Nikon Nikkor AF-S DX 18-70 mm f/3.5-4.5 IF-ED review - Build quality

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Nikon Nikkor AF-S DX 18-70 mm f/3.5-4.5 IF-ED

24 September 2007

Arkadiusz Olech

3. Build quality

The first impression of the Nikkor 18-70 mm is very good. The build is solid and compact, and fits well to the body of the camera. Most importantly, it is equipped with a metal bayonet. The very user friendly focal length range -equivalent of 27-105 mm on 35 mm film - makes the lens very universal. If we add the Silent Wave Motor (SWM), thanks to which Nikkor is supposed to zoom fast, quietly and flawlessly - we receive a lens which is hard to beat.

The picture below shows the size difference of the Nikkor 18-70 mm (left) with a kit lens from a D50 18-55 mm (middle) and with a 70-300 mm telephoto lens (right).

Nikon Nikkor AF-S DX 18-70 mm f/3.5-4.5 IF-ED - Build quality

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The Nikon designers took care of every internal detail as well. Thus, the Nikkor 18-70 mm contains 15 lenses in 13 groups. It is worth adding that one of the lenses is an aspheric element and the three others are made of low dispersion glass, which is designed to ensure good chromatic and spherical aberration correction, as well as good picture sharpness and contrast.

The Nikkor 18-70 mm is a part of the AF-S DX series, which was specially designed to work with digital DSLR cameras. To enable this, Nikkor has high quality antireflective coatings which are supposed to level all the internal reflections, as well as those created by detector filter reflections.

There is a seven blade diaphragm and an IF system (Internal Focusing), which works comfortably with all kinds of filters.

In summation, there is nothing negative to say about the Nikkor in this category.