For many years I`m a Leica adict, a few years ago I decided to buy something more casual, evey day, but with high quality.
I decided to try Nikon.
This was my first Nikon lenses.
Ok, this is not a prime Leica but I love it !
Now I have a lot of Canon, Leica and Nikons but this one is still my favorite bud, always bring it with me in all my trips.
Why ?
Because this is a high quality all-in-one lenses, from macro to tele it does anything well, you don`t need to carry other lenses for casual photo, you will never lost a scene!
I recomend, buy one used if you find !
Ops ! sorry for my poor english !

An excellent lens. Able to deliver pro caliber results, and priced moderately. Also has a useful macro mode.

Russ

A real Swiss Army knife for film cameras. This lens covers from wide angle to moderate tele in a nice small neat package, with macro function built in.

Build and Handling: Fairly compact, plastic but solid feel with good heft. Built mainly for autofocus, it has a very narrow angle of turn for focusing.

Optically: Sharp, good contrast, good colour, minimal distortion, very slight vignetting. Variable aperture but still only 3.5-4.5 which is not too bad. Macro at 1:2 function works well in a pinch, with acceptable quality.

Drawbacks : None at this price point.

This has been my normal "walk around lens" for many years, it served me well on my film SLR and stiil gives good service on my D70, although I need to use the equivalent 18-70 for wider shots.

The macro feature is very useful, allowing a 1:2 maximum ratio between 50 and 105mm, the only irritation being that you can only switch out of macro if the lens is focused past the macro zone.

The lens hood is a bit of a beast, but it does the job well. The lens has consistantly given good performance for me and provided many a good shot.

To sumarise, this is a little gem of a lens, sharp, compact, covers a decent range and is excellent value for money.