>BTW, if
>you wanted to see a soft Nikon zoom, the old 43-86 was such a
>dog you could hear it barking in your camera bag. Even
>through the viewfinder, it approached sharp and then drifted
>out the other side, never having achieved sharp focus!
>Sometimes I wish I had another one to remind me of how far
>optics have come! May it rest in peace.

Amen to that. It was a dog. It brings to mind the 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 AI-s. Goofy distortion at all focal lengths, wild CA up to about f/6.3, horrible bokeh. It was like some botched assignment produced by a student in his first shop class. I liked the focal range, so I kept trying to use the thing. The results usualy gave me a headache.

Same goes for the original 24-120 VR. I kept leaning toward my monitor and backing away and leaning forward again thinking there was something wrong with my vision - trying to get displayed shots in focus. Went through three different copies over the years before I just gave up on the zoom range. When the new version was announced, I said a silent prayer, placed an advance order, got it, loved it and haven't looked back. For travel and general purpose street photography, the new 24-120 VRII f/4 replaced my 24-70 f/2.8 on my D700 and now the lens is permanently mounted on my D800.

I could hope for an f/4 version of the 16-85 VR mounted on my D7000 but the lens mavens at Nikon seem to be getting ready to release a reboot of the 18-35 next?!? Like there are some significant number of Nikon owners pining for an updated 18-35?? Nikon must know what they're doing, but with a couple of glaring gaps in the DX lineup and some existing (and popular) FX lenses in desperate need of updates (80-400 VR, a standard f/2.8 zoom with VR), the announcement of the 18-35 reboot seems curious to me. I just think that between the 10-24 and the 12-24, the wide angle zoom is currently extremely well covered for DX, and that FX is extremely well covered by the 16-35 f/4, and that the old 18-35 was/is not bad at all. So why bother with a new version. Hopefully, Nikon will be vindicated quickly because a bunch of Nikonians will chime in on this thread to tell me that a serious number of them have been waiting very patiently for a better 18-35.

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Howard Carson, Managing Editor
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