Ultra wide!
Last Sunday, during the morning, I went outside for a walk to the “usual” landmarks of Milan, to test my new Nikkor 10-24 lens…
But I think I need to take a step back, as I haven’t yet dedicated a post on the blog to my Nikon D90 reflex, which I bought around a year ago…
Before digital cameras came around, I didn’t use cameras much… and come on, with films and their limited shots, and the time it took to develop the film and realize which photos came out nice and which didn’t (when it was too late already), they weren’t very friendly…
Moving to the digital era, I became a user of Casio’s Exilm cameras, from the simple zoomless S3 (but it was very small and thin for those times), to the excellent Z-750, on to the curious EX-V7 (7x internal zoom, at the expense of image quality, which was a bit lower than the 750). 
What I always loved about Exilims, which for other aspects were actually worse than their competitors, was the possibility to use them in full manual mode. After taking a few shots I was indeed getting intrigued about techniques like long exposures for night shots, or playing around with depth of field, so manual control was needed.
Still, what those little cameras could do was still limited, and after seeing some travel companions with their DSLRs (in Canada, Peru, Cuba…), after some careful researching, as I desired a greater control on pictures and a better quality especially for night shots, I went for the buy, in time for a field test in China.
At first I was interested in the Canon 500D, but I ended up going on the Nikon D90, which I preferred mainly because of the better quality in high ISO pictures (ironically, that’s due to the fact that the 500D has more megapixels than the D90, which is probably too much for the size of the sensor…), and because the D90 is a little step up in terms of functionalities.
My biggest worries where weight, the need to carry a dedicated bag and the nuisance of changing lenses. The weight is tolerable, though, and I got an over-the-shoulder bag which isn’t too cumbersome, carrying just the camera, with which I’m more comfortable than I expected. My “travelling” lens of choice ended up being the Nikkor 18-200, of which I’m very satisfied. It’s good for basically every kind of situation, from a moderate wide angle to a quite good tele; the comfort of not having to change lens greatly outbalances some defects like complex distorsions (easily removed with a clic thanks to PTLens) or the alleged lack of sharpness (probably I’m still too much of an amateur to believe it important).
Well, betraying my requirement to only carry one lens, a couple of weeks ago I decided to buy an ultra-wide angle, the Nikkor 10-24, inspired by this article by the crazy Ken Rockwell, that really intrigued me a lot on the whole ultra-wide thing.
The choice was not very easy, with several alternatives: Nikon 12-24, better built and with a slightly better quality, but not wide enough and more expensive; or even the new Sigma 8-16, which enticed me a lot with those 8 millimetres, but which didn’t give me enough flexibility with those 16 millimetres… Witha 10-24 I can still shoot “normal” pictures without switching lens! So my choice was Nikon, and in this case, too, I didn’t care much about the claims of low sharpness at wide apertures.
Around here I’m showing some pictures from the set on Flickr, with some shots from Sunday morning. I’m quite satisfied; the ultra-wide opens up another bit of creativity, as long as you get really close (as Ken says) and find a good subject to put in front, to avoid shooting an “empty” picture.
To sum it up, with the 10-24 I can enjoy:
- Creative, ultra-wide pictures
- Wide or normal landscapes
- Group pictures, or pictures of people in front a landscape
- A little bit of “creative” macro, thanks to the low focusing distance of 24 centimetres
The 18-200 is still the choice for:
- Portraits and close-ups
- Sort-of-macro (with the tele extended)
- Tele, of course
- Pictures of animals or moving subjects
- Handheld night shots, thanks to the Vibration Reduction the 10-24 doesn’t have
- In general, every “normal” picture
Overall I think the 18-200 will still be the lens I’ll use the most, but under some circumstances (in cities or in wide landscapes) I think switching to the 10-24 will give me something more…
Down here I tried to run a comparison:
The pic on the left is an 18 mm (as I could have taken it with my other lens), the one on the right is 10mm… the difference in perspective and in the perception of depth is quite evident, right? 
