Category Archives: Nikon lenses

Some of the best optics ever

The Nikon D800 in the studio

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses, Photographs

There is no better bargain.

I have been taking studio pictures with my Novatron strobe outfit for almost three decades now with the cameras ranging from rangefinder Leicas, through Rollieflexes, and Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Autofocus in the DSLRs instantly obsoleted the film equipment which was sold. Maybe the lenses were better, but nailing focus every time beats optical quality in my book.

My Nikon DSLR journey started with a D700, then the D3x, the APS-C D2x, and finally the D800. The latter was introduced by Nikon in 2012 for $3,000 and I paid just $525 a few months ago for mine with 16k clicks. Clicks are not that important for a body designed to deliver 200,000 of them, but a USA legal import is. Nikon USA will refuse to service grey market imports. Check the serial number and look for the ‘Nikon USA’ sticker inside the battery compartment.



The all important sticker.

Suffice it to say that, with the introduction of mirrorless bodies and new lenses to fit, Nikon has comprehensively trashed the used value of every DSLR they ever made and most of the lenses which fit it.

Yes, the D750 and D780 and D810 and D850 have better low light sensors but that is of no use in the studio environment. With powerful strobes I’m mostly using ISO 200 or less.

Two things stand out in my D800 experience in the studio. Even in the low ambient light that I use with weak modeling lamps in the strobes, focus is nailed every time and as for absence of sensor noise it is simply extraordinary. Definition is like nothing I’ve ever seen and while I am strictly an SOOC guy, knowing that I can crop when needed is comforting.

Maybe a Phase One or a digital Hasselblad with a large medium format sensor will render more detail for the mega buck cost of entry, but as I have no interest in making billboard-sized enlargements, call me a happy camper. And keeping the additional $12,000 in my pocketbook is a benefit not lost on me.

Do I have a complaint? Of course. Just take a look what this little outfit weighs with the 28-300mm AFS zoom and loaded battery grip:



A waistline comparable with that of most Americans.
Can you spell ‘obese’?

I extolled the D800’s many virtues, weight aside, here, but as ever pictures speak louder than words. Here is Dutch, a gorgeous Hungarian Vizsla, in a recent studio session, SOOC naturally:



A beautiful hunting dog, descended from Hungarian royalty.


Sharp enough for you?

One final advantage. Even my ancient, non-subscription Lightroom v 6.4 from 2015, bought and paid for just once, happily processes D800 RAW files. Try that with your latest and greatest Nikon body, or pay the nasty people at Adobe a monthly fee of $20 in perpetuity – and good luck getting off that treadmill. It’s not for nothing that the US DoJ just sued them for shady subscription practices.

The Nikon D800 outfit

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses

At bargain basement prices.

Having returned to FF DSLRs with the Nikon D800 one year ago, I thought it might be of interest to show my outfit now.

When Nikon discontinued its DSLR range in favor of newer mirrorless bodies, with lenses to match, two things happened. The price of the latest gear shot up and that of the discontinued hardware crashed. As a result, if your psyche can tolerate a flapping mirror, just as most have these past 75 years, then look to keep your check book bruised but not battered as you acquire some of the finest photography hardware ever made.


The kit today.

  • D800 body, $475 with just 16,000 shutter actuations. Yes the later D850 comes with 45mp (you do not need that many) and costs three times as much. Your call. Need wi-fi and a fold out LCD screen? Try the D750 at the same price with a more than adequate 24mp.
  • 50mm f/1.4 AF-S G Nikkor, just overhauled by Nikon – $113. Front left. All prices include original Nikon hood and both caps.
  • 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S G VR Nikkor, $415. Rear left.
  • 16-35mm f/4 AF-S G VR Nikkor, $315. Rear right.
  • 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G Nikkor, $238. Front right.
  • 60mm f/2.8 AF-S G Micro Nikkor, on the camera with film copying attachment – $267 + $60
  • MB-D12 vertical camera grip – $37. Front.
  • New Nikon battery, in the D800 – $60

There is nothing I can tell you about these lenses that is not already known – outstanding definition at any aperture, dead accurate and fast AF and robust but not heavy for what you get. Resale value? 100 cents on the dollar.

The Micro Nikkor will be sold when my film ‘scanning’ project is completed, making for a net kit cost of just $1,653. A Nikon Z8 mirrorless body runs some $3,800 and lenses are extra. Can you spell ‘Bargain’?

For all my Nikon lens articles click here.

The Nikkor 16-35mm revisited

Nikon lenses

All that’s old is new again.

I last wrote about this ultrawide full-frame zoom in 2012. I must have been enjoying a period of more money than sense as I paid the full retail price of $1300 for what was a lens recently introduced by Nikon. At that time I wrote:

It’s bulky, the gargantuan lens hood is needed to shade the exposed front element, it’s set in a yucky resin body and at 24 ounces it’s no featherweight. The maximum aperture of f/4 is relatively modest and you will struggle getting dramatic differential focus effects. Being a ‘G’ optic there is no traditional aperture ring, aperture control being solely possible from the control dial on the body. I prefer a ring on the lens. Finally, at just under $1300 it’s anything but cheap.

The lens was sold after a couple of years’ use when I went all MF. That 16-35mm was in great demand at the time so the high resale price somewhat mollified the pain from the damage to my pocketbook.

When Nikon started transitioning from flapping mirror DSLRs to the mirrorless Z range, they did buyers of the old Nikon F mount optics a great favor. Stated simply, the bottom dropped out of the market on resale value on some of the finest optics known to man. Having recently added mint examples of the D800 and the 28-300mm zoom, I could not resist completing the focal length range with an ultrawide zoom and picked up a near new specimen of the 16-35mm ultrawide zoom for …. $315! Thank you Nikon and thank you Mr. Upgrading Seller. And thanks also for the free Hoya UV “Antistatic” (whaaat?) filter which sells for $70.

All the familiar characteristics of the 16-35mm are there. The awful barrel distortion at 16mm (the built in Lightroom Classic lens correction profile takes care of that with ease), the huge bulk and the slow maximum aperture. You can’t do anything about the bulk but the fact that this was the first ultrawide zoom with Vibration Reduction makes that f/4 maximum aperture more like f/2, and it works well.

But how wide, exactly, is 16mm? In full frame vernacular it’s plenty wide but not as wide as the claimed 12mm of the ultrawide optic in my iPhone 12 Pro Max, one of the best reasons for buying the iPhone. Yes, that device may have third world ergonomics and lacks reach at the long end of the lens range, but the ultrawide is excellent.

I set to checking who is who and what is what with two quick comparisons:


The 16-35mm Nikkor at 16mm**.


The 12mm lens on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

** With distortion correction using the Adobe profile in Lightroom v6.

The answer is that the iPhone is noticeably wider using the ultrawide lens, if not as wide as you might expect, but what is really interesting is the comparison of resolving power from the miniscule lens in the iPhone with the giant on the D800. Yes, the D800 is better, but barely so. And the lenses in the iPhone will only get better whereas the Nikkor 16-35mm has remained unchanged for over a decade.


Comparing definition at 1:1. iPhone at left.

Still, for a modest investment of under $1,400 I have a top class 36mp sensor body and a lens focal length range of 16-300mm with just two zooms. I’ll leave you to count how many fixed focal length optics those two zooms replace and the fact that I can stretch the 300mm to 1000mm with relative impunity is just icing on the cake. Can’t do that with an iPhone.

Here’s my complete D800 kit:


The 16-35mm and 28-300mm VR Nikkors with the D800 body.

Nikon D800 cropping

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses, Photographs

1,000mm? Hand held? No prob.

Cattail fields are a favorite perching palace for male redwinged blackbirds. (The blah-looking females keep a far lower profile).

The birds are fairly shy and while it’s a joy to listen to their trilling sounds, getting close enough for a good picture is something of a challenge.

The long end of 300mm on my 28-300mm AF-S VR Nikkor is really not enough for the job, but it’s not like I’m going to lug around 8.4lbs and $12,000 of 600 f/4 AF-S Nikkor bottle, so I make do with what I have:


The red winged blackbird on a favorite perch.

How best to do that? Simply crop like crazy, taking benefit of the massive pixel count of the Nikon D800, and handhold with VR for a perfectly sharp result, using center spot AF:


Here’s the full frame. Focal length equivalent for the crop is 1,000mm.

The Nikon D800

Hardware, Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses

No more Cold Turkey.

‘Cold Turkey’ refers to the process whereby and addict gives up addictive substances in one fell swoop. No weaning, no cutting back, no phasing out. Bang. All at once. The most compelling version of the process can be seen in French Connection II where poor old Gene Hackman is made an addict of heroin by his captors. It’s a disturbing movie and a good one.

And when the iPhone 11 Pro came along I went Cold Turkey with regard to my DSLR, MFT and 35mm film hardware. The Nikon D3x, the D700, the two film bodies – FE2 and F100 – and two Panny GX7 bodies along with a plethora of lenses were all sold, right down to the last lens cap and card reader. In the four years since I have been chugging along (almost) happily with that iPhone and its successor, the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Almost? Well, in a word the ergonomics are indistinguishable from the function of a bilge pump. Both suck. And the reach at the long end is extremely limited.

So the other day finding that I might want a ‘serious’ camera on occasion I reneged on the ‘iPhone only’ commitment and bought a DSLR and lens.


The Nikon D800, introduced in 2012. Mine came with two Nikon batteries
and the ghastly factory strap, quickly replaced with an Upstrap which I found in a drawer.

My D800 body came with a mint 85/1.8 AF-D Nikkor which I immediately resold. Never sell a body with a lens – you will lose money on both, as did my seller.

What is the thinking behind buying a camera discontinued almost a decade ago, along with a 28-300mm VR Nikkor discontinued in 2021? There is a host of good reasons.

Quality: As an upper end Nikon body, the D800 succeeded the fine D700, upping the sensor megapixel count from 12 to 36. Who needs 36 megapixels? See below. The body is robust and the shutter long lived with subsequent iterations (D810, D850) adding little.

Economics: At introduction the D800 retailed for $3,000. The latest Nikon mirrorless digital bodies sell for $2,000 to $5,500 (Z6/II, Z9) and you need the latest Z series lenses to take full advantage of what these offer. By contrast the used D800 I just acquired ran me $525 with a very low shutter count of under 16,000.


Open a snap in Preview for a shutter actuation count.

You can buy beaters with hundreds of thousands of actuations (probably ex realtors, wedding snappers and war types) for just a little less, which seems pretty dumb to me (KEH on the web, Roberts Camera and many others on eBay), especially given the abundant availability of lightly used bodies. I got a mint body and, for another $450, a mint 28-300mm ‘lens for all seasons’ VR Nikon AF-S lens. And I had to splash out another $13 on an SD/CF card reader (the D800 can use one of each) as mine had been sold at the start of the Cold Turkey interlude.

Negligible depreciation: With the D800 having lost over 80% (!) of its original cost in the decade since it was discontinued it’s not going to go much lower very fast. So if I get disillusioned with my purchase it’s out of here for negligible net cost. Same reason I only buy used cars …. every 20 years!

The Nikon F mount: It’s probably fair to say that more lenses were made with the Nikon F mount than with any other. The new mirrorless Z cameras dictate the use of a kludgy adapter with these and you do not get the full functionality of the latest Z optics. But with the Nikon F mount you do get access to some of the finest SLR optics made at ridiculously low cost. My own journey through that cornucopia of choice is best seen here. And all those manual focus Nikkors work with the confirmation light in the viewfinder of the D800, taking the guesswork out of critical focus.The D800 will happily use old screw drive AF-D lenses as well as the latest AF-S optics, not to mention the old and vast range of manual focus lenses.

Weight: The D700 weighed 40ozs, the D3x 50ozs, with the Z6/II and Z9 coming in at 25 and 47ozs (!), respectively. The D800 weighs 35ozs, just 10ozs more than the Z6/II. Not bad.

Cropping: While sensors of 45 megapixels are now common on the high end, the 36 megapixels introduced with the D800 was a revelation. If your lenses are of decent quality then you can extend the long end with cropping rather than carrying extra glass. Here’s a case in point:


D800, 28-300VR at 300mm. ISO 800.


Crop of the above image.

The cropped image is one quarter of the full frame, meaning the focal length equivalent is no less than 1200mm. Handheld. VR is the icing on the cake of the D800’s big sensor. The crop is unprocessed – the minor color fringing and sharpness drop off are easily fixed in Lightroom.

Lightroom: I refuse to ‘upgrade’ to Adobe’s subscription version of Lightroom. I prefer to keep control over my images. My purchased version (6.4) has not been materially improved and natively supports import of D800 RAW files with no special tricks required. All I have to do is plug in my $13 USB3 card reader into the 2010 Mac Pro (still barely improved on by Apple, and adequately powerful to deal with the D800’s large files), with USB3 being a nice way of speedily handling those 70 megapixel uncompressed RAW files. Nice.

In conclusion, if you want a state-of-the-art camera and lens combination, have no issues with buying used, do not wish to spend over $1,000 and lose very little should things not pan out, the D800 with a modern polycarbonate-encased Nikkor AF-S lens is the way to go. And the ergonomics are the best on the market – button placement, feel in the hands, use with gloves, the menu system, and so on.