Review: Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR

When I purchased my first Nikon DX body, I elected to forego the kit lens and select my own. The criteria was simple; if this were the only lens I would ever buy, which one would I choose? So, I was looking for the best combination of quality, versatility, size and price, pretty much in that order. It came down to the 16-85mm zoom or the 18-200mm zoom. Because the 16-85 was optically superior, smaller, and cheaper, it ultimately won out.

Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-4.5G: Six Primes in One

The AF-S DX Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR has six ideal focal length designations on the barrel, which are my go-to numbers. Although DSLR zoom lenses are continuously variable, I find myself going straight to these numbers first, depending on the subject matter.

Size Doesn’t Matter

Canon FD 35-105mm f/3.5 vs. Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6

I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of my two equivalent standard zooms, the Canon and the NIKKOR.
The Canon on the left is larger and has a 3x zoom range. The NIKKOR on the right is considerably smaller and lighter, and has a 5.x zoom range.

Who Moved My Macro?

My Canon FD 35-105mm f/3.5 and 70-210mm f/4 both had macro functions. The DX 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 does not seem to have this function, and the manual makes no mention of it.


Turns out, at 85mm (127mm in the full-frame world) the minimum focus distance is about 7". This yields a slightly larger image than the 70-210 in macro mode, which in turn is slightly larger than the 35-105. But I would like to explore something bordering on photomicrography.

So it’s time for my third lens...

Nikon DX Micro NIKKOR 16-85mm f/22G ED

Picked it up new, for less than ten bucks. You won’t find this lens listed on the Nikon website, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s my DX 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED, reversed. Ten dollars bought me a 67mm reverse lens mount adapter. At full extension, it has a diopter of about 8, with a nice built-in lens hood and comfortable working distance. At the 16mm end (fully retracted), it has a diopter of about 42! And, the working distance is still pretty good. It is manual, and it doesn't have and adjustable aperture…yet. Hence the f/22.

First test: handheld, wide open; razor thin DOF

Yes, it works, and it works well. But I’m not too keen on a fixed aperture of f/22, nor having the rear element of my lens exposed (not to mention the CPU contacts). So, knowing how well this will work, I can spring for a Nikon BR-6…

This is a little doohickie that attaches to the front of the lens (previously the rear lens mount), and has a lever to hold the aperture wide open. It will also accept a standard cable release, which is used to control the aperture. Lastly, it has a 52mm filter thread, so you can attach a filter of your choice to protect the lens and CPU contacts. It’s pricey, about the same cost as a premium circular polarizer. But the nice thing is, I only have to buy one of them and it will fit all my Nikon lenses. And if I were to reverse, say, a 24mm f/2.8 prime lens, I’d have a very fast 28 diopter lens.

I do have such a lens, but it’s Canon FD. That would be one way at least of using a Canon lens on a Nikon body (it’s fairly easy to adapt Nikon lenses to Canon bodies, but not the other way around). But, it’s almost as difficult to adjust the aperture on a reversed Canon lens as it is to find the infamous “Macro Hood”, Canon’s version of the BR-6.

I can however use it with any Nikon prime lens, the wider the better as the shortest focal length yields the greatest magnification.

OK, so it’s not really a third lens. But for now, it will save me the cost of one.

Slowly Rebuilding my Empire: The First Lens

The compact “standard” zoom is like the holy grail of lenses to me. Back in the day, your first lens was a 50mm prime. If you could get a really fast one, all the better. Today, you can pack a wide angle, normal and short tele into a single, compact lens.


I decided to forego the 18-105mm kit lens, and order my D90 body with a lens having a metal mount and more conservative range (The AF-S DX Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR). My thinking was that since this lens is going to be on my camera 90% of the time, quality was more important than convenience. With a full-frame range of 24-127mm, this is my dream lens.

The 18-105 would have given me a top end of 157.5mm, and the hugely popular 18-200mm (which is like having 4 lenses in one) would have given me 300mm. So, in a fleeting moment of lens-envy, I took a photo with the 16-85mm at full zoom and used Photoshop to crop it as I would have with the 18-200mm. The quality was so good, so void of noise and aberration, that I easily resampled it to match the original pixel dimensions. The results surprised even me.

The secret is to set Photoshop’s interpolation preferences to bicubic smoother, and sharpen afterward at a huge percentage (400%!) but at a very small radius (0.5 px). This reduces the aliasing during enlargement, and sharpens only fine detail, resulting in a better image.

So if I need to zoom in that tight on a whim, I can take care of it in post. No more lens-envy. And if I need to do any serious telephoto work, There’s always the AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR, which would be a nice complement to this lens, and is 100% compatible with the N80. And on the D90, it tops out at 450mm!

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My First Nikon DIGITAL SLR

My Nikon D90 body arrived today, along with the AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens and some other goodies. But I’ll talk about those later. The first thing I do is top off the battery, and read the quickstart guide. While I’m waiting for the battery to charge, I mount the lens to the N80 body, just for the fun of it. Of course, it works flawlessly, and at 16mm, it’s rediculously wide.


Yes, there is vignetting; I knew there would be. But there’s two things I can do about it. First, I can use it to shoot a square format; a square crop will eliminate the vignetting. Second, I can borrow a trick from Nikon’s full-frame DSLR’s: FX Crop Mode. I can easily build a Photoshop action to apply FX Crop Mode to 35mm film scans. Third, with a 16mm angle of view, I could create a panoramic crop mode which will also eliminate the vignetting and restore some of the advantage gained by that wonderfully wide angle of view. Best of all, I can apply any of these formats to the same image. I am now even happier with my N80 purchase. I tell you, all this digital photography does wonders for the film world.

Two hours later, I have my first experience shooting with a digital SLR. Broadly speaking, I am underwhelmed, and I mean that in a good way. It’s exactly the same as any other SLR I’ve used, except smoother and quieter. The autofocus works nicely, but then I’m used to that from my Nikon P5100. However, there is no more myopic process of standing back from the camera to look at an LCD, the P5100’s primary means of composing an image. Even though the P5100 has an optical viewfinder as well, it’s hard not to take advantage of all the shooting information that appears in the LCD.

But then, I take it off auto mode and start customizing it to do what I want. Program, aperture priority, shutter priority, and manual modes; white balance, ISO, exposure compensation, bracketing. Like the P5100, the menus are wonderful, but, I don’t really need to use them. For 95% of what I need, I can simply press a dedicated button, rotate a command dial, and view the results on the LCD screen on the top of the camera. I begin to appreciate not just the software user interface, but the physical interface as well. The setup of the controls is logical and ergonomic. Now I’m overwhelmed.

I am now not only a Nikonian, I’m a D90 groupie.