www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/1224.htm
I don't need a tripod with this lens: digital SLRs look great at higher ISOs and these short focal lengths allow long exposures with sharp results, so all those night shots were shot hand-held while walking around!
This was the first true ultra wide zoom available for any mainstream DSLR. It was announced at PMA in February 2003 and was hard to find for a year. This special lens has a much shorter range of focal lengths than other wide angle lenses in order to give really wide images on the Nikon digital SLR cameras, as well as Fuji cameras based on the Nikon DX sensor sized cameras.
If I hadn't already bought and prefer the Nikon and its focusing I'd probably own the Tokina. Dead last would be the Tamron, which is a cheap-feeling lens with the smallest zoom range, slowest aperture and highest price of these three. All of these three off-brands are half the Nikon's cost at about $500. I doubt there's much optical performance difference between the Nikon and Tokina. The Tokina seems to be metal and the Nikon is good plastic. The Nikon offers much sweeter focusing with no need for switching between manual and AF, but if money is an issue I suggest getting one of these. Skip the zoom that comes with your camera and get one of these instead.
The Canon is the best lens in this range with much less distortion than the Nikon, but doesn't fit my Nikon cameras. Forget the huge, bulbous and slower Sigma 12 - 24 unless you also want to run it on a film camera.
Focus: Internal true Silent Wave Motor (SWM) for fast, silent focus. The front elements move inside the lens with zooming while the barrel of the lens stays put.
The lens focuses with only the slight motion of a few internal elements instead of having to crank the entire lens in and out. This means the front no longer rotates as you focus, making polarizing and grad filter use easy. M/A (Manual/Automatic) mode means that even while in autofocus you may simply grab the focus ring to make manual focus adjustments. Next time you tap the shutter it returns to AF mode, and next time you grab the ring you're instantly in manual mode.
It's a somewhat complex distortion so it doesn't correct completely. Some almost invisible pincushion 18 mm: very slight pincushion. Correct with -13 Use between 15 and 18mm when you need very straight lines running along the edges of the frame, otherwise don't worry about it. Only at 12 - 14mm can you really see any barrel distortion if you're a professional brick wall photographer. Watch for the fact that the falloff of the D70's flash makes the lens appear to have more distortion than it really does. TRICK: This is a digital lens so I know anything you do with it is through a computer, so correcting distortion is trivial.
here how to do it), and it also can be done with a little more work in older versions of Photoshop thusly: Expand the canvas size by 50%. You may have to play around a bit with the value depending on what you shot.
Same file correcting the distortion as above with Photoshop's "Spherize" tool at -10% after increasing canvas size 50%. Note how the vertical lines on extreme left and right are now almost straight, but middle right now curves in a little.
At 12mm it gets a tiny bit soft at the very farthest edge, something rarely noticeable unless you shoot test charts all day. On film (Velvia) it's sharp and crisp and contrasty at every focal length and aperture. It has far more sharpness than any contemporary digital camera can exploit. Nikon is getting so good at making lenses that there are fewer and fewer flaws to write about making my job here easy. Maybe when you get a 50 MP DSLR you might start having to worry about sharpness with this lens. If you're brazen enough to dare use this lens on a film camera you'll see that the lens produces the same image which merely varies in size as the lens is zoomed. The farthest edges of this image circle, beyond the angle seen with a filter, get blurry, but inside of that area everything is great. When used with a filter the area of blurriness is cut off anyway. If the sun or other point light source is just outside the image you can get two small yellow dots towards the edge of the photo closest to the light. Use your hand to shield that light and you'll have no problem. If you use an uncoated non-Nikon brand filter you will get a small ghost near sources of light. When shooting into lights take off the filter or use a multi-coated one. Coma: I see none even wide open in the corners, excellent. Use with on-Camera Flash This lens will cast a shadow visible in the bottom of your photos when used with the built-in flash of the D70 or D100 and when zoomed to about 18mm and wider. When used purely for fill light as a small percentage of the total light this shadow may not be visible.
at 12 mm on D70 at 18 mm on D70 at 24 mm on D70 TRICK FOR USE OUTSIDE THE USA: Although it is a violation of US Federal law to use this product in a manner contradictory to the manufacturer's instructions or labeling, the Nikon 12-24mm works fabulously well on film cameras so long as you don't zoom wider than 18mm with a Nikon brand filter, or as wide as 16mm with no filter. Other brands of filters tend to be thicker and will limit this even further. It vignettes (cuts off the corners) when set wider on a film camera. Avoid 16mm since the far corners have slightly lower sharpness out that far.
Tricky Deduction The Nikon 12-24mm covers larger formats than DX at proportionally longer settings, each of which gives the same maximum field of view. In other words, the maximum FOV is limited by mechanical vignetting, not the actual focal length setting. The circle of illumination at the image plane varies with focal length setting. From about 12 - 18 mm the field of view for this variable image circle remains about the same as the image circle changes size. Thus if a larger format CCD Nikon camera were to be introduced you'd still get the same ultrawide view at some setting. The only thing you'd lose is the ability to zoom in to a narrower field, since the longest the lens goes of course is 24 mm. Thus all you'd lose is the effective zoom ratio at longer settings if you put this on a digital cam, like the Kodak SLR/n, with an oversized sensor or a 35mm film camera.
I've been expecting Nikon to copy my idea of Digiwide manual-focus prime lenses for digital SLRs, and Nikon finally did it as a zoom. Popular Photography reviewed this 12-24mm on page 51 of their January 2005 issue. This 12-24mm and a telephoto or medium zoom are the only lenses you'll need for a DSLR.
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