Canon nFD 35-70 f4 Review

Vintage lenses are having a bit of a renaissance thanks to mirrorless cameras. Famous lenses like the Takumars and even old Nikon pre-Ai primes, are enjoying a resurgence in popularity, but no-one cares about vintage manual focus zooms. Right?

The Canon nFD 35-70 f4 is a cheap, unloved, forgotten zoom lens that can still be bought for around £50, but is it any good?

The specs

Canon’s 35-70mm f4 zoom is an FD mount lens of the nFD, or new FD, type, which just means it lost the fiddly breach lock mount in favour of a bayonet style mount. It was first sold in 1979. It has 8 elements in 8 groups and 6 aperture blades. Aperture ranges from f4 to f22 with half stops. Lens diameter of 63mm and an overall length of 84.5mm and weighs in at 315gm.

The filter thread is 52mm, but good luck getting a filter on and off, as the lens zooms in and out within an external tube which serves as a built in lens hood, which is probably why it comes with a push on lens cap.

The lens has a minimum focusing distance of 50cm and the focus throw from minimum distance to infinity is just under 180 degrees.

Build Quality and Feel

The build is plastic and feels a bit cheap. I would say it feels like most cheap zoom lenses of the eighties. The focus and zoom rings are light and not well damped, which doesn’t help the cheap feel, but the aperture ring has a firm feel with nice clicks with each half stop (much better than the aperture rings on their SSC primes which feel a bit flimsy). Safe to say, this isn’t as rugged as say a Nikon AI lens.

In its favour is the size and weight. This is a light and compact zoom lens, and given it has a constant F4 aperture, that’s not bad, even in the age of manual focus lenses. It gets a bit long when mounted on an adapter for a mirrorless camera, but its still a light and compact lens and nicely balanced on the Fujifilm X-T3.

In Use

I took it out to Hornsea beach back on New Years day and was pleasantly surprised not just at the quality of the images I was getting, but also how easy it was to focus. Not being well damped didn’t hinder the focusing at all. I usually prefer a longer throw to really nail focus, but at a whisper under 180 degrees, it was just about right.

And as mentioned earlier, the lens was nicely balanced on the X-T3. The zoom does extend when zooming and focusing, but you don’t notice it as the front element never protrudes beyond the front of the zoom ring/built in lens hood. It was actually very pleasant to use and I must admit, a little bit fun.

Image Quality

All images are straight of camera jpegs.

I was surprised at just how good the images look. It renders colours and contrast nicely and overall, the images look sharp and punchy when the light is good, but the lens tends to lose contrast when the light get’s a bit dull. Like other vintage lenses it loses contrast when shooting into the light, and there is flaring, though it seems to be well controlled.

I didn’t notice much in the way of chromatic aberrations, though I’m sure in the right situations, they will show up, as is the case with most vintage lenses. Thus far though, purple and green fringing look to be well controlled for a lens of this age.

Bokeh is okay. You’re going to get soap bubble bokeh balls at F4 and sun stars when stopped down, but on the whole, the fall-off is gentle and the out of focus areas are rendered nicely.

So Is It Worth It?

Overall, the lens was surprising good for the price. Obviously you’ll find these near the £100 because some sellers never miss an opportunity to rip people off, but you can find it under the £50 mark. So is this cheap little lens worth it? It’s not going to replicate the image quality, or bokeh, of fast primes like a 50mm f1.4, but I was really taken aback with how good the images looked. Considering you can get this for half the price of the nFD 50mm f1.4, (and let’s not even talk about how much you’d pay for a good condition 35mm), it’s a good value option if you want to start playing with vintage glass on a mirrorless camera.

Ayutthaya: Wat Chaiwatthanaram

And so we come to the last of the four sites we visited in Ayutthaya, and I’ve saved the best for last. Wat Chaiwatthanaram is the biggest of the four, at least it seemed to be, and also the busiest.

Tourists at Wat Chaiwatthanaram — Tourists in traditional Thai costume at Wat Chaiwatthanaram

Wat Chaiwatthanaram was built in the 1600s on the banks of the Chao Phraya River by King Prasat Thong in honour of his mother. Built in the style of Angkor Wat, the site is made up of a central prang with several smaller prangs and pagodas surrounding it. It has undergone several rounds of restoration over the years and restoration work continues today.

We came here by accident. Our intention was to visit Wat Phutthaisawan, one of the few temples to escape the Burmese in 1766, but we ended up at the wrong place, which turned out to be lucky. Be warned, there is an official car park beside the temple, but on the opposite side of the road there are hawkers trying to wave you into their yards so you can rent traditional Thai costume. There are about 8 or 9 shops opposite, all renting out Thai costume, so if that’s your thing, then this is the place to rent them.

This site was the busiest of the sites we visited with plenty of tourists in Thai costumes taking photos, so something to be mindful of. That said, it wasn’t so busy we couldn’t enjoy the place. This was also my favourite of the four sites we visited and honestly, it felt like stepping into Star Wars. I half expected x-wing fighters to take off.

There was a very different atmosphere here, almost other-worldly. The place felt grander and more expansive and more significant some-how, and strangely enough, this felt the most peaceful and enjoyable of the four sites we visited. It was a good end to our two days here.

Ayutthaya is a great place to visit. Culturally significant and lots of friendly people. If you’re debating whether to add it to your Thailand itinerary, wonder no more and do it. I think you’ll find it well worth it.

Ayutthaya: Wat Ratchaburana

Wat Ratchaburana sits right next door to Wat Mahathat, so it’s easy to visit both sites on the same day. Wat Ratchaburana is known for the main prang, which is mostly intact (I think it’s the most intact of any of Ayutthaya’s heritage sites). You can climb up the prang to get a fantastic view of the entire site, and it’s worth doing.

The entrance is through the remains of the viharn and the prang is framed nicely as you enter. Ratchaburana was quite busy, so patience is needed when trying to get a photo of the prang through the entrance. (It’s the money shot after all, and everyone was taking them, so we felt obliged to do the same).

Main prang framed by the entrance to Wat Ratchaburana

Wat Ratchaburana was built in the 1400’s on the site where the king’s older brothers were cremated. Apparently they fought for the kingdom, wounding each other so severely they both died, leaving the kingdom to the younger brother. (Surely a story worthy of a movie). Another legend tells of a crow that impaled itself on the finial of the prang, which was taken as a bad omen of Ayutthaya’s fate. Not long after, Ayutthaya fell to the Burmese and Wat Ratchaburana was sacked and burned in a fire that spread over into Wat Mahathat and a few other sites.

The central prang is surrounded by four stupas and the whole site feels more compact compared to others, but there is plenty to explore. The prang is the star attraction though and you can climb up to the top room. Climbing the prang is a precarious experience, especially if you don’t like heights, but it does give a great view of the site, and you can see the details of the preserved render as you climb. At the top you can go inside, but the stairs down into the crypt are blocked off, and the room itself is governed by bats. A lot of bats.

Small piles of stones in front of the main prang at Wat Ratchburana

Details on the render of Wat Ratchaburana's prang

Although everything revolves around the prang, it seemed like there was more to see here than at Wat Mahathat and I enjoyed this more than the two sites we visited before. With both Wat Ratchaburana and Wat Mahathat being next to each other, it’s worth visiting them both, and when you’re finished, there’s a great Ice cream parlour called Scoops Me Up on the soi opposite Wat Mahathat (Bang Lan Road). The ice cream is really good and a nice reward after a day of exploring.