Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI on Sony A7

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI, produced in the 70's. Mechanical quality is very good as you'd expect from Nikkors of that era. Though, I assume the optical quality of wide angle lenses from that age is not always the best. Especially on digital cameras with 24 MP FF. Let's have a look how the 28mm competes.

Clicking on a crop loads the whole image in original size. A tip for Retina display users: Zoom in 1.5x or 2x. Otherwise you are not really in 1:1 mode.
Images are developed from RAW files in Ligtroom 5. All adjustments are Lightroom standard (sharpness: 25/1/25/0).

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI f/2.8

Center so, so the rest soft.

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI f/4.0

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI f/5.6

Good sharpness in center. The rest is unsharp.

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI f/8.0

Not much better than f/5.6.

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI f/11.0

Conclusion Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI

The Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI is not a great lens. As of f/4.0 it's sharp in the center. But, even stopping down to f/11 the edges don't get sharp. And with edges I mean 1/3 left and right from the whole image respectively. No we don't speak about corners.

It's possible that the lens works better with film, but this doesn't help me either. For me, the lens is rather useless on full frame. What a pity, the mechanical quality of the lens is great. Conclusion: Not all Nikkor lenses are good lenses. The successor the Nikkor 28mm 2.8 AI-S is said to be better. It has a different optical design and floating elements.

Nikon 28mm 2.8 AI f/8 - Corrected

Corrected chromatic aberrations and additional sharpening - it doesn't really help!