Quote Originally Posted by NikonUser View Post
Ok,

So I went out this morning with some lens testing in mind. I must have had my anti-bird face on because they wouldn't let me get close.... but here is what I have discovered.

1) Stopping the lens down does indeed help with the sharpness issues I've been having and by f8 I can get some nice results. I didn't really test f5.6, but I think that might also yield large improvements over f4

2) The lens/camera need calibrating. The results with live-view are MUCH crisper than by using the normal autofocus. I will have to pull out the D2X and see if I get the same results with both bodies.

So, not great news, but at least I can get around the problems for now. Using live view sucks, but at least it works.

Thanks for the help guys.

Paul
As Arthur suggested, you may be getting worse results at f4 due to the fact that the lens needs some AF fine tune and at f8 there is enough DOF to cover any slight misalignment with AF. You may find that your f4 shots will be better once you do AF fine tune.