NIKON 28-105mm Zoom-Nikkor Lens

Rating:
Summary: practical lens
Review: I purchased this lens shortly after getting my first SLR camera. While it came with a 28-80mm lens, I found that I wanted something that was faster and that had a little more throw on the long end of things.

I've had this lens now for about nine months, and it rarely leaves my camera body. The optics are great, the build is far better than what comes in an SLR kit these days. The only suggestion I can give to a buyer is to get a top of the line UV filter, because otherwise, you will notice degradation of the image quality.

This Nikon lens is built well. It has a nice heavy feel that will make you feel better about spending the money on it. I know I love mine. I only wish that Nikon offered a version of this lens with a constant (fast) aperture.

Rating:
Summary: practical lens
Review: I purchased this lens shortly after getting my first SLR camera. While it came with a 28-80mm lens, I found that I wanted something that was faster and that had a little more throw on the long end of things.

I've had this lens now for about nine months, and it rarely leaves my camera body. The optics are great, the build is far better than what comes in an SLR kit these days. The only suggestion I can give to a buyer is to get a top of the line UV filter, because otherwise, you will notice degradation of the image quality.

This Nikon lens is built well. It has a nice heavy feel that will make you feel better about spending the money on it. I know I love mine. I only wish that Nikon offered a version of this lens with a constant (fast) aperture.

Rating:
Summary: Good utility lens
Review: I've had this lens for about a year now and really like it a lot. I use it on my FM3a manual body, so the autofocus is not available to me. However, the range of focal lengths and the quality of the build are precisely what I need when I want to travel light.

The benefits of this lens are obvious. The focal lengths range from 28mm at the wide end to 105mm at the long end. The build quality is excellent and yet the lens is not perceptably heavy. In daylight, the lens performs remarkably.

However, the lens also has its downsides. The first and most obvious is that the lens is very slow. F3.5 is hideously slow in anything but the best lit scenes. Then on the long end the lens only manages a measly F5.6.

Another problem is that the lens flares terribly in bright sunlight. Many of my pictures have flaring if the sun is in the frame or slightly out of it. Bright objects in the frame will also cause it to flare.

Focus is also a problem on manual focus bodies. The focus throw is very short and loose (good for autofocus bodies, though) so getting precise focus is a challenge. Even in focus, the lens is very soft. There is also some light fall off in the corners when fully zoomed and some minor barrel distortion when wide.

But despite those drawbacks, this lens serves me well. To replace this lens with anything else would require either a 3 lens set of 28, 50, and 105 prime lenses or a couple zooms which would end up costing more and be a constant weight while traveling.

The range of focal lengths is what sets this lens apart from the rest of Nikon's zooms. While other lenses may be faster, sharper, and better built, this one can do the work of any other combination of lenses between 28mm and 105mm passably and at a reasonable price.

3 stars for this great lens value. It won't be the best lens you own, but if you're lazy like I am it may end up being the lens you use the most.