16-35 vs. 18-35

[MFloyd]

@simsurace
@Bjørn
Thank your for your feed-back.

[BEZ]

I have a 16-35 that seems sharp into the corners and generally very sharp  .....I don't mind carrying a few extra grams to have constant f4, and 16mm.

But I am not a landscape photographer, so my priorities may vary from your use.

Cheers

[Frank Fremerey]

Another question, Simone: Would the humble AF-D 18-35 also be a candidate? It is even smaller and cheaper, yet many praise its IQ.

[BillO]

Another question, Simone: Would the humble AF-D 18-35 also be a candidate? It is even smaller and cheaper, yet many praise its IQ.

Because of sample variations (seems especially so in the "consumer" lenses) it is a bit hard to generalize from my one experience, but I will relate it anyway.

I had the AF-D version which seemed OK on the D80 that I used it with initially.  When I moved up to the D600 "full-frame" sensor it looked rather soft overall so I traded it off.

Later I bought the AFS version which seems substantially sharper, with more contrast than the earlier version on the D6XX. 

I believe that at one point Dave Paterson made a similar observation, but that was at least a couple of years ago.

[beryllium10]

This discussion re-started at a great moment.  Thanks Simone and all who've contributed, this is very informative.  Like Simone I am looking for a workhorse wide zoom.  Over the past weekend I rented a 17-35 mm f/2.8, to see how it worked on a D810.  In my case I'll be using it a lot to record geological sampling sites, which is closest to landscape photography. My previous camera was the D7000 (crop sensor), which paired extremely well with a Tokina 11-16 mm f/2.8 for this purpose.  The 17-35 looks like a good one for me: The focal range is right. I like the 2.8 max aperture, and the manual aperture ring compared to the 16-35 f/4.  The build is rugged compared to both the 16-35 f/4 and 18-35 variable aperture zoom, which is important for the use it will get. I actually like the heft of a big lens, and would happily carry a 17-35 in the field.  It's a lot lighter than rocks. 

However, the copy I rented performed poorly.  Below is a test scene at 17 mm and f/2.8, and some 100% crops.  The backlight is strong and the sky is at least a stop overexposed in places, which helps show up focus errors and chromatic aberration, which makes this a tough test.  The others come from the left side, top, and top-right of the frame.  I see lots of chromatic aberration, and distant objects around the edge of the frame are poorly focused. I couldn't get an acceptable image of this scene at aperture wider than f/8.  The lens performed slightly better at 28 mm (OK by f/5.6), and better again at 35 mm.  Note - Image processed in Adobe Camera Raw with calibration set to camera-neutral. All other settings left at their defaults (no chromatic aberration corrections, sharpening USM 25% / radius 1.0). 

I have difficulty believing that a correctly working copy of this lens would perform so poorly.  I wonder if it had been beaten up a bit in its (long) rental history.  However, I'd appreciate feedback from those who've used the 17-35.  Is this is standard on a high-DPI camera, or was I using a poor or damaged copy?  Also, can anyone comment on the optical performance of the 17-35 stopped down to f/4, compared to the 16-35 and 18-35 at their wide-open settings?

Thanks, all advice appreciated.

[simsurace]

Another question, Simone: Would the humble AF-D 18-35 also be a candidate? It is even smaller and cheaper, yet many praise its IQ.

t

What would be the advantage? Sorry, you already named two.
I've heard that it doesn't really cut the mustard on hi-res bodies since it's an old design. But I guess this might be overstated.
At this point I already own the modern 18-35 now so the easiest thing is just to sell off the 16-35. Getting a third lens into the mix is too much hassle. But thanks anyway for the suggestion.

[simsurace]

Beryllium, the test shots are wide open?

I don't have any personal experience with the 17-35, but I would have expected less than stellar performance wide open in the corners of a wide zoom from that era. In the case of the 16-35 I was disappointed because from a much more modern design (more modern even than the 14-24 which is very renowned) I was expecting very good performance even in the corners. Wide-angles are the lenses that have most benefitted from recent developments in optical engineering, we are now seeing very good wide-angles even from third-party manufacturers thanks to cheaper aspheric lenses, advances in computing etc.

A quick comparison at the-digital-picture confirms your findings: the 17-35 at f/4 is much more blurry in the corners than the new 18-35. I cannot say whether your copy is even worse than that.

[Frank Fremerey]

Beryllium: I feel the detail rendering of the 17-35/2.8 Nikkor seems pretty good in your examples. IIRC it was introduced with the F5. Someone would have to show me a film that can resolve this amount of details.
If you are not depending on JPEG ooc you can easily get rid of lens distortion and abberation in post processing.
I did not buy this lens because I could not bear lens distortion in the view finder. I felt sea sick. I later tried and bought the 1.4/24G which has next to no distortion in the finder.

Simone: The 14-24/2.8 is a lens originally listed North of 2k€. That is a price range where Nikon throws in all they got: glass, mechanics, quality control. I used this lens a lot as a loaner from a friend. Gosh. A great performer!
The 16-35/4 is ~1k€ listing price and you get a lot of "features", which does not mean all these features feature state of the art incarnation...

[Erik Lund]

The 14-24mm AFS 2.8 suffers from unpredictable ghost and or flare especially for instance when the sun is anywhere near the frame - the front elment 'peeps' out and is more or less unprotected by the build in lens hood as it approaches the 14mm mark - Can of course look nice but it can also ruin an images if no such thing is acceptable for the intended image.
Otherwice its a winner on all accounts - more or less

[Frank Fremerey]

I confess. My work was mostly indoors. Tripod. HDR.

[beryllium10]

Simone Frank and Erik - Thanks for your replies.  Simone - yes, my picture was with the 17-35 wide open.  At this focal length it improved as expected on stopping down, but didn't get sharp into the corners until f/8.  I think your test scenes from earlier in this thread show the 16-35 and 18-35 performing better in the corners at f/4.  Frank - I would normally remove the CA and distortion in the raw conversion, so not too worried about those aspects.  However, for my day-to-day use of a wide zoom sharpness across the frame is important and it sounds as though I shouldn't expect the 17-35 (even at f/4) to match the more recent lenses.  Shame that with new optical design comes less robust build ...  I'll try renting the 16-35 and 18-35 and see how I like them (I already know I will not like the plastic and the lack of aperture ring).  I have rented the 14-24 in the past and really liked it, but inability to protect it with a filter is a major drawback for me.  Whichever I end up with will get months of outdoor use at a stretch, in places with plenty of snow, rain or dust in the air.

Cheers - John

[Chip Chipowski]

I don't know whether that 17-35 test shot is good or bad, but it looks like a really challenging scene.  It looks like your focus point is in the foreground or mid distance, so I would think some of the far away corner elements are way OOF.

[Frank Fremerey]

I don't know whether that 17-35 test shot is good or bad, but it looks like a really challenging scene.  It looks like your focus point is in the foreground or mid distance, so I would think some of the far away corner elements are way OOF.

Does this call for an old school brick wall test??? HAHAHA

Another ides: What about third party glass? I heared the new Tamron line sounds promising and IIRC Tokina had interesting offerings too.

[pluton]

I'm still pleased with my one copy of the 17-35, 9.5 years later. Bjorn R observed sample variation issues way back when the lens was introduced in 1999/2000.  Mine has proved useful from D200 and D2xs to D3 and surprisingly, D800.  I 'm not motivated to get rid of it even though I've got the 14-24 plus a bunch of good primes.
Question:  When you folks refer to "the corners", exactly how far away from the actual corner are we talking about?

[simsurace]

Question:  When you folks refer to "the corners", exactly how far away from the actual corner are we talking about?

In my samples, it's the farthest 1/6th or 1024x684 px of the total image (6016x4016 px).