Home > Consumer Reviews > Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S Zoom Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

I wanted to like this lens badly based on what I needed in my bag and what was said here and at other sites. Unfortunately I found the lens to be unacceptably soft between f/2.8 and 4.5. If I would have been a little more careful in my research I would have noticed this to be a common observation though for landscape photographers they don't mind as they're typically stopped down anyway. But for me, to consider the 17-35mm as a replacement for the kit 18-70 as a near-full time lens I just couldn't justify the price/quality ratio when I'd have to stop the lens down to where the kit lens is to get to the sweet spot. I guess I'll have to start looking for the 17-55mm option where it is said to excel at the wider open aperature.

an ultra high quality lens far superior than the canon counterpart, i actually have the canon 16-35L 2.8 II and bought this lens for my friend who has a nikon d700, i am totally impressed by nikon and especially there 5 year warranty on most of their lenses. if i did not already own canon lenses i would have defiantly switched.

Check the quality control of this lens when you buy. Mine had severe front focus problems. Even when i selected the auto focus sensor the lens still had focusing issues . The lens was soft to F4. At F2.8 the images were incredibly poor. In my 20+ years of photography i have never seen a lens this bad. To make sure, i borrowed a friends 18-55VR. This $200.00 lens had better color saturation, contrast and accurate auto focus. Not only that, but it was sharper. To get the 17-35 as sharp, i had to stop down to F8. I tried to get another sample but they were out of stock, so i just returned it. I know a lot of people rate this lens 5 stars, and i understand that ever now and then you get a bad sample, but this lens had multiple problems. On the positive side, it is not as big and heavy as some people claim. It balances well on my D200, and the autofocus is fast. I will be looking into the 24-70 2.8.

At $1,500, this lens should be mint straight from the factory. My copy failed to auto-focus properly and appeared to have serious backfocus issues. Although the "Silent Wave Motor" made for very quick focusing times (if the copy had been focusing properly), it made a pronounced metal-on-metal or metal-on-plastic, high-pitched scraping sound at times. I understand this is endemic in many copies. Lastly, I did not think I would miss the added focal length of a 17-55mm or 18-55mm, but that extra 36mm-55mm range really does make a difference, and makes this lens less usable for DSLRs. More importantly, when focused (by chance), the optics did not produce sharpness substantially superior to my other, less expensive, DX lenses.

On the other hand, this lens is not as heavy or large as other reviewers have noted. I would have no problem carrying the 17-35mm all day, every day. Perhaps my review would have been different if I received a different copy. But for $1,500, this should never happen. We as consumers should not be forced to return substandard equipment in order to ultimately get a copy that works.

The image that Amazon is showing is not the Nikon 17-35mm.