Part 7 - Wide-angle heaven
Interior of Flamborough lighthouse
Ever since we started on the digital journey over six months ago one thing has consistently annoyed us - the lack of a wide angle lens! In our first article we said that one of the major advantages the Nikon lens mount would have for us, was the announcement of the new Nikon DX 12-24mm lens designed specifically for the small digital sensor on both the D100 and our Fuji S2 Pro. This would give the equivalent of an 18-36mm lens on a 35mm camera. Since this has always been our "standard lens", its easy to see why we found this so attractive - no equivalent lens exists for the Canon D SLR's. Unfortunately, this DX lens (along with the 24-120VR lens) has remained just an announcement for over six months. Every month since March, the lens has been promised, but never materialised and we think our pictures have really suffered as a result. A superwide lens is great for interiors or architecture, but more importantly its fantastic for adding drama to pictures because of the exaggerated sense of perspective. All our trademark pix have used it!
At last the wait is over! Thanks to Robert White Pro dealers, we had the lens a couple of weeks ago, along with the 24-120VR - just the combination we have wanted since our first article. Unpacking the lenses was like Christmas and birthday rolled into one, we could barely contain our excitement. Our first impression was very favourable, with fast AFS focusing on both lenses and really nice build quality - but as always the proof of the pudding is in the eating - and this is where we started on the rollercoaster ride.
First of all the 12-24 - this lens is fantastic, it works perfectly with the Fuji S2 and has stunning optical quality. The results are very contrasty with excellent sharpness and no real light fall of towards the corners. Since we only have one of these, we spent most of our first shoot grappling each other for the lens, as we both wanted it all the time! In between the grappling (quite fun really) we were back shooting our usual pictures with strong leading lines and dynamic perspective. All in all it was 7th heaven.
Now, what about the 24-120VR! This lens should be fantastic because of its ability to allow much slower hand held shutter speeds (yes, we know Canon users have had this type of lens for a while, but it's still a novelty for Nikon) and also because it becomes the 35mm equivalent of 36-180mm. Combined with the 12-24mm - a very compact and versatile pair. Now for the bad news. On returning from our first shoot we eagerly downloaded the pix and the trouble started - all the shots on the 24-120mm seemed very soft. We had tried quite few shots on slow speeds, just to test the VR capability and without exception they were all fuzzy. One of the great advantages of a digital camera is that you can test this kind of thing in ten minutes and then view the results straightaway. The VR on our lens made all the pictures blurred - whatever shutter speed was used! So a week later that lens was back with the dealer and a second sample obtained, this time thanks to our local Jessops. We decided to test this straight away, before we used it in anger and hooray the VR seemed to work perfectly! Unfortunately, at all focal lengths, this sample was very soft on the whole right hand side of the frame - certainly soft enough to be very noticeable on an A3 enlargement. So back to the dealer again!
As we write, we haven't managed to find another one, but our advice is to check this lens out very carefully if you buy one. If it works well, we think it will be a cracker - if not, you might get better results with the letters "please rinse and return" stamped around the edge of your new lens!