review of the Nikkor 35-105mm f/3.5-4.5

The 35-105mm was Nikon’s first variable aperture lens, but compared to the modern lenses it does not lose a lot of light. Rather than closing down to f/5.6 at the maximum zoom range, it closes down to f/4.5. Besides the useful focal range (especially on film / full frame) it is also capable of a reproduction ration of 1:4. So this seems like an interesting lens. And to be honest that’s the reason I bought it, because I was curious and not because I needed it.

Of course this is an older zoom lens, which means that the quality is not comparable to current Nikkor zoom lenses. However the image quality is surprising, the lens is far more usable than I anticipated. If you punish this lens it does show its shortcomings, but if you are aware of them you can make pretty good use of this lens. So one of the things you should not expect this lens is to produce good image quality when you are focused on infinity and you use a wide open aperture. Then the image becomes muddy and it reminds a bit of a smart phone image. However, if you close down one stop and try not to be at the extremes of the focal length you can get a very acceptable image. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it a 6.5 or 7 while the 50mm would get a 10. So if I want an extremely sharp image for a large print I would not use this lens. And I will probably never take it when I go out to make landscape photographs.

However the lens is quite sharp when you focus a bit closer. The normal focus ring allows you to focus up to 1.4 meters, but there is also a macro ring. Depending on your focal range you can get a magnification of 1:4 (35mm) or 1:5.5 (105mm). And the images I got out of that mode are very good. Again, on a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it an 8. And since we discuss close-up photography we might as well discuss bokeh. The bokeh of the lens is alright, it is not really bad but also nothing outstanding. The aperture blades are not curved so you can see the aperture blades back in the bokeh highlights. Normally I don’t find it distracting but with this lens it can be a bit distracting from time to time depending on the actual aperture you use. But if you have less out of focus highlights, shoot at an aperture which suits the bokeh the bokeh is quite nice. The area which is closest to the focus point can be a bit distracting depending on the background, but generally it looks good.

As you can see, the ground which is only just out of focus is a bit busy. But besides that I like the bokeh in this photograph

This lens flares quite easily. If you can find an appropriate lens hood you should use it to avoid unwanted flare. But the flare of this lens is quite beautiful, it shows that this lens contains out of a lot of lens elements. You can control the flare to a certain extend by zooming a bit in or out. Zooming just a bit can change the look of the flare dramatically and I you have the time it is worthwhile to experiment with the best focal range. Of course this lens has other short comings as well. It has quite some distortion I’ve read on other websites. But until now it hasn’t bothered me that much. I have to admit, I do not shoot architecture, but the distortion isn’t too obvious and I generally do not correct for it. Another issue this lens apparently has is vignetting. After all, it’s an old zoom. But I have not noticed it yet. I’m sure there is some, but it hasn’t bothered me yet even though I don’t like it if you can see imperfections in my photographs which were not intended for the viewer to see. (flare on the other hand can be a nice creative tool)

So I’ve discussed the image quality of this lens, but I don’t think that’s the most important I like about this lens. I have sharper lenses. But the thing about this lens is that it gives reasonable image quality while also being very versatile. You can focus reasonably close and the focus is just nice, it’s the classic Nikkor quality. I like the focal range on DX (but that’s because I don’t like shooting with lenses wider than 28 on DX) especially for a general walk-around lens. It has a 52mm filter thread which is shared with a lot of other Nikkor lenses. And the build quality is just great. The main quality of this lens is the handling. Of course I can get better image quality by shooting with a modern zoom or a prime, but there’s just something about this lens that keeps making me use it. Because what’s image quality worth when your photos suck? I really like my primes, and I think that they help me to see better photos. But from time to time you just want a zoom, and then I pick this lens of the shelf. 

Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 (pre-ai)

Why would you buy an manual focus lens within the range of your kit lens in the first place, and why on earth would you want to have one with an aperture that your kit lens is able to give you as well? First of all, I like primes, I like the way you always get the same kind of perspective. When you have a zoom, the perspective changes with every time you use another focal length. Primes give you a better idea how things will look like before you look through the viewfinder because the way they render what they see does not change. This makes you work faster, or at least when you’re used to using primes.

But for me the most important reason to have this lens is that it has hyper focal markings on its body. I like to use this lens for landscapes, and the hyperfocus markings are very useful. The reason I find the ability to use hyperfocus distances so important is that by closing your lens too far down diffraction occurs. Diffraction causes your lens to be less sharp than at the middle apertures, and because of that it is useful to use hyperfocus distances.

Handling the lens

The focus is very light on this lens, you need little pressure to turn the ring. But it is not so light you “overshoot”, you can focus this lens very precise. Besides the perfect focus mechanism this lens is fairly wide, even on DX sensors, this means your DoF is larger than with telephoto lenses. Because of that you maintain focus much longer, making it even easier to focus this lens.

Another reason I love this lens for my landscape shots is that the front element does not turn when you focus. It only extends a bit, but that doesn’t matter. This allows you to mount filters on this lens without the focus affecting it. Imagine using a polarizer on a lens which front element turns when you focus, almost impossible to use. With this lens it is much easier to use a polarizer, or a graduated neutral density filter.

Besides that there is little to mention about the lens, it is quite small and light. It makes the ideal travel companion on a DX camera. This lens decreases the size of your DSLR significantly compared to a zoom lens, because this lens is so short it takes up less space.

Results

The results are just amazing. This lens isn’t very fast, nor is it very wide. Nikon didn’t need  to make compromises to build this lens, resulting in a very good lens. Pointed at the sun it is hard to get a flare, and sharpness is already very good wide open. There is little CA. It is sad, but there’s just nothing more to say about the results, except that it is just a very good lens.

Conclusion

As I said, this is a very good lens. You will get great results from this lens, even wide open. In that perspective it is sad that its focal length falls within the reach of the kit lens. This lens isn’t significantly faster than your average 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. However I am convinced that this lens was able to maintain its value, especially because of the hyper focus markings. These are really huge to me, and I prefer this lens over my kit lens because of that, and because its front element does not rotate during focusing.

Because this lens isn’t exceptionally fast or wide this lens can be found for little money, which is another great quality.

(I don't like to put up full resolution files, if you're interested in this lens you can leave a comment / sent an email for larger files)

my thought process for this photograph

First I wanted to take a normal photograph of a mushroom nearby, but the flies kept bugging me. Then this little shroom caught my attention because flies were constantly sitting on it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and decided to come back to this mushroom since it was near the entrance of the forest.

After 2 hours I came back and the sun was already setting and I cursed myself for being too lazy to figure out what I actually wanted. Than I remembered that I also brought a flash and triggers just in case I might run out of light.

I tried a test shot and realized that the light was too hard for this photograph, good thing I always keep an envelope in my bag as a reflector for macro photography. (if you take an occasional macro photo, put an envelope in your bag the next time you go out. They do not take up any space, but can save you, just like it did for this photo)

Instead of using the envelope as a reflector I pulled it over my flash to soften the light. I put the flash at a 90 degree angle from the camera and started to take some photographs. Than I accidently pointed my camera a bit at the flash and noticed the flare.

I thought it would be cool to make a dramatic photo with flare of a fly looking into the camera. I increased my shutter speed to decrease my ambient exposure to make the photo more dramatic and pointed my camera near the flash with envelope.

Unfortunately the flies would not look into my camera, but when I reviewed my shots on the computer I saw this one looking at the flare.

Thanks for reading,

Koen

review nikkor 50mm f/2

Before my first review of a lens, I will explain what I try to do here. I'm not interested in what is the sharpest lens, if it is sharp enough it's sharp enough. I only use it in real situations and will not compare the sharpness at different apertures using a tripod to shoot the same subject over and over again. I just explain my experiences with a couple of lenses.

The 50mm, a lens every photographer should have in their bag. Well at least in the film days, (and maybe the future full frame days) because with the DX format a 50 will become a 75mm.

This length is a bit awkward if you are not used to it. It is a slight telelens, but it doesn't come really close as well.  So you probably won't be using this lens indoors, but i find it a very useful focal length for portraits. You can get fairly close to the model, get some interaction. It also suits my style of street photography, I'm not really a street photographer but i always felt that the action was like 4 meters in front of me and a 35mm (50 on DX) just didn't come close enough. But I also use it for everyday shooting, to shoot my brother's basketball games, concerts.

But now the lens, I own the nikkor-h 50mm f/2 pre ai lens. I bought it for 15 euro's from a guy who thought it was broken because it didn't focus on his camera. I saw no use in telling him that it would have been weird if it did, so I just told him I was trying a bit of DIY repair for a schoolproject. It looks like it's been through a war, but the glass is still good and has no scratches. I don't show a photo of the lens because it does not really matter what the lens looks like, there are different versions: 2 pre-ai's, ai and ai-s but they are all the same. As long as it is a manual focus nikkor 50 we're talking about the same lens.

The lens has 6 aperture blades which aren't round, if you close it down you will get a hexagon shaped bokeh.

Personally it does not really bother me, nowadays the aperture will be round at every aperture, creating a smoother bokeh. But it does not really distract, because if you have round bokeh or hexagon bokeh, the highlights will be shown as little almost round shapes. It only distracts because we aren't used to other shapes than roundish bokeh.

The lens has an aperture range from f/2 to f/16, at f/2 it is already pretty sharp and it peaks from f/5.6 to f/11. At these apertures this lens is extremely sharp, every imperfection on a model's skin would definitely show up. That's why I always use it wide open for portraits, because than it all comes together. When I take a head shot, only the eyes will be really sharp, hiding the imperfections on the model's skin, and if i do a full body shot they will not show up because they are too small.

For everyday situations I tend to use it at f/5.6, just because I like the depth of field it gives me, my subject will be sharp while the background will be unsharp. Especially if i shoot landscapes with it, I prefer rising the ISO than having a too short depth of field.
Landscapes? Yes! landscapes, i like longer focal lengths, I feel uncomfortable when i shoot anything wider than a 24mm at DX. I like to focus on details and like a smaller depth of field than the distortion of ultra wide angles. So i shoot landscapes with my 50mm from time to time.

Like this one, I took this photograph in Utrecht. I forgot the exact aperture but I think think it was taken at f/11 to get a maximum depth of field. What really amazed me when i was processing this photograph was how far you could enlarge it, it is impossible to see it from here, but the bridge has it's name written in the middle. I was wondering what the bridge was called and at 200% i could read it!

For sports:
It is a bit hard to find a good solution between getting close enough and getting a large enough depth of field. Because it is very hard to track focus someone who is playing a game. I rather use zone-focussing, but than you will need quite a large depth of field, a depth of field a longer lense only gives you when you close it down. I find the 50mm just at the edge of being convenient, my hit-miss ratio is a bit too high, but when i pull of a shot it looks great. The player is well isolated and you can clearly see the expression in his face.

Conclusion:
Get this lens, it is a cheap one and a good one. Manufacturers have been making 50mm's for ages and know how to make a good one for a small price. It does not really matter if you buy the f/2 or the f/1.8 version, although the f/1.8 is more common I also noticed that the price is like 10 to 20 euro's higher. This is weird because you only can tell the difference between these apertures by looking at the specs. The difference is 1/3th of a stop, I would not spend 10 euro's extra for this, especially since i bought this lens for 15. Just get the cheapest one and enjoy this lens.