Pixiq

I am always amazed when I see those "what's in the camera bag?" bits in photographic articles. Why? Well, other people's lens choices seem so logical; a series of carefully chosen zooms from ultra-wide to long telephoto with overlap regions to cover any eventuality and maybe a few specialist items thrown in (a macro, PC lenses ...etc). 

Much of my stuff has been collected piecemeal and for particular purposes, so I end up with a whole bunch of lenses, some of which might be deemed esoteric for ordinary use, better suiting the specialist niches in which I operate a lot of the time.

A couple of years ago it became glaringly obvious I needed a sort of 'dogsbody lens' that I could utilise for a lot of general travel and brochure-cum-magazine work here in Italy (it pays some bills!). The inevitable data search ensued and the 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX NIKKOR entered the scene.

One of the first items to appear on Pixiq was a thread that discussed best choice of a general lens: I thought about it then wrote nothing. Yesterday, with a kind of 'end of year' check through my Lightroom 3 catalogue I went to the selection by metadata and noticed a figure of several thousand images shot with this zoom over the past year alone. Yep, I love Lightroom when a single click can bring up a screen full of all those images: I was struck by the sheer variety of instances when I had used it.

Always beware the hyper criticism

There is plenty out there on the Internet with details to satisfy the nerd within us which is why, when I write about lenses, I try to consider the 'real world' use always after a long period of general deployment. A tendency with some reviews is to pick on things that, to the uninitiated, might seem important but in practice really do not matter a fig. This is particularly the case with zoom lenses which, in design, are a huge and rather amazing opto-mechanical compromise.

It all gets a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears with the chairs at the end belonging to Baby Bear and Daddy Bear being too soft and too hard respectively. But then, in the middle, Mummy Bear's chair is just right. Something has to go in the design of any zoom lens and it usually happens at the extreme ends of the performance range. The more ambitious the zoom the more the compromise - a 28-200 mm zoom (and now 55 - 300mm VR) is a fantastic device for a whole load of things but if you want impressive close focus at the wide end and wide aperture telephoto at the long end then you might need to carry other lenses in your gadget bag. 

You use what you have, though and in the past couple of years my son Rhodri has spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia and then in South America where he took some stunning images - travelling light with an approx.  7X zoom ( 24 -200mm) and a diffused, off-camera flash.

This Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX NIKKOR zoom appealed to me because it offered 16mm focal length at the wide end - the equivalent of 24mm on 35mm film or FX. Ever since I began photography (with whatever format I have used) I have always done a great deal with lenses in the 24 to 28 mm range (and their equivalents in 6x4.5cm and 6x7cm) with something in the bag (currently a 15mm diagonal fisheye and/or 10-20mm zoom) for occasional use away from the 'norm'.

Here are the manufacturer's claims for the lens: 

• Powerful 5.3x zoom with wide 16-85mm focal range (35mm equivalent: 24 to 127.5mm), perfect for everything from portraits to interiors, architecture and landscapes. 
• Second-generation Vibration Reduction (VR II) stabilization system enables more flexible hand-held shooting and lets you use shutter speeds that are up to 4 times slower. 
• Exceptionally high optical performance: designed specifically for use with Nikon DX format digital SLR sensors. 
• Closest-focusing distance: 0.38m. 
• ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass and Aspherical lens elements ensure high resolution and contrast while minimizing spherical aberration, astigmatism and other forms of distortion. 
• SWM (Silent Wave Motor) for fast, whisper-quiet autofocus. 
• Nikon Super Integrated Coating greatly reduces ghosting and flare and ensures outstanding color reproduction. 
• Compatible with 67mm filter attachments.

 And my personal experience in use:

• Size and  Build: Physically the lens is small, robust and very well-balanced on a D300 body. It is supremely versatile.
• Autofocus: is precise and speedy and on manual it has a good 'conventional lens weighting' that I like. 
• Vibration Reduction it comes complete with VRII image stabilisation - a feature which at first seemed interesting but was never an important selling point for me. My ideas have changed for when I use this for ambient light photos in interiors they are noticeably sharper when this is switched on. It really works -- arguably for those claimed 4 extra stops.
• Optical Performance. Razor-sharp it truly is over the zoom range.

A mild digression

It always intrigues me when people talk about sharpness (the subject of one of my coming posts) for it is an impression created by a combination of things from the resolving power of the lens to its contrast and the way the image is created in the camera's microprocessors. Some of you out there might regularly expect to produce giant images from your digital files - great, may the fee you get be commensurate with the size. Most of the time, unless it's for exhibitions, mine get blown up to double spread A4 at most.

Given reasonable care taken in the photographic process, an awful lot of lenses can give great quality for this. I have been delighted with what this impressive Nikon zoom can do. Unless you are using top of the range zooms such as Nikon 12-24mm or Canon 16-35mm and the Sigma 10-20mm with a zoom range of two times or thereabouts you will get some deterioration when the lens is wide open particularly at the short focus end. But it is the kind of thing you will only notice if you go out of your way to get images that challenge the lens. Same with distortion (both barrel and pincushion) -- you'll pick it up at the edges of frames and may be at the centre when standing square on to a brick wall. But these days with the degree of lens correction available in Photoshop and Lightroom it is easily corrected if it bothers you.

Pricing

It is not the cheapest of 'general purpose' wide to moderate zooms (see dealers in your country for the best offers) but those extra few millimetres make a difference with 16mm focal length rather than the 'standard' 18mm at the wide end. It is not generous with aperture (f/3.5-5.6) but than I very seldom shoot wide aperture with wide-angle lenses so, for me, it is not a problem. And now, with a new generation of sensors, the performance at ISO 400-800 is arguably indistinguishable from that at ISO 200 and so it matters less and less.

I can squeeze better 'macro' performance out of this lens with a supplementary lens added at the front. I have experimented with a 12mm extension tube, which works well (even if very close at the 16mm end): it was Kenko rather than Nikon. You have heard this gripe before -- please wake-up Nikon and give your 'followers' proper electronically coupled extension tubes. You'd probably sell large numbers, even at the undoubtably extravagant price they would cost! I cannot use a x1.4 converter because the lens rear element is too close to the end of the mount.

Included below are the lens parameters:

• Focal length: 16-85mm
• Maximum aperture:  f/3.5-5.6
• Minimum aperture:  f/22-36
• Lens construction:  17 elements in 11 groups (with two ED glass elements, three aspherical lenses)
• Picture angle: 83° - 18°50’
• Closest focus distance: 0.38 m/1.3 ft. (throughout the entire zoom range)
• Maximum reproduction ratio: 1/4.6
• No. of diaphragm blades: 7 (rounded)
• Filter/attachment size: 67mm
• Diameter x length (extension from lens mount) Approx. 72 x 85mm/2.8 x 3.4 in.
• Weight Approx. 485 g/17.1 oz

CONCLUSION ?

This is  a very useful, sharp and reliable optic that I purchased to use a lot for general stuff and then found, almost unnoticed until yesterday, that I seem to have left it on the camera for an awful lot more. You can get a bit lazy with a lens like this and an pop-up flash!

NB For a personal take on some other lenses, based on extensive field use see my earlier Pixiq posts:

NIKON 

• A macro classic: the 105mm f/2.8 AF-S VR Micro Nikkor Pt 1
• A macro classic: the 105mm f/2.8 AF-S VR Micro Nikkor Pt 2

SIGMA

• Sigma's 10mm f2.8 and 15mm f2.8 rectangular fisheyes
• A macro lens for all seasons: the Sigma 150mm f2.8 EX DG IF HSM part 1
• A macro lens for all seasons: the Sigma 150mm f2.8 EX DG IF HSM part 2