As always I bought it for next to nothing. It is NIKON F mount lens. To be more precise it it a AI lens. No AI-S features. This review will be a little shorter than usually, because the lens is crippled by malfunctioning aperture blades. I can only shoot wide open at f/3.5. Mine has 3 months guarantee so I will not hesitate to send it back.

Design

It is a telephoto lens which operates by barrel rotation. It says it is MC, but I cannot see anyway. It is an automatic lens, so you can frame picture wide open and then camera will trigger mechanical coupling to close aperture appropiately. It keeps focus while zooming. Zoom, focus and aperture rings run smoothly. It is not so convenient as with push-pull, because framing and focusing takes a little longer.

In general it is very well built with metal and glass. And of course it is an inexpensive expenditure. My copy has little dust inside and no fungus.

Performance

It can be easily seen at wide open f/3.5 at far range that it is soapy. Of course very few people try to shoot wide open outdoors. Still it should be at least sharp enough without significant haze seen. It is not.

As it is sharp it also has a lot of mist put on the picture in front. Contrast is quite okey, same thing with colors. It is not that bad. At close range it is also very sharp and also very misty.

Soap effect is mimized at 150mm close-ups. It is heavy at 70mm or 100mm. Stopping down to f/11 gives very good results at 150mm, 100mm and even 70mm. On the last picture there is a net put on window and it is important that you do not see moire because it was shoot on NIKON D200 which has improved filter atop the sensor which lacks a little bit of sharpness but gives better results in terms of patterns.

Conclusion

In case you could get working copy unaffected with aperture damage and without fungus you can start with f/5.6 and shot close, mid and far ranges with quite good results. Avoid f/3.5 outdoors. For such a price it is not a sin at least to try this lens and pass it on.