A review by Andy Astbury

Wide Angle Glass

The Spectacular New Nikon
14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S NIKKOR

As a wildlife photographer my camera bodies are usually mounted with either a macro lens or some devilishly long and heavy telephoto monster.

I never profess to being the worlds greatest landscape photographer but I do enjoy finding strong graphic lines in a land, water or cloudscape and doing my level best to capture the drama that I see. I also from time to time, fall back into those strange ways I used to have back in the early 80’s – street photography and general stock work – it makes a relaxing break from sliding around in the mud trying to get a great PoV on a wading bird, or, as happened the other day, dropping your right-angle finder in 4 feet of lake water whilst trying to capture ovipositing Red Damselflies and getting your chest waders full of water in order to retrieve said item of kit.

I was chatting to another photographer a few weeks ago and he had just taken delivery of this new 14-24 Nikkor and he asked me what I thought of it, handing it to me rather gingerly as my ‘frontage’ was liberally smeared with goose ‘poo’ at the time!

I did some general test shots at 100ISO on my D2Xs at various focal lengths and apertures, the usual shots you’d do to test the quality of WA glass – spindly tree branches against a nearly ‘blown’ sky on the edge of the frame looking for CA faults etc, and ending with a couple of landscape shots at 14 and 20mm off the tripod at f/11 manually focussed at my ‘guestimate’ hyperfocal distance of just a ‘smidgen’ over 1 meter.

The next day, when I got around to checking the images, to say I was impressed is a bit of an understatement. I was somewhat ‘blown away’ by three things – the CA test shots showd a 99.9% absence of any fringing in all but the very nastiest and meanest test shot I could muster; the sharpness was astonishing even resolving staggering detail at infinity on the hyperfocal manual shots, and at 14mm the barrel distortion was a lot less than I imagined – whether by accident or design Nikon have produced a very flat-field lens here.

Needless to say I was on the ‘phone to Bob screaming ‘Get ME ONE – NOW!”

Since taking delivery of this awesome lump I’ll bet I’ve taken more wide angle images than I’ve shot in the last year with my existing 12-24 which, even though it is a superb lens, cannot hold a candle to this new Nikkor.

This shot of the new version of CBC’s Westfields HQ in Sandbach shows the lack of distortion at between 19 and 20mm – my full frame favourite WA was always a 28mm.

The image below is an unsharpened 100% crop selection from the right edge of the frame.

That’s very sharp for a wide angle and the detail definition is superb.

The above is at 14mm – a shot across the tidal mudflats at West Kirby – spot the Godray!

If I’d have tried to capture this scene with my existing WA its inherent contrast would have most probably lost the ray of light coming through the clouds as it wasn’t that well defined.

Another shot (above) from West Kirby the other day, again at 14mm, and the crop below is at 100%,
this time from the centre.

I also took this shot from the same position at 20mm and you can read the entire warning sign.

Just another couple of shots from this fantastic lens – I can’t leave it alone!

Yes, this lens is very expensive indeed, and is designed for the new generation of Nikon FF DSLR’s – if you are always going to use APS-c sensor cameras then the old 17-35mm would certainly be a cheaper alternative – but for me it’s no better than my existing lens, which as you have by now gathered I couldn’t wait to get rid of.

Not only is it expensive but it’s rather heavy too, but you soon get used to it, and when you handle 120-300 f/2.8 and 300-800mm zooms all day like I do then this lens is always a featherweight by comparison.

For sharpness, faithful colour and contrast reproduction, resolution and lack of CA this new lens from Nikon is just astonishing – if you are into photography for a living you cannot afford not to own one, and if you are in it for the love of it then the investment will be outweighed by the results.

Andy

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