The wide angle zoom lens: friend or foe?

Staff · Issue 5, Feb 2002 · pp. 26–29

Products mentioned: Nikon F100, Nikon 17-35mm, Nikon 28-70mm, Subal Housing, YS 120 strobe, YS30 strobe, Ektachrome extracolour 100, Nikonos RS, 20-35mm lens

The world of technology, these days, is a very different place compared with a decade ago. For example and with apologies to the editor, we are writing this article for a magazine that does not exist, well not in the traditional sense! The pace of progress is remarkable. The humble zoom lens has also benefited from the technology revolution, and a modern zoom lens is very different beneath the skin than a lens from even the early 1990s. Established wisdom states that zoom lens should be avoided by serious photographers because to work over a range of focal lengths their optics are compromised compared with a prime, fixed focus, lens. In other words, by attaching a zoom lens to our camera we are going to take pictures that are not as sharp or as saturated with colour as we would with a good quality prime lens. But technology has changed things. Computer aided design has provided solutions…