The Controversial 43-86mm f/3.5 Zoom-Nikkor, Part One

I picked up this old Nikkor zoom lens for $30 out of curiosity. I have always been more of a prime lens guy and have only owned a handful of zoom lenses over the years. But the 43-86mm f/3.5 Zoom-Nikkor has gained the reputation as being one of the worst lenses Nikon ever made. Or is it? I decided it would be fun to try out.

For clarification, there are two versions of this lens; the one that I bought which is the second version made from 1975-1982 and the original, much more hated version, which was made from 1963-1975. How do you tell them apart? The earlier version has the lettering inside the filter ring. My lens has it on the outside of the filter ring, identifying it as the late version.

I don’t spend a lot of time on social media but I do follow a few Facebook groups and on one, dedicated to all things analog Nikon, I posted a picture of my lens and the fact that I just picked it up for $30.

It generated 173 comments to date, the most I have ever received from anything I have ever posted on Facebook. The first comment I received from a Nikon fan was “You overpaid by $30.”

That was followed by “Terrible lens!”

“Ken Rockwell says it is the worst lens Nikon ever made.”

“It’s the lens that virtually single handedly ruined the reputation of zooms over fixed focal length lenses for decades. Expect soft, flary images full of CA and distortion.”

“43-86 is widely regarded as Nikons worst lens in terms of optical aberrations and geometric distortion. Or looked at another way it’s good for special effects photography.”

“Biggest disappointment in Nikon history!”

“Got one .. dreadful cast to it.”

The comments then took a turn towards the more complimentary…

“People have been reading Ken Rockwell a bit too much. It’s built like a tank and it works much better on film, which is what it was designed for. Slap it on a Z9 it likely is far out of its league. It’s pretty decent, but it doesn’t, and shouldn’t, compete with recent lenses.”

“That’s a great lens in the real world as opposed to the fantasy land of charts and resolution targets. The actual results for general photography are great. Shot one for years. Perfect for framing slides accurately. I’m betting the majority of people in this thread who are complaining about it have never used one. I made thousands of dollars from images shot with mine.”

“That was the real utility of the lens back in the day because even with the modest zoom ratio it afforded significant in-camera cropping over a fixed 50mm lens.” To which another reader responded…”Exactly. I shot literally thousands of Kodachrome transparencies with one and never had a customer complain. Too many people read test reports and too few actually use this stuff. The users never seemed to mind. So what if it shows a little barrel distortion at one extreme and some pincushion at the other? There are no straight lines in nature. Soft? My lord… stop down to 5.6 and quit complaining. It’s a great tool for general use even today.”

“To say the 43-86 is crap is to say the Ford Mustang of 1965 (same era) is crap compared to the Ford F-Series of today, that Kodachrome 25 is crappy compared to Nikon Z8. It is a legend in its own right, design with pencil, slide rule and log table, odd focal length and short range chosen as that was probably what could be done practically by hand. Not sure if today's audience even know what a slide rule or a log table is. Made beautifully, like a tank, renders nicely, flares fantastically, not a resolution monster. And, everything done by hand. And a decent f3.5 for the Kodachrome 25 era, not some crappy (I am at it too!) f4.5-6.3 lens you get today because of high ISO performance of today. Take one out and imagine it is 1965 again. The age of everything by hand. Slap it on your Nikon F, or Nikon Df for that matter, and enjoy the moment. Don't enjoy going out to slam the lens for its optical weakness. Enjoy what it achieved in a world that had gone past. Enjoy the 1965 Ford Mustang, enjoy Kodachrome, enjoy the 43-86!”

“It was the workhorse lens for photojournalists back in the day.”

Obviously, there are a lot of strong opinions out there about this lens. As I write this, I am about half way through a roll of Kodak TMAX 400 with the 43-86 mounted on my Nikon FM. Part two of the post will feature my results. I will say that I do find the focal length handy…from about 50mm normal to one of my favorite focal lengths—85mm. And the lens is very well made with nice clicky f-stops and smooth well dampened focus. I have never been a huge fan of push-pull zooms, but the size and weight of this one made it feel good in the hand balanced with my FM body. I have enjoyed shooting with this lens.

More to come…