Off 24th Street.

Nikon D3x, 20mm UD Nikkor.

During the past three weeks I have featured images taken in San Francisco’s Mission District using the Nikon D3x full frame DSLR with the 20mm UD Nikkor lens, one which I first wrote about here. All of these were snapped in one afternoon. The UD Nikkor, an older lens, first sold in 1967, comes with very high quality construction and optics. It mates perfectly with the bulky full frame Nikon DSLR bodies, especially those with a built in vertical grip (D3, D4) or those which have had one added (D600, D700, D800). The balance on these is well nigh perfect and the electronic focus confirmation light makes focusing easy and fast.

If you can handle the limitations of Manual Focus – hardly that great in a 20mm lens with its great depth of field – this is an outstanding addition to any Nikon full frame outfit. VR is unnecessary in a lens this wide.

Use of this lens on an APS-C (D2x, D3000/5000/7000 etc.) body is pointless – you get all the bulk and weight of a full frame lens, but discard half the image, owing to the smaller sensor. Worse, you get an effective focal length of 32mm which is hardly what this optic is all about. If you want something this wide on APS-C, get a lens computed for that format of around 12-13mm focal length which will yield the same field of view as 20mm on full frame.