What they say about the Nikon D700 is true

I posted yesterday about how great UPS is, but, of course, it’s what in the box that matters the most, and today I had a chance to shoot for a few minutes at lunchtime. Now that I’m back to full frame, the lenses I bought for my N70 make sense once again.

The picture above was taken with my old 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom (pre-VR version). Critics think of it as mediocre or worse. An example of worse is Michael Johnston’s review of the better (VR) version. He called it “a piece of shit”. Even I thought it too mediocre for my D200, as DX cameras require more of a lens than does a full-frame camera. (Update added 3-April-2009: From reading some reviews today, it seems that the newer VR version is worse, not better. So, maybe there’s no contradiction between my results and Michael’s.)

I put it on the D700 anyway to see how it would do. Judge for yourself—the shot looks OK to me. (Zoomed to 120mm, 1/500 sec., f/9, ISO 500, hand-held.)

Actually, the results are even better than you think, because that image is a 100% crop from the whole frame, which is shown below. (You can get very close to deer, but not squirrels.)

I’m not sure what to think, as I haven’t used the lens in years and have used my D700 for only a few minutes so far. But, I’d say it’s off to an excellent start. If the 24-120mm is shit, I can’t wait to try my 85mm f/1.8 prime, which everyone acknowledges is a great lens. Fortunately, there are plenty of squirrels available for a retake.