hazey lens

G

georgehowson

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George
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:thinking:Hi there just needing a bit of technical advice if that's okay,

Got myself a Nikon F1.4 50mm off e#ay a couple of years ago. Always suspected its' shots were a bit hazey but hadn't used it much. Thought it was maybe because I mainly used it wide open when I couldn't get enough light with anything else. Tried it a bit more stopped down (f13) at the weekedn and I think as you'll see it's decidely hazey (note photo below is an unedited raw to jpeg conversion). Is it something to do with the coatings on an older lens not stopping light from the side? (I don't have a lens hood on it and I noticed in some shots the haze was worse centrally.) Have I been sold a duff lens and if so what's wrong with it, is it possible/worth fixing?

Cheers,:thumbs:

G.


 
Set the aperture wide open, remove the caps and look through the rear of the lens towards the sky or a lamp. Angle it around a bit. Do you see any fungal growth?
 
f13 is past the diffraction limit of your D40, try again at f8 and see if that improves things.

Also try different subjects, and different lighting conditions, the onboard flash is a good one as it is constant, try a cereal packet or something you can compare the image with.
 
George, I just edited the image, I adjusted the white balance (just using the eye droppers in levels)

I think the lens is fine.

I see from the exif that you were using Auto White balance, may help to set this yourself to "Sun" unless it is heavy dark cloud, then "Cloudy"

 
A RAW will always look 'hazy' as there's no sharpening applied in-camera...
Compare it to a JPEG-High taken of the same subject at the same time, you'll see the difference immediately (as long as you have 'normal' or higher sharpening applied in your custom settings)...

Don't worry about camera-WB either if you're shooting RAW - makes no difference to the file until you import it through the RAW converter...

Hard to tell at this resolution - could just be down to a crummy day out...
Try again indoors with flash so there's plenty of light kicking around at about f/8 as others have suggested.
 
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