Nikkor 28/2 Ai, not as Good as Zeiss, But...

[Arninetyes]

I was searching for info on the forum about the Nikkor 28/2.8 Ais. I stumbled on this old thread comparing a Zeiss 28/2.8 Distagon to a Nikkor 28/2 Ai. In short, the Nikkor looked horrible. Contrast was much lower and resolution was much worse than the Zeiss, especially in the corners. The conclusion drawn by most was the Zeiss was vastly superior--in fact, several people were surprised at how bad the Nikkor was.

I've played with enough Zeiss lenses to know that most are better than most Nikkors. However, when I looked at the corner performance of the 28/2, it reminded me of a problem I've had with a few old wide-angle lenses. That is, when old, and dust, haze, and crud builds up on internal surfaces, contrast and clarity suffer, especially on edges and corners.

Now, I'm not saying that my 28/2 Ai is superior to a 28/2.8 Distagon, because it isn't. However, the corners are not as fuzzy and washed out as they were in the comparison.

There are a few possibilities: 1) perhaps Orio had a bad copy. While Nikon used to have high quality standards, their production tolerances have never been as tight as Zeiss' standards; or, 2) perhaps it suffered from serious internal crud; or, 3) perhaps both. I do know that my 20/3.5 UD and 25-50/4 Ais were both terrible before I had them CLA'd--both were so bad I couldn't get images with any kind of decent clarity no matter how hard I tried. Now both are as sharp as their optics will allow--not Zeiss sharp, but much improved.

Here is an example of a shot with my 28/2 Ai. The top picture is the full shot, reduced to 800px wide, no other processing. The following two are 100% crops of the upper right and lower right corners. No, not Zeiss sharp, but much, much better than the washed out, smeared looking corners from the referenced threads.

Anyway, just a thought.

[bonc]

I posted this before (see below).

Yes the Nikkor 28/2 samples from Orio are obviously bad. The below samples I give are taken by f/5.6 and I've never seen such smeared corners with my 28/2.

According to Bjorn this lens is considered as excellent.

[fotomachi]

I use the Nikon 28mm f/2 quite often for night photography (D700), especially for star trails.
It's a very good lens, already biting sharp at f/4, which usually is the aperture setting I use for star trail photography. But corner performance is not up to modern levels though.