Ok, so if you have been following the GCM blog posts you will know that I like the Nikon series E lenses. C did say to me a while ago that this lens is meant to be one of the best in a line-up of eight lenses.
So here is my review of the above lens. I will be handing it over to C later this year for him to test on his 36 mega pixel camera. He will only know about this when he reads this blog post! So this is my cheeky way of asking him to test it! I’ll provide tea and cake as a reward! (Tea and cake! It’s a deal -C)
There are many things I like about this lens. There is no order to them:
The size of this lens is only 125mm long or just under 5 inches making it easy to put into a deep pocket if needed for travelling light.
Unusual for many zoom lenses it has a fixed F3.5 aperture throughout its zoom range.
It is metal in construction, consisting of 12 elements in 4 groups, but not too heavy at 215 grams and has a 52mm screw filter size, making it easy to use screw in filters and any filter system holder you might own.
Bearing in mind this lens was made during the early 1980s it’s manual focus only, folks. The focusing throw is not too long, making it very quick and easy to focus. I also enjoy the fact that it has a one touch zoom and focus.
Using this lens on a modern DSLR you can use it in fully manual and aperture control mode. However, if you want data on your files you will have to set this lens up via your camera’s menu, which is not to hard to do.
In use this lens is sharp from F5.6 with good contrast and free from distortion,this is partly due to the lens having a short telephoto zoom range. It can focus down to 1 metre, or 3.5 feet, throughout its focal range which I find very handy at times.
If you are a “Bokeh” person then you will like this lens for its smooth “Bokeh balls”!
There is no “VR” on this lens but you don’t need it, given its size and weight.
The only thing about this lens that I don’t like is the purple fringing that can be seen most of the time. However this can be fixed in post-production.
The fringing may be due to the lens being used on a digital camera, but we will check this by also using the lens on a film camera with colour film, (multicoating on lenses have been modified in some cases to reduce this effect)
So to sum up, this lens for my style of photography, ie landscape, close ups and the occasional portrait, is a great little lens.
The only thing left to do now is to go out and shoot some more images with it! I also need to find a HN-21 screw-in lens hood for it which should not take too long, I hope, and not be hard to find.
I wonder if this would also work well on C’s Panasonic G2 camera using his adaptor, making the lens in effect a 150-300mm.