The Series-E 75-150/3.5 is my most used manual focus zoom. What's not to like? It covers a very useful medium telephoto range, which is perfect for portraiture, landscape, and closeups. It was also about the longest focal length I could easily hand-hold when shooting 100 ISO film, so I rarely used longer lenses. The close focus limit is very useful, and as Birna said, it handles closeup lenses (3T in my case) very well. The relatively fast constant f/3.5 aperture is also handy, much nicer than f/6.3 of many current zooms, only 1/2 stop slower than the big f/2.8 zooms, and allows nice narrow DOF if required. Background rendition is also relatively smooth and pleasant.

There are two versions of this lens. The first has a black plastic grab ring and early ones have the thin tabs at the rear of the lens which can easily get bent out of shape. I have the later version with the chrome grab ring and solid rear lens protectors. My version has not developed zoom creep.

There is nothing like this among the zooms currently available, the closest would be the Tarmon 70-180/2.8 which trades a slightly shorter zoom range for a more compact design. I sometimes wish for Cosina to bring out a modern version with improved coatings and glass, but they seem to be happy producing primes.

Today Cadiz was overcast, monotone with little contrast.

 Z6, 105mm 2.5 ai

This is my new favorite "earthrise" earthset shot (D5, 80mm, f/7.1, ISO 400)  Not sure why it's 1.9:1 aspect ratio, but it works:

Here's a related article posted on PetaPixel:

https://petapixel.com/2026/04/06/the-10-year-old-nikon-d5-dslr-really-is-the-best-camera-for-artemis-ii/

Beautiful work again John, both of them.

Thanks, Paco !