Yesterday I had a small amount of money come my way unexpectedly so I decided to finally add a 35mm f1.8 G to my bag. I had held off as I had bought the 50mm f1.4 a while back. I reserved it on line and went to collect it from the store.
Although I was a little worried about appearing pretentious, I decided to take my D90 along to check the lens out (thinking I am sure it wasn't necessary). I was apprehensive when I discovered the lens on display was the last they had but I decided to at least try it on my camera. I cranked it open to 1.8 and set ISO to 800 as it has no VR of course then took a shot at near closest focus of a DSLR on display.
When I zoomed in to the max on my cameras' screen, I saw the worst red/magenta colour fringing around the white 'ANON' names letters against its black background that I have ever seen - it was huge! I took exactly the same shot with the lens that happened to be on the camera when I picked it up to take - the 18-105 kit lens - and there was NO CA apparent! I just read on the DP review test that it is minimal wide open and gets worse after f4. I said I would not be buying it and asked them to get me a fresh unopened example for me to check.
A question for you guys that have this lens: Am I being unrealistic in expecting at least the same performance as the kit lens in this case? Both lenses were wide open, the kit lens was at f5/35mm.
I have obviously been lucky with my eBay purchases in the past, but suffice it to say I will not worry about appearing pretentious when buying equipment in the future.
