First Thoughts on Nikon 10-24mm Lens

Back in April, Nikon announced the AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED lens. The usual alphabet soup of letters and numbers is pretty meaningless if you just come here to see pictures, so let’s hop to it. I used the lens for the first time last weekend, at two weddings. First up, Jim and Ashley:

Nikon D200, Nikkor 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, f/4.5, 1/15th, ISO 800

This is a wide lens. It effectively replaces Nikon’s 12-24mm lens in the lineup and provides some competition for Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina, who all have 10mm offerings. Looking through a 10mm lens is a whole different experience. There were many times when I was in danger of colliding with my subjects because I didn’t realize how close I was to them!

Nikon D700, Nikkor 10-24mm lens @ 20mm, f/5.6, 1/10th, ISO 320

The lens focused quickly and accurately in the low light of the reception hall and provided sharp images at all focal lengths. The two shots above were illuminated with a Nikon SB-900 flash while dragging (slowing down) the shutter to get the colourful/blurry ambient light in the background. For much of the night, I stood on the dance floor, camera pressed to my eye, and circled the participants over and over again while pressing the shutter every so often. With ordinary photography, one would want to stay as still as possible to minimize vibration or blurriness; here, though, the flash freezes the subject and my circling movements combined with the slow shutter speed add a little pizzaz to the background.

But what happens when you put this DX lens on an FX (full-frame) camera?

Nikon D700, Nikkor 10-24mm lens @ 11mm, f/5.6, 1/10th, ISO 320

You get a crooked, wavy vignette which looks… kinda cool, I think. The lens doesn’t quite project enough light on to the full-frame sensor to completely cover it, hence some information at the edges isn’t recorded. Here’s another shot, zoomed in a bit to 12mm:

Nikon D700, Nikkor 10-24mm lens @ 12mm, f/5.6, 1/10th, ISO 320

A teensy bit less of the vignette is visible here. Zooming in to 15mm eliminates it completely. Nikon’s FX cameras have the ability to automatically crop the images when DX lenses are attached, but I prefer to disable this function and shoot images like the above. This maximizes the amount of control I have after the fact, allowing me to crop where and how I want, and getting images that are as wide as possible.

The edge distortion at the wider focal lengths is surely noticeable by now, but it can be put to good use if the bride and groom are willing to have a little fun, like Meghan and Mike:

Nikon D200, Nikkor 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, f/4.5, 1/400th, ISO 500

Nikon D200, Nikkor 10-24mm lens @ 10mm, f/5.6, 1/125th, ISO 200

Meghan and Mike luckily didn’t mind the funhouse-mirror approach to photographs and we got some unique shots as a result.

I’ll be taking this lens with me on my July trip to Nova Scotia, where it should excel at landscape images of the ocean and sky. Luckily it takes the same 77mm filters that my existing pro Nikon lenses use, so I won’t have to buy a new circular polarizer. The build quality of the lens isn’t quite the same as my 17-55mm or 70-200mm lenses, but it’s still really really decent for what is essentially an expensive but consumer-grade lens. I own a Sigma 17-35mm f/2.8-4 lens that cost about the same amount when it was new, and it feels very cheap by comparison. Nikon knows what they’re doing when it comes to fit, finish, and refinement.

I’d easily recommend this lens for anyone looking for a super-wide and I look forward to using it on my vacation.