Ben
I bought this for my Nikon D3200 to use mostly for indoor photos without a flash. Since it’s a fast lens that can let in a lot of light, it should be ideal for this application. The pluses: - The build quality is actually pretty solid. The materials don’t feel cheap, the manual focus ring is well damped, and the metal mount clicks into place securely. - The autofocus works well — it’s a bit louder than the kit lens, but definitely not objectionable. - Good bokeh. The minuses: - The images it produces are soft. I knew to expect some softness around the edges at wider apertures, but it should still be sharp in the middle, and as I stop it down, the edges should sharpen up. However, that wasn’t the case with this lens. Between f/1.8 to f/2.8, things outside the focal plane are pleasantly blurred, but things *in* the focal plane, in the middle of the lens, lack definition as well. Stopping the lens down to f/4 or f/5, it gets a little better, but still isn’t great. I did an A/B comparison with the kit lens at f/4: with the kit lens, the edges of my son’s face were sharper, and the individual hairs on my dog were in focus rather than blurred and grainy. (Before you ask, I did remove the protective film on the front and back of the lens; the version I got had a blue-tinted film with a pull tab that’s not as easy to overlook.) I’ll be returning this lens and buying the Nikkor version. For me, it wasn’t worth the loss of image quality for the money I saved.
