Crosstown traffic

Crosstown traffic, a photo by pvera on Flickr.

Some of you about to grab a Nikon APS-C or Sony NEX body are probably wondering about the use of buying these with a "kit" lens since pretty much everyone (except a couple lunatics) says that those lenses are shit.

I am one of those lunatics. I spent months trying to find something wrong with the Nikkor 18-55 VR DX kit lens, and I couldn't. It is a light and inexpensive lens that is very compact and is extremely versatile. I didn't get the Sony NEX equivalent until I got the NEX-7, so I wasn't able to check on it until the past week or so.

My verdict: the NEX 18-55 OSS kit lens is not a piece of shit. It's super light, very small, and works really nicely on both the NEX-C3 and the NEX-7. It's no Carl Zeiss, but again, for what it costs, it isn't a piece of shit.

This photo doesn't look like much, but it was shot from a moving car at sunset through a windshield that I am sure wasn't perfectly clean. You can read most of the license plates without having to mess with over-sharpening the photo. Now look at the building right in the middle of the photo: that building is 4,323 feet away according to Google Earth, yet with enough zooming you can actually count the antennas on its roof.

Just because a bunch of people tell you those lenses are shit doesn't make it true. Go to the store and mess with them and see for yourself. And no, technical reviews don't count, all they do is take machine measurements and don't take into account that our vision is analog.