Monday, July 15, 2013

Wide angle options for Nikon FX

I had the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 when I bought my first FX D700. The main reason was Tokina 11-16mm was my best lens with Nikon D90 when I go out for landscape.

When I upgraded to D800, I questioned all my zoom lens and opened to prime lenses. Few months ago, after I had a good line up of prime: 20mm f/238, 35mm f/2.0, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.4; plus the busy work and wedding shoots, I have not use 16-35mm much. I decided to sell that lens.

I since then trying to look for a new 16-35mm... And here are my reasons.

1. 20mm does not give me the wide effect I wanted in wide angle. Sometime that extra wide is what I needed.
2. Other options that I looked at :
  • Zeiss 15mm: hm... Even before I look into image quality, I just cannot justify spending $2950 on a lens. Plus I depend on filter heavily while shooting landscape and I really prefer something straight out of the box to work with filter and not have to do DIY
  • Nikon 14mm: again, similar to the Zeiss. Price and filter is a big no no.
  • Rokinon/Samyang 14mm: Price is definitely a plus. But the sample images online didn't give me the confident on this lens also the filter compatibility is a negative. Plus I need something that can be used in landscape, wedding, and events when I want to. And this lens doesn't offer auto focus. So it's out.
  • Sigma12-24mm/Tokina 16-28mm: These were at some point my top candidate. But if I have to go without filters, I'd rather pay more for the well known to landscape photographers Nikon 14-24mm.
  • Nikon 14-24mm: I can totally justify the cost for such a well performance lens. But comes withe the lens cost, I looked into options for filters. All I have now are 100mm Lee and Cokin filters. I have ND 3x, GND in all different level, and a 10 stop 77mm. Going with this lens meaning all these filters almost non usable. To convert the whole setup to fit Nikon 14-24mm is what I cannot justify for the price
3. My only option left is to go back to 16-35mm. So which is better: 20mm or 16-35mm ? I looked at:
  • Sharpness:  I did some simple test and it seems they are equivalent.
  •  Star: I do shoot night, cityscape thus the star effect overall is important. It's kinda decision point for my wide angle option. In this category, 16-35mm won. 
 I clearly prefer the star on 16-35mm (right) over 20mm (left).

So I placed order on 16-35mm again and will soon be posting 20mm up for sale.