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The Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm is a constant aperture f/2.8 3.2x zoom lens developed for use with Nikon digital SLR cameras. The 3.2x zoom covers from a wide angle of 79 degrees to a narrow angle of 28 degrees, 50 minutes (equivalent to 25.5mm to 85.5mm for 35mm format) and is ideal for architecture, landscape, group shots and portraits. Silent Wave Motor enables high-speed autofocusing with quiet operation.
The Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 DX constant-aperture lens shows just what you get when spending money on premium optics: Top-notch performance across the board, with very good sharpness even when shooting wide open. (And at f/2.8, "wide open" on the 17-55 is wide indeed.)
As usual, sharpness improves when you stop down a little, although we found that the improvement was less significant at the intermediate focal length of 28mm. That said though, this lens has a very wide "sweet spot," being very sharp from wide open to about f/8, regardless of focal length. Images are only a little softer at f/11, but sharpness diminishes rapidly beyond that point, and things get quite soft indeed at the minimum aperture of f/22, particularly at wide angle settings.
Worst-case chromatic aberration is a little high at wide and medium focal lengths, at least for a lens in this price range, but the average level is quite low, indicating that CA falls off rapidly as you move away from the corners of the frame. Vignetting is also a little high wide open at 17mm (about 0.8%), but falls rapidly as you stop down, and as you move toward longer focal lengths. (Worst-case light falloff is 1/2 EV at f/4 and 17mm, and less than 0.2 EV at f/4 for focal lengths of 28mm and longer.) Geometric distortion is high at maximum wide angle (a bit less than 1% barrel), but drops rapidly, to about 0.3% pincushion at 28mm, decreasing to about 0.2% pincushion at 55mm.
