 Awesome lens. |
| Review Date: May 25, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Oleg Rakhmanchik, New York, NY United States |
| This is one of the best walk-around lens you can buy for your Nikon camera. This new version has a built-in motor, which makes it compatible with D40/D40x/D60 AF-S only cameras (using it with D40). The lens is very sharp, fast and well made. |
No focus problems here, great general purpose lens
|
| Review Date: November 22, 2008 |
| Reviewer: M. Hendry, Santa Monica, CA USA |
I was wary of picking this one up, but so far I haven't noticed anything wrong at all with autofocus: very clear, crisp images, and I'm loving the speed compared to my D40's stock lens (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6).
About all I could complain about is the motor, which is noisier and seems slower than the 18-55. It works though which is the main thing! Build quality seems solid.
Mine is Japanese-made according to the label, serial number 29xxx. One would hope that after building nearly 30,000 of the things they would have any quality control problems worked out.
Update 01/2010: I posted my review originally 14 months or so ago and in that time I've upgraded from a D40 to a D90 and picked up a few other lenses along the way for specific situations (f/1.4 Sigma prime, 55-200mm Nikon long zoom, 105mm Sigma macro). It's more plasticky in construction than any of those but is still my favorite lens, not just the one I use the most, because of the quality of the images. After 10,000+ shots taken I'm not noticing any mechanical or electrical problems. Seems other people have, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones! |
Excellent Lens for the money
|
| Review Date: November 30, 2008 |
| Reviewer: J. I. Foster, |
I bought this lens in August of 08 for my wife to use for on-location shoots. She tried it for a few months before deciding to go the Nikon route. She says she had focusing issues with the lens.
Instead of selling the lens, I decided to keep it and try it out myself. I love the lens and have had maybe two focusing issues with it, but they were expected (low light, direct sunlight). It is tack sharp in the apertures I use for portrait work (mainly 2.8-4 at the most).
It does have distinct sound when auto-focusing, but it isn't a deal breaker (I actually like the noise it makes).
Overall a great little lens at a bargain price. |
Excellent Lens
|
| Review Date: May 21, 2009 |
| Reviewer: B. Steinagel, Greenville, WI |
I was a little hesitant to purchase this lens after some of the experiences people were having with front focusing on Nikon bodies. However, I decided to buy anyway and do some tests of my own. First off, I think what some people are seeing as front focusing is a combination of a few things: handholding the camera at slow shutter speeds and using a wide aperture. All lenses are at their sharpest when stopped down about two stops from their widest aperture, so for this lens expect to get your sharpest photos at apertures around f/5.6. It really helps to mount the camera on a tripod whenever you're photographing to eliminate any blur caused by handholding. Use a cable release as well. If you must hold your camera while photographing, use a shutter speed that's at least the reciprocal of the lens focal length. In other words, if you're shooting at the 50mm setting with this lens, make sure your shutter speed is at least 1/50 sec. or faster.
If you're shooting in RAW format, remember that these images need a little sharpening during post-processing because in-camera processing is usually not applied to RAW images like it is with jpeg images. This may be another area where people are seeing front/back focus problems where they don't really exist.
In my tests, I haven't found anything that would indicate front or back focusing with this lens mounted on a Nikon D90. I did get a Japanese-made lens by the way with a serial number of 029xxx. |
A Nice Fit for Your Nikon
|
| Review Date: January 3, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Tiffany Ann, Black Diamond Bay |
This is a very good lens and I used to use it all the time, till I bought the Nikon 17-55 f/2.8. The Nikon lens weighs twice as much, but it's pictures are sharper at the edges at f/2.8 then this lens. Still, I've taken thousands of shots with this lens, it focuses fairly fast, the pictures, once you get up to f/4, are every bit as sharp as the Nikon's and it's light.
I have read about the problems others have had with this lens, but it's worked flawlessly for me and I wouldn't hesitate recommending it to anyone. One thing I particularly like about this lens is the smooth zoom action and that there is no lens creep. I've dragged this lens all over heck and gone. You can lock the lens at 17mm, but I've never had to do that. The lens only extends a hair over an inch at 50mm and for me, and probably for you too, it's not a big deal. I should mention that the focus ring rotates during autofocus, for me also not a big deal.
I use this lens, even though I have the Nikon 17-55, because lots of times I don't want to carry the weight around. If you can't afford the Nikon lens, I really believe you'll be happy with this one. |
|
No video reviews found for this product.
