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Here is a head to head comparison of the Nikon 85mm f1.4 D IF AF, 70-300mm f4-5.6D ED AF, and 80-400mm f4.5-5.6D ED AF VR lenses.
The D200 camera settings were:
JPG-Fine, aperture priority, Exposure Comp +0.7EV, ISO 100, WB Shade, AF-S, all images auto-focus,
color mode Ia, Tone comp: Normal, Hue adjustment: 0 deg, Saturation: normal,
sharpening: +1, JPG Compression: Optimal Quality, NR Off, shutter speed between 1/750th and 1/2.5th seconds depending on aperture. The tripod is
a Bogen 3051 with a heavy pan/tilt head - a beast.
The 70-300mm D was done first, then 85mm f1.4 and then the 80-400mm. I made sure the zoom lenses were at
85mm by shooting and adjusting the lens until the camera LCD indicated the lenses were shooting at 85mm. The
test was done in the morning with the sun behind the wall. The light was becoming progressively less blue and only 2-5 minutes passed between lens tests.
The test was done while the wall was in the shade. The exposure was not changing rapidly at all. I used the histogram to
to set the exposure to +0.7 to brighten the bricks without blowing out the highlights. The VR setting on the 80-400mm
was turned off as it is a known issue that VR on degrades tripod mounted lenses.
The images were brought into Photoshop 7 for batch processing. A center selection of 400x300 pixels was chosen and the exact same
position from each lens sample was repeated. Due to lens alignment, the exact same sample area of the wall was not shown but the same
center position of the lens was the objective of this test. The resulting crop had an Image-Brightness/Contrast change of +10 Brightness and
+10 Contrast. It was less complicated than going through the individual histograms, potentially causing an apparent improvement
in sharpness or color. The image then had an Unsharp Mask of Amount: 150%, Radius: 1.0 and Threshold: 14 applied. Files were
then saved as "Save For Web", JPEG High (Quality 60). The resulting image is what you see on this page.
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| f-stop | 85 f1.4 D IF AF | 80-400mm f4.5-5.6D ED AF VR | 70-300mm f4-5.6D ED AF |
| f 1.4 |  | N/A | N/A |
| f 2 |  | N/A | N/A |
| f 2.8 |  | N/A | N/A |
f 4
80-400mm Done at f4.5 |  |  |  |
| f 5.6 |  |  |  |
| f 8 |  |  |  |
| f 11 |  |  |  |
| f 16 |  |  |  |
| f 22 | N/A |  |  |
| f 32 | N/A | |  |
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