Recommend me a wide zoom that perfoms well stopped down

[techuser]

I currently use a modern 18-55 reversed for macros, it works well and I have nothing against it optically, but I have no control of the aperture, because of this I'm looking for something on a similar range that has aperture controls on the body.
Most of the time it's at 35mm and F11, so a 35mm prime isn't out of the question, I just think that stopped down the zooms might peform just as good.

What I used before was a Soligor 28-35, but it gives too much blue flare against bright lights
Looking at the Tokina 25-50 now, any recommendations?

[cooltouch]

Nothing that gets down to 18mm. That's APS-C stuff, and good luck finding any APS-C lenses that might still have an aperture lever. I dunno, do Nikon or Pentax APS-C lenses have aperture levers?

Since you mentioned that Tokina, two other zooms come to mind: the Tamron SP 24-48 and the Vivitar Series 1 24-48. They are both manual focus lenses and have aperture levers. I own one of each. They're good, solid performers.

[Lloydy]

I've got ...... Kiron 28-70 / 3.5-4.5, don't bother wit it, I haven't got a sharp picture from it yet.

Sigma Aspherical 24-70 / 3.5-5.6. Marginally better than the Kiron, but considering how awful the Kiron is.....the Sigma is not good at all.

Vivitar Series 1. VMC. 28-90 / 2.8-3.5. It's a large, one touch lens, a nice quality lens, and wonderful. There's no macro but close focus is 0.75 m. I love this lens, it's sharp and well behaved.

Vivitar Series 1. VMC. 24-48 / 3.8. A big fat lens with 77mm filter thread, an old school two ring zoom that is is superb. No macro but 2 feet close focus. Not common but worth looking for.

Or go up to 35mm zooms - such as the Tamron 17A 35-70 / 3.5, which is excellent, Tamron 22A 35-135 / 3.5-4.2 which is a great lens, so versatile.

Then there's the classic Minolta Rokkor Macro 35-70 / 3.5 which is without a doubt my favourite short zoom. It's often compared to a 'bag of primes' and I agree, it is that good.

There's a lot of 35-70ish zooms out there, it was a very popular range, so I expect there are other good short zooms, and a lot of mediocre ones.

[invisible]

[Teemō]

Minolta MD 24-50 F4 must be one of the best, but not the 24-35 F3.5 (although that is a good complement for the 35-70 F3.5, with the 55mm filter thread size).

[techuser]

Thanks! I'll look at reviews of those

[marcusBMG]

Check out Johan J. Ingles - Le Nobel's web site for lots of macro info, including a page on reversed lenses etc.

http://extreme-macro.co.uk/