Nikon 17-35 -- worth the money?

So, I am going to the Galapagos in three wks.

I currently have the 10.5 and the 12-24mm lenses, plus some macro lenses which i suppose won't see much use.

What do people think of the 17-35? It is supposed to be incredibly sharp, very fast @2.8.

I need to decide now. Will I regret not having the lens or will I use it?

ARRRGH! so many decisions

thanks.

If you have the bucks, buy it, you won't regret, and it will be especially useful for shark photography if you take it underwater. It is also a nice portrait and landscape lens, sharper than the 12-24. I have the 17-55 (which is of similar quality) and it never leaves my D2x topside.

Luiz

LChan,

I'm pretty sure this has been discussed at length before, so you might want to do a search.

My view: I have the 17-35 mm and use it a lot, underwater and above. This is a magical lens. It's not just sharp - colors seem (to me) cleaner and slightly more saturated through this lens, and it seem easier, main subjects 'pop' and landscapes in the right light glow in ways that I really like.

Underwater , I particularly like to use it for sharks and other animals that I'm not confident that I can approach closely enough with the 10.5 or 12-24 lenses. This is the factor that most people cite, of course. Cranked in to 35, it's roughly the equivalent of a 50 mm lens on a full-frame SLR and can do quite nice fish portraits, etc.

Another big advantage of the 17-35 is that this is a 2.8 lens. The one stop difference (compared to the f/4 12-24) can sometimes be very important in low/dim lighting wide-angle situations where it's difficult to get a good ambient exposure at f/4, but which aren't suitable for the 10.5 FE (also f/2.8).

The length of the 17-35 is almost identical to the 12-24, so you should be able to use it with a big dome and the same extension ring (and diopter, if you use one) as the 12-24 mm zoom. I can't remember if the lens takes a different zoom control ring, and that may depend on the housing. (On my Subal D2X housing, the zoom control works slightly better with the 17-35 than the 12-24, which sometimes can slip at depths above 15 meters.

So. I love this lens, am very glad I have it and use it a lot. Whether I would buy a new full-price 17-35 now, however, is another question. I purchased the 17-35 back in film days, to use as my main wide-angle lens with the F100. This is not a cheap piece of glass. But it's a good one.

Frogfish (Robert Delfs)

Awesome lens

Karl

hmmmmm.....

that is actually what i'm looking for.

something to take pix of sharks and stuff that won't allow me to come as close.

thx.

perhaps someone can help me as I am in the midst of the film-to-digital thing and am a bit confused as to why 17-35 mm is a better shark lens

according to Nikon:

17 - 35 has 104 to 62 degree coverage on 35mm film and

79 to 44 degree coverage on DX format

12 - 24 has 99 to 61 degree coverage on DX format

Coming from shooting film, I generally dive with housings that contain a 20mm, 24mm, 28mm or 35mm lens. That is essentially a 94 to 62 degree coverage range;

Experience has shown that the 28mm is my basic 4 to 10 ft long sandtiger shark lens diving NC in non-tropical clarity water;

I find that if I am not inside 6-8 ft from a shark, my pict is "do-do" other than as a "there is a shark" picture; and a 35mm lens at that range isn't wide enough or too flat to add any "drama/dimension" to the picture (And I have tons of too-far-away-shark-head-shots to prove the point); now that is with film. if I put the 35mm in DX format, that would be the equivalent of shooting about a 50mm in film - which, in my mind, would cause major issues if trying to capture a fish of any size....isn't that what you are doing with the high end of a 17-35 zoom range?

....maybe the water clarity makes a big diff, but it seems that the 12-24 is the perfect dx shark lens for my conditions...

just wondering. thx

bfdc

I was in the Bahamas shooting a shark feed.

I used my 12-24 and it was great for very close shots, but it is so wide that I had a hard time getting good pixs when the sharks were a little further out.

I don't know how good your vis is, but in the tropics the vis is so good, i get tempted to try taking pixs when the subject is further out, or the subject only allow so much distance. With the 12-24, the subject on the pix is really small, with a lot of surrounding water.

That is why i posed the question of the 17-35. I have two ultrawide (weitwinkel) lenses in the 10.5 and 12-24, and two macros. Unfortunately nothing else. Ultimately, i can only bring one lens underwater.....

Think about the 17-55 too, it is just as good as the 17-35 but adds more reach in the long range and it is an even better shark lens, I think.

Luiz