Nikon Lenses Rants and (mostly) Raves

I feel like slightly ranting, and mostly raving.

Can I just say this? I love my Nikon Nikkor lenses.

And FYI, this is a "big picture" blog post, not a techy nitty gritty post about lenses.

A lense, made up of many groups and elements of ground glass, takes in light from an image which might be inches or meters or miles away, and focuses it on a piece of film or a digital sensor. This is a small miracle. To do this with the high quality with which today's lenses are capable is a bigger-than-small miracle. It might be scientific to a certain degree, but like most of science, it's also miraculous.

As professional SLR brands go, my experience has been 100% Olympus with film, and for the past 6+ years is now 100% Nikon with digital. (I still have an Olympus OM-1n film camera and love it, more on that some other day.)

30 years ago I cut my teeth on some really nice Olympus Zuiko and Tamron SP lenses, and I've had a couple very good Sigma lenses over the years too. (In my youth, a Tamron 80-200 was on my camera about 80% to 200% of the time.)

But today, I do love the quality of the Nikon / Nikkor lenses in my kit. I prefer Nikkor's higher quality ED glass, and I like fast glass.

The main lenses I regularly use today are 3 primes and 3 zooms, all Nikkor:

• 24-70mm 2.8 (main lens on my D700)
  
• 17-55 2.8 (approx DX equivalent to the 24-70; main lens on my D300)
• 105mm 2.8 VR micro
• 50mm 1.4
  
• 10.5mm 2.8 (DX, usually attached to my D300)
• 70-300 4.5-5.6 VR (a cheaper but really good lens, just not as fast)
  

My next lens might be Nikon's 70-200 2.8 VR, although with the D700 I get an extra 2-4 stops of usable extra "speed" (courtesy of higher ISO) to work with and therefore the need for a faster zoom than the one I have is relaxed quite a bit. If I do go this direction, I'd get this faster (2.8) telephoto zoom mainly for the narrower depth of field around the 60-100 range for portraits (compared with my 70-300's 4.5-5.6) and a faster VR-assisted performance for longer, fast action stuff like sports.

Balancing these things, the 70-300 Nikkor I already have makes a very nice image, and is much more portable. I would need a different camera bag to carry the 70-200 2.8 with my kit. :-/

My only super wide currently is the 10.5mm DX lens, which doesn't cover the D700's full frame, although I can shoot a very usable (if lower res) wide image with it on the FX sensor, and I've done that a few times.

Three other lenses I'm interested in are the Nikkor 14-24 (to fill the focal gap; and some architectural stuff I do) and the Nikkor 85 f/1.4 (for individual portraits with very narrow dof) and a longer fast prime (400mm or more) for wildlife stuff and sports. And for the moon, I love to shoot the moon.

Lenses. There are always more of them. And one can always dream, right? But the point is to make great images, not accumulate lenses.

As I mentioned, I like fast glass. Part of the reason in the past was that I like to shoot handheld, and shooting people and events that are on the move (while I too am on the move) and when the light might be on the low side is much easier to do with a wide aperture.

The second reason I like fast glass is I love bokeh and separation from the background. Aside from some cultural documentary and event photography and certain macro scenarios, I'm often at or very close to wide open, on my fastest lenses.

Fast glass is expensive, heavy, bulky... and worth it all.

Raves? I do have them, one for each lens.

• My 105mm 2.8 "micro" (the rest of the world calls this "macro" except Nikon) is an amaaaazing lens. I use it all the time for macro photography, individual portraits, and even some landscapes and wildlife. It has wonderful bokeh, separation, macro capability, and can focus about a foot away from the subject. I use its VR some but not a lot, usually when doing handheld macro photography. If the subject's not moving (wind, etc.) and VR is helping me on the camera side, I can get crisp images.
  
• I love the 50mm 1.4 for individual and group portraits, low light, streetwalking. It has beautiful bokeh, and wonderful separation at f/1.4 or slightly closed down. It's so nicely compact. And it has an aperture ring on it. I (don't use but) love that!
  
• I love the 24-70 f/2.8 for groups, portraits, landscape, architecture, and event photography. This is the lens I usually keep on the camera. (The 17-55mm is comparably wonderful, on the D300, but I'm usually shooting this 24-70 on the D700)
  
• I love the 70-300 (on a DX body this zooms to an equivalent 450mm!) with it's VR and light weight. I do some portraits with this, especially outdoors with just 1-2 people. In spite of the smaller slower glass it produces very nice images. The VR is nice, esp. at 300mm.
  
• I love the 10.4mm fisheye even though it's a DX lens and doesn't cover my FX sensor; I've still used it on the D700 for some very usable images. It can focus up to an inch away! It's an awesome lens. Thanks Nikon! It's wonderful on the D300. Actually, it's my main lens on the D300. It's my "Fish on a Stick". More on that some other day. :-)
  

Rants? Gripes? I have very few. For now, I do have TWO.

• First, something I am confident will never change, I resent the decision Nikon made in the very early beginning days to use a "backwards" rotation to attach the lens to the camera. Completely unnecessary mistake by Nikon! And even though I've been using Nikon cameras and lenses almost daily for 6+ years, it's still partly counter intuitive. Lefty Loosy, Righty Tighty. I don't actually ever use that reminder, but I do instinctively know which way things go "tight" and which way things go "loose," this is universal and worldwide. Why, oh Nikon, did you do the opposite? I think there's probably no good reason you couldn't have reversed the mount so it was compatible with THE WHOLE FURGEN RESTA DA WORLD. But no. And now it's too late to change because on the other hand, the AMAZING thing you have accomplished is virtual compatibility between your oldest and newest lenses and bodies. There's no going back now. OK, rant #1 is over, I'll try not to bring it up again. (breathe)
  
• My 105mm 2.8 is the only Nikkor lens I've ever used that has serious problems auto focusing. It will very slowly "hunt" its way (usually in the wrong direction and eventually back again) to find focus even when it was very close to focus or even ON focus to begin with. By slow, I mean, several (3-5) seconds! I have used this lens on four (4) Nikon DSLR cameras, always with the same result. This lens, which produces amazing images, is the only one one I know that's dubious of the Nikkor name for this stated reason.
  

A couple thoughts on DX and FX lenses. I'd very seriously hesitate at this point in time to buy another DX lens. Part of the reason is I think the smaller sensor DX format will eventually go away in Nikon's DSLRs. (My guess is within about 4 years.) A DX lens is designed to project its "deliverable" image on a smaller area than the newer, better "full frame" FX sensors.

Since Nikon does and will increasingly continue to make great glass for the relatively newer FX digital sensor size (which does remain compatible with DX sensors too, those cameras simply use less of the image delivered to the focal plane by the lens), there's a much bigger risk of lost investment in a DX lens than a normal lens that covers a full 35mm frame area.

Having said all of the above, life has constraints, and not only am I willing to live within constraints, and not only do the lenses I already own provide a huge creative lattitude to make the images I love to make; but I believe my creative efforts will thrive more when I work within constraints rather than without them.

Meanwhile, Nikon: please keep making great lenses, please apologize to each of us some day (a free new lens would do) for the wrong-twist-direction thing; and thanks for the wonderful tools.