the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

  • site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge
You are here: Home / D850 / Nikon D850 mirror shock with Otus 85/1.4

Nikon D850 mirror shock with Otus 85/1.4

November 16, 2017 JimK 5 Comments

This is the 21st post in a series of Nikon D850 tests. The series starts here.

The title of this post is less ambitious than the content. I will compare 4 different D850 shutter modes:

  • Normal operation, with flapping mirror and mechanical shutter
  • Mirror up operation with electronic first-curtain shutter (EFCS)
  • Live view operation with EFCS
  • Live view operation with electronic shutter

I used this target:

I focused manually using live view, max magnification, and focus peaking, and used a Nikon intervalometer set for a 3 -second delay to trip the camera for 32 exposures in each mode.

Here’s what I saw for a vertical edge in a raw green channel:

The vertical axis is the MTF50 measured in cycles per picture height, a standard measure of sharpness. Higher is better. I’ve plotted the worst, average (aka mean), and best results, and also the mean plus and minus the standard deviation (aka sigma). As expected, the normal mode of operation, with the mirror flipping up when the shutter release is depressed, is the worst. What is surprising is how little the double-press mirror-up, electronic first curtain shutter buys you. I’m suspicious; I’ll have to do another test with another lens and see if the same thing happens. 

As expected, the two live view modes, with no mirror motion at all, did the best. There’s a little surprise here, though, as the electronic shutter (ES) did slightly worse than the EFCS; if anything, it should be better.

The shutter and the mirror on the D850 move up and down, so if the tripod is not converting vertical motion into horizontal swaying, we should see worse results for the flapping mirror with horizontal edges.

And we don’t. I’ve seen this before. Tripods are more stable up and down than side to side. You shouldn’t compare absolute values of the charts for the vertical and horizontal edges since they are different amounts off axis.

The EFCS is very slightly worse than the ES with horizontal edges. It is possible that there is an effect from the flicker of the Wescott LED light sources, that is modulating the vertical edges very slightly, and the slower travel time of the ES makes the effect more apparent. But that’s just a guess.

D850

← Nikon D850 shutter shock with Otus 85/1.4 The film look →

Comments

  1. Christoph Breitkopf says

    November 17, 2017 at 1:20 am

    Jim,

    either the first chart is labeled incorrectly, or your comment “as the electronic shutter (ES) did slightly better than the EFCS” is wrong.

    I’m also quite surprised by the comparatively bad MUP+EFCS results. But I think all of these are probably good enough for real-work use. That’s definitely not the case if you use a lens with a tripod mount. I never got a really sharp macro image with the D600 and the 4/200 Micro. Switching to an A7 (more or less the same sensor) gave me visibly sharper images.

    Chris

    Reply
    • JimK says

      November 17, 2017 at 7:40 am

      Thanks for the correction. I changed the word “better” to “worse”.

      I’m going to try the collar-mount 200/2 next.

      Reply
  2. Bill Janes says

    December 17, 2017 at 6:32 am

    Jim,

    Very helpful post. The results with MUP, EFCS are disappointing. Did you use shutter delay in your testing.

    Bil

    Reply
    • JimK says

      December 17, 2017 at 7:36 am

      Yes, they are. I used the 3-second delay from the intervalometer, which gave a “double-push” three seconds apart, then a three-second wait, then repeated.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. D850 vibration with the Nikon 200/2 says:
    November 17, 2017 at 4:51 pm

    […] did a test of the effect of vibration on image sharpness in the D850 with an 85 mm lens here. There were a few mild surprises, but nothing earth-shaking. I wanted to try the Nikon 200 mm […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

March 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Jan    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • Good 35-70 MF lens
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • JimK on Sony 135 STF on GFX-50R, sharpness
  • K on Sony 135 STF on GFX-50R, sharpness
  • Mal Paso on Christmas tree light bokeh with the XCD 38V on the X2D
  • Sebastian on More on tilted adapters
  • JimK on On microlens size in the GFX 100 and GFX 50R/S
  • Kyle Krug on On microlens size in the GFX 100 and GFX 50R/S
  • JimK on Hasselblad X2D electronic shutter scan time
  • Jake on Hasselblad X2D electronic shutter scan time
  • Piotr Chylarecki on Who am I?
  • JimK on Who am I?

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.