...

Thanks M-88

1. Photos must be taken on the same medium (same film)...
True for one photo. Not true for hundred of thousand (flickr) that consistently have more sharpness.

I never knew photography was about sharpness.
I agree - only talking about sharpness here. I adore Lomo photos.

quality of manufacturing...
Spot on, like cameras that do not lose adjustment over time (see answer above)

I am a Nikon SLR user and a Leica rangefinder user.

I have owned and used Nikon F, F2, F3, F4, EM, N70, and N2000.

I have owned and used Leica M1 (not a rangefinder) and Leica M6.

I have never noticed an "evident lesser sharpness of Nikon cameras." Also, when the Nikon mirror lock-up feature is used, I have never noticed a significant difference in image quality between Nikon lenses and Leitz lenses.

Slightly telephoto lens test by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Strange, but I have never noticed any differences in sharpness between Leica and Nikon lenses made for film cameras. Maybe later versions for digital market. They can differ in other aspects, but that is a different discussion.

Yes, I agree you must have special glasses on. I looked at the first few picture in your flicks links for F6 and M6. I don't see better resolution in the Leica pictures or worse focus in the Nikon pictures. They are, however, higher in contrast, which is mostly a matter development and of post-processing and could give an impression of higher sharpness.

piero2019 said:

Thanks for your answer.

it isn't possible to see differences in sharpness between lenses except where they perform really bad.
Well, I suppose I must have special glasses on, because I clearly see it, check out the flickr links.

It's possible that people who put a lot of money in a Leica setup also get better scans, on average.
If you look at the exifs of the pictures, in both cases they are on average the same scanners.

Click to expand...

Thanks Narsuitus but I am specifically talking about autofocus on Nikon bodies.

At the end of my message I do state that pre-autofocus Nikons are, in my opinion, sharper.

when the Nikon mirror lock-up feature is used...
You are telling me that, when photographing dummies in a studio setting, using mirror lock-up, you got equivalent results between lenses. This does not apply to my thesis of manual vs autofocus on Nikon bodies.

narsuitus said:

I am a Nikon SLR user and a Leica rangefinder user.

I have owned and used Nikon F, F2, F3, F4, EM, N70, and N2000.

I have owned and used Leica M1 (not a rangefinder) and Leica M6.

I have never noticed an "evident lesser sharpness of Nikon cameras." Also, when the Nikon mirror lock-up feature is used, I have never noticed a significant difference in image quality between Nikon lenses and Leitz lenses.

Slightly telephoto lens test by Narsuitus, on Flickr

Click to expand...

guangong said:

Strange, but I have never noticed any differences in sharpness between Leica and Nikon lenses made for film cameras. Maybe later versions for digital market. They can differ in other aspects, but that is a different discussion.

Click to expand...

Thanks Guangong,

the discussion is about autofocus on nikon bodies.

grain elevator said:

Yes, I agree you must have special glasses on. I looked at the first few picture in your flicks links for F6 and M6. I don't see better resolution in the Leica pictures or worse focus in the Nikon pictures. They are, however, higher in contrast, which is mostly a matter development and of post-processing and could give an impression of higher sharpness.

Click to expand...

I think I am not alone in getting the impression, along with a few other people still buying Leica.

OP I am unsure if you are looking for answers to why you cannot focus the Nikon as well as the Leica or are convinced you have found the answer, namely the Leica gives the better focusing and nothing anyone can say will cause you to question your conclusion

If you have reached a conclusion then rejoice because you have the better camera and frankly having told us that Leica focuses more sharply than Nikon then having extended your sympathy to Nikon users there is little more that you can do with those users in the same way there appears to be little those users can do to convince you that your conclusion might be wrong.

Don't worry, be happy as they say

pentaxuser

P.S. how do we Pentax users measure up to Leica sharpness

I'm a bit confused here. If you think the problem is in the autofocus system, why don't you compare a shot focused automatically to one with the lenses in mf mode and measured?

Hello Pentaxuser and thanks for your answer.

The discussion here is about autofocus on nikon bodies.
I will rephrase your statement:

The Leica (and Nikon pre-AF) gives better focusing than Nikons AF over time, where they (Nikons) tend to go out of adjustment.

I actually think they are made to lesser standards of precision (of autofocus), because Nikon realized they could sell more cameras looking at factors other than sheer sharpness.

By looking at photos on the internet, and out of my personal experience, I found my statement to be probably true.

Pentax cameras are pretty sharp in my opinion, but I like to have more lenses available like the MF Nikons.

pentaxuser said:

OP I am unsure if you are looking for answers to why you cannot focus the Nikon as well as the Leica or are convinced you have found the answer, namely the Leica gives the better focusing and nothing anyone can say will cause you to question your conclusion

If you have reached a conclusion then rejoice because you have the better camera and frankly having told us that Leica focuses more sharply than Nikon then having extended your sympathy to Nikon users there is little more that you can do with those users in the same way there appears to be little those users can do to convince you that your conclusion might be wrong.

Don't worry, be happy as they say

pentaxuser

P.S. how do we Pentax users measure up to Leica sharpness

Click to expand...

twelvetone12 said:

I'm a bit confused here. If you think the problem is in the autofocus system, why don't you compare a shot focused automatically to one with the lenses in mf mode and measured?

Click to expand...

Thanks twelvetone,

very good observation.

I don't do that because AF cameras are optimized to be used with AF, and generally a pain to MF - and even if I found a particular AF camera to be sharper in MF mode, in that case I'll just buy an MF camera.

Since for my particular style of photography sharpness is important, should my theory be true, it would mean that pre-AF bodies are better for me.

Chris Crawford made an important observation, that is, AF bodies tend to go out of adjustment with time, and since MF is not a problem for me, an MF body would be much more practical.

I think part of what you are seeing with the multitude of unsharp pictures is the popularity of the zoom lenses over the fixed focal length lenses. Zooms tend to be inherently less sharp because of all the compromises that had to be made to get them to work, especially in the older ones. The newer computer designs with newer optical materials are an improvement but have rarely equalled a good prime focus glass. Another thing I noticed a while back was an article on lens design where the ray paths were modified from crossing at a very sharp point at focus to more of a less sharp point that was stretched out above and below focus so the image would look sharp without having to be focussed dead on, possibly as an aid to make auto focus easier to achieve. No idea how prevalent this is in the lens industry.

glbeas said:

I think part of what you are seeing with the multitude of unsharp pictures is the popularity of the zoom lenses over the fixed focal length lenses. Zooms tend to be inherently less sharp because of all the compromises that had to be made to get them to work, especially in the older ones. The newer computer designs with newer optical materials are an improvement but have rarely equalled a good prime focus glass. Another thing I noticed a while back was an article on lens design where the ray paths were modified from crossing at a very sharp point at focus to more of a less sharp point that was stretched out above and below focus so the image would look sharp without having to be focussed dead on, possibly as an aid to make auto focus easier to achieve. No idea how prevalent this is in the lens industry.

Click to expand...

That could be actually the case: somebody with a Leica is inherently more likely to use a fixed focal.

I'll filter for specific fixed lenses and post the results.

I bought Nikon cameras primarily for the Autofocus feature. The ones I have perform very well, but you need to know how to use it. In my hands I use the autofocus only on stationary subjects. The nice thing about these cameras is that they focus with the mirror down! This way if the focus is off, it is immediately recognized before tripping the shutter. Makes me very curious as to how people are getting out of focus images unless the camera in question needs repair service or if the diopter adjustment on the viewfinder is not set correctly.

piero2019 said:

That could be actually the case: somebody with a Leica is inherently more likely to use a fixed focal.

I'll filter for specific fixed lenses and post the results.

Click to expand...

And there it is:

F6:
https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=nikon f6 85mm f/1.4g&view_all=1

FM2:
https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=nikon fm2 85mm f/1.4

I would still say the FM2 has an edge - small, but an edge...EDIT: maybe that edge is the f6 not having been serviced for autofocus...

ic-racer said:

I bought Nikon cameras primarily for the Autofocus feature. The ones I have perform very well, but you need to know how to use it. In my hands I use the autofocus only on stationary subjects. The nice thing about these cameras is that they focus with the mirror down! This way if the focus is off, it is immediately recognized before tripping the shutter. Makes me very curious as to how people are getting out of focus images unless the camera in question needs repair service or if the diopter adjustment on the viewfinder is not set correctly.

Click to expand...

You are saying that it's better to have an AF camera serviced upon buying it?

piero2019 said:

I think I am not alone in getting the impression, along with a few other people still buying Leica.

Click to expand...

There are reasons other than sharpness for using a rangefinder camera. Sure, some Leica lenses may be better than some Nikon lenses, my point is that you can't usually see a difference in resolution in scans (except drum scans very good digital macro scans, and except in the corners or wherever a lens may be very weak). Otoh if focus is missed, that should mostly be obvious even in low res scans because something else will be in focus.
Asses your own image quality problems separately from what you think you see on the internet. What's the point of coming up with a grand theory before you have even established if your cameras need adjustment? Have you actually assessed if your cameras focus accurately or not? You haven't told us what you do with your negatives, scan or wet print? If scan, how? Not saying it's the case for you, but very often when people are disappointed with the quality they get from 35mm, it's mediocre scans or drug store prints.

Thanks for the funniest post thread I've read in over a decade on this forum...truly hilarious!

Colin Corneau said:

Thanks for the funniest post thread I've read in over a decade on this forum...truly hilarious!

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There may be more and better to come. I feel the thread is a long way from dying

pentaxuser