One of my favorite lenses on the the D80 has been the 24mm f/2.8D prime. The 36mm equivalent is for me a “normal” view that doesn’t feel wide but doesn’t constrict the view down to the detail level. It focuses pretty closely and has a flat field, making my abstract closeups a possibility with the same lens.
I bought the 12-24mm f/4 DX zoom last spring for my Italy trip to have a truly wide lens since the 24mm had been my widest Nikon lens. I used the zoom a number of times, but somehow I didn’t get along with it’s bulk. On the D80, the primes, 24mm and 50mm balanced well.
In the last few months, I’ve been using the 12-24mm more and become more and more impressed by it’s very sharp, very contrasty drawing of a scene. When I took the D300 out for the first few times, the 12-24mm went on it and produced remarkable images. I find myself at the widest end of the zoom most often, portraying the suburban landscape with a classic landscape photography vocabulary.
At the end of the week I put the 24mm on the D300 and didn’t feel as much of a change in bulk as with the D80. I got a few nice images though. The wider aperture gives a different look as in this image, where the foreground grass is de-emphasized because it’s not in focus. The trees are in critical focus and the background recedes more as it moves out of focus.
As I was working on the image though, I noticed the chromatic aberration in the the thin branches of the central, leafless tree. There’s a color fringe that’s barely visible in a full monitor view (20″ Apple Cinema). Of course this is twice the size that my Epson 800 will print and about as large as I’d ever print the image anyway. I adjusted it in Capture NX using the chromatic aberration control, but it remains visible in the image.
It will be interesting to look back over some of my other images and see to what extent the older prime exhibits this behavior. It’s very easy in Aperture to filter images by lens and camera, so I can quickly have a look. But more importantly, I’d like to know whether I should pursuing the look of the 24 or switch to the 12-24mm for these wider angle captures.