Hey Guys
Trying to decide between these two wides. Thought I was going for the 14-24 but have heard that the new 16-35 is the new sharpness king. I'm shooting landscape on both the D7000 and D3x and love the idea of being able to use ND filters on the 16-35.
The 14-24 is pretty much without peer as a super-wide. There aren't even any SLR primes that can be considered its peer with the possible exception of the Zeiss 21mm. What's really amazing about the 14-24 is that it doesn't have any real weakness excepting a very small amount of easily correctable CA at some focal lengths and apertures. It's incredibly sharp right from f/2.8, even into the corners, pretty much across its entire zoom range (although it's arguably slightly better at the wide end than the 'long' end).
Having said that, I don't really consider the 14-24 a landscape lens for several reasons. The focal range, f/2.8 aperture, and the fact that it's optimized for shooting at wide apertures make it arguably more useful as a PJ/street lens. As a landscape shooter I just don't find the focal range useful; sure, I occasionally shoot in that range; but not that often. A lens that extends to 30-35mm instead of just 24mm would mean a lot less lens swapping. And as impressive as the f/2.8 performance is, I mostly tend to shoot at middle apertures, and would prefer not to pay the size/weight penalty for capabilities I seldom (if ever) need. Then there's the filter issue; IMHO the new Lee contraption doesn't eliminate this issue, because it's large, cumbersome, very expensive, specific to this one lens, and still doesn't support polarizers. The two filters I tend to use are a polarizer and my Sing-ray vari-ND; I don't care about grad filters (I prefer digital exposure blending).
The 16-35 f/4 on the other hand, is a good wideangle landscape lens IMHO. It does have some of the compromises traditionally expected with zoom lenses which are worth understanding. While it's not bad at f/4, things improve greatly by stopping down even to f/5.6. But from f/5.6-f/11 it's darned close to the 14-24 for sharpness, especially in the 20-24mm range where I'd say they're pretty much indistinguishable for sharpness (the 14-24 may still have a bit more contrast/bite though). Both the focal range and the ability to use my standard 77mm filters are very welcome. I mostly shoot from a tripod, so I'm usually not concerned about VR; but I did get some use out of it recently shooting from a boat on a lake, and I can see it being very useful inside places such as museums, churches, etc where tripods are not allowed.
The 16-35 has two significant weaknesses. The first is massive barrel distortion at 16mm. It improves by 18mm, and is gone by 20mm. But at 16mm it's wicked bad. While this can be corrected in software, such a large correction means losing significant image to post-correction crop (and losing resolution in the corners due to interpolation). The second issue is sharpness in the 30-35mm range, which is not nearly as good as other focal lengths. Stopping down doesn't bring things into the acceptable range for me (on a D3x), though with lower pixel density (D700, D3s, etc) it might be OK.
So basically I treat the 16-35 VR as an 18-30mm lens. That's where I find the performance to be truly excellent and it's also a range I'm far more likely to use than 14-24mm. So for me, the 16-35 VR is a more useful landscape lens than the 14-24. I originally thought it would completely replace the 14-24 for me and I'd sell the latter; but I haven't been able to bring myself to sell the 14-24, given its stellar performance and the fact that every once in a while I have a need for that 14-18mm range. But if I didn't own either lens, the 16-35 would definitely be my first purchase.
