dumbo's reviews

  • Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 SP AF

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Very sharp, Great Bokeh
    Gets longer when focusing closer

    This lens is super. It's sharp and have wonderful bokeh. It's light and compact.
    The front lens is recessed pretty deep into the lens. This give a little less working distance, but makes the use of a lens hood (bundeled with the lens) unnecessary most of the time.
    This lens has one downside, which applies on all lenses that does not have internal focusing, and that is that it becomes longer as you focus closer. No big deal IMO.
    Under some extreme backlit surcumstances I've noticed a little more decrease of contrast than you normally would like. This can be used creativly also, of course. It's nice (at least sometimes) to fill the entire frame with a golden glow when the sun stands low.
    I have not notices any flare yet, though.
    It's not boult like a tank, but I think the bould quality is pretty good. As long as you don't use it to hammer nails when building your house it should serve you well for a long time.
    Oh... And the push-pull AF/MF selector is very neat. AF is farily fast on my D70. Faster than I though it would be. I've used it so catch flying birds with good results.

    reviewed October 25th, 2005 (purchased for $540)
  • Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF DX AF-S Nikkor

    9 out of 10 points and recommended
    Nice zoom range, Good image quality
    Some vignetting on the wide end if shot wide open

    This lens is very good. It has a nice zoom range and is a very handy allround lens, reaching from wide to short tele. Being sold as a "kit lens" with the D70 this lens was considered "A cheapo kit lens" when it fisrt hit the market, with the Canon 18-55 in mind. Time have shown that Nikon chose to provide a much better lens for the first time SLR buyers. This lens have very good image quality.
    It's sharp throughout the range, with it's sweet spot at 24-35mm.
    It's sharp allready wide open, but gets sharper when stopped down to f/5.6-f/8, where it has it's sweet spot.
    Chromatic Aberrations is very well controlled, and is small enough to not really be seen in a print, even if you provoke the lens to show it's worst.
    The downside of this lens is the vignetting. It's not very bad, but wide open at the wide end it's clearly visible with large areas w/o much detail. It can easily be corrected for in software in the few cases it's annoying.
    Distortion could be less of course, but as long as you're not an architectural shooter you can correct for this distortion using PTLens or another suitable software on the few pictures where this is disturbing.

    Overall this is a very good lens and very much worth it's price. When bought in kit with a D70 it's a steal.

    Of course there are things that could be better. The contrast could be better. A f/2.8 aparture wouldn't hurt either. But then the price would be much higher. This is a very good compromise.

    reviewed October 25th, 2005
  • Nikon 35mm f/1.8G DX AF-S Nikkor

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Sharp, cheap, fast
    None I would really call a con

    Well... There are, of course, weaker points with this lens, as with all lenses.
    For me personally the "cons" of this lens are manageble i the way that most of them only occur under certain circumstanses and all but one of them can be corrected for in PP if needed.
    The weaknesses are pretty much chromatic aberations and distortion. Distortion is not noticable unless you shoot lots of architecture och brick walls.
    The chromatic aberrations rarely get noticable unless you pixelpeep. It can also be corrected in post process, apart from the loCAs which can be tricky to get rid of. I have yet to have a shot ruined by loCAs thoughl.

    Enough of the (not so much) weaknesses of this lens and go on with what is good.
    Sharpness and contrast are really good, even wide open. Of course you win some by stopping down a stop, but after that there really are not much difference and even wide open it's still sharper than many other lenses stopped down one stop. I'm not the least hesitant about using this lens wide open.
    It focuses pretty fast and locks on target w/o hesitation. I'd say it's about as fast as my AF 50/1.8D.
    Bokeh is not the best I've seen, but it's OK wide open and gets pretty nice once you stop the lens down only a little.
    Flare resistance, I'd say, is very good. No real reason not to shoot with the sky in the picture if you have to. Almost no decrease in contrast and at worst a small green "blob" on the opposite side of the light source that can easily be cloned out.

    Bould quality is nice. There are much plastics used, so it pretty light and does not feel like a tank, but the plastics are well put together and the lens feels solid and does not produce any quirking sounds if you put some stress to it.

    Being what this lens is, a cheap normal lens for APS-C sensor Nikons, the only real fault with this lens is that it was not released along with the D70.

    reviewed June 17th, 2009 (purchased for $270)