Wide angle DX?
Nov 17, 2016 18:05:56 #
imageal wrote:
The Tokina SD 11-16 f2.8 (IF) DX II has been an excellent purchase for me. I got it from Adorama for $439. It is aspherical and I have been pleasantly surprised at the lack of distortion using it on a Nikon 7100. The 2.8 gives you an advantage when the light is low.
Here are a couple of hand-held sample shots.
Here are a couple of hand-held sample shots.
Nice shots.
Nov 17, 2016 18:35:56 #
Thank you! Both cars were shot in The Villages, in Central Florida. Each third Saturday of the month they have a classic car show on their Spanish Springs Square. When the "snowbirds" are in town they car have 250 or more vehicles on display. It's a lot of fun to see some really great restorations.
Architect1776 wrote:
Nice shots.
Nov 17, 2016 19:11:24 #
imageal wrote:
Thank you! Both cars were shot in The Villages, in Central Florida. Each third Saturday of the month they have a classic car show on their Spanish Springs Square. When the "snowbirds" are in town they car have 250 or more vehicles on display. It's a lot of fun to see some really great restorations.
Wow, sounds like fun and a photo op rich environment.
Nov 17, 2016 19:33:52 #
Hi Lou,
I just upgraded to the D5500 myself. What a great camera! I also picked up the Tamron 16-300mm All-in-One/Macro lens. It is great for wide angle, telephoto, and Macro. It's a bit heavy, but it's nice to not have to carry several different lenses. Plus, it comes with a 6 year warranty. You should be able to pick it up right around $500. Good luck, and happy hunting.
I just upgraded to the D5500 myself. What a great camera! I also picked up the Tamron 16-300mm All-in-One/Macro lens. It is great for wide angle, telephoto, and Macro. It's a bit heavy, but it's nice to not have to carry several different lenses. Plus, it comes with a 6 year warranty. You should be able to pick it up right around $500. Good luck, and happy hunting.
Nov 18, 2016 14:16:07 #
amfoto1
Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA
Since you are looking for a wide angle lens for use on DX cameras... forget FX lenses.
Yes, FX lenses will work fine on DX cameras. However, there simply aren't many FX lenses that go much beyond 14mm wide, but on a DX camera that's gonna be less wide than some DX lenses offer. Plus, 14mm and wider FX lenses are very expensive. For example, a 14mm FX Nikkor sells for $1900.... or a 14-24mm FX Nikkor, currently on sale, costs $1700... even a third party Sigma 12-24mm "DG" (same as FX) costs $1600. Those are pretty much a waste of money, unless you plan to use the lens on both FX and DX cameras. FX lenses also will be larger, heavier and many of the very widest of them have a protruding, convex front element that precludes using standard filters on them.
If you want something truly wide and for use only on DX cameras, get a DX lens. There are quite a few to choose among.
Nikon themselves offer 10-24mm and 12-24mm zooms... but they're quite expensive (about $900 and $1100 respectively).
Tokina are an excellent alternative. They're very well made and have very good image quality. They currently offer choice of a DX 11-24/2.8 or a DX 12-28/4 ($560 and $470 respectively). Both these current lenses are able to autofocus on all Nikon DSLRs... they have built-in focusing motors (AF-S style). If you look at used Tokina DX ultrawides, you'll find 11-16/2.8 and 12-24/4, but it's a little trickier and depends upon the camera you'll be using the lens on. In Nikon mount there are two versions of each of those older lenses: a cheaper original and a little bit more expensive "II" version. The difference between these is that the "II" has a built-in motor (AF-S) to be able to autofocus on all Nikon DSLRs, while the original doesn't (like AF-D lenses) so will only be able to autofocus on cameras where the body itself has a motor to drive AF. So, that means D300, D300s, D500 and D7000-series will be able to autofocus them, but D3000-series and D5000 series cameras will not. The motorless original Tokina lenses will fit onto the motorless camera bodies, but will be manual focus only.
Tokina are nice in that they use the same direction of rotation as Nikon with both the focus and zoom rings (many others rotate the opposite direction, as with Canon and others). Tokina lenses are a little different in that they use a "focus clutch" mechanism, where to switch between auto focus and manual focus you actually slide the focusing ring slightly forward or backward. When this is set to AF, the manual focus ring is disengaged... So if you turn it the focus ring it will simply spin and won't change focus. Set to AF, that ring doesn't move when the lens autofocuses. On the other hand, if you shift to the manual focus setting, that turns off autofocus and engages the ring the mechanism to allow manual focusing. This is a pretty standard setup on Tokina lenses and really isn't a big deal in normal use... It's just "different" from other lenses.
These lenses appear to use a micro motor type of focus drive. On longer focal lengths that type of drive might be slower. But on these very short focal lengths autofocus is near instantaneous. That's because the focusing elements within a wide angle lens only need to move a very short distance to achieve focus.
Image quality is excellent with all these Tokina. The f4 lenses are a little smaller, lighter and less expensive, and actually are fine for most people's wide angle uses. Large aperture wide lenses just aren't that necessary. But if you really feel the need, there are the the f2.8 alternatives (AFAIK, no one else offers any f2.8s in ultrawide DX zooms). Tokina also is now offering a 14-20mm f2.0, if you feel the need for an extremely large aperture zoom. 14mm is pretty wide, just not as wide as some of the other options. 2 or 3mm makes a pretty noticeable difference with ultrawides.
The widest of the ultrawide is a Sigma 8-16mm. Just be aware that when you get that wide it means a lot of distortions and a convex front element that prevents using standard filters. Sigma also makes a couple different 10-20mm lenses... a cheaper one with a variable aperture (f4.5-5.6, if memory serves) and a more expensive, much larger and heavier f3.5 version. Sigma has some deeply discounted sales prices on some of their lenses right now.... which suggests to me that they might have new versions coming soon and are clearing the shelves of current models.
Tamron makes a 10-24mm, often one of the least expensive but a bit more plasticky and not quite as sharp as some, at the 24mm end of it's focal length range.
Tokina also makes a 10-17mm, but be aware this is actually a fisheye lens (with potential for very strong curvature of straight lines in images).
You've probably noticed that all the above are zooms. There are almost no truly wide DX primes, other than some manual-focus-only (Rokinon, Samyang) or fisheye.
Yes, FX lenses will work fine on DX cameras. However, there simply aren't many FX lenses that go much beyond 14mm wide, but on a DX camera that's gonna be less wide than some DX lenses offer. Plus, 14mm and wider FX lenses are very expensive. For example, a 14mm FX Nikkor sells for $1900.... or a 14-24mm FX Nikkor, currently on sale, costs $1700... even a third party Sigma 12-24mm "DG" (same as FX) costs $1600. Those are pretty much a waste of money, unless you plan to use the lens on both FX and DX cameras. FX lenses also will be larger, heavier and many of the very widest of them have a protruding, convex front element that precludes using standard filters on them.
If you want something truly wide and for use only on DX cameras, get a DX lens. There are quite a few to choose among.
Nikon themselves offer 10-24mm and 12-24mm zooms... but they're quite expensive (about $900 and $1100 respectively).
Tokina are an excellent alternative. They're very well made and have very good image quality. They currently offer choice of a DX 11-24/2.8 or a DX 12-28/4 ($560 and $470 respectively). Both these current lenses are able to autofocus on all Nikon DSLRs... they have built-in focusing motors (AF-S style). If you look at used Tokina DX ultrawides, you'll find 11-16/2.8 and 12-24/4, but it's a little trickier and depends upon the camera you'll be using the lens on. In Nikon mount there are two versions of each of those older lenses: a cheaper original and a little bit more expensive "II" version. The difference between these is that the "II" has a built-in motor (AF-S) to be able to autofocus on all Nikon DSLRs, while the original doesn't (like AF-D lenses) so will only be able to autofocus on cameras where the body itself has a motor to drive AF. So, that means D300, D300s, D500 and D7000-series will be able to autofocus them, but D3000-series and D5000 series cameras will not. The motorless original Tokina lenses will fit onto the motorless camera bodies, but will be manual focus only.
Tokina are nice in that they use the same direction of rotation as Nikon with both the focus and zoom rings (many others rotate the opposite direction, as with Canon and others). Tokina lenses are a little different in that they use a "focus clutch" mechanism, where to switch between auto focus and manual focus you actually slide the focusing ring slightly forward or backward. When this is set to AF, the manual focus ring is disengaged... So if you turn it the focus ring it will simply spin and won't change focus. Set to AF, that ring doesn't move when the lens autofocuses. On the other hand, if you shift to the manual focus setting, that turns off autofocus and engages the ring the mechanism to allow manual focusing. This is a pretty standard setup on Tokina lenses and really isn't a big deal in normal use... It's just "different" from other lenses.
These lenses appear to use a micro motor type of focus drive. On longer focal lengths that type of drive might be slower. But on these very short focal lengths autofocus is near instantaneous. That's because the focusing elements within a wide angle lens only need to move a very short distance to achieve focus.
Image quality is excellent with all these Tokina. The f4 lenses are a little smaller, lighter and less expensive, and actually are fine for most people's wide angle uses. Large aperture wide lenses just aren't that necessary. But if you really feel the need, there are the the f2.8 alternatives (AFAIK, no one else offers any f2.8s in ultrawide DX zooms). Tokina also is now offering a 14-20mm f2.0, if you feel the need for an extremely large aperture zoom. 14mm is pretty wide, just not as wide as some of the other options. 2 or 3mm makes a pretty noticeable difference with ultrawides.
The widest of the ultrawide is a Sigma 8-16mm. Just be aware that when you get that wide it means a lot of distortions and a convex front element that prevents using standard filters. Sigma also makes a couple different 10-20mm lenses... a cheaper one with a variable aperture (f4.5-5.6, if memory serves) and a more expensive, much larger and heavier f3.5 version. Sigma has some deeply discounted sales prices on some of their lenses right now.... which suggests to me that they might have new versions coming soon and are clearing the shelves of current models.
Tamron makes a 10-24mm, often one of the least expensive but a bit more plasticky and not quite as sharp as some, at the 24mm end of it's focal length range.
Tokina also makes a 10-17mm, but be aware this is actually a fisheye lens (with potential for very strong curvature of straight lines in images).
You've probably noticed that all the above are zooms. There are almost no truly wide DX primes, other than some manual-focus-only (Rokinon, Samyang) or fisheye.
Nov 18, 2016 15:28:39 #
Alan, thank you very much for the in depth comments. They truly are helpful... in fact, I'm strongly attracted to the Tokina 12-28; and the 11-20; but I don't know if I really need the extra stop to 2.8. And, this whole effort is very much subject to approval by, of course, The Boss. Nonetheless, I'm learning and refining possible choices - and the more info I get, the better informed I'll be.
This is how I went about moving up from my Oly 5060WZ, which I loved, but which I felt I ran into limitations when I wanted to zoom farther in, or when I cropped and lost detail. (5 MP).... Thus, I researched and read many, many, reviews - eventually choosing for me a mid-range choice blending $$$ limitations with the desire for as good a camera and lenses as I could get.
So, again, I very much appreciate your time . .. and everyone else's too... (I even got a private reply) in helping and guiding me. I'll certainly advise when the choice is complete.
This is how I went about moving up from my Oly 5060WZ, which I loved, but which I felt I ran into limitations when I wanted to zoom farther in, or when I cropped and lost detail. (5 MP).... Thus, I researched and read many, many, reviews - eventually choosing for me a mid-range choice blending $$$ limitations with the desire for as good a camera and lenses as I could get.
So, again, I very much appreciate your time . .. and everyone else's too... (I even got a private reply) in helping and guiding me. I'll certainly advise when the choice is complete.
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.