It has been a long time since Nikon came out with a fast wide prime lens, so a lot of people are excited about the new 24mm F1.4 has just been announced. A few years ago, the lack of good prime lenses was a major cause of many wedding photographers drifting over the the Canon camp.
Even with the arrival of the D3 and D700 bodies from Nikon, many still felt that Nikon was depending on their exceptionally good zoom lenses and not giving the primes the attention they deserve.
The best prime lenses in the Niko9n range are a couple of the older designs; the 85mm F1.4 and the 28mm F1.4. I have the 85mm and it is an exceptional piece of equipment. The 28mm lens was discontinued a few years ago, but is so highly regarded that good used one have been selling for well of $4,000 on eBay, way more than twice the price of the lens when it was new.
The new 24mm F1.4 promises to be a classic lens - hopefully it will have all the good optical features of the old 28mm, but including Nikon's latest advances as well. But is it really worth paying more than $2,000 for a lens that doesn't zoom?
For many people, including myself I think it is. Why?
Well, the first thing is that the F1.4 lenses can function nicely in really low light. When you consider that a lot of wedding photography takes place in dark churches and dimly lit reception venues, the ability to capture great images, without having to resort to much additional lighting is really important. My 85mm F1.4 is great at this, but the field of view is too narrow for a lot of the shots I want to get.
Another important reason to use this lens is to be able to isolate the subjects from the background. The longer focal length lenses do this quite easily, this image of President Obama taken with my 70-200 F2.8 lens for example.
The ability to do this at a much shorter focal length is one of the reasons photographers have been prepared to pay so much for the older 28mm lens on the used market. At weddings it is great to be able to include something of the environment in a lot of the images and still keep that nice out of focus background look. The new lens promises to deliver on this.
I like to get close. I'm not one to lurk in the background at our weddings - you'll usually find me right where where things are happening. The new 24mm lens will allow me to do this while still maintaining all the advantages I listed above.
All in all, assuming it as as good (or better than) as Nikon's other new lenses,m this should be a winner and allow creative photographers to capture unique images. That's why it is worth the money!
