In 2012 a friend gave me his Nikon N65, the first auto-everything SLR I ever owned. I was suspicious of all of that automation at the time (read my review here), but after awhile I came to like it and have owned and enjoyed a number of similar cameras.
The N65 came with a couple of lenses, including a 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6G AF Nikkor. Nikon sold those by the bajillion, often mated to an SLR body in a kit.
To my surprise, I came to really like that 28-80 and I used it a lot on the one Nikon AF body I kept, the N90s (review here). It also worked fabulously on the Nikon Df DSLR I bought this year! Here’s a sample photo from that combo:
This lens is plenty sharp, albeit with some barrel distortion at the wide end. Every now and then I catch a little light vignetting. But Photoshop can correct all of that.
This lens’s one flaw is its build quality. Its body and mount are plastic; the lens weighs next to nothing. Not long ago I did something stupid: I picked up a camera this lens was mounted to by the lens itself. The focus ring twisted a little, something inside went crack, and the lens would no longer focus. It had seized up hard.
Fortunately, replacements are inexpensive on the used market. If you trust the wild west of eBay, you can get them for 20 bucks, sometimes with an SLR body attached!
I wanted one with a warranty in case something was wrong, so I shopped UsedPhotoPro. There I found the similar 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6D AF Nikkor lens, for just 30 bucks shipped. D lenses all have aperture rings, where G lenses do not. That means I can use this lens on a wider range of Nikon bodies! The D version seems to be a little better built than the G version, too.
But my lesson is learned: no more picking up a camera by its lens!
