Nikon Nikkor Wide Lens Pricing Guide

Full Frame, DX Crop, Ai, Ai-S & the one Z Mount Lens. Not a complete list of them… Here is a list of like all of them from photosynthesis.co.nz

Hello DankPads, I am something different here, this isn’t a laptop pricing guide today, it is a lens pricing guide instead! I own Nikon D3300 and D7200 DSLR, my youtube videos are shot with them. I saved $400 on buying my D7200 used, but I spent over 4 days researching 12 different cameras and then 20 different lenses that usually sold with them.

So why this post or guide? Well for one it’s fuel by how ridiculous how much people sell these lenses. Seriously these people buy them at big stores like Best Buy and pay a 60% premium over the OEM price. I am in the process of building a lens collection, but instead of just for pleasure & internet points, like my laptop collection, I do use my 4 lenses quite a bit.

I have done research on over 100 Nikon lenses. I DO want to cover the 3rd party lenses from Tamron, Sigma, Zeiss & Tokina, but that would require a little bit too much research… so we start off with the Nikon standard, Nikkor.

Light & Matter had a blog post about these lenses. They provided a big list of lenses sometime in 2017. I sifted out all the Nikkor lenses and then started to see if they had lenses not included. Some of these lenses are out of production, some of these lenses are super old & manual only, which would need modding to be done to work on some cameras. I have a 35mm lens that only works on my D3300, because it doesn’t have the AI-s cut in the aperture coupling ring to fit on my D7200. So if you’re going to buy an old lens, keep that in mind!

7mm to 35mm Lenses covered

The lenses in this page are Flsh eye, Ultra Wide to Wide. These lenses will give a bigger perspective of the environment, think of it like your eyes, on how much you can see when you look from left to right. A few 24mm & 28mm lenses are here, which can be used for portraits, but no 35mm primes, that will be for the next post.

Ultra wide

Any lenses from 4mm up to 24mm are considered ultra wide on Full Frame cameras. These lenses often suffer from perspective and barrel distortion. the usage of these lense is to give an ultra wide view of the world. Some can be a little bit wider than what we can see with our eyes. These lenses are used for architectural, interiors, landscape, & panorama. You can use these to give a close subject a bigger than life image & have the rest of the environment behind it. For me I use these lenses to take photos of real estate interiors, & car engine bays. These usually can focus up to a foot away and after 6 feet they can have the entire image in focus. I would often fix the distortion with photoshop, however if you don’t have it on an even tripod, any parallel lines look like shit.

Fish eye

These lenses provide a curvilinear image, so there is circular distortion all over these type of lenses. For that these are mostly a specialty lens, great to give a 3D environment to. These lenses are popular with ‘attitude’ sports like skating, rollerblading & snowboarding. Some of these fish eye lenses have a circle cut off, because the sensor is too big for the lens. That means at the corners and far edges have no image. Most of the fish eye lenses have the glass protrude from the lens body, some have built in hoods for this reason, & have drop in filters. Also I’m covering some old fish eyes because some are ludacris as hell.

Wide

Lenses from 24mm to 35mm are considered to be wide. These lenses don’t capture as much as the environment as an ultra wide, but it still has it uses. Lenses in this focal length can be used for landscape, portrait & street photography. There are quite a bit of lenses here at the f/1.4 & 1.8 max aperture, which is great for low light & that bokeh blur effect.

Tilt Shift / Perspective Control

Like fisheye lenses, these for specialty use, but are a bit more complicated & much harder to execute quickly. The benefit of these lenses is that they can remove the distortion often seen in wide angle lenses. So any subject that has vertical lines, stays parallel when used properly without the need of photoshop to fix. Another benefit is that these lenses can have multiple points of focus, because the glass is tilted, it changes the perspective of the sensor. It can also blur the top and bottom of the image very drastically, giving a ‘miniature’ feel to objects that are not miniature at all. There are only 2 lenses in this group that have perspective control.

• Jay Cassario’s wedding photography article – SLR Lounge
• Julia Anna Gospodarou’s architectural write up

Know your what your camera can do!

Some of these lenses may not be compatible with your camera, or will not have some features working. D5xxx and D3xxx do not have focusing motors built inside them, so lenses designated with AF only, will not have auto focusing features. For more detailed information check out Ken Rockwell’s website, I basically copied his stuff. ^^

AF 1986 – Present
Auto Focus. Duh! 😉 But this was always wasn’t available. These lenses are made to work with all the old Nikon cameras, it has a little screw in the rear of the lens that connects to the autofocusing motor on Nikon SLR and DSLR if they are built in. These are easier to service if you decide to operate on one.

AF-P 2017 – Present
Pulse motor, super quiet & super fast focusing with limited compatibility. All cameras built after 2014, select ones after 2012.

G – 2000 – Present
Gelided, these removed the aperture ring, so older cameras will not work, aperture works via thumb dial in manual modes. This is sort of a non issue for DSLRs, as AF lenses with aperture rings had to be set at the highest F stop then thumb dialed in aperture.

AF-S 1998 – Present
Silent Wave Motor. A stepping motor built into the lens, rotates glass like all manual focusing lens. This was a step up from normal AF lenses as you are able to override the autofocus without the need to change to manual mode or risk of damaging the camera’s AF motor.

AI, Ai mod, AI-S | 1977 – 1981 & 1981 to now
Auto Exposure Indexing. For DSLRs this is mostly useless, and I won’t get into the specifics for film. You can use these lenses on all DSLRs, but you’ll have to manually change the aperture with the ring. I believe light metering doesn’t work on non-aperture coupling ring DSLRs, so you’ll have over exposed or underexposed shots if you’re going thru the viewfinder til you find the right balance. I find messing with the aperture ring super fun to rotate, however without light metering, certain environments will need additional shots to get the exposure correct. You have to mess with lens settings in the camera if you want the EXIF data to be correct on aperture. Some lenses aren’t no different from AI to Ai-S spec wise, but others got extra improvements, hence the price difference. Don’t even get me started on how it works with flash.

F Mount or non-AI | 1959 – 1978?
These are the super old vintage lens. They can break cameras that have coupling rings, but the ones that don’t have any, can work without any issues. For instance I can use a vintage 1965 35mm f/3.5 lens on my D3300 but I can’t use it on my D7200. I have to file off or dremel for the aperture fit, or somehow guess how it can fit correctly. No focus ofc, get them for fun, maybe not serious work.

Pricing Guide Info

In this format I have four prices here. On the far right is the B&H new & like new price. This is a representative of what Nikon lists the retail price of their lenses & cameras. Other reputable stores are Adorama, Crutchfield, Cameta Camera, & Costco. Feel free to look at the Nikon authorized dealer list for all of them. A lot of the times, a new lens is a must, especially when it comes to reliability and service. Some lens hold to their value, and on some occasions go up in value if they were a low production run.

Next we have the KEH EX+ price, which is typically Excellent Plus or Like New condition. On some the only price I had was Very Good for the super old lens. These conditions are what they call them, which is very accurate to photographers who’ve bought from them. You will see a considerable discount on these lenses compared to new/retail pricing. I’d recommend getting an EX+ lens if you’re looking to do some serious work with it. This price is fairly representative of what a high eBay auction/buy it now comes out to be.

And finally we have the eBay low and mid price. I didn’t bother researching a high price, because we already have two high prices! These lenses are at a great discount compared to KEH sometimes, but it’s not always the case. I tried to look at lenses that didn’t have any damage or issues on the lower end of the price. If you’re looking to roll the dice and save some money, go ahead and buy it at these lower prices. From what I gathered, quite a bit of pawn shops and auction sellers are selling them like ITAD equipment, 99 cent auctions.

• Lens model – Link to Nikon’s Website, Ken Rockwell or other page
• ID – Model number & links to my google drive for a picture of the lens
• Sold – Links to eBay sold prices, from low to high.
• KEH EX+ – Links to the KEH page for a used lens
• B&H New – Links to the B&H Page for a new lens
• N/A – None available

DX Zoom – Ultra Wide & Fish Eye

• There is no f/2.8 zoom for DX crop sadly.
• 12-24mm f/4 IF-ED pro lens doesn’t hold its value well, buy it used for that discount.
• 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G is the ‘all around’ one out of here, basically plastic version of the semi pro above.

FX Zoom – Ultra Wide, Fish Eye & Wide

• There are many many many older lenses I am not covering in this range, will be here for a future update 🙂
• Two lenses are new at this time & thus haven’t depreciated much
• 17-35mm 2.8D is the best discounted lens, at KEH & eBay, it is part of the ‘holy trinity’.
• 14-24mm 2.8G is newer, a bit pricier & has that Nano coat, however you are not able to put a filter on it.
• 8-15mm Fisheye has the circular cutoff at 8mm and goes away at 15mm, new and still expensive. The only FX Fisheye zoom

FX Prime – Classic Fish Eye & Ultra Wide

• Just tossing all of them on here, since they are all pretty much $$$
• I would of put the year on here, but wordpress tables can only be so wide… ;(
• I think all of these fisheyes are curvilinear…
• 16mm 2.8 Ai-S might be the best available fisheye prime to get easily
• 15mm 2.8D is next to get if you need an auto focus or new
• 6mm 2.8 fisheye is the quintessential dgaf hulk smash collectors lens

FX 19mm & 20mm Primes – Ultra Wide Portrat

• PC 19mm 4E ED is the most priciest because of the tilt shift mechanism. You get a Fluorine coat for ruggedness but the moving frame would gunk up if you’re out in the elements
• 20mm 1.8G ED is the newest lens here, with a nano coat, & pro lens
• 20mm 2.8D is the best priced lens here, unless you need such a max aperture as the 1.8G

FX 24mm Prime

• The last 3 lenses have Nano coating, which basically reduce flares & ghosting. They also have rear focusing, good to keep dust away
• 24mm 1.4G has the biggest price depreciation for resale
• 24mm 2.8 Ai-S is the cheapest prime here at the cost of no autofocus
• PC-E 24mm 3.5D offers a good discount for a used tilt shift lens, partially because its been out in the market since 2008

FX 28mm Prime – Wide Angle Portrat

• 1.4E & 1.8G have Nano coat & rear focusing elements
• 1.4E has Fluorine coat for tougher glass
• 1.8G would be my sensible choice without breaking the bank or missing out on features.

More to come!!!

I don’t have a closing to say… dunno what to put in here. These should be a secondary or third set, unless you need these specifically for the needs posted here.