Flooded Cypress Dome - Everglades National Park, Florida
I bought the 12-24mm lens with my first digital camera, the D100 and loved the wide angle lens. At the time, my widest was a 24mm lens and when placed on a cropped sensor like the D100, it became a 36mm lens which just isn’t very wide. Being able to shoot at an effective 18mm opened up a lot of doors to landscape photography.
This was one of the first DX lenses made. This means it is lighter and smaller than a lens built for a full frame camera. The ƒ4 aperture also reduces the size over a ƒ2.8 prime lens. I find that while this lens isn’t the sharpest out there, it is plenty of sharp and I have sold numerous prints taken with this lens. I still own this lens though it mostly stays in the studio as when I made the jump to the full frame D3 camera in 2008, I also purchased the 14-24mm ƒ2.8 lens.
Moraine Lake - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Today, I do less landscape photography than I did earlier in my career, but I still keep this lens around. I have considered selling it on several occasions, particularly now that I have the 14-24mm but there’s still a chance I’ll go back to a crop camera for underwater work in the future and this would be a valuable lens for that.