> General purpose photography, all hand-held: a portrait, a picture of an old house. rain tracks, old buildings, or an old car. My idea was to carry the 35mm camera around with me (as I used to many, many, many years ago) and shoot whatever catches my eye. The idea of a zoom was to be able to "get in closer" without having to physically move closer to whatever I want to photograph.
> I intend to develop the 35mm negs (in my darkroom) and print the ones I like to 8x10 or 11x14. Thus, image quality matters.
I want a Nikkor 25-50 f4 AI-S to make a pair with the 50-135 f3.5. I've found I prefer MF 90% of the time. It has a good reputation if you'd be interested in the wider end of things as well.
Given your recent post with your shooting criteria, I would double down on the 35-105. It is fairly compact, no bigger than my 105 f:2.5, is a push pull design(which I think is easier to us) uses nikon standard 52mm filters and has a nifty macro capability.
The 80-200 would be a good second lens but IMO
Is a bit long for a solo lens in your kit.
How's the 50-135mm f/3.5 working for you? I've heard some good things about it. I read somewhere that this lens is preferable to the 75-150mm f/3.5 E series. Do you agree?
---I have the Nikkor 35-105. They don't get much love from the pixel-peeping (or grain-peeping?) crowd, but I've always thought it as a great "walking around" lens when you want a compact kit. In one optic you get pretty much everything; wide, normal, classic portrait length plus macro and everything in between. And, it's compact compared to the longer zooms with more range, roughly the same size as a 105 prime.
It has it's demonstrated faults as does the cousin 28-85 if your favorite subject is resolution charts, but they are not particularly noticeable in real-world photos. At least, that has been my experience.
- - - -No experience with the 80-200 E so I cannot compare. But I love the 50-135. It's a typical Ai-S Nikkor. Meaty real metal with great glass. I got lucky with mine it's like new. I'm not well versed in technical descriptions but I love the images I get with it and it lives on the F5 whenever the I want to go light ( :crazy: ). After the CLA virtually eliminated the zoom creep (used to fall to the stops w/o resistance) it became easy to use. Smooth zoom with easy focus on every camera I have that it fits. I've played with the "macro" setting and it softens considerably but allows some decent shots in a pinch. It's a great carry around lens that covers a nice spread. That and the 24MM f2.8 Ai covers just about everything I would see in a day.
---
Thank you for sharing your experiences with the Nikkor 35-105mm. I have read a number of negative reviews and was wondering. I would think that if it were such a bad lens, Nikon would have discontinued it very quickly.
The original 43-86 Nikkor zoom was panned for years for it's optical performance. But (my understanding is that…) photojournalists loved it, as it gave them a lot of flexibility in framing when shooting from press boxes and the like where they couldn't move around much, and had no time for fiddling around changing lenses.
===My recommendations would be:
Best (approaching prime lens quality):
35-70 f3.5 (constant)
28-50 f3.5
75-150 series E zoom
You can see a pattern here and this pattern is even valid for today; all things equal, the better zoom will have:
The original 43-86 is really poor in definition, samples are abundant in the web. The "new" (redesigned, late 70s) 43-86 has enormous amounts of distortion.
===
Surprised you place the 75-105 series E above the 50-135.. f/3.5 (???) Care to elaborate?
Look at his signature. He doesn't own one.
LOL!! I do own Nikon lenses. And have sold others. Currently:
Nikkor AI 20/4.0
Nikkor PC-Nikkor 35/3.5
Nikkor PC-Nikkor 35/2.8
Nikkor AI 50/1.8
Nikkor-S 58/1.4
Nikkor AI 135/3.5
Nikkor AI 200/4.0
Sigma Super-Wide II 24/2.8
Some of the above lenses are so good that should be labeled "Canon", in particular the 35s, 20, and 200.
The 58/1.4 is sweet as Nutella.
Currently no Nikon zoom lenses in my arsenal, only Canons.
The "new" (redesigned, late 70s) 43-86 has enormous amounts of distortion.
===
Surprised you place the 75-105 series E above the 50-135.. f/3.5 (???) Care to elaborate?
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