Lens Comparision

Never thought that I would be writing a lens comparison article ever. But this one had to be written. Since my lenses and the D300 body were stolen on the way back from Benares I had been thinking a lot about getting a lens. I seriously considered a Tokina 17-50mm f/2.8, my old (and now stolen) trusty 18-105mm Nikon and the 16-85mm much praised Nikon. The long-zoom section bothered me (and still does) as there is almost nothing without a constructional flaw except probably 70-300 Nikon but that be saved for another day.
After a lot of flip-flopping I decided to buy the 16-85mm Nikon. Now I still had two lenses from before, the 18-55mm Nikon and the 50mm f/1.8 fixed again Nikon. Immediately I wanted to make a comparison between the three lenses. I just don't want to make any comments. The comparison is right here for you to see.

18-55mm f/8 1/10s

16-85mm f/8 1/10s

50mm f/8 1/10s

And all above were shot in exact same light within minutes of each other. Camera mounted on tripod. The zooms were set to 50mm manually. All were stopped down enough to achive optimum or near optimum performance. The crop was taken slightly off center. The image on the left is obviously the weakest. But the one on the right (50mm prime) is clearly far less flattering than the center image. 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S ED shines through the 2 ED and 1 Nano coats on the glass.