Utterly sharp

Our Nikon 60mm f2.8 AF D micro lens arrived last Thursday. I’ve been using its early predecessor, the 55mm AF, for some years, so I sort of knew what to expect. My sceptical colleagues, though, were completely bowled over.

On the surface of it, this is an ’ordinary’ 60 mm lens, at f2.8 fairly slow for a prime lens, with a nice smooth feel and a very, very sharp focus at normal distances. On closer inspection, this lens has got two features that you wouldn’t expect. The first is a ’limit/full’ switch, and the second is an extra set of numbers on the distance scale.

Take the lens close to the subject, and it comes into its own. You can bring it as close as a few centimetres away before it bangs up to the end of its travel, and the extra numbers shows 1:1. This means that the size on the negative or CCD is now the same size as the object itself. At normal print sizes, this means that a bee fills most of the picture, and a hair, or a ring, or the hands of a watch, are shown in dazzling detail.

Nikon calls this a ’micro’, but it is in fact a traditional ’macro’ lens, executed almost flawlessly.

There are a couple of problems with earlier ’micro’ and macro lenses, and Nikon have worked carefully to overcome them. First, there is a tendency for the lens to whirr from one end of its travel to the other hunting for a focus -- for example, if something floats in front of the lens while you are working at normal distances, a micro will happily try to focus on it. This is irritating, and will use up your battery quickly. Traditionally the answer is to switch to manual focus -- and Nikon is prepared for that with a nice, solid auto-manual slider -- but this isn’t always appropriate, for example when photographing the aforementioned bee. The solution on this lens is the Limit switch. If you are working at normal distances, switching to limit switches off the macro end of travel. If you are working at macro distances, switching to limit turns off the normal end of travel. Hey presto. Auto-focus suddenly becomes useful again, even at macro distances.

The other problem is that as the lens approaches a close object, less light enters. On my old 55mm you just had to try to account for this somehow -- usually by bracketting. On the new 60mm, the lens informs the camera when it gets near the end of its travel, and the minimum f-stop goes up. At first I thought this was a problem with the lens, like zooms that increase their f-stop as you extend the lens. But, no, it is actually correctly compensating for the changing characteristics.

Beyond that, the 60mm focusses very smoothly, and finds its point of sharp focus much more quickly (and more reliably) than the 55mm did. It has a solid feel, and the picture is utterly, utterly sharp.

I’ve always loved the 55mm micro. With this lens, I’m falling in love all over again.

Essential for serious D100 use, but could have been combined

This is an essential item for serious D100 use, but it has enough parts in common that it should have been combined with the charger rather than sold as a separate item.

The EH-5 is essential for one purpose only: you cannot clean the CCD without it. If you buy it for that purpose, it is also useful for when connected to a computer, which drains the battery pretty quickly. You can further use it when doing studio photography, but, given that a single battery charge is good for around 600 shots, you may prefer to have one less cable to organise unless studio photography is your mainstay.

Why should you want to clean the CCD? With 35mm film, the surface onto which you are recording is used just once. Any dust which is in your camera will spoil at worst one picture, but probably will never build up to the extent that it is noticeble. With a compact digital, the camera is never opened, and there is no possibility of dust entering. With a true SLR digital, though, dust enters whenever you change lenses, as well as tiny slivers of metal which get shaved off at the same time. The sensor is a charged couple device, and the charge attracts whatever dust is in the camera. There's a function in Nikon capture to cancel out dust, but, if you are using the camera a lot, and with different lenses, you are eventually going to need to clean it.

There's been a lot of discussion online about cleaning the CCD. Nikon recommends using the mirror lock-up function and a blower (_not_ compressed gas). This function only operates when the camera is plugged into this mains adapter, to avoid the risk that there won't be enough power to close it again.

However, one piece of advice which I found online was that you could get the shutter to lock open with the mirror up by setting everything to manual and using the Bulb (extended exposure) function. Unfortunately, this does not work! The shutter opens correctly, but because the CCD is charged (ie - Charged Couple Device), it attracts dust far more rapidly than you can get rid of it.

Therefore, although seemingly expensive, the EH-5 is the only way to go, because only when you use the EH-5 and the mirror lock-up is the shutter open and the CCD uncharged.

Nikon does not recommend cleaning the CCD with anything other than an air blower. However, both Fuji and Kodak recommend Eclipse fluid and specially designed, clean room manufactured swabs for cleaning their CCDs. Nikon does sell such a kit in Japan, but not yet in the UK.

As far the other uses of the adapter, there is some real value in being able to save the batteries when connected to a computer, either for downloading or while using Nikon Capture Control. The EN EL3 batteries do have a limited, albeit long, useful life, which probably equates to 'forever' if you are just using the batteries for taking pictures, but will be substantially less if you do a lot of downloading.

I bought the EH-5 solely because I needed to clean the CCD. The other benefits do add value, but wouldn't have persuaded me to buy it.

I give this 4 stars because it does do exactly what it says it does. However, it could have been designed in with the charger unit and supplied with the camera, or, at the least, have been built into the more expensive double charger unit, and so saved at least one box-worth of electronics.

Ideal lens for digital, but the aperture is disappointing

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.

The best lens ever produced by Nikon

Firstly. Amazon service. Just faultless and so easy. New stock means NEW.The prices. Very competative. Not always the cheapest but you know it will be right (Not some shady import or ex dealer demo).
The Nikkor 85mm 1.4. Just nothing sharper. Has excellent contrast, and for bokeh (nice out of focus backgrounds) there is nothing to touch it. Costs a bit more than the 2.8 but it is crafted and will last a lifetime. Buy one!! Does full justice to the Nikon D300.