Optical quality of Nikon 10.5 vs 14 mm lens?

Christian:

I have a question about WA-lenses for a digital Nikon SLR camera.
There's the Nikon 10.5 mm and the Nikon 14 mm.
Why is the 14 mm more expensive? Is there a difference in the quality of the lenses?
Has anyone tried both with a digital SLR and care to share their impressions?

cheers

/christian

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oldpeanut:

The 14mm lens is designed for covering the full frame (36mmX24mm) image area with 114 degree of view. It's a huge lens with a lot of glasses, so it's expensive. Please check the link below for a review of this lens:

http://www.naturfotograf.com/14nikkor_review.html

The 10.5mm lens is a DX format fish-eye lens excellent for underwater photography use. Check the review listed below:

http://www.naturfotograf.com/lens_fish.html

You can see mjh provided very good example of underwater photos taken with a 10.5mm lens.

Cheers,

Terry

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mjh:

Have not tried both and no idea why the 14mm is more, maybe more glass? But I do know people are taking some incredible pictures with the 10.5. Here are a couple of my attempts.

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Christian:

Thank's for the links. Have you tried the 14 mm for underwater use?

cheers

/christian

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Christian:

I have a question about WA-lenses for a digital Nikon SLR camera.
There's the Nikon 10.5 mm and the Nikon 14 mm.
Why is the 14 mm more expensive? Is there a difference in the quality of the lenses?
Has anyone tried both with a digital SLR and care to share their impressions?

cheers

/christian

Click to expand...

RonFrank:

There are several factors that contribute to the 14mm lens being close to three times the cost of the 10.5mm

First, it's a full frame coverage lens, vs. a DX lens.

It's also a Rectilinear lens rather than a fisheye.

It has an aperture ring which adds to the build cost.

The G lenses seem to range in build quality. While I'm sure that the 10.5mm has good build quality, the 14mm uses more ED glass, and less plastic material. Look at the difference in size and weight, the 14mm weights a hefty 1.5lbs compared to the 11 oz 10.5, so twice the weight = more metal, and more glass.

I've used the 14mm but not the 10.5mm, and neither UW. The fisheye effect is sometimes interesting, but in general is not a practical day to day lens. One can use software to create a rectilinear image from the 10.5mm lens, but the end result is a crop.

There are some websites that review the 10.5mm and show the crop factor if you are interested in seeing the end results. The 14mm is a 21mm (35eq) on a DX body, and the 10.5 is about a 16mm fisheye, not really all that similar, but more so if you use the software to create the rectilinear image.

The 14mm was designed to replace the very popular 20mm f2.8 on DX cameras. The 10.5mm was designed to replace the Nikon 16mm fisheye.

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