Review: Nikon FX wide-angle lenses

by adamhanlon Wednesday, July 4th, 2018

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

Rightly considered by many to be a superb topside landscape and general wide-angle lens, the 14-24mm certainly belies the traditional adage that primes are sharper than zooms! Its corner to corner sharpness is rightly legendary, and it has been described as being “optically perfect” in combination with many full frame Nikon cameras.

Listed minimum focus distance is 0.28m/0.9ft.

The lens has 14 elements in 11 groups. Two of these are ED glass, which helps reduce color fringing. Three are glass-molded aspherical. The inside of the front element (only) has Nikon’s special Nano Crystal anti-reflection coating. The diaphragm has 9 rounded blades.

The lens was pool tested at 14mm and 24mm. It is fair to say that there may well be sweet spots between these two focal lengths that were not tested. The testing used a 80mm of extension and a Zen 230mm (9”) dome.

Test at 14mm

f5.6.

f7.1.

f9.

f11.

f13.

Full high resolution downloads of the 14mm focal length test files are available. Please use the password “wide-angle15”.

Test at 24mm

Full high resolution downloads of the 24mm focal length test files are available. Please use the password “wide-angle15”.

Conclusion

The advanced construction of this lens seems to make it less suitable for use behind a dome. I would suggest that you need to be at f11 or greater to get acceptable performance at 14mm and f8/f9 at 24mm. This variation may be due to the elements’ movements within the lens affecting the lens:virtual image distance.

The lens was lent for review by David Cheung of Scubacam Singapore. Many thanks!

Hi-I think that you are right on the decision whether the soft corners is, in some instances, due to focus distance or not.

Of course, what is acceptable as corner sharpness is subjective, both in terms of the image being show and the what the photographer will accept...

Posted by Adam Hanlon on 2015-04-03 15:16:27

Alex - thank you for the write up and sample shots. After downloading and reviewing the full size files my take away is that f7.1 - f9 seems to be when corners for all of the lenses begin to firm up.

The tough part though is determining whether the improvement is due to focus distance and an increase in depth of field or not. I'll have to take a look at them again in a couple of days and see if I can draw some conclusions.

Posted by TightLines on 2015-04-02 17:12:44