Nikon 35-80mm f/4-5.6D (1/3)

Описание: This is the third of a series of 371 videos featuring every F-mount lens type, including all variants, ever made by Nikon.

We begin with one of the very best of Nikon's lightweight lenses, the AF Zoom Nikkor 35-80mm f/4-5.6D (in its second iteration). This airy — you might almost say ethereal — 180g wonder is known as 'the backpacker's best buddy' by virtue of the fact that it slips so easily into a rucksack. It punches remarkably well above its weight; its optics are unsurpassed for a lens in this category. It is especially suited to photographic journeys through the Indian subcontinent.

My backpack always contains a copy of this bantamweight bad boy, along with the sylphlike Nikon 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6D (330g), and that lord of low light, the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D (155g; especially good for those candid shots in night markets, brothels, etc.)

I also pack my lucky Nikon 24mm f/2.8D (270g), picked up used from one of Chittagong's few halfway-decent camera shops for, I must confess, a not especially reasonable price (I urgently needed to go wide). The lens casing was stained and there was a lot of dust and some scratches, also a sticker that left an industrial-strength residue that I still haven't been able to remove. But it works as well as the day it was born.

All the lenses I purchased second-hand, and in the case of the 24mm f/2.8D, third-hand.

As for the body I use, it can't be described as the lightest option but there is no question of retiring it for a good many years. It's a Nikon D700 (995g; 163,000 shutter actuations when I last checked just before Christmas, and still going very strong indeed). This, of course, is the best DSLR body Nikon has made bar none. It is the only item of photographic equipment I have ever bought new. I, an enemy of price discrimination, cheerfully bought it from the Hong Kong grey market and used the money I saved on a flight ticket to Mexico City.

These four lenses — the 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6D , the 50mm f/1.8D, the 24mm f/2.8D and the incomparable 35-80mm f/4-5.6D — together with the D700 add up to less than two kilos. This is the limit of what the shrewd world explorer seeking to maximise his photographic opportunities is prepared to carry. He leaves those monstrous, bulbous, stupidly gilded, thief-magnetic glass lingams — mahalingams, to be precise — to the amateurs.

Note: The Thai-made example of the 35-80mm shown here (serial number 4863585) is one of the last of those made between 1995 and 1999 (4000001-4971299). It is not to be confused with an earlier variant manufactured from January 1994, initially in Japan (6000001 to 6074893) and then in Thailand (3000001 to 3617130), which differs slightly in design and in the materials used.