Yeah I agree with you about most of the Zooms, as they seem a bit soft to me, although some are still acceptable. They don't hold up as well mechanically and tend to be prone to haze. There are some gems however among the fixed focus lenses.
Yeah I agree with you about most of the Zooms, as they seem a bit soft to me, although some are still acceptable. They don't hold up as well mechanically and tend to be prone to haze. There are some gems however among the fixed focus lenses.I recall those older aftermarket primes being decent. The zooms, not so much.
sharpness is more important to me
PC-NIKKOR 28mm f/3.5 The Nikon 28mm f/3.5 PC is a purely mechanical manual-focus perspective correction (PC) lens for film and FX digital cameras. It works on DX cameras, too.
My next observation is that if I know I will need to make a large print, I will use the 6X4.5 or 6X6 or 6X7 format. Knowing that one 28mm lens or another, made for the 35mm format, is 2% sharper in the far corners is just not that useful.
If the OP is really obsessed for sharpness, he/she should move to medium format.
If the OP is really obsessed for sharpness, he/she should move to medium format.
I have a Kiron made Vivitar 28 f2.8. Hasn't spent much time mounted to a camera, but so far seems like a good lens.Kiron has a good reputation
Then the answer is easy: 28/3.5 in AI version. Tested to be really, really good.
Yeah I agree with you about most of the Zooms, as they seem a bit soft to me, although some are still acceptable. They don't hold up as well mechanically and tend to be prone to haze. There are some gems however among the fixed focus lenses.
It took the advent of cheap computing to develop high quality zooms. The optical calculations required to optimize a zoom are painfully complex and needed a computer to get done right/in any reasonable amount of time. Since prime lens elements do not get moved other than to focus, the calculations are much more tractable.
Even Nikon themselves had some fairly not-great zooms back in the day. The 43-86mm is a legendary piece of trash and the 80-200mm was only "OK" on the best of days. (I've owned and used both).
Today's modern zooms are leagues better. I've used a Nikkor 28-300mm on a digibody and it's tack sharp throughout. But I am mostly a film shooter and you're hard pressed to find something compatible with the older Nikon legacy film bodies. I do a have a 28-70 AF-D lens that I use both on digital and film bodies that serves very nicely. It's dirt cheap used and a really good performer. I took it to Italy last year and was very pleased with the results.
I've found the Nikon AI an AIS manual focus zooms the be notably superior to most similar aftermarket copies, in accordance with your observations.
Yes of course, while computer aided lens design has been around since the 1950's, access to good computers and sophisticated optical design software was challenging for all institutions except the largest and best funded (and I'm sure Nikon was one of those fortunate large ones). Even today, options for optical design software capable of designing sophisticated multi-element lenses with relative ease, at reasonable cost, are limited. Zemax, for instance, was once a viable choice for smaller users, but through corporate acquisitions it has now moved to a subscription-based and very expensive pricing "model" - sort of a shame really. I remember purchasing the DOS Zemax version (for my employer) back in the early 90's for something like $900 and it was quite powerful even then.
Optical design leads you to non-linear equations without closed form solutions, more quickly than electronic circuit design does
I don’t have extensive experience with Nikon but I usually shoot a 28/50 combo on any camera. I picked up a 28mm 1.4D without really knowing anything about it. I just needed a fast 28 and WOW. Really lovely and special rendering lend. I use it on my f3 as well as my D700
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