Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF Lens
- Min Aperture: f/36
- Camera Format: Digital SLR
- Focus Type: Autofocus
- Lens Max Aperture: f/3.5-f/4.5
- Focal Length: 18mm - 70mm
- Lens Type: Zoom Lens
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Superb performer for a ridiculously low price
Pros
Sharp, useful zoom range, great color rendition, ridiculously cheap
Cons
Vignettes at 18 mm, variable aperture, a bit slow (aperture-wise)
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Even for twice the price, the lens would still be incredibly good value for the money.
Background information
This lens was developed to be bundled together with the Nikon D70, hence the informal name "the D70 kit lens". When I bought my D70, the price difference between purchasing the D70 kit together with the bundled lens and the D70 body only was so slight, that there was hardly any point in not going for the kit.
Normally a bundled lens is more or less a substitute for a lens cap with pretty lousy optical performance and build quality, but in this case Nikon chose to include a surprisingly good lens. The specs of the lens should already be a sign of that this is not just your average bundled product soon to be replaced by something better: 15 elements, of which 3 are ED-glass for color aberration control, Nikon's Silent Wave Motor (SWM) for near instant and silent focusing and with a maximum aperture of f/3.5-4.5, which while not being quite enough for really low light shooting is still fairly bright.
The lens
The zoom range is incredibly useful with the D70 and other digital cameras with a 1.5x crop factor - it is the equivalent of a 27-105 mm zoom lens in the full-frame world. The "kit lens" that came with the Nikon D100 was a much less usable 24-85, which on the camera turns to a rather mediocre 36-127 zoom lens.
The 18-70 is a DX-design, which means that it is optimized to work with cameras using the smaller "APS-sized" sensors, and not with full-frame cameras. You could of course put the lens on your F5 as well, but it would only give a circular image with massive vignetting around the edges of the frame.
In spite of the internal focusing motor and the 15 elements, the lens is quite a simple and lightweight unit that sits perfectly on the D70. The lens housing is of course made of plastic although the lens mount is metal. The lens extends during zooming and becomes a little more than an inch longer when zoomed in fully to 70 mm. Like with all AF-S lenses, the autofocus can at all times be overridden manually by grabbing and turning the focus ring on the lens barrel. The zooming and manual focus rings turn smoothly and with a minimum of resistance.
The lens barrel has the usual crinkle finish although the zoom scale is only printed on and not engraved like on the more expensive lenses. The golden ring present on Nikon's professional grade lenses is lacking from the front of the barrel. The filter thread size is 67 mm, which is quite an odd size.
The lens comes with a plastic flower lens shade and a soft carrying pouch, which I can't really find any practical use for. The build quality is decent, but it is pretty obvious that the lens is designed to be used by amateurs taking extreme care of their equipment and not by professionals banging and tossing the lenses around.
Optical performance
Of course it all boils down to this point: how does the lens measure up for normal use? The answer is, it certainly does surprisingly well.
On the D70, sharpness is truly excellent. Throughout the entire zoom range, the lens provides more sharpness and detail than the camera can capture. The only really negative aspect with the optical performance of the lens is its fairly pronounced vignetting (darkening around the corners). This is however easily taken care of in Nikon Capture as long as you are shooting in RAW-format (and why wouldn't you).
Some slight chromatic aberrations are present near the edges of the frames, but to a much lesser degree than one would expect. Again, this clears up perfectly with Nikon Capture. Distortion is clearly present in the images, especially some barrel distortion at the 18 mm range, but that is hardly something I will lose any sleep over. Shooters of architecture may find it bothering though.
Some lens comparisons
Having a couple hours to spend, I thought I would try to do some rather unscientific comparisons with some of my lenses to see how the 18-70 DX measures up against the competition with real life subjects (trees and flowers in my backyard and the houses visible from my window).
I started off by comparing the lens to the (now obsolete) Nikon 24-85G, these two lenses being quite similar in both build quality, zoom range and brightness. Through the entire zoom range where the two lenses overlap, the 18-70 DX wins with a slightly sharper image and much less chromatic aberrations. Being a full-frame lens, the 24-85G is definitely sharper near the edges of the frame, where the 18-70 DX begins to lose some coherence. But the difference in color rendition was quite striking, with the 18-70 DX rendering the images with much warmer and more natural colors while the 24-85G introduced a rather unnatural bluish tinge. I was actually surprised to find this, as I expected the two lenses to be fairly equal.
Next I compared the 18-70 DX with the 50 mm 1.8D prime. As expected, the prime clearly wins on sharpness throughout the entire aperture range. Well, no surprise.
I then compared the lens to its closest relative, the big brother 17-55 DX. I must admit, that I expected a much more pronounced difference, but they were in fact rather similar in performance at first glance, the 18-70 DX being only slightly inferior. Of course by opening up the aperture, the two lenses quickly separated in performance, the 17-55 DX maintaining the same sharpness all over its range, while the 18-70 DX was only able to maintain its sharpness in the center of the frame with a successive drop in sharpness, contrast and coherence near the edges of the frame. Well, given the difference in price, that was pretty expected!
The next comparison was with my 12-24 DX to check the wide angle performance. To my utter surprise, the 18-70 DX was noticeably sharper at 18 mm than the 12-24 lens at both f/4 and up to f/8. At 24 mm, the 18-70 DX was equally sharp as the 12-24 DX at both f/4 and f/8. Hardly believing my results, I checked the lenses over and over again, and came to the same conclusion - the 18-70 DX is equally sharp or in some cases even sharper than the 12-24 DX in the 18-24 mm range! That was an amazing discovery, considering that all over the Internet, people are bashing the 18-70 DX for its bad wide angle performance. Either I have a stellar copy of the lens or Nikon did something to the later batches of the lens - the bottom line is that I am totally pleased with the wide angle performance of my 18-70 DX.
By the way, I found out that the 18-70 DX creates a noticeably darker image than the 12-24 DX at the same settings. The lens in fact sometimes even borders to underexposing the images and needs some EV boost. Strange, and I have no explanation to why this happens. I wonder whether or not the physical aperture in fact is smaller than the specification.
Conclusion
The 18-70 DX is an absolute bargain. Don't take my word for it (or anybody else's for that matter), but try to do some shooting with it - you will not be disappointed!
Given the ridiculously low price of the unit, one would not expect a great performer, but the fact is that even for twice the price, the lens would still be incredibly good value for the money. As it is now, it is simply one of the best deals you can get your hands on.
This lens was developed to be bundled together with the Nikon D70, hence the informal name "the D70 kit lens". When I bought my D70, the price difference between purchasing the D70 kit together with the bundled lens and the D70 body only was so slight, that there was hardly any point in not going for the kit.
Normally a bundled lens is more or less a substitute for a lens cap with pretty lousy optical performance and build quality, but in this case Nikon chose to include a surprisingly good lens. The specs of the lens should already be a sign of that this is not just your average bundled product soon to be replaced by something better: 15 elements, of which 3 are ED-glass for color aberration control, Nikon's Silent Wave Motor (SWM) for near instant and silent focusing and with a maximum aperture of f/3.5-4.5, which while not being quite enough for really low light shooting is still fairly bright.
The lens
The zoom range is incredibly useful with the D70 and other digital cameras with a 1.5x crop factor - it is the equivalent of a 27-105 mm zoom lens in the full-frame world. The "kit lens" that came with the Nikon D100 was a much less usable 24-85, which on the camera turns to a rather mediocre 36-127 zoom lens.
The 18-70 is a DX-design, which means that it is optimized to work with cameras using the smaller "APS-sized" sensors, and not with full-frame cameras. You could of course put the lens on your F5 as well, but it would only give a circular image with massive vignetting around the edges of the frame.
In spite of the internal focusing motor and the 15 elements, the lens is quite a simple and lightweight unit that sits perfectly on the D70. The lens housing is of course made of plastic although the lens mount is metal. The lens extends during zooming and becomes a little more than an inch longer when zoomed in fully to 70 mm. Like with all AF-S lenses, the autofocus can at all times be overridden manually by grabbing and turning the focus ring on the lens barrel. The zooming and manual focus rings turn smoothly and with a minimum of resistance.
The lens barrel has the usual crinkle finish although the zoom scale is only printed on and not engraved like on the more expensive lenses. The golden ring present on Nikon's professional grade lenses is lacking from the front of the barrel. The filter thread size is 67 mm, which is quite an odd size.
The lens comes with a plastic flower lens shade and a soft carrying pouch, which I can't really find any practical use for. The build quality is decent, but it is pretty obvious that the lens is designed to be used by amateurs taking extreme care of their equipment and not by professionals banging and tossing the lenses around.
Optical performance
Of course it all boils down to this point: how does the lens measure up for normal use? The answer is, it certainly does surprisingly well.
On the D70, sharpness is truly excellent. Throughout the entire zoom range, the lens provides more sharpness and detail than the camera can capture. The only really negative aspect with the optical performance of the lens is its fairly pronounced vignetting (darkening around the corners). This is however easily taken care of in Nikon Capture as long as you are shooting in RAW-format (and why wouldn't you).
Some slight chromatic aberrations are present near the edges of the frames, but to a much lesser degree than one would expect. Again, this clears up perfectly with Nikon Capture. Distortion is clearly present in the images, especially some barrel distortion at the 18 mm range, but that is hardly something I will lose any sleep over. Shooters of architecture may find it bothering though.
Some lens comparisons
Having a couple hours to spend, I thought I would try to do some rather unscientific comparisons with some of my lenses to see how the 18-70 DX measures up against the competition with real life subjects (trees and flowers in my backyard and the houses visible from my window).
I started off by comparing the lens to the (now obsolete) Nikon 24-85G, these two lenses being quite similar in both build quality, zoom range and brightness. Through the entire zoom range where the two lenses overlap, the 18-70 DX wins with a slightly sharper image and much less chromatic aberrations. Being a full-frame lens, the 24-85G is definitely sharper near the edges of the frame, where the 18-70 DX begins to lose some coherence. But the difference in color rendition was quite striking, with the 18-70 DX rendering the images with much warmer and more natural colors while the 24-85G introduced a rather unnatural bluish tinge. I was actually surprised to find this, as I expected the two lenses to be fairly equal.
Next I compared the 18-70 DX with the 50 mm 1.8D prime. As expected, the prime clearly wins on sharpness throughout the entire aperture range. Well, no surprise.
I then compared the lens to its closest relative, the big brother 17-55 DX. I must admit, that I expected a much more pronounced difference, but they were in fact rather similar in performance at first glance, the 18-70 DX being only slightly inferior. Of course by opening up the aperture, the two lenses quickly separated in performance, the 17-55 DX maintaining the same sharpness all over its range, while the 18-70 DX was only able to maintain its sharpness in the center of the frame with a successive drop in sharpness, contrast and coherence near the edges of the frame. Well, given the difference in price, that was pretty expected!
The next comparison was with my 12-24 DX to check the wide angle performance. To my utter surprise, the 18-70 DX was noticeably sharper at 18 mm than the 12-24 lens at both f/4 and up to f/8. At 24 mm, the 18-70 DX was equally sharp as the 12-24 DX at both f/4 and f/8. Hardly believing my results, I checked the lenses over and over again, and came to the same conclusion - the 18-70 DX is equally sharp or in some cases even sharper than the 12-24 DX in the 18-24 mm range! That was an amazing discovery, considering that all over the Internet, people are bashing the 18-70 DX for its bad wide angle performance. Either I have a stellar copy of the lens or Nikon did something to the later batches of the lens - the bottom line is that I am totally pleased with the wide angle performance of my 18-70 DX.
By the way, I found out that the 18-70 DX creates a noticeably darker image than the 12-24 DX at the same settings. The lens in fact sometimes even borders to underexposing the images and needs some EV boost. Strange, and I have no explanation to why this happens. I wonder whether or not the physical aperture in fact is smaller than the specification.
Conclusion
The 18-70 DX is an absolute bargain. Don't take my word for it (or anybody else's for that matter), but try to do some shooting with it - you will not be disappointed!
Given the ridiculously low price of the unit, one would not expect a great performer, but the fact is that even for twice the price, the lens would still be incredibly good value for the money. As it is now, it is simply one of the best deals you can get your hands on.
