Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I love it, but do I need it?, July 31, 2003
I got this lens as the companion for my FM3a. The lens was especially designed for the camera and they make a beautiful silver pair. As far as aesthetics goes, these two are a match made in heaven.So what's right about it? Lots. The lens is 45mm which is only 2mm longer than the 'true' normal of 35mm film which is 43mm. That means that it is more normal than your standard 50mm lens. It is stylish. The pancake design is sleek and tight. The silver matches the silver of the FM3a (will they make one in black to match the black FM3a?). The provided filter and inverted lens hood also add to the lens' attractiveness. It is also light, which makes it an easy choice to take along as your normal lens. The lens is very sharp throughout its focal range. It is a snap to focus the lens and the focus ring is solid and sure. The aperture blades are rounded so that the final aperture is almost a circle. If bokeh is your thing, this lens delivers awesome blur. There are drawbacks, of course. It would be nice if the lens was a little faster. The 50mm Nikkon lenses come in f1.4 and f1.8. They are more than twice as fast, allowing you to gather more light when you need it. The 45mm is restricted to f2.8, which is plenty fast for everyday shots, but in lower light a faster film may be necessary. I found the focusing ring and the aperture ring a little too close for comfort. Sometimes when trying to adjust the focus, I ended up adjusting the aperture instead. It's not a huge deal, as it's simply a twist of the ring to change it back, but it happens often enough that there may be a user-design issue that needs to be addressed (redesign the user? :-) The price. It is too high. That's the biggest complaint I have with this lens. With a 50mm f1.8 available for bargain basement prices, is it worth it to spend this much on a slower, only slightly more normal lens? That's up to you to decide. In all, I'm very happy with this lens. It is a treat to use and the picture quality is outstanding. I don't know if I would have bought it if I hadn't been swept up in the FM3a purchase, but I'm glad that I have it now. It is my primary lens and it hardly leaves the camera body. Of course it doesn't have auto-focus, so you may not find it terribly useful on your N80 or N75, but if you are getting the FM3a, take a look. You might find that the price is justifiable.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great lens!, February 23, 2006
Based on so many reviews praising this lens for its ability to render smooth out-of-focus elements (boke or "bokeh"), I picked one up with high hopes. Sadly, I was pretty disappointed when trying to shoot flowers and finding the background harsh and distracting, even moreso than my 50mm f/1.8D. I was told by a few people that my lens was likely a lemon, though after some investigation, I determined that much of the praise for the boke came from the rounded aperture blades, which produce a rounded out-of-focus highlight rather than a heptagonal one (as in the case of the 50mm Nikkors). Apart from this, the background smoothness is limited by the same limitation inherent in the 50mm primes, which is the correction for spherical aberration.
However, stopping the lens down to f/4 overcomes most of the harshness in out-of-focus blur you see wide-open.
I thought I would get that bit of information out in the open as the vague praise of its boke is a bit misleading (tessars aren't really known for their boke anyway). However, that is not all there is to the lens (we can't obsess only about what's not in focus!), so let me mention a few more things!
The 45/2.8P can produce amazing colors. I would say the color saturation, while natural, is the highest of any lens I've used. This is the main reason I like this lens so much. Further, contrast, tonal gradations, and shadow detail produce a very pleasing overall image.
When in focus, the 45/2.8P is very sharp, even at wide apertures. Some will say it's sharper than the 50s, some will say it's not as sharp as the 50s. I would say they're roughly comparable.
Distortion is very low, flare and ghosting are tame overall, and light falloff is noticeable at wide apertures but often contributes to the relatively undefined "look" people like so much from this lens.
The 45/2.8P is, I think, the smallest 35mm lens Nikon makes (or made, they are discontinued now). It is built better than the AFD 50s, its compactness and relatively good build quality inspires a sense of confidence. The manual focus ring feels very nice and is enjoyable to use, as long as you don't need AF.
On the whole, I think this is a fantastic lens, even though it's not the "boke lens" I was originally expecting. Many photographers will say that the best lens is the one you have with you, and the 45/2.8P, with its combination of compactness and superlative image quality, can be a hard lens to not have with you. Is it worth the price compared to the 50s? In truth, for many people probably not. The differences in image quality are seen in subtleties, which may not compensate for the relatively small aperture and lack of autofocus. However, although I am not made of money, I don't consider purchasing it a mistake at all!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Nikon's Best Lenses, July 1, 2005
I've heard a well-founded rumor that this 45mm f2.8 Nikkor lens is an exact carbon copy clone of the 45mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss Tessar which was made for the Contax/Yashica SLR camera system. Furthermore I had heard that this lens was made by Kyocera in the same factory which had made the Japanese Carl Zeiss lenses. I'm not sure if either rumor is true, but the 45mm f2.8 Nikkor lens is a classic Tessar design. Regardless of its origins, this lens is truly an exceptional performer and is a nice companion to a Nikon FM3A body if one wishes to do some discrete street photograhy with this camera or one of its predecessors in the Nikon FE/FM series. True, it is more expensive than the 50mm AF Nikkor lenses, but what you gain is better image quality and, I suspect, better mechanical quality too.
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