Expensive but Essential

If you lose one of these then as expensive as they are, you're going to need another one. It's cheaper than replacing your entire lens when it gets scratched to death from being unprotected in your bag!

These are also good for replacing the old style Sigma lens caps if you have them as the old style Sigma lens caps are near impossible to get on or off with a lens hood fitted. These are much better!

Ultra clear and saved my lens from being damaged

This lens filter is fanatastic!

It doesn't add anything to the current lens on my Nikon D40 SLR.
But it provides the best protection for the lens, keeping dust and other particles from affecting the lens.

It saved my lens recently on my last trip, as my camera bag took a tumble, with the SLR inside.
The lens filter cracked, but my lens was safe and sound.
The only problem was trying to finding a camera store, which was able to remove the damaged filter.
You definitely need a filter wrench to get the filter off.
In the end I was able to find a nikon repair store, who were able to remove my smashed filter.

I would definitely recommend this product and will be purchasing another one, to replace the one I lost.

An Excellent Lens, but read on if you are confused about VR and VRII

I ordered this lens from Amazon as it was advertised as a VRII in the product description. Its actually labelled on the box and on the lens as a VR lens, however the supporting documentation inside the box does refer to it being the latest VRII technology. This confused me as I thought Amazon had initially sent me the wrong lens.

Now the confusion is over, I'm keeping the lens, however have not yet had a chance to use it.

I hope this makes things clearer for other buyers, as my initial disapointment is now resolved.

I'm massive fan of Nikon lenses, so am sure I wont be disapointed with the quality.

The king of all fish-eyes!

I have zero regrets about buying this lens even at inflated UK prices. It has allowed me to get more WOW shots than any other lens, including street photography, music photography and floral close-ups.

The optical quality is amazing with chromatic aberration only showing up at largest aperture (2.8) on the borders and in extreme contrast conditions. Even then, this is soon fixed in PS.

I seriously recommend buying the Hemi plug-in for PhotoShop if you buy this lens (it's another £20 or so) which will allow you to correct some distortion and produce a reasonable panorama from a single image or simply keep only the lateral warp which is generally more desirable.

Amazingly close focal distance (careful not to scratch the coating on the outer glass - you will be a LOT closer to your subject than it seems).

Simply: my favourite lens!

Zoom Ring fault

Caveat emptor - an optically great lens (well, above average anyway) but there is clearly a build quality issue with the 24-70mm zoom ring which frequently either arrives with or develops a 'grinding' noise in the range 24-35mm. Reports over Nikon's willingness to rectify this problem vary. Check user forums on the web before considering purchase. I had mine 18 months before the fault developed and I'm not the only one to suffer.

Nikon 52mm Filter

An essential filter to protect your lens. There are cheaper filters around but if you are going to spend money on a top quality camera then you want to put a top quality filter on. Nikon is top quality. Usual fantastic service by Amazon

Cut yourself sharp

Incredibly sharp macro/portrait lense. Probably not as convenient to use for true macro work as 105mm or longer, due to shorter focal lenght, but use it for everything else and that's when you start appreciating the bonus of macro focusing. Count every eyelash in a portrait (or a wrinkle, so be careful photographing women!). Autofocus is lightning-fast, lens feels solid without being too heavy (it's actually quite light). Absolutely recommended, no cons whatsoever (unless you're doing macro for which is a bit too short, but if you're using dedicated flash, you won't get in the way of your light, so really, even for macro it's perfect).

The perfect"stock" lens...

You really don't want to keep swapping lenses unless you have to and with this one... you don't have to. Covering the most used and useful focal lengths from 16mm (24mm old style), which is probably as wide as you want to go in everyday shooting, through to 85mm (128mm old style), which is in the most popular mid-range telephoto length, it's all here in a single lens.

Size wise it's a bit bigger than a standard 18-55mm lens; weight wise it's quite a lot heavier; but despite its weight it's still small enough and (just) light enough to be used as a"stock" lens. Maximum aperture of 3.5 to 5.6 is good and its VR (vibration reduction) system not only completely compensates for any aperture restrictions but very significantly extends your camera's versatility by allowing you to shoot at slower shutter speeds without a tripod. And... the pictures it produces are, to me, indistinguishable in quality from my other Nikon lenses.

Sure you can get all of this much cheaper, but only if you're prepared to cart at least two or more lenses around with you and regularly swap between them. What you're paying for here is the speed & convenience of a genuinely portable solution to probably 99% of your photo requirements: other than where you need A2 size or larger photos at exhibition quality levels, you don't need a longer zoom lens given the pixel resolution of current Nikon SLRs and the fact that you can enlarge sections of their photos to almost double their size without any noticeable loss of quality, you only need a wider angle lens for specialist, ultra-wide shots, and - because of its VR system - you only need a wider aperture lens in equally specialist situations where absolutely minimal depth-of-field is critical.

Problems? Only one: at its widest angles the lens blocks part of the illuminated area when using the built-in flash on my Nikon D40X producing a black shadow in the lower part of the picture. This is easily avoided by zooming in to around 20mm (30mm old style) and, of course, isn't an issue when using a separate flash unit, but... it's annoying if you're in point & shoot mode and forget to correct for it and, the same problem may well occur with the built-in flash units on other Nikon bodies.

However, other than this minor niggle this is a superb, if expensive, replacement for your stock lens which once on your camera will rarely come off. Brilliant!

Big zoom lens

A great performer when lighting is good and you have time to enable focus, even on a D300 a bit slow to focus, but it is an old design without AFS, results are superb for a lens of this price, quiet heavy. I soon learnt why they have a tripod mount even though it is VR lens. At full zoom even at 1/400th you can get camera shake, VR will not stop that all of the time, use a monopod to ensure the sharpest results. At 200mm it is fine but the power of the lens will persuade you to zoom tighter, I can't resist it. Highly recomeneded though can't wait for the AIS version.

Perfect

The body cap was as described and exactly what I was looking for, the postage was appropriate and speedy - a nice simple hassle-free transaction!

What happened to this review and I'd like to read the comments

M Turner reviewer 9 and 95
46 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
Ideal lens for digital, but the aperture is disappointing, 4 Jun 2004
This review is from: Nikon 35Mm F2 Af Nikkor D Lens A (Electronics)
35mm is a bit of an unusual lens for a 135 size SLR. 28mm is the 'standard' wide-angle lens, although many photographers have opted for the slightly wider 24mm in recent years. This may explain Nikon's reluctance to really invest in this length of lens - the relatively slow f2 aperture compares poorly with Nikon's 50mm offerings, and even the 28mm is available - for a price - at f1.4.
Everything changes, though, with the advent of digital SLRs. Nikon's D1, D2, D75 and D100 all use a CCD which is the same size as APS rather than 135 film. The result is that all lenses behave as if they were about 1/3 longer. The humble 35mm is thus the equivalent of a 55mm, which is as close to the 50mm 'normal' length as makes no difference - at least until Nikon come up with a 33mm lens.

'Normal' lenses are the least exciting but most ubiquitous, and if you only intend to own one prime lens, you probably owe it to yourself to make it that one.

So how about this lens? I personally found the f2 maximum aperture to be more of an annoyance than a problem. I grew up on f1.8 lenses, and was never willing to shell out the extra for an f1.4. f2 really isn't that much slower - it just feels like it is.

For the rest, this is a nice, light compact lens with internal focusing so your polarising filter doesn't go spinning round when you don't want it to. In common with its 135 size 50mm equivalent, it gives a picture which is very close to what the eye sees. We found that its shortest focal distance was attractively close, although this isn't, of course, a macro lens.

One other benefit of using this with a digital Nikon SLR is that the smaller CCD size reduces the effect of aberrations, and this is therefore a 'better' lens on digital than on 135.

The alternative is to go with a Nikkor ED (extra-low dispersion) zoom. In principle the quality of a prime lens like this should always be better than any zoom. In practice Nikon's ED glass is so good that you don't see much difference. However, this lens is markedly better than my budget Nikkor 24-120 which I got with the camera (and don't really use much any more). If you can afford money, the ED zoom is probably worth it. If you are on a budget, though, and want to max out on quality with flexibility, this is a good buy, despite the disappointing aperture.

Comments (5) | Permalink | Most recent comment: Jul 20, 2010 11:29 AM BST"

OK general purpose wide

Could really do with a few more stops as its not great as the light dips, but general great clarity and image quality. Much better than lugging round a big old wide zoom.

It's Nikon, what more

Nikon filters, do you need to say more. But they are a tad expensive, and bear in mind that Hoya filters are every bit as good as Nikon, and also cheaper. Hoya are one of the largest manufacturers of optical glass in the world and you wouldn't go wrong with them either.

Nikon 52mm Filter

An essential filter to protect your lens. There are cheaper filters around but if you are going to spend money on a top quality camera then you want to put a top quality filter on. Nikon is top quality. Usual fantastic service by Amazon

Nikon Sj-1 Color

I had mislaid the set that came with my SB800, so ordered this replacement.

These filters are excellent for use under different lights, allowing more natural colours to be achieved without messing about with the camera's colour temperatures. They can also be used to achieve interesting lighting effects.

They fit perfectly into the SB800. Not much more I can say about them :)

Need a hood ?

Need a lens hood, then get the real thing from Nikon - well made and not too expensive if you shop around !

Lens

A brilliant little all-rounder lens at an economical price. Can get quite good close ups as well.

nikon 28mm lens

this product was exactley what I had searched for, this was the only place I could find it for a reolistic price. First class service thanks

What it says on the box

Excellent product, exactly what it says on the box and absolutely the CHEAPEST around. Delivery fast too. Searched everywhere and this won hands down. Highly recommended.