@AJHenderson Hi AJ. How are you this happy time of the year? If you have time and interested, I have opened thread on DPREVIEW forums. I bring up some issues about my camera there in features aspect. I am now experiementing with shots as I have got my shooting tent and will update everyone later how it worked for me. Here's forum link: dpreview.com/forums/post/54788676

@Boris_yo you don't need MF, that's manual focus, not manual exposure

the numbers on the side are the focus distance

the zoom ends up impacting the aperture because at longer focal lengths, cheap lenses can't go to as fast of an aperture because their aperture can't open far enough. This is because the aperture remains constant as the focal length increases and f/ numbers are measured as a ratio between the size of the aperture opening and the focal length. If the focal length doubles and the aperture remains constant, the f/ number also doubles.

@AJHenderson Here's shooting tent: dpreview.com/forums/post/54799480

Heya

hey

How are you?

pretty good, looking forward to moving in to my house

haven't had much time for photography lately other than random photos of the baby

since I've been busy with preparing for the home purchase

And the baby

Back @AJHenderson

I'm sorry to do this but I'm excited: photo.stackexchange.com/questions/56967/… bump. BRB again

@AlecTeal I don't know Nikon's product line well, but it sounds like the main trade off is weight vs some features on the lens body

which sounds more like an opinion based personal question

@AJHenderson please don't vote to close.

I'm not confident enough there aren't differences that the review missed to close it as opinion based though

I'll leave that to someone more qualified in Nikon lenses

Should I edit in other changes I've found? (diaphragm blades....)

the more detail you can give, probably the better, but the big thing that would be helpful is what kind of shooting situation you expect it to make a difference in

without some idea of what you want to do with it, it is hard to make an objective evaluation of how the feature differences impact your usage

it is likely going to be hard to get a meaningful answer though

I really can't see what a "good" answer is

Comparison of the lenses would be nice.

because it sounds like it is unlikely there is a direct obvious winner beyond the size and weight issue

@AlecTeal in that case, you may want to focus on asking what the differences are

rather than asking which one to get

or asking which differences are most important for your use case and give a use case

either of those improvements would help make your question more directed

and a lot less likely to get closed. I tend to be one of the more forgiving users in terms of VTC

(vote to close)

/me is thinking

See I have no specific use case in mind, I just want to make a more informed decision.

"Which one should I get?" is code for "help me compare these"

yeah, then just ask for the differences I guess

"which one should I get" sets off alarm bells in a number of our user's heads resulting in "VTC product recommendation"

which interestingly, convention of the site says that if it is comparing two specific products, it is on topic, but this one would still be opinion based as without a use case it is impossible to tell you which to get because we can't prioritize differences

if you are going caving with it, the new wins hands down because you need small and light

if you are going to be needing maximum battery life for long shooting, then maybe the old wins because of being able to turn off the power consuming VR

You can turn that off on the new one AJ

oh, ok, well it's a bad example then, but I think you can still get the point

Nikon's thing is a switch that turns VR on or off now. Older lenses have "passive/active" as well as "on or off"

without a use scenario, the priority of features is impossible to determine

Don't be so boring @AJHenderson, take the diaphragm? Why would the new one have 7 blades not 9? Can I expect heptagonal Bokeh? If so this would be a downside.

Yes you could say "do you want heptagonal bokeh" but then that's being pedantic!

right, but perhaps the lighter weight matters more than the loss of bokeh

I can't judge that for you

if you are doing studio portraits, I can say that the bokeh quality probably matters more than weight

Lighter weight wont matter. Bokeh shape does. I'm talking about stuff that I can't be sure of what difference it'll make. I know how much I care about weight, I do not know how the aperture differs

@AlecTeal but YOU are the only one that can make that judgement

I've seen 5 bladed ones with pentagons and 5 bladed ones giving round bokeh.

for some people, their situations dictate that weight will matter more

Another one! The old one has 3 more glass elements (not special glass either) @AJHenderson

You can ask: "are you using the lens for the CA" the answer is VERY PROBABLY no

So if there is a reduction between the lenses a good answer may mention that.

These are subjective things I cannot answer. Weight is, weight will not vary you cannot have "different designs of weight" like you can with diaphragms

@AlecTeal ok, so I think I see what you are saying. Yes, some factors are objectively better, but you can't make a non-opinion based recommendation of a lens because the subjective features of the lens do matter in the overall decission

that's why, without context, a lens recommendation question is primarily opinion based

I took a stab at editing your question to remove the opinion based part though

while still trying to leave what it seems like you are trying to get at

@AJHenderson Nikon hve a nasty habit of making stuff worse, the newer one may not be better by several measures. That's what spooks me from buying it. Like less glass, this could be "great, better performance" or cost-cutting. I have found no indepth article comparing the two

@AlecTeal yeah, I understand. You want to know what the meaningful differences between the two are

that's a good question

it is just that what your question was appearing to ask and what you are actually trying to get at weren't in line with each other