Leica 135mm F2.8 Elmarit 1-cam
Despite it's age, this lens shows good sharpness from wild open (though most 135/2.8 do). What catches my attention first is the very nice bokeh, considering it's just a f2.8 lens. It would be interesting to compare it to Nikon's 135/2.8, but I've sold mine long time ago. The original filter comes with it adds quite a bit chance of flare, it's better to remove it if shooting with DSLR. (F mount converted and tested on D3.) By the way, 1-cam version is really not for mount conversion, you have to machine the cam off the lens. I'm only buying to deliberately have all German made Leica, which plays its part in the hype about Leica. What I have found out so far just don't quite support the hype though.
11-JAN-2007
Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135mm F3.5
An East Germany (M42 screw mount, also known as Pentax universal mount) lens with extremely good bokeh. The Sonnar design makes it sharp even at wide open and the sharpness hardly improve when stopped sown. The use of M42 lenses on Nikon, however, bears penalty. You can not focus to infinity: with 135mm lens, 6 meters is as far as you can focus without a correction lens in the lens mount adapter. Adapter with lens often degrades the image a little bit. It's all metal construction with built-in hood, weighs 430g. The feel of its focus and aperture ring indeed gives you the pleasure of manual focusing. There are only 4 elements in this lens but you still need to be careful with flare.
Nikon AF 70-210mm F4
A rare old lens that was only in production for a brief period of time, and so far it produces satisfactory results. The filter thread rotates as you focus and the lens extends around 2 centimeters, which is not much; the focus ring is narrow and at the front end of the lens- basically it's part of the front element's casing- so it's not good for MF even though it's not loose, AF is not fast- at lest not on a D70s. However, the zoom ring is large and well built, plus the length of the lens remains unchanged throughout the entire focus length. In terms of performance, it's sharp from f5.6 at 210mm and sharp with even faster aperture at shorter focus length. This lens weighs 760g and uses metal HN-24 hood. I'm quite happy with this lens, actually.
Nikon AI 300mm F4.5
This one so far gives okay sharpness and contrast from f5.6 in my opinion; then again, I don't have much experience with telephoto lenses. The lack of ED glass in this model results in visible chromatic aberration (on D200) at high contrast edges but not very serious. The built-in hood is very nice; the focus ring is smooth but kind of stiff on my copy. It weighs around 1200g.
Sigma AF 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO DG MACRO
A lens that gives good sharpness within the 300-dollar price range. The problems are: you need to stopped down to at least to f8 in order to gain good sharpness and it's soft beyond 200mm, the filter thread turns when focusing (which means you'd better switch to MF when adding filter or hood otherwise you might damage the AF motor), there's no zoom lock and the zoom does creep, and finally I don't like the Sigma color at all. So basically it's a lens for sunny days. The contrast of this lens is noticeable lower than my Nikon lenses and it does flare, so watch out for it. AF is very slow. One of my friends used to have another copy and he told me that the paint with shiny spot does come off. Anyway, it's still a good performer in its price range when I bought it (otherwise I'd have bought something else); now I suppose the new Nikon 55-200mm DX is not too bad but lacks the 300mm end. This lens weighs 550g.
Nikon AF-S 70-300mm F4.5-5.6G VR
Very nice on full frame camera, VR works very well, below 200mm shutter speed like 1/15s is easy to achieve without blur. The lens pouch and the rubber seal at lens mount are great.
Reflex-Nikkor 500mm F8
The serious lacking of range on full frame camera lead me to this lens (after coming back from Yellowstone), considering the cost, size and weight, this is perfect for me. It's not as sharp and as contrasty as refractive optics, but it still captures lots of detail. The key thing about using this lens is to keep the shot steady, and use high ISO to achieve high enough shutter speed. Another interesting thing to know is Nikon has an earlier version of 500mm mirror lens, which is 500mm F5 (3kg and 38.4cm long) in non AI mount- it's also very rare. This one is just 840 g and 10.9 cm long.
