Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/01/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> ''The 85f2 never seemed to catch on with Nikon users. It was > intended to fill the shoes of the discontinued 85f1.8 which it really > couldn't do. ... The lens never changed in design or cosmetics during its > production run. It's one of the Nikon lenses that is not highly > regarded.'' I may be wrong about that, but to me this statement doesn't tell much about the optical properties of this lens. Your excerpt says the lens didn't "catch on with Nikon users". To me this means the *users* were not hot after this lense. No reason is given here. The old 1.8/85 was legendary and probably every lense that would have come after it couldn't fill "its shoes" in the users eyes (And there was the 1.4/85. The 2/85 was always the ugly little sister, the cheapy 85mm. Not a good ground for a great reputation). If the author refers to bad optical performance why didn't he say that? And "not highly regarded" tells only what came to the authors ears. Again this just tells that people didn't sell their souls for this lense. But was this actually a bad lense? And what was so bad about it? The author doesn't comment on that. I prefer to trust somone as David Ruether with whom I had some correspondence about the 2.8/180 AF EDIF about half a year ago. In his "subjective lense evaluations" (available over the net, I can look up the URLs if anyone is interested) he ranks all Nikon 85mm lenses (F-mount) at the same high level (with some comments on specifics as good close-range performance due to CRC in the 1.4 or a very good performance wide open in the 1.8). He states the number of samples he tested and includes the variation he found between the samples. His evaluations may be subjective and do not come from an MTF-Bench but they are carried out sorrowly with a good portion of scepticism about the own methods (he described this with his first impression of the 24-120mm Nikkor in rec.photo.equipment.35mm). In any case this is worth more than a "I don't kow but people talk dirty about this lense"-statement from a Nikon-Wiz. And after all my experience with this "not highly regarded" lens were very good, a bit better than with my former Minolta MD 100mm/2.5 which hasn't a bad reputation and a bit different than with the old 1.8/85 I now have. I can't tell which Nikkor I prefer. I am curious how the Nikon 85ers compare to the Leica 90mm lenses (we already discussed the 75mm Summilux and maybe we can bring this thread back onto leica-teritory this way)? Any experiences or direct comparisons? best regards Stefan - -- Stefan Kahlert my location: Bonn, Germany, Europe. uzs13b@uni-bonn.de