NIKON AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G ED IF Digital SLR Zoom Lens

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great, and too expensive!
Review: I think the pricing on this lens is just obscene. Nikon has a good reason to charge us this much: given the 1.5x crop factor on digital SLRs which effectively has a 1.5x zoom effect on lens focal length, if you need a true wideangle lens, you just have to buy something like this. This lens' 12-24mm is equivalent to a 35mm film camera's 18-36mm focal length, which covers the usual wideangle range.

The lens has all the bells & whistles of a modern Nikon official lens, save for VR (vibration reduction), which isn't necessary on a wideangle anyway. You get internal focusing via a silent ultrasonic motor, extra-low dispersion (ED), and solid construction and excellent optics.

But, for the high price you pay for this, you don't get a macro mode. Nor do you get a fast lens: the maximum aperture is only f4. I thought they should do at least f2.8.

Also, because this lens is designed for the smaller-than-35mm frame size of a d-SLR, whatever goes through the lens ends up in the image frame (i.e., the sensor). Whereas with regular non-DX lenses you get the extra benefit of keeping *only* the center 67% of the scene as seen by the lens and hence getting a sharp picture from corner to corner, the DX lens does not have maximum sharpness at the edges and you may see chromatic abberations as well.

In short, if you want wideangle on a d-SLR that's subject to the 1.5x crop factor, you don't have a choice. Cough up and get this lens. For those of us who didn't get rich by trading Google shares, we can only dream ... and play with this in a camera store. Life's just unfair. (I'm waiting for Tamron or Sigma to come out with a cheaper version of this super-wideangle.)