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To compare real-life sharpness in the corner and center of the frame, we shot this scene with the Nikkor DX 35mm f/1.8G and DX 16-85mm VR lenses mounted on a Nikon D90 body at all apertures. The DX 16-85mm VR was adjusted to deliver the same field-of-view. The D90 was set to RAW to avoid in-camera JPEG corrections; all files were processed in Nikon's Capture NX 2.2.3 with lens corrections disabled and the default sharpness of 3.

At f5.6, the corner performance of the DX 16-85mm VR improves with less vignetting and slightly sharper details, but it's still not a patch on any of the samples from the DX 35mm f/1.8G.

With the aperture closed to f8, the DX 16-85mm VR enjoys a boost in corner sharpness which would satisfy most people when viewed in isolation, but again alongside the DX 35mm f/1.8G samples, it still looks soft. Indeed the DX 16-85mm VR's best corner result here (at f8) remains below that of the DX 35mm f/1.8G's worst (at f1.8).

The DX 16-85mm VR's performance greatly improves as you move away from the extreme corners though. As you can see in the second table of crops, the sample at the maximum aperture looks pretty good, and interestingly doesn't appear to get noticeably better as the aperture is closed.

That said, the DX 35mm f/1.8G's crops still enjoy visibly higher contrast, and if you look closely, you'll notice finer detail too, such as in the branches of the trees by the lakefront. We'd say the DX 16-85mm VR's center performance at 35mm f4.5 is roughly equivalent to the DX 35mm f/1.8G at around f2.4, but again the prime takes a comfortable lead as it's stopped down a little.

So if you commonly use the 35mm focal length and want uniformly sharper images right into the corners, along with much greater light gathering capabilities, then the DX 35mm f/1.8G is a great complement to the DX 16-85mm VR zoom.

Now let's pitch the DX 35mm f/1.8 versus the DX 18-105mm VR.