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You are here: Home / The Last Word / EFCS results with a 400mm f/2.8 lens on a D810

EFCS results with a 400mm f/2.8 lens on a D810

July 30, 2014 By JimK 2 Comments

Next up, in the series of lenses that I’m using for EFCS testing on the D810: the Nikon AF-S 400mm f/2.8 D II. Not a VR lens; the one just before the Canon patents ran out.

I started at f/5 at 1/500 and worked down in 1/3 stop intervals.

The results, measured for horizontal edges:

400 MTF50

 

400 MTF30

 

From 1/250 to 1/125, there’s not much to choose between the two shutter modes. The divergence of the results at 1/500 are a surprise to me, and could be the result of the interaction of vibration with the shutter opening, or could just be experimental noise (although, from looking at the slightly lower shutter speeds from the non-EFCS mode, there’s probably a pattern there).

One of the issues could be that the 3 second shutter delay that’s the most Nikon provides on the D810 isn’t enough for big iron lenses like the 400/2.8. The only way to test that hypothesis is to dig up a remote release. I may do that.

Note the dip in EFCS MTF at around 1/250. That could be noise, or it could be the acceleration of the second curtain.

The EFCS and non-EFCS MTFs show no sign of converging at slow shutter speeds. The oscillations of such a big lens take a long time to damp out. All the more reason to use EFCS and not let them get started in the first place.

 

 

← EFCS results with Nikon 70-200 on the D810 Autofocus on the Nikon D810 →

Trackbacks

  1. EFCS without atmospheric effects | The Last Word says:
    May 17, 2015 at 3:30 pm

    […] I went back and looked at the MTF testing I did with the D810 and the 400/2.8, and there wasn’t much difference at shutter speed faster than 1/125 second. […]

    Reply
  2. EFCS in the real world with the Nikon 200-400 f/4 on the D810 | The Last Word says:
    May 19, 2015 at 1:50 pm

    […] When I made the series that I posted yesterday, I also made a series at ISO 64 one stop down from ETTR, which gave me slower shutter speeds. Previous testing had indicated that, with the Nikon AF-S 400mm f/2.8 lens on the D810, that EFCS did…. […]

    Reply

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