Normal view 70mm, extended view 35mm. Notice the button for the close-up mode.
That lens has been recommended to me by a http://www.fredmiranda.com member. I
was looking for a super-sharp normal range zoom for street photography and
portraits and I didn't want to pay the price for a 28-70 AF-S... So this one has
been suggested and one day later I found a nice used copy in a small shop in
Montreal, Canada. My first impression was that the lens was pretty heavy (metal
and glass, no plastic like in the recent lenses) and had an old design (Nikon
lenses from the eighties/nineties kind of look). The zoom is a push-pull system.
I was initially afraid of getting dust on the sensor because of the
"pumping" zoom, but in practice this wasn't really a problem. The
front element is turning, making the use of a circular polarizer difficult.
There is a macro mode (1:2), but this should be seen as an emergency mode only,
I don't like the pictures coming out of it (usable but not comparable to a normal close-up lens). AF is no AF-S, this means a bit slow
and noisy (driven by the in-camera AF motor), but this has never been an issue for portrait.
Another detail, the lens was sold without a sunhood, and I adapted the one used for the 70-300G.
Perfectly clicks into place and works perfectly without vignetting on a digital camera.
If you want to use the lens on a film camera, like the F5 (an ideal walkaround combo by the way),
you'll need to use the original sunhood to avoid vignetting. That hood is quite small and to me, not very efficient.
Pros
- very sharp pictures
- fast, constant 2.8 aperture
- built like a tank - pro feeling
- cheap (used)
- emergency close-up/macro mode
Cons
- push-pull zoom (a matter of taste)
- rotating front element
- slow and a bit noisy AF
- limited usability in macro mode
- no standard sunhood
Anyway, highly recommendable, this is quality glass...
Excellent portrait and semi-low light allround lens, a bit long on a DSLR... The range was perfect (still is) on a film camera.
An example on the F5 film camera: