My present Nikon Equipment

  

The F100 is truly a professional caliber camera that produces fine results, resists the elements well, and complements the F5 so well that F5 users may find they use their F100 more often than not. A few of the highlights:

  • The F100 is virtually an F5 at a fraction of the cost. The F5 features you give up simply aren’t important in the hands of a competent photographer. If you require mirror lock-up, removable 100% prisms, or 8 fps, be prepared to pay an extra US$700-800 for those features.
  • Many F5 foibles have been banished or reduced with the F100. Gone is the extra LCD (and its power consumption). Safeguards like the lock on the power switch, the kludgey rewind procedure, and the two-step back opening procedure have been banished without really compromising the handling. The multiple exposure control has disappeared and been put where it should have been in the first place, on the frame advance control.
  • A bracketing system that is a joy to use, and more flexible than the F5’s.


Nikon F100 camera

The AF Nikkor 50/1.4 is not a spectacular but nonetheless a very important completion of my equipment.  It is very compact and lightweight. 


50mm F 1.4

The 85mm f1.8D AF-D has extreme sharpness and contrast and is one of Nikon's finest lens.  The f1.8 aperture speed helps in indoor low-light situations and it is a compact, light lens that fits well in any camera bag or pouch

  • It is sharp at every aperture, and especially at f/1.8.

  • AF speed is super fast on the F100 and F5.


85mm F1.8

A 35-70mm zoom lens is a very embarrassing zoom range now.

For 35-70mm zoom lens to be able to sell well, price could the the first priority, next is features. So, most SLRs sold now are with a 35-70mm zoom lens. Feature-wise, there will not be any difference between a f2.8 and a f3.3/4.5 zoom because 1st time buyer unlikely will understand the difference anyway.

Thus, a 35-70mm f2.8 is definitely not aiming for those within that pool. It is for a photographer who knows the difference, and they are demanding features, and most of all, quality. And as far as the latter is concerned, this lens delivers!

  


35-70mm F2.8
The optical quality of the AF 180 is outstanding. It delivers incredibly sharp and contrasty images by f/4 onwards. At f/2.8 center sharpness is very good, but corners exhibit a slightly lower quality. Wide open, a scarcely visible (on uniform backgrounds) light fall-off is present, which disappears at f/4. Distortion too is very well corrected. 

In conclusion, this lens allows to carry very high optical quality in a small package and outperforms the AF ED 80-200/2.8 at the long end as far as distortion, vignetting and sharpness at wide apertures are concerned.

THIRD PARTY Opinion:
"....I think both the Olympus 180/2.8 and the Nikon 180/2.8 were inspired by the Zeiss Sonnar 180/2.8, which was introduced for the 1936 Olympics in Germany. The Nikon and Olympus lenses are, technically, Sonnar-like designs, with a positive group at the front, a negative group in the middle, and a weak positive element at the back. The Olympus is more obviously a Sonnar type; Nikon has taken the design and modified it more substantially. And the Nikon has *far* better correction of chromatic aberration!..."

  


180mm F2.8