First a picture of the lens at 18mm and extended to 70mm
First impressions: this is the first lens I got with my first DSLR, the Nikon D70. It was the so called "kit lens". Build quality was more than reasonable, with the gold touch of most recent lenses. My references were the cheap kit lenses you get with the F65/N65, among the worst lenses in the Nikkor catalog. After taking a few pictures, I have been amazed by the picture quality that lens can deliver. Sharpness is really excellent, and surpasses most if not all consumer grade lenses I have seen. Performance wise it is very close to even pro-lenses in the same range. The lens features AF-S, the high speed and silent AF motor from Nikon, with manual correction. The lens is cheap, compact, light and performs well: the ideal lens to start digital photography. The range is also very convenient, being the equivalent of a 28-105 more or less on a 35mm classical camera. Maximal aperture is only 3.5 on the wide end but that will be enough in miost cases, but don't expect to have nice blurred background for portrait on the longer end (70mm). The drawbacks are some vignetting on the short end (18mm - but that disappears when stopped down, hence not really a problem in practice) and quite some distortion, also mainly on the short end. Also important to mention: this is a DX lens, that means to be used on a cropped sensor (1.5 factor). This lens will give terrible vignetting on a 35mm camera.
Pros:
- cheap
- compact and light
-
nice build for a consumer lens
- delivered with caps, sunhood
and pouch
- excellent (amazing) optical performance -
sharpness, CA, contrast
- superfast and silent AF-S with
manual correction
Cons:
- could be faster (not a 2.8 lens)
-
some vignetting fully open on the short end
- quite some
distortion (can be corrected in post processing) - definitely not a
lens for architectural photography
Conclusion:
Highly recommended
An example picture:
