rafaelcasd Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Hi all, been busy with the customer in town and my kid transferring college. So far so Good. will catch up to everyones postings later in the week. Wanted to share my personal observations on the 20mm 1:3.5 UD that I own. I have used the lens on film with good success, here is a sample of a scanned slide, likely at 1:11.

Quail Botanical Nikon F nikkor 20mm f3.5 UD 4 by Rafael CA, on Flickr
Never been able to mount it on the D3, the ai tab hits the lip of the aperture ring and I have never found an ai lens or a ring selling for reasonable prices. I have read that some non-ai aperture rings are fat and some are thin, some of my non ai lens like the 5.8cm have a very fat aperture ring, my 20mm UD does not, I tried to mount it on the D800 and the aperture ring slid very nicely under the ai tab, no interference at all, the aperture ring on the lens and camera still rotate freely on both. I did have to remove the aperture shoe, very easy to do. Also, need to use exposure compensation if you close the lens down, like F/8.0 will require +2 Exposure compensation as the ai tab is not coupled.
Here is the lens mounted on the D800, my copy has perfect glass, no dust at all.

nikon nikkor 20mm ud D800 side

nikon nikkor 20mm ud D800 front by Rafael CA, on Flickr
by Rafael CA, on Flickr
Here a couple of samples the first at full aperture, the second at f/8. These are full resolution at flickr.

nikon nikkor 20mm ud D800at f3.5 test by Rafael CA, on Flickr

nikon nikkor 20mm 1:3.5 ud D800 at f8 test by Rafael CA, on Flickr
Now against the sun at f/8 and f/3.5

nikon nikkor 20mm ud D800at f8 sun in frame by Rafael CA, on Flickr

nikon nikkor 20mm ud D800 full aperture sun in frame by Rafael CA, on Flickr
Note the interesting rainbow rays at full aperture, only lens I own that does this.
My observation is that this lens is very usable at 3.5 on the D800, center is very sharp and gracefully softens towards the corners, probably mostly due to curvature of field as the edge sharpness is strongly dependent on distance, at middle apertures the center only gets a tiny bit sharper and the edges and corners get progressibly better, the corners never do get totally sharp but the edges do. Contrast is fine. The HN-9 shade vignettes a little mounted on a filter.
At 3.5 the 20mm performs significantly better than my 18mm 3.5 ais, but at 8.0 the 18mm is a lot better across the frame, both are equally shap in the center.
Again these are personal comments on one sample of each.
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