Help me pick out a lens for the Nikon D80

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:55:11 GMT, Jürgen Exner wrote:

As far as I know you are the only person I have ever heard of that has
said that the 60mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor does not perform well.

Thank you. I truely appreciate this clarification.

I readily admit that I don't own this lens. However I have been looking for
a macro lens for myself recently and the review at
http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showp...duct/98/cat/12 for the
lens isn't all that great.

Not much information was provided as to how slrgear tested this
lens. Aperture and focal length (fixed at 60mm) was displayed in
interactive charts, but I didn't find any mention of the lens to
subject distance that was used for the tests. Were the distance the
same as was used in the tests for the 50mm f/1.4 and f/1.8 lenses?
Was it 6 inches? 10 feet? 20 meters? BTW, if you play with the
interactive chart, you'll see that almost all of the terrible blur
is gone by the time the lens is closed down one stop. Unfortunately,
the lens to subject distance wasn't shown, and it's an important
factor.

According to http://www.donferrario.com/ruether/slemn.html (David
Ruether's SUBJECTIVE Lens Evaluations) the 60mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor
rated 3.5 at infinity and 5.2 at close distances, with the comment
that at infinity the poor performance wide open eventually became
excellent when closed down. Not surprising, since the Micro lenses
are really designed to be at their best at close distances. These
ratings ("subjective lens evaluation numbers") are described as:

3 -- fair image quality, perhaps good at one or two stops
4 -- good to excellent image quality at most normally used stops,
a professional-level lens, but with some limitations (this level,
with many fractional gradations, includes most Nikkors)
5 -- excellent image quality at all stops, with only minor limitations

So the lens had excellent performance at all stops at close
distances, and probably low quality wide open at infinity, but fair
to good performance at infinity when closed down. Slrgear's review
is incomplete and may well be misleading. Ruether also shows how
many lenses were used for the evaluations, which can range from 1 to
many. For the 60mm Micro two lenses were tested. Slrgear doesn't
provide this information, so the number of lenses tested is probably
one, which doesn't allow the reviewer to account for any sample
variation.

Interestingly, there are two different 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor
lenses (an AF and a MF version) and Slgear prefers one of these to
the 60mm lens, but doesn't indicate which of the two was compared.
Ruether's ratings for both of these lenses (5 samples) were 4.4 and
4.8 at close distances, so according to his evaluations, the 60mm
lenses outperformed the 105mm lenses at close distances. At
infinity, the 105mm lenses outperformed the 60mm Micros, but if the
"Micro" designation means anything, their purpose in life is to be
used close up, not at infinity.

Also, there wasn't any mention that the 105mm lens underwent the
same tests. Just that the reviewer used one extensively on his own
D70 and in his opinion the 60mm lens didn't do as well wide open.
This sort of anecdotal comparison, while useful or interesting in
other types of reviews, isn't what belongs in what purports to be a
scientifically performed set of lens measurements and evaluations.
One would also like to see the charts for the 105mm Micro Nikkor,
perhaps some measure of flatness of field, and the aforementioned
lens to subject test distances.

Although it would require more work, the lenses would ideally also
be tested at several standard distances, allowing the results to be
compared with "standard" 50mm non-Micro lenses that undergo similar
tests.