Category Archives: Nikon lenses

Some of the best optics ever

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.

Hit with the ugly stick

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses

Hard to imagine something that looks worse.

I am a long time fan of Nikon’s hardware. Click here and you can access an index of the dozens of Nikon related articles on this blog.

And, for the most part, while it’s performance that matters, it never hurts if the hardware is pleasant to contemplate and Nikon’s aesthetics have been generally decent, if not stellar. Sure, there’s none of the elegance of Pentax or the beauty of early Leica M bodies, but Nikons like the legendary Nikon F brought with their designs a macho sensibility to complement their wonderful utility.

So I look at their latest mirrorless body, and I weep:



The Nikon camel – a horse designed by a committee.

And the ‘designers’ – if there were any – attached a quite stupendously ugly lens to this cobbled together excrescence of a body. Yeah, I know how to make good pictures, but with something this grotesque in my hands, the task becomes impossibly challenging.

Nikon – a magnificent legacy

Cameras, Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses

The Nikon Museum in Tokyo.


Click the image to go to the interactive Google view.

Nikon honors its legacy in the extensive displays in the Nikon Museum. When Nikon abandoned the Zeiss Contax lens mount replacing it with the F mount in its first – and best – SLR, the peerless Nikon F, it was as much a statement of intent as it was an act of courage. The wisdom of that decision persists to this day when even the earliest F mount lenses can be mounted on the latest Nikon D850 DSLR.

Now with a new, wider mount in the Z6/Z7 mirrorless offerings, Nikon has finally begun to abandon the flapping mirror in favor of what is already acknowledged as the best EVF in the business, the one found in the new Z bodies.


A display of rangefinder bodies which preceded the Nikon F. The related lenses put Nikon on the map.

Leitz, Wetzlar used to be the owner of the legacy crown, snatched from it by Nikon with the Nikon F which saw the rangefinder Leica M bodies migrate from being workhorses to becoming silly Veblen goods. The working pro gives these not even a passing thought, no more than an enthusiastic driver thinks about Rolls Royces.


The Nikon F. The camera which changed everything. This camera did to the German
camera industry what Honda did to British motorcycles.

Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D AF lens

Nikon lenses

A decent walkabout optic.

The heart warming facts about Nikon’s AFD zoom optics is not only that many choices exist but also that many are insanely inexpensive in mint, used condition.

My mint copy of the 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 ran me but $78 plus $7 to Amazon for a 62mm UV protective filter. I did not bother getting a lens hood as the one for this lens is huge and mostly useless.

The rational ‘walkabout’ comparison is the 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 IF lens which adds internal focusing for a smoother feel and extends more at both ends. I have been using the 24-120mm on my Nikon F100 with Ektar film with considerable success. If there’s a complaint it’s the generous dollops of distortion, barrel at the wide end and pincushion at the long. This needs correcting in LR with architectural subjects, a pain but not hard to do.



At their widest settings. Note that the zoom rings work in opposite directions.


At the longest focal lengths.


So how does the 28-105mm differ? Bulk and weight are much the same, the zoom rings displays a tad more stiction owing to the traditional design, the optic is faster at the long end by one stop and adds a handy macro feature.

Here are test images – you can compare with those from the 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 by clicking here.



At 28mm, f/3.5, center and edge.


At 28mm, f/8, center and edge.


At 50mm, f/4, center and edge.


At 50mm, f/8, center and edge.


At 105mm, f/4.5, center and edge.


At 105mm, f/8, center and edge.


In summary edge performance at the wide end is ghastly at full aperture; you need to stop down to f/8 to make it useable. The 24-120mm optic is far better in this regard. The edges from the 28-105mm get progressively better as the focal length increases. Whereas the 24-120mm lens shows chromatic aberration (easily fixed in LR) the 28-105mm has none. Not published here, distortion characteristics disclose that the 28-105 shows mild barrel distortion at 28mm, disappearing at 50mm or longer. That is much better than the 24-120 which barrels greatly at 24mm and pincushions north of 50mm. Neither optic does a particularly good job of rendering out-of-focus areas, both yielding results that are too ‘busy’ for my taste. The 28-105mm lens shows no light fall off at the edges at any aperture or focal length. I have found that the later lens correction profile in LR for the 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 G VR optic (the one with no aperture ring) works well with this earlier AF D lens.

Handling of both optics on the D700 DSLR and F100 film SLR is excellent. They balance well, zoom rings lack any gritty feel, AF is as fast as you need for all but sports subjects and as I always use aperture priority with aperture control transferred to the lens, the aperture ring on the 28-105mm is easier to access as the lens is less steeply pyramided at that location, making the ring more accessible. Not a big deal in practice.

The macro range on the 28-105mm is accessed by setting the focal length between 50 and 105mm and focus between infinity and 0.5 feet. The switch on the barrel is flipped and you get a very handy macro lens with a focal length range of 50-105mm. The long focal length setting is especially handy as it allows better clearance between the front of the lens and the subject. This is the closest I could get at 105mm:




The magnification ratio computes to 1/4 life size.

Sharpness, even at f/4.5 in the macro range, is excellent – fully useable.

Conclusion: If you need 24mm (which is much wider than 28mm) and useable edge performance near full aperture at the wide end, the 24-120mm is the better choice. If you prefer a minimum of post-processing to remove distortion the 28-105mm is to be preferred. The construction quality and material choices (more plastic) of the 28-105mm are lower but hardly a deal breaker and the macro feature is both useable and the optics excellent. Weights of the two lenses with filters are 16oz for the 28-105mm and 20 oz for the 24-120mm.

It’s a nice choice to have to make with each lens selling for well under $100. I have both!