Canon 16-35 MKII or Nikon 14-24mm Manual Focus?

[Physicx]

I have recently upgraded to full frame to a 5DMKII. The good news is that I can now shoot with my 24-70, 70-200 and 50 1.4 on the FF body and its been a very pleasant experience.

I have also sold my cropped body and my beloved cropped body wide angle lens. The sigma 8-16mm. Its lovily piece of kit. Sharp to the corners and gives nice colours. The only down side is that it is a bit slow at 4.5 and it is not FF.

Im looking for a full frame wide angle lens and have considered the 16-35 MKI and MKII. The MKII isnt perfect, and at this price, it is comparable to the much better 14-24mm from Nikon. I have heard that you are able to shoot with an adapter. Anyone can give any guidances what this adapter is and how much it costs.

I have been toying with the thought of getting the Nikon lens and shoot with manual focus. Be interesting to hear from anyone who has actually done this. I am buying this lens for a travel lens. So I will be shooting most of the time out and about everywhere, which means the AF would be really handy for fast shots.

[oscaroo]

Gday.

I've the 8-16 sigma on a 50d. I tried it out on a 5d2 and it works fine!
From memory you get FF coverage down to 14mm and if you were to be brave enough to saw-off the hood then you could go down to I think 10mm before some edges start falling off. At 8mm you'd have some round-edges on the corner of your image.

When I get a 5d3 one day I might "modify" my 8-16mm in this way.

[neuroanatomist]

FWIW, I recall seeing a website offering hood removal for the 8-16mm as a service.  Might be worth a search if you're worried about DIY.

[wcksmith]

I've got the 5DII and have used the 16-35mm II for a couple of years & do like it.  Mine's just a hair soft on the left side unless I stop it down to f16 or so, but it's super sharp in that range.  I've heard that several have that issue.

I bought the Nikon 14-24 this past winter & got this adapter for it: http://www.adorama.com/CZNKGEOSAF.html

I think I wasted my money on getting this more sophisticated adapter.  The one without the added chip would have been just as useful. Supposedly this chip enables the focusing confirmation function but it didn't work on my copy.  The lens is stunningly sharp wide open & stopped down in the middle and the corners.  I get the extra 2mm of wide angle - you can almost see your ears in the viewfinder 

I shoot landscapes only, so I'm always manually focusing whatever scene I shoot, so that is not a big deal for me.  If I was using it to wander around & shoot, I would not buy that lens given the manual focus.

Three other items to note:
1) you cannot use filters on the front of the 14-24 lens unless you buy some pretty exotic and expensive adapters - I have not bothered with this - so if you want a polarizer, forget about it.
2) the aperature of the lens is adjusted with a manual lever that protrudes from the adapter - you slide it one way to open up, and the other way to stop it down.  There are no marks or clicks to let you know where you are between F2.8 & F22 - it's a guess.  It's not hard to get it in the ballpark of what you need though.  It just takes some getting used to.
3) You have to open the aperature wide open to focus (manually), then stop down to the desired point to shoot the image - stopping down significantly reduces the light in the Live View, or view finder & it's tough to focus that way.

If you can live with these caveats, its a fabulous lens, even on the Canon body.

[D_Rochat]

Does anyone know why Canon hasn't produced one yet? I could see that they wouldn't want too many ulta wide zooms in their line, but I don't see why they couldn't replace the existing ones with a 14-24 when they are ready to be upgraded. I'm sure they could address the filter issue in development if they decided to go ahead with one.