No takers for this Inverness café's outside seats, this snowy morning.

Had noticed at the beginning of the year that this lens seemed to be focusing closer on the right-hand side, compared with the left - for landscape orientated shots... unlike above. Thought it was probably just me. A couple of earlier shots today, of a distant view, and using a wide aperture, showed it to be very much the lens that was at fault. Probably a "de-centred lens element". Looking back through various older shots, all the way back to when I first bought the thing, several years ago, and it was there too. Damn! Had never been greatly enamoured with the thing. Perhaps that was unconsciously why. But it's the second such Nikon lens that I bought new, and I've found to be dodgy like this, in only a few months. Both owned for longer than the warranty period, before noticing. Admittedly both are cheap lenses, but this one has generally, a very good reputation. Will have to do some more serious testing in future... sadly, lest I get another lemon.

Should I replace it with another of the same type? The newer 30mm Sigma is much more tempting, but not cheap. 40mm Nikon macro lens is supposed to be really good, and would be handy for work related photos of electronic bits-n-pieces. Some stuff to sell first. Too honest to sell a duff lens on to someone else... unlike many other folk. So another paperweight. Or more likely - typical engineer - take it apart to see how it goes together, and works (...worked). Of course I could just always use it with shots where one side of the image is in focus, and the other is deliberately blurred. It works well enough above, with it turned through ninety degrees. Perhaps not...