My 17-55mm f2.8G review

Mr Fartleberry said:

An old old expensive lense. Nikon milking amortization out of it to the max. Since it was designed for Kodachrome slides I have noticed a lot of pro complaints regarding corner sharpness.

A dog whose time to be put down was years ago. But I hear a Leica M3 or Hasselblad 500C takes excellent pictures.

Write me a victim's impact statement as to why this optic doesn't need to be updated and improved.

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Do you do anything but complain about Nikon equipment?

Mr Fartleberry said:

Anyone using the ancient 16mm on the D800 at 36MP? Nikon refuse to update this 20 year old lense and I'd like to know how it performs on digital.

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Mr Fartleberry said:

I've had the D200 grip (poor design + spontaneously broken battery latches) and the D300 grip (much better). But I won't pay the $$ for the obscenely priced D800 grip. That's the end of it. I can't keep shelling out endless money every few years for something that has zero resale value and is obsolete every camera generation. Nikon are really good at pushing people to the edge. Not enough of them call it quits though.

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Mr Fartleberry said:

Good for Canon. Something Nikon never did with the 4 year old D700.

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Mr Fartleberry said:

Love the people promoting the idea that Nikon are doing us a favour bringing out super fast super expensive moderate wide angles. 3 in a row now. Or the 14-24. Much of the market is so willing to pay over 2 grand for these large expensive lenses so I guess that's where their designers and marketing are told to go for sales.

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Mr Fartleberry said:

I'm very concerned with the "full deposit" extortion being applied by Canadian camera stores now. This just didn't happen prior to the D800.

If Nikon hadn't dragged it's feet so long upgrading the D700 we wouldn't be where we are today.

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well, after buying a Tamron 17-50, returning it for a better one & still not being 100% happy with it i bought a brand new 17-55 Nikkor.

unfortunately all's not well with this lens either. i've used it twice now & i'm not happy with what i'm getting. i used it as a walkaround lens in Bruges last weekend & shot RAW. after going through the shots afterwards i found most were just plain soft &or had missed focus. these were taken with a variety of apertures & shutterspeeds so there was no common theme. then this weekend i used it again for a trophy presentation at an RC race. lost of reasonably close people shots etc just like the so called DX wedding lens is supposed to exel at. yuk. everybody looked soft with no detail at all. its not my body as everything i took with the 70-200VR2 was perfect & its always good with either of my primes or 10.5 fisheye (its a D2Xs) to save time & as the pics aren't massively important i shot all the race stuff as jpeg. the 70-200 shots were perfect sooc but the 17-55 shots were awful. some of them responded well to some sharpening in either LR or CS but for over £1000 i expect at least usable (for web viewing at minimum) from this lens.

i have called the shop who say they want to test it but if they say its OK & i know it isn't would i be able to deal direct with Nikon in the UK to get this sorted?

You might try autofocus adjustment on the body. Like you, I was a bit disappointed initially but it was "front focussing" that was sorted out by adjustment.

Nevertheless, it needed more adjustment for this lens than any other I own (Nikon or third party) which is a bit surprising.

My "travel light" combination is the 17-55 plus Tokina 50-135 F2.8 - another great lens.

(Sorry - I've just seen that you have a D2X that won't allow this). It sounds as if you have a bad sample - hope the shop agrees. As you say, a £1000 lens should be impeccable.

Let's know how you get on.

--
John Gruffydd, Mold, Wales, UK

i will. hopefully i'll be able to get back over there at the weekend

i don't want my money back or anything like that (even if in my opinion the lens isn't fit for purpose) i just want it to be as awesome as i know it should be

sh0wtime said:

i have called the shop who say they want to test it but if they say its OK & i know it isn't would i be able to deal direct with Nikon in the UK to get this sorted?

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I suggest doing a controlled test to figure out where the issue is. If you don't find anything, perhaps you just need to adjust to the lens. If you do find something, it will definitely help Nikon to determine what they need to adjust.

Shoot a flat target at various focal lengths and apertures using a tripod and preferably a cable release. If you have Live View, use contrast detect focusing as a baseline for sharpness. Your PDAF shots should be fairly close if not exactly the same sharpness as CDAF. If not, your lens needs work.

I have the same lens and it's been great right out of the box. No sharpness complaints at any aperture and the focus speed is plenty fast.