Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 series-E Ai ~ Yet Another Look

Having looked at Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 Ai, an old Nikon Nikkor-O 35mm f/2 and a Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AiS for field flatness on full frame Sony A7, here is a look at a Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 series E AiS.

 

 

Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO50, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 AiS - shot from f/3.5 through f/8
• Rawtherapee RAW to jpg conversion - Auto-Match function, but nothing further (ie: NO Capture Sharpening)

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  It's just a pair of closed gaze scrims in our apartment.  The details are interestingly small, so therefore useful for this kind of "wee look-see."  The center section, upper left corner, and lower right corners were used in the comparison.

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments - 

I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but, wide open the 75-150mm Nikon is a bit soft.  

At f/5.6 and f/8 this un-loved under-appreciated ancient 2x good-for-nothing $25 lens is plenty "sharp" to my eyes, even though I think I see just a hint of field curvature at the extreme edges.  

I think there might be a bit of magic in this cheap optic. 

After having worked with manual focus Nikon lenses for many years I think I finally understand that this softness is deliberate.  I think it's how the Japanese express their sense of "delicateness" in photographic images.

Nikon's "Thousand and One Nights" says -

"...Although the E 75-150mm f/3.5 was manufactured as a popular lens for use with the Nikon EM, the finished lens was, in fact, sufficiently well executed as to find favor with the experts...

... the background blur is delightful, and makes the lens suitable for portraits... -–in line with the original concept for the lens. As on the AI Nikkor 135mm f/2 lens, the secret behind this is the deft use of close-range aberration fluctuations-–the correction for spherical aberration being slightly attenuated at close range in order to smooth the background blur..." 

What I think I see is that Nikon has developed a lens design approach that favors under-corrected spherical aberration behind the point of focus when a lens is shot wide open.  They seem to do this as a way of lending an image the Japanese "delicateness" I mentioned at the top of this section.