Mid-Range Zoom Comparison Part 1

: Nikon MF 35-70 f/3.5, AF 28-85 f/3.5-4.5, AFS 24-85 f/3.5-4.5

Is there an inexpensive option for a good, compact and sharp walk-around zoom, the kind that won’t break your back when you’re traveling? I decided to see how three mid-range Nikon zooms compare. For this review I choose these three: the manual focus 35-70 f/3.5, an old zoom from the ’80s. It’s solid metal and feels good because of it. It focuses and zooms smoothly. The AF 28-85 f/3.5 – 4.5 feels less well-made because of plastic parts, has more range on both ends but sacrifices the constant aperture. The newest of the three, the AFS 24-85 f/3.5 – 4.5 is the most compact and gets points for the widest angle of view and silent-wave autofocus. All three are out of production.

It’s probably not reasonable to expect any zoom in this class to compete with the pro-line zooms or corresponding prime lenses. But just for some perspective I also made test shots with three AF primes that fall into this zoom range — the 35 f/2, the 50 f/1.8 and the 85 f/1.8. I won’t bother with the faster apertures on these primes here since the focus of this is the slowish zooms.

In my 200mm lens comparison I mentioned that sharpness in the edges of the frame is important to me because of how I tend to compose pictures. That’s still true but for this comparison I’m looking at center sharpness — simply for the sake of convenience.

Here’s the scene — rocks along the bank of the Hudson. Not especially interesting but useful because of the debris.

This is the 35mm field of view. If you look closely at the center you’ll see a white object — it’s a soccer ball and that’s the area I picked for 100% crops.

In Part 1 of this comparison I’ll look at the wide end of the zoom range. All three lenses cover 35mm so that’s where I begin.

Here are the crops. I’m starting with f/4.5 because that’s the fastest aperture common to all the lenses at this zoom range:

Nikon AF-D 35mm f/2 @f/4.5

Nikon 35-70 f/3.5 @f/4 (@35mm)

Nikon AF 28-85 f/3.5 - 4.5 @f/4.5 (@35mm)

Nikon AFS 24-85 f/3.5 - 4.5 @f/4.5 (@35mm)

At f/4.5 the prime clearly outshines the zooms (the 35-70 shot is at f/4 because this lens does not half half-stop clicks). That’s no surprise. The 35-70 and the 28-85 seem evenly matched but what shocked me was the poor result with the 24-85. What’s going on here? Plenty of reviewers have touted this as a sleeper lens, sharp optics in a consumer package with AFS, a real deal. Maybe it gets better stopped down.

Let’s go right to f/8 because from f/4.5 to f/5.6 isn’t much of a jump: