Sauseschritt wrote:
7. While you can still buy used, do NOT save money on wide angle lenses. Modern wide angles are plain and simple just superior to what we got in the past. You could get an older zoom, starting with the Nikon AF-S 14-24mm f2.8, which was a true breakthrough lens back in the day, so good that Canon users adopted it, and it was superior to many prime lenses at the time, too. The lens has many troubles though, such as getting a filter solution for it.
So much truth packed in #7.
I bought the AF-S 14-24 f/2.8 around 2008, when--as stated--it was a breakthrough lens. Made many valued images with it. It was especially good, wide open, for Milky Way nightscapes.
When mirrorless came out, I decided to modernize to the Z version of this lens, as the reviews were great, and this niche in my photo ecosystem had become too important to economize on. Looking to sell my old lens--still in excellent condition and including a pricey Photodiox filter holder and polarizer--I found the used camera dealers would only give me about $300. Meanwhile, Nikon was still selling this lens new for about $1800. Ack.
A friend who still shoots F-mount had long wanted such a lens, and I offered mine to him for what the dealers would pay. He snapped it up. I gave it a quick test before handing it over, to make sure nothing had gone wrong since I last used it. Unsurprisingly, the results looked great--and made me wonder why I'd dropped so much coin for the Z version. So I took the same shots with the Z version of the glass, compared the images side by side, and saw that the new lens was clearly superior. Wide open, the two versions looked about the same in center, but the newer glass maintained that quality out to the corners, where the old glass fell off a bit.
So it was win-win. Friend got a lens that looks perfect unless you pixel peep against much more expensive glass. I got enough pixel peeping to feel good about the hole in my wallet.