Wel­come to my Nikon 14 – 24 review. I love this lens.

Where to Find the Nikon 14 – 24 Lens

Why Use the Nikon 14 – 24 Lens?

Let’s start with the obvi­ous facts. At f/2.8, it’s a fast lens. The qual­ity is out­stand­ing, both in the build qual­ity of the lens and the opti­cal qual­ity it pro­duces. It pro­duces images that sim­ply out­per­form other wide-​angle lenses in its class. This lens pro­duces images that have stood up to the most ardent pixel-​peepers and won them over.

There are no vignetting or issues with chro­matic aber­ra­tion, even wide-​open at f/2.8. As an ultra-​wide angle lens, there is some dis­tor­tion, but it’s remark­ably less than you would expect. Com­pared to the unflat­ter­ing wave­form dis­tor­tion of other wide-​angle lenses, the Nikon 14 – 24 is a dream and its dis­tor­tion is rather eas­ily cor­rected in Photoshop.

With a short focal length and an f/2.8 aper­ture, this is a low-​light dream lens. Shorter focal lengths are less sus­cep­ti­ble to hand­shake, mak­ing it much eas­ier to get a sharp image when light­ing con­di­tions are less than ideal.

So much for the obvi­ous. Now let’s get into the heart and soul of this lens. How do you use it as an artist? In my opin­ion, that’s really where the Nikon 14-​24mm lens shines — it pro­vides cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties unmatched by any other lens. For me, it allows my cam­era to cap­ture the grandeur of a scene when space is limited.

Look­ing through this lens, par­tic­u­larly on a full frame cam­era like my Nikon D700, inspires awe the first time you see the view. It’s incred­i­bly wide! You think back to all of those images where you just couldn’t fit the scene and you sud­denly wish this was in your bag. Now it fits. The Nikon 14 – 24 proves that you really can have it all, but you don’t have to dis­tort it like a fish­eye. Take a look at the image below.

The sheer breadth of this wide angle lens is appar­ent, but it isn’t dra­mat­i­cally warped like a fish­eye lens. This is a 14mm focal length shot. Imag­ine try­ing to get this scene using a 24 – 70 lens. First, there’s really only one place to stand if you don’t want to be run over by the traf­fic going through the port cocheré and there’s no room to back up fur­ther, or else you’re out­side of the struc­ture. You’d have to take mul­ti­ple shots and stitch them together later. By the time you took those shots, the peo­ple and cars in the fore­ground would move and it really wouldn’t come together. Some­times, you just need an ultra-​wide angle lens to cap­ture a grand scene.

What are the Drawbacks?

The front ele­ment of this lens looks like a big bub­ble and the lens hood is per­ma­nently mounted. If you like to use fil­ters on your lenses, that’s going to be a bit of a prob­lem. You can find fil­ter solu­tions from ven­dors like Lee Fil­ters that adapt or mount to the Nikon 14-​24mm, but you’re not going to just screw on another 77mm threaded fil­ter to this lens.

Expect to feel some heft when you pick up the Nikon 14-​24mm lens — 34.2 oz accord­ing to Nikon’s web site. By itself on my Nikon D700, that doesn’t bother me. When I load up my cam­era bag with this lens and a few oth­ers, you start to feel the cumu­la­tive effects of fast glass weigh­ing on your back.

Despite those draw­backs, it hasn’t stopped me from ensur­ing I take this lens with me every­where. When I toured the U.S. Capi­tol build­ing, this was the only lens on my cam­era and it worked perfectly.

How to Use an Ultra-​Wide Angle Lens

As I men­tioned, I think this lens does an out­stand­ing job of cap­tur­ing grandeur. The way to do that is to get in close to your sub­ject. If you try to shoot an ultra-​wide angle scene from a dis­tance, you’re not going to rec­og­nize much of your sub­ject. It will end up as a thin slide inside your frame. To use this lens, you have to get in close. In fact, that’s part of the beauty of keep­ing this lens with you. It takes your viewer right up to the edge and puts the sub­ject in their face, let­ting it spread out to the sides. View­ers want to see details and this lens lets you close enough to show everything.

Have you ever been to a pop­u­lar loca­tion and tried to take a photo with a long focal length? I have, and what usu­ally hap­pens is that some­one walks right in front of me, mess­ing up the shot. It hap­pens because they don’t know that they’re walk­ing in between your scene and cam­era. With this ultra-​wide angle Nikon 14 – 24, you can close that gap and elim­i­nate a lot of frustration.

What if I have a Canon Camera?

Then you’re in luck! You can use this adapter to mount a Nikon lens to your Canon body, allow­ing you to shoot with the Nikon 14-​24mm lens.

Novoflex Lens Mount Adapter — Nikon Lens to Canon EOS Body

Sam­ple Nikon 14 – 24 Lens Images

Nikon 14 – 24 Review