Nikkor Ai 24mm f/2.0
Introduction
For a long time, I've had an interest in lenses that have odd parameters, aka the weird stuff. With each camera maker having their own small set of unique, exotic lenses, my curiosity quickly overwhelmed my wallet and I found myself unable to test most of these crazy lenses. My curiosity only growing stronger with time.
Eventually, getting a job turned the tables and I found myself able to go after the unreasonable stuff. May it be expensive, too cumbersome, too soft,
too hard to use, I was gonna get them all.
So, naturally, it made sense to get the Nikkor 24mm f/2.0. What's not to love ? a small, wide aperture, wide angle lens with a supposedly
funky rendering if pictures online are to be trusted.
Let's take a closer look at this lens, and see how weird and quirky it can get.
Liberation from evil tripods
I got this lens at a photo shop in Paris near the Bastille (or lack thereof) and I immediately slapped it onto my Nikon F2 and got to shooting straight away. It was hard to not be amazed at this lens, it's no bigger than a standard 24mm f/2.8 lens, yet is a full stop faster and opens up the door for more versatile wide angle photography, as I would immediately notice.
In my Nikon, I had some expired shakacolor that is actually ISO 200, but that I decided to shoot at 100. As I walked from the street with a setting sun into the
subway system of Paris, I was pleasantly surprised at being able to shoot handheld with this lens, albeit at rather slow speeds.
My initial impression of this lens was very positive, it's small, wide, fast and light, what else could you ask for ? good image quality ?
Well, how does it do in that regard, actually ?
A unique look for a unique lens
Lovers of clean, smooth, creamy out of focus and low optical vignetting, you're not going to like this lens.
The out of focus highlights on this lens are crazy looking, being very outlined and noticeable in the center of the image,
and turning into elongated triangles in the corners. This makes for a very old school look, that I actually personally love.
This lens is no sharpness award winner, being somewhat capricious and deciding when it wants to be sharp and when it doesn't want to. Thankfully, the floating element (CRC) makes sharpness consistent throughout the focus range and to me, image quality stays very acceptable
To be more accurate, even wide open at f/2.0, sharpness always is great in the center, but it takes somewhat of a hit in the corners, being quite dreamy even if it keeps resolution high.
Vignetting and flare are two surprising features of this lens, in a fast, wide vintage lens you would think that it would perform poorly in both aspects, but that's not the case. Vignetting is not really noticeable, with no fixing in post being even required and flare is not intrusive.
My cool wide lens
They say that if you commit a crime but that no ones knows about it, that then you haven't committed a crime. While I don't know how good
of an advice this is in life, I sure know that this saying applies well to this lens. Sure, it may not be the sharpness, but you can
only notice it in some specific situations, and in most situations you won't notice it at all. Then, if you can't see that it's not
super sharp, it is super sharp, right ?
Not just that, but just stopping the lens down to f/2.8 or f/4.0 does make it truly sharp, with a corner to corner sharpness, more or less.
This lens would be considered by most as "soft", or "lomo", they'd tell you that it's not worth it, that it's too expensive and too soft,
and that it's coma kills it. While it's coma is rather strong I am part of the weirdos who think that coma looks nice, and it really is
sharper than the straight out of camera JPEGS shot on an APS-C camera lens reviews would let you to believe. The abberations that it will hapilly show, again,
are happy little accidents so i really don't mind them. So again, sure the price sure is high and it's not optically perfect,
but I have a Nikkor Ai 24mm f/2.0 and you don't.
So take that, meanies!
More images
