A pretty sharp lens with good contrast (noticeably higher than the old 18-35mm) and color, even with wide open at 24mm it's still very sharp; in some lens test I read it's even better than prime lenses. This lens hardly flares and I haven't notice much light fall-off (with B+W 010 MRC on it), which can be seen with the 18-35mm. The only bad things about this lens are noticeable chromatic aberration and distortion at 12mm, but it can be removed with software. The feel of the zoom ring is not so good as with 18-35mm, and it's the new Nikon lens layout, which means the focusing ring is closer to the camera. One strange thing is there's no environment seal for a lens like this, otherwise it'll be such a nice combination with D200. Overall I would prefer this one over any other lenses- its performance speaks for itself. As for the price, I think it's a bit high but justified. The lens weighs 465g and has 7 rounded diaphragm blades. Used on full frame bodies it's no better than those old wild angle primes, mainly due to vignetting and corner softness.

My recent attempt to shoot with a set of primes while traveling wasn't quit nice. Either it's too much trouble or time consuming to change lens, or I'm getting to lazy :) In the end I found a used copy (the street price of this lens has gone up quite a bit due to exchange rate) of 17-35mm and had Nikon restore it back to proper condition. Optically it's nowhere near the 14-24mm and there's no weather sealing either. On the plus side it's smaller, lighter, ghosting resistant, and the focal length covers around 90% of my travel needs. So far my impressions of this lens are as follow: Soft extreme corners don't go away at wilder settings, even if you stop down to f11, but stop down to certain extend does make it less visible. You need to stop down more at wilder focal length, such as f8 at 17mm, f5.6 at 20mm, f4 at 28 mm. Center resolutions is always good, there's no problem here. Close focusing of this lens is very good, I don't see the drop in sharpness. Distortion is especially noticeable at 17mm. The color rendition is not as vivid as 14-24mm, the image also lacks the 3-D look in comparison. It's still a pretty good lens once stopped down enough, and it will be my first choice for traveling. I suppose one could always dream for a 14-24 like update from Nikon, but I really doubt it will be as compact size-wise. One interesting thing is the front element is close to the filter enough such that my regular B+W filter doesn't cause any vignetting.

Although it has 62mm filter thread, it's a small and light weight (260g) lens. Focusing takes only 1/4 of a turn and the lens tube extends only about 0.4cm. On a full frame camera and focus at infinity, light fall off at the corner is visible below f11 (with standard B+W 010 filter), but not so serious after f5.6- removing the filter helps, but I have yet to test that in detail. Extreme corner softness is almost 100% gone at f8 (only a trace of it at the corner when viewed at 100%), and in my opinion corner softness is not a problem from f5.6. I would rate its overall sharpness better than the 18-35mm.

Initially I thought it's an AIs lens until I check the serial number, luckily it's manufactured near the end of Non-AI version and there's multi-coating. It gives more contrast than the AF 35/2, it's also very sharp from wild open at center; corner sharpness is good from f2.8 (on D200). Like the 35/2, this lens produces great star effect at night with large aperture settings. This is really a good performer, too bad it's only a 28mm.

Along with the Nikon 18-35mm, these are the first two lenses I purchased with D70s. I mainly did portrait with it until I switched to prime lens. Overall this lens is very good for its price, because optically this lens is almost perfect: excellent center sharpness (but going soft toward the corner), very flare-resistant (can't recall seeing any flare with this one), minimum distortion and light fall-off. The reason that I switched to primes is they are faster lenses, and because the color A09 produces is not as saturated as Nikon lens- which is obvious when I once shot the same scene with both 18-35mm and A09. The focusing takes only 1/6 turn, so you need to be careful when focusing at the 75mm end where depth of field is quite shallow. This lens weighs 510g and has 7 rounded diaphragm blades. The bokeh of this lens is not bad, but of course not on par with the 85mm F1.8. Focusing is extremely fast on D200 and okay on D70s.

A lens I have been resisting to buy, with the hope of AF version surfacing. But that is probably not going to happen until next year (again). So far the impression is softer and lower contrast f1.4, but very good already at f2. Shooting at infinity requires stopping down to f5.6, otherwise the curvature of the field (heavier than the Noct) will render corners soft. However, once stopped down this lens is indeed super sharp.