As mentioned previously, I recently acquired a Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 D, my first auto-focus, close-focus, telephoto zoom lens.
Back when I picked up the D7000, I avoided the kit lens like the plague and went with the Sigma 30mm 1.4. All the reviews and beginning photography stuff I read said “prime!” and “zoom with feets!” and so I took that to heart.
When I got hired to shoot some Real Estate, I picked up the Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 DX, but I otherwise shied away from auto-focus zooms.
That’s not to say I didn’t buy an zoom lenses, but the ones I did acquire over the years were all old, mostly well-regarded, constant aperture, manual zooms—like the excellent Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series and the Kiron-made Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1—or strange things I picked up just to see, like the Tokina 35-200 f/3.5-4.5 (the review of which still draws the vast majority of traffic to this site,* even 2 years after its publication), or the 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series (which probably deserves a proper review of its own, given that there are very few out there).
Anyway, with my someday move to ‘full frame,’ and someday maybe sooner addition of a proper Nikon 35mm body (F4, maybe, since it will take those invasive fisheye things (which I’m unlikely ever to have), or the F100, which is pretty much a 35mm copy of the d7000, controls-wise), I decided it was time for a good walk-around lens, and after much review-reading and account-balance checking, the 28-105 rose to the top.
Sure, there’s a switch to get in and out of the close focus mode (1:2 reproduction ratio), and you have to flip the M/AF switch to get into manual focus, and sure, 28mm on a crop body is not particularly wide, but it’s a great lens, and I’m well satisfied with the image quality.
Take this not-so-itsy-bitsy spider here:
Not bad! Much better than I’ve gotten with reversed or extension-ringed lenses, or much crisper, anyway. Decent color, decent saturation, decent exposure, and peep the 1:1 crop:
So I’m quite pleased with this purchase. Alhamdulillah.
And a shout-out to KEH. This lens was EX+ rated by the crew there, and it’s an absolute beauty: looks barely-used, and is in every way tip top. I often hesitate a bit when buying used lenses, but I think I’ll be heading to KEH first from now on.
D7000, Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 D, AP mode, wide open, ISO100; minimal processing in Lightroom 5.
*One of my goals is to find ways to attract more visitors… Hana and my wedding pictures brought the most visitors, but that’s not particularly repeatable, and The Tokina review and my darktable workflow bring visitors too, so maybe therein lies my answer. But do I want to dedicate my shooting time and creativity to messing around with old lenses and alternative softwares? I don’t know.
