Nikon Br-3 Adaptor ring.

Nikon Br-3 Adapter Ring This is almost an essential piece of kit if you reverse a lens for macro work. It fits onto any Nikon lens and provides rudimentary lens protection to the mechanism but also allows you to fit a filter to stop the ingress of dust; it has a 52mm filter thread. Usual Nikon high quality.

Excellent if slightly dated lens

This is a famous long portrait lens, best suited perhaps to Nikon's full frame bodies like the D3 and D700.

It has a Defocus Control ring, a unique function which allows the user to vary the foreground or background blur. Quite an easy thing to use but I don't employ it so much. The autofocus is screw-drive, quite quick but a tad too noisy for shooting, say, during a wedding ceremony. The more versatile 70-200 VR has near silent and almost immediate autofocus.

The build is above average, crinkle effect metal barrel but still quite light. The general feeling is of quality from a previous era.

There is a built-in hood which is a good idea, but it doesn't slide too smoothly (unlike the one on my Leica 75mm Summicron-M, which is as smooth as silk) - in fact some user have found it temporarily jamming when pushing back if it is not done smoothly. Some copies like mine seem to have a small hole drilled in the hood, maybe to secure the lenscap with a cord.

Optically this is very fine, giving outstanding colour rendition and skin tones. The speed is useful, with a typically large front element.

It's a toss-up which is better between this and the 105mm DC, but the latter is preferred by some and is perhaps better for closer work or a crop sensor camera like the D300.

Nikon Rubber Eyecup

Perfect for the job. Lost mine off the camera and these are just dandy. No other comments as they are just what I ordered. No complaints.

Excellent Lens for Upgrade

I've started using Sigma zoom lenses as they are so much cheaper than the Nikon equivalents. This lens is excellent and I have been using it for portrait work and also occasionally to walk around with. The portrait results in particular have been excellent, with very sharp images, mainly taken at f8.

The lens is very well made and solid. Although it's one of Sigma's EX (professional) lenses, it's not quite as well finished as the 50-150mm I also own. I think this is purely down to the 18-50mm being a slightly older design.

There is a switch to lock the lens at 18mm but it doesn't suffer from zoom creep anyway. Zoom and focus rings have nice action and the lens, as with all other Sigma lenses I've owned, comes with a high quality semi rigid carry case that I actually use unlike the useless Nikon suede effect lens bags.

For the price, this lens is incredible value. Why suffer the annoyance of a variable maximum aperture when you can pick up this constant f2.8 lens for the same price as many of Nikon's 'kit' lenses?