There are 8 lenses total in the “consumer” lineup of Nikon’s Series-E’s. You can take this post as a bit of a guide for help choosing which lens may be right for your photography. Lenses are arranged from wide-angle to telephoto. Links to the full reviews are located in the headings. Also, below two pictures are in a much bigger size than they are displayed here. Click on them to see more detail. First up, the 5 primes in the series:
Left to right: 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 100mm, 135mm
Completing my exploration of the prime lenses in Nikon’s “consumer-rated” Series-E’s, the 28mm E fills the last focal length hole: wide angle. When used on a film or full-frame camera, this lens behaves similar to how an 18mm lens would on APS-C, or a 14mm on m4/3. Unfortunately, due to the crop factors of smaller sensors, this lens instead performs like a short normal (42mm FoV on APS-C) or a long normal (56mm on m4/3). This presents a bit of a challenge in use, as on the NEX-7, the 28mm E isn’t wide enough to normally “get everything in”, nor is it long enough to have any reach. However, the 35mm-50mm general FoV is rather useful for a “walk-around” perspective such as in street photography, so there are still applications for an odd-man-out like this.
There is GREAT news for those still wanting to get wide-angle performance out of this lens: when used with the NEX-7′s built in “sweep panorama” feature (or when shots are manually stitched), a noticeably wider view is obtained, both in vertical and horizontal orientation. More on that at the end. Is the 28mm E a lens I can recommend? Let’s find out!
Well, first off, apologies for being two days late. To make a long story short, I have had some crazy work hours the past 5 days. Each day essentially went eat–>work–>eat–>sleep–>repeat, with no free time in-between. I’ll make up for the wait with some great photographs at the end. 
Regardless, I’m back now, and ready to continue my exploration of the Series-E lenses. What you see above is the final prime in the “consumer-rated” series Nikon made accompanying their much more expensive AI-s counterparts. With a semi-wide (more like a short normal) field of view and not-so-fast maximum aperture on APS-C cameras, the 28mm E doesn’t seem to be a lens to write home about. Its close focus is about the same as the 35mm E, but with the wider angle, this lens doesn’t make as good as a “poor-man’s macro”. Unfortunately it also isn’t a very cheap lens either, most copies on eBay go for $100/€82 or more (though, the AI-s version usually sells for at least $250/€204).
What the 28mm E does do, is take pictures with a wider field of view than I’m used to. My previous widest lens was the aforementioned 35mm E, but this new personal record-holder gives photographs a completely different perspective. As some may know, shallow depth of field photography is something I love, but with this lens, getting that shallowness is only possible at, or near, close-focus. As such, framing is crucial. Any objects in normal distances better be appealing, I can’t blur them out even wide open!
Keeping this short and sweet, because it seems everyone now has the capability to do fireworks pictures (especially around this holiday!).
So…short version: all shot last night with NEX-7 and Nikon 28mm f/2.8 E at ISO 100 as close as the police would allow me, with apertures ranging from f/5.6-11, and exposure time ranging from .8-3.2 seconds (tripod and remote release used). Some are captioned, some aren’t. Will have first impressions of this last prime in the Series-E line-up from Nikon sometime this weekend. Now…PICTURES!
P.S. I uploaded the following 12 at a slightly higher resolution than normal to try to share better detail of the streams.
Starting Salute, look how small the people are in the bottom right
