Late to the party…expensive clothes, bad manners

Over 10 years ago, Canon introduced diffractive optics technology with the launch of the 70-300mm DO. Today, Nikon brings us the AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4E PF ED VR with a 'Phase Fresnel' element that 'nearly eliminates chromatic aberration'.

As far as I can tell, this is essentially their version of DO technology. It's an expensive lens, launching at $2000. For that high price tag, but at no additional charge, it comes with an unfortunately high propensity for lens flare artifacts. It's okay though, because Nikon promises it can be (mostly) fixed with a forthcoming lens correction module for their CaptureNX RAW converter.

I couldn't speak to what most dedicated amateur photogs would do, or for that matter Nikonians.
For myself though I know that when I buy a lens I spend hours looking at ISO charts and reading reviews.
The most important thing is great glass IMO.

This lens comes with disclaimer that it takes software to correct its problems? I have a feeling this lens is going to be a flop. What a marketing miss.

Ha....not impressed by the fancy name???? :rolleyes:

It will be somewhat (I had "very" before...but, I don't shoot Nikon) interesting to see the optical results. I haven't really tried to follow the science of DO too much, but this seems more similar to Canon's first design with a single DO element, which had optical issues. It seems that Canon's attempt to fix the issues, with the 400 DO II, is to put two of the elements back to back in a "gapless" formation.

We'll see if Nikon found another solution to the problems, or if they offering flawed 10 yr old tech.

How do you fix lens flare with software? Lens flare would be very dependent on the direction of light hitting the lens plus source intensity. That would seem hard to control the resulting flare without knowing the input conditions.:confused:

Otherwise it would seem they would have to detect the defect in the picture and clone it out, and that seems wrought with with potential failure.

I guess I don't understand why you would want a lens with known defects that needs software to fix (assuming it is always available), and I am curious what a similar standard lens design would cost. I certainly would not be the first to order.

There's a sample image pair:

http://nikonrumors.com/2015/01/06/ni...xplained.aspx/

At a guess, it's merely boosting midrange microcontrast (aka clarity) to counteract the veiling glare that is one aspect of lens flare.