gary gaugler wrote in message <34710d48.48788173@news.calweb.com>...
>On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 18:34:32 -0700, Donald Farra
>wrote:

>[snip]
>>The lenses you listed should in my opinion be able to pull at least that
>>performance, stopped down at least two or three stops from wide open.
>>
>>This leaves us with an interesting question, if the lens, camera and
>>film are not to blame then what is at fault here?

>Here we are with your opinion of the resolution of these lenses. What
>we need are some specific data of the various lenses' abilities.

>As I said...the ones he is using are far from ideal. That is not to
>say that all Nikon lenses are that way. I said that too.
>
>I have used the same lenses he was using and they are junk. If you
>can provide definitive data that places them in perspective, please do
>so. It would be intersting from a quantitative standpoint. From a
>qualitative aspect, they do not measure up.

While I regard your advice and opinions on these NG's as informative
and reliable, I think in this case you may have run across a bad double
case of lens sample variation - and hit the bottom of the run in both
cases...! ;-) I have sitting on my shelf the only sample I have tried
of the D 35-105, and it is rather sharp for a lens of its type (not up
to my selected MF 35-105 Nikkor, but almost as good, and better than
most 35-X zooms I have tried). The only sample of the 75-300 Nikkor
that I have tried was sharp to the corners throughout its zoom range
wide open - a very good lens. Sample variation is a problem with zooms
(especially ones that include wide-angle in the zoom range), and most
zooms at their widest two stops are not up to primes of the same FL's,
but even the worst-sample zoom Nikkors I have seen were mostly up to
the task of producing a sharp-looking 4x6 print - a not-very-taxing
requirement, as the poster above has pointed out... I still suspect
either (or both) poor technique or bad printing quality as the source
of the problem.