Vignetting

Vignetting (pronounced vin-yet-ing), in photography at least, is the darkening of the perifery of the image. This is usually most pronounced in the corners but sometimes also follows the edge of the image.

Almost all lenses will cause vignetting to some extent and it is always most aparent at the lenses widest aperture. I'm fairly certain if you want to find out why this happens there will be something online somewhere that will tell you, but be warned it will likely contain many long words and talk about 'cos' something i didn't get when i was at school and something i certainly dont get now! This is why i'm not going to go into any more detail for it's happening than to say it's because of the body of the lens getting in the way of the light's path. It is also perhaps worth noting this is true of both the lenses you put on your camera or in the case of digital cameras the micro lenses on your sensor

Vignetting is on many occations an iritation and a few modern cameras are now equipt with a post process function for removing it. I certianly would not apreciate vignetting caused by my equipment if i was in a studio environment! Removing it in a post process can be detrimental to the final image as it is effectivly achived by increasing the gain in specific area, this will cause an increase in noise in those areas. Fortunately even the most basic modern lenses vignette only very slightly and it being removed by the camera or doing it yourself useing lightroom (or any other program with a vignette removal function) rarely causes to much of a problem

Conversly it can also be a good thing and if you are familiar with lightroom 2 or cs4 then you will have come accross the 'post crop' vignette function for darkening or indeed lightening the perifery of your images. I was really pleased when i came accross this feature as at the moment i find vignetting aesthitically very pleasing, it is very useful for focusing the attention to the centre of the image!

Here is an example of an image i have recently created useing the 'post crop vignette' feature:

This is the image without:

And here is the image with the vignette added

I hope you will agree that the darkening of the corners of this image adds a certain something, and if nothing else it does serve to focus the attention.

Here is another example with vignetting added

This would be little more than a photo of a page of the dictionary (well it still isn't) but it is certainly more aesthetically pleaseing due to the vignette!

It is very easy to do this useing software, but there a ways to do it with hardware

The first is to buy either a lens or a camera that is prone to it, there are many out there! It is most commonly asociated with toy or 'lomo' cameras such as the diane or holga but there are many cameras out there that do this! I have recently modifyed a lens from a russian camera known as the industar-69 to work on a more modern digital camera. Details of this modification and sample photos are also on my blog

The other way to create a vignette is to focus your lighting to the centre of the image this can be done fairly easily with various lighting equipment, but can also be done using many accessory flash units by setting the zoom of the flash to a greater focal length than the one you are using
Here is a photo taken at 45mm with the flash zoomed to 85mm

I hope this information has been useful to you.
Please feel free to let me know if you found this interesting or indeed if any of what i have said is nonsence!

Photos with Industar-69 on R-D1

Getting a Pre-AI Nikkor 2.8 45mm gn Auto to work on a D300/D3

This is a Nikkor 2.8 45mm GN lens:

This particular one has the Nippon Kogaku branding on it. It was designed to work with Nikon cameras like the 'F' and 'F2'. It has an aperture coupling prong adjacent to 5.6 on the aperture scale - i believe some people call it "bunny ears". Whatever you call it, its that little silver thing sticking out the side of the lens.
Older pre-ai cameras had a little pin that this engaged with, this allowed the meter to give you a read out that differed when changing the aperture without having to actually stop down the lens.

Below you can see my Nikon f2, and if you look closely at the bottom of the head you can see the little pin.

And here you can see that the prong engaged with the pin.

So this is how my 45mm lens works with the cameras of its generation, unfortunately this is not how a d3 works!

Modern lenses and d3s talk to each other with a lot of electronics that I don't fully understand, all I know is that with my camera in aperture priority or manual mode, I twizzle the dial under my forefinger and it changes the aperture that the camera will stop down to when i press the shutter button. Clever stuff! Not quite as satisfying as the older mechanical way of doing it but clever non the less.

This all said, all is not lost in attaching older manual lenses to a d3, as those clever folks at Nikon have, on their higher spec models at least, provided a little lever that ai/ais lenses can engage with. This means that as long as you provide the camera with the aperture of the lens you wish to attach, the camera can meter the exposure at whatever aperture you choose to set the lens too.

Apart from the fact that you don't have to tell the camera the max aperture of the lens, this is the same system that, as far as i know, was used on all ai/ais cameras and as such here is a picture of an ais lens attached to a Nikon FA. You can see the part of the lens that juts out adjacent to f16. This pushes the spring loaded lever on the camera and tells it how to meter depending on what aperture you set the lens to .

Its basically a neater and less clunky version of what came before .
My problem is that my pre-ai lens (obviously) pre dates this system and so I need to modify my lens in some way so that it can push this little lever...

...and this is how i did it

First remove the coupling prongs as they, on a 45mm pancake lens, interfere with with the little lever.

Keep these bits safe as you will be able to reattach them should you wish to use the lens on a camera where they are required.

Now it is nessasary to file a slot in the rim of the lens for it to engage to the lever
By looking at whereabouts the part of the lens that engages with the lever on another 2.8 lens is, I can determine where I need to file. In this case it is adjacent to f11.

Please be aware that this is not the case on all lenses, if you are trying to adapt a 1.2 lens for example, you would need to file a slot between 5.6 and 8 but I would seriously recommend looking at an ai/ais equivalent to find the exact spot.

Here is the slot I filed.

And here it is engaged to the lever on a d300.

When mounting a lens moified in this way you will need to stop the lens down to its minimum aperture to mount the lens on the camera!

I now have a fully functional 45mm mf lens for my d3 and d300.

And here are some (fairly dull) photos I took with it on my d3. I will put some better ones up when I get a chance. You can at least see that it works!

As I said on my modification of the industar 69, I'm no expert at this sort of thing so it is fairly easily done. That said, I take no responsibility if you follow my instructions and balls it up. You do this at your own risk

And for anyone who may quible with my desision to hack apart a nippon kogaku branded lens, its a damn slight cheaper than the 45mm 'p' lens and at least this way I get to appreciate a old bit of glass with the ease of use of putting it on my digital cameras. And if i want to use it on my f or f2 i can still reattach the coupling prong!

Please let me know if any of this info is wrong!