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Image © NikonUSA My Nikon kit has recently been running one prime and 2 pro grade zoom lenses. Those pro lenses do not lend themselves to the casual stroll and smaller lenses are desirable. I'm not so much concerned about the weight as I am being able to fit everything into my recently acquired Lowepro Transit 250 AW sling pack. Went to a local camera store and was looking about for a nice, small-ish do-it-all street zoom. After looking at the various options available, I decided to give the Nikon 24-120mm f3.5-5.6 VR lens a try. The f/4 version would have been bigger than we wanted to go at this point and is quite the budget jump. Testing was done on a Nikon Df. Click images for larger view. 32mm | 1/30 | f/8 | ISO 400 IQ First and foremost, a lens must perform to my standards. It needs to be sharp and provide a good base image. Sadly, the majority of the internet reviews I read about this lens are very accurate. I was hoping it would not be as bad as the buzz stated, so I gave it a try for myself. This is not a good lens, and dare I say, that this might be the worst lens I've every used on any system. Why? It is not sharp at any focal length or any aperture. I tried auto focus fine tuning on the Nikon Df and D700....no go. I even tried shooting in live view with contrast detect AF to see if that improved things....no joy there either. On that point alone, the lens fails. Which is a shame because it is a decent focal range and the contrast seemed very nice. It's hard to tell where the IQ breaks down on web size images, and I'm not a pixel peeper. Trust me, the images are soft, in the center and it only gets worse at the edges. 120mm | 1/320 | f/5.6 | ISO 200 Handling I'm not a fan of the "reversed" focus/zoom rings that Nikon went to with the AF-S lenses. I tend to accidentally bump the ring by accident when supporting the lens with my left hand.. To be honest, I thought that might have been an issue with the image sharpness being so bad. I made sure that I took that out of the equation during the tests and verified that I was not moving that focus ring by accident. On the positives, the zoom throw from 24 to 120 is relatively short so going from one end of the focal range to the other can be a quick trip. It can also be a little less accurate because it is so close together. It is not an internal zoom lens, so there is telescoping, but it is not that far, to be honest. This is a G lens, so no aperture ring. 120mm | 1/640 | f/8 | ISO 200 Weight/Size For our desires, this lens was a good size and weight for the purpose it was going to be used for. No real complaints there. It balanced well on the Nikon Df, even better on the D700. 120mm | 1/125 | f/5.6 | ISO 320 VR active Auto Focus Auto focus was decent for this lens. Not slow, but not pro grade lens fast. It would be fine for the majority of my use situations. This is an AF-S lens with the full time manual focus override. 120mm | 1/125 | f/8 | ISO 1250 | VR active Conclusion I REALLY wanted this lens to work out, I did. It was a good size, had a useful focal range and was a quick, quiet focuser. Too bad that the IQ in the sharpness range was a total deal breaker. After many tests and trying to work with the lens over a 3 day weekend...there was just no salvaging it. It was returned and the money was used to purchase other lenses that might fit the everyday walk around lens scenario. To get the provided sample images to look even half way decent, I had to process these images more than normal. B&W with a lot of grain helped tighten things up a bit. Wider angles were better, but still not great. 38mm | 1/40 | f/8 | ISO 250 | VR active 32mm | 1/40 | f/8 | ISO 200 | VR active 110mm | 1/125 | f/5.6 | ISO 1800 | VR active 120mm | 1/125 | f/8 | ISO 3600 : VR active

Image © mir.com After my failed attempt to bond with the Nikon 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6VR, next lens into the testing queue is an oldie....the Nikon 35-135mm f/3.5-4.5 Again, the desire is to find a lens that can be an everyday walk about and useful focal length. 35mm may not seem wide enough for a lot of people, I find that I crave a longer focal length and a narrower field of view than I do wide. There was not a lot of information out there on this lens, but for the price, it was worth the gamble. Majority of the testing was done on a Nikon Df. 135mm | 1/640 | f/4.5 : ISO 200 IQ Initial testing of the 35-135mm was definitely more favorable than the 24-120/3.5-5.6VR we tested. Contrast on the lens is very good and the sharpness is there. No, it is not as good as the newest lenses out today, but it is not far behind. I was honestly surprised. I probably should not have been as we have similar performance with the older Nikon 28-85/3.5-4.5. 135mm | 1/640 | f/4.5 | ISO 200 Handling This is where I thought I would hate this lens, but turns out, the push-pull zoom is not that hard to get used to. In a way, I kind of like it. On the Df, I use the lens aperture ring to change the value instead of the control dial. 70mm | 1/400 | f/5.6 | ISO 200 There is even a macro mode at 35mm. Press the silver button on the side of the lens and twist to put it into macro mode. In this mode, it is manual focus only. There is no VR on this lens, so when shooting at the longer focal lengths, you'll want to make sure you keep your focal lengths in the realm of the hand holding rule. 85mm | 1/800 | f/4.2 | ISO 200 Weight/Size While a bit on the heavy side(it is an all metal constructed lens) it balanced well on the Nikon Df. It fits nicely into the side pocket of the Lowepro Transit 250 AW attached to the Df. 135mm | 1/200 | f/4.5 | ISO 200 Auto Focus Auto focus was acceptable for this lens. On the slower side, but I expected as much for a lens of this age and design. It focus' accurately and the slower AF is better than no AF at all. I'm not going to complain about it! 98mm | 1/100 | f/5.6 | ISO 280 Conclusion This is a dandy of an old lens and for the sub $100 price tag, it will be able to perform its job admirably and to our needs. I envision this being used when I want to run with the Df and only take one lens. 135mm | 1/200 | f/8 | ISO 200 135mm | 1/400 | f/8 | ISO 200

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