Re: Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AI-S vs a Midrange Zoom ...Thoughts?
KankRat wrote:
Does this lens actually live up to its reputation?
Yes and no. It's not the brilliant, genius, as-good-as-Leica lens that the hypesters describe. It's not junk either...as is the case with most of the old Nikon MF primes, it has valuable qualities and usefulness for certain tasks. It is the user's task to find out what types of shots any particular lens is best at.
I recently had my 30+ year-old 28/2.8 AiS serviced at the Nikon west coast shop. I shot casual tests using a Nikon Z8 + FTZ.
Assuming the Nikon shop put the 28/2.8 AiS back together correctly, here is what I've found:
The 28/2.8 AiS is always ultra sharp in the central area (≈18mm circle) at any f stop.
The lens has low distortion, which makes viewing and composing much nicer than lenses with visible distortion, eg my Zeiss ZF 28/2.
The lens works very well if the critical sharpness is mainly needed in the central zone.
The outer zones of an image may or may not be sharp, depending on the distance to the subject.
The plane of focus seems to be very irregularly curved at distance,(based on my improvised, non-scientific tests) which leads to some objects towards the outer zones and sides of the frame never being completely as sharp as the center, even at very small stops like f/11. Other objects in the outer zones, but not at the centrally focused distance, may be very nicely sharp and look great.
I have gotten very nice shots with this lens in the closer-than-one-meter range, where I suspect that the field curvature flattens out at bit.
I'm not near my "photo computer" right now, and don't know if I can post photos. If I can, I'll post some boring test shots if you like.
Mar 17, 2024 at 03:52 PM
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