Back in February I bought this used super cheap Nikon 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 zoom lens manufactured in the 90’s.  It was Nikon’s first attempt at an affordable kit lens with the early batch of consumer autofocus film cameras back in the day.  This lens is small, about the size of a modern F mount 50mm 1.8G!  I was elated that I found this [Made in Japan] version for about $20, but after shooting with it I realized the aperture ring/lever was broken so this lens only shoots wide open.  Which comes with plenty of drawbacks with a lens this old.  After lots of odd exposure errors on my D4 I thought I would just shoot it for fun on the Fuji GFX.

Here are some samples: portraits, landscapes, and random day to day snapshots

This lens isn’t too bad on the GFX format.  However, it has crazy barrel distortion that you also get on native FF, and vignettes a bit at 35mm depending on the focus distance.  It has an interesting double rainbow flare when shooting into bright light.

I think this lens was worth the cost and time to experiment with because it gives me a roughly 28-30mm FF FOV on the GFX, combined with its excellent dynamic range.  The above shot was originally quite dark, and you can push and pull the shadows+highlights in post due to the sensor data being so robust.

A few weeks after sitting on the shelf I took a part the back side of the lens and fiddled with the various aperture levers inside.  I managed to move one of them and fixed the lens to about f/11 and f/5.6 (by my estimates).

This lens is very sharp and usable at smaller apertures out in broad daylight.  Again, most lenses are very good stopped down, it’s just that if a lens is marketed and sold as a wide aperture one we tend to only use it as such to justify our purchase.

The 35-70mm produces sharp and detailed photos without much fringing either.  I was expecting the aluminum foil to be a purple mess, but it’s pretty decent as an up close lens.

Again, the Auto WB of almost every Fuji camera leans towards blue, even in bright sunlight.  This picture is out of camera, and I thought it looked soft and unique so I left it as is.

“28-30mm ish” on a 4:3 larger than FF sensor draws images and people in a bit different way.  I’m still deciding on if I should get the real deal Fuji GF 35-70mm for some photo jobs and projects but this is a good practice stand in.  Not bad for $20!

These product photos I shot with a 20+ year old Nikon digicam.  Goes to show digital image quality was already pretty great back then, and the only things that have only taken a few steps up are resolution and push-ability of raw files in post.

Since I discovered that this cheap 35-70mm had promise, I ended up getting another bargain find, a fully functioning Nikon 35-80mm!