Nikon AF-P DX Nikkor 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6 G VR
Nikon’s new ultra-wide zoom looks very appealing – but only if your camera is new enough. Andy Westlake tries it out
Nikon’s new budget 10-20mm zoom is put through its paces by andy Westlake
Ever since digital SLRs with sensors smaller than 35mm film appeared, there’s been a question of how to shoot at wide angles. APS-C or DX-format cameras need purpose-designed lenses with focal lengths as low as 10-12mm. To make them reasonably small and affordable, they are designed with smaller image circles, so aren’t compatible with full-frame cameras.
It didn’t take long for APS- C-specific wide zooms to appear, but they’ve always been pricy. Nikon’s AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5- 4.5G ED will set you back £700, driving most to buy third-party alternatives such as the £330 Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM. Doubtless, many Nikon users looked on in envy when Canon announced its EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM in 2014, which costs just £200 new.
Now, Nikon has replied, with the £329 AF- P DX Nikkor 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6G VR. With built- in optical stabilisation, at first sight it looks like an obvious buy. Unfortunately, it comes with a serious catch – as an AF- P lens that uses a stepper motor for autofocus, its compatibility with older cameras is limited. This is a strange misstep from Nikon that has no obvious technical explanation: the steppermotor- equipped Canon 10-18mm will work perfectly happily on all its APS- C DSLRs.
According to the lens’s instruction manual, it ‘does not support’ cameras
that are more than five years old, namely the D4-series, D3-series, D2-series, D-1 series, D800-series, D700, D610, D300series, D200, D100, D90, D80, D70-series, D60, D50, D40-series, D7000, D5100, D500, D3200, D3100, or D3000 models. So if you use one of these, you can stop reading now and buy a third-party alternative. With the D5500, D5300, and D3300, you’ll need to update the firmware for the lens to work.
Features
Nikon has employed an optical formula with 14 elements in 11 groups, including three aspherical elements to help minimise distortion. The aperture diaphragm uses seven curved blades, so you’ll see 14-ray sun-stars when it’s stopped down. The minimum focus distance is 22cm at all focal lengths.
As with its Canon equivalent, the 10-20mm’s modest maximum aperture of f/4.5-5.6 isn’t much to write home about. However, it does have built-in optical stabilisation that should allow shooting at shutter speeds 3.5 stops slower than would otherwise be possible. As a result, you can shoot handheld in lower light compared to using a larger-aperture lens.
At the front of the lens is a 77mm filter thread, and as with the vast majority of lenses these days, it doesn’t rotate during autofocus, which makes the use of polarising or graduated filters easier. Nikon has also supplied a large petal-type lens hood in the box, which can be reversed over the barrel when it’s not in use.
Build and handling
Weighing in at a mere 230g, and measuring 73mm long and 77mm in diameter, this lens is particularly small and light for an ultra-wide zoom. Indeed, it’s by far the most compact Nikon-fit option, and practically half the weight of the alternatives (including the only other stabilised option, the £580 Tamron 10-24mm F3.5- 4.5 Di II VC HLD). To achieve this, unsurprisingly, it makes extensive use of plastics in its construction, including the lens mount. However, it still feels quite sturdily made, and far better than some older all-plastic budget zooms.
The lens has but two controls: a large zoom ring that covers most of the barrel, and a slim manual-focus ring that’s placed in front of it, just behind the point where the front flares out to accommodate the filter thread. Unlike most other Nikon lenses, it has no switches on the barrel to select between auto and manual focus, or turn image stabilisation on or off. Instead, you have to select the focus mode using either the focus mode switch on your camera, or the onscreen control panel for lower- end models that don’t feature one. Meanwhile, image stabilisation is turned on or off from the camera’s menu – fortunately, Nikon suggests that it’s usually safe to leave it turned on all the time, including when the camera is on a tripod.
We’ve become used to this kind of switchless lens design on mirrorless cameras, but the difference is that it’s usually been designed in from the start of each system, so is consistent across lenses and cameras. Existing Nikon owners who are used to having physical switches on all their other lenses will, I suspect, look less kindly on the idea. I didn’t find it a problem when testing the lens on the Nikon D5600 body, as I just left AF and VR turned
on almost all the time. It’s not as nice as having physical switches, but personally I wouldn’t see it as a deal-breaker either.
Autofocus
As with its other AF- P lenses, Nikon has employed a stepper motor in the 10-20mm for focusing. This technology is borrowed from mirrorless camera systems, and in combination with internal-focus lens designs, allows for fast, silent and accurate autofocus.
In practical use, the AF- P system delivers on all these promises. Autofocus is generally extremely quick and only barely audible, even to the photographer in a quiet room. During video recording, it enables focus to be pulled from one subject to another with a much smoother effect than you’ll get from typical AF-S lenses, and without operational noises affecting your soundtrack.
Manual focus is also available, and as always with stepper-motor lenses, it uses an electronically coupled focus-by-wire system. This means you can only focus the lens manually when the camera is turned on and the metering is activated, which might feel strange to many DSLR users. Compared to the bad old focus-by-wire systems of a decade ago, though, the manual-focus ring has a much more positive feel to it, allowing extremely precise focusing.
Performance
While it would be remiss to expect great performance from what is clearly a budget lens, it’s also important to take into account that Canon’s similar 10-18mm is quite highly regarded for its imaging prowess. Unfortunately, based on our review sample, Nikon doesn’t seem to have quite such a praiseworthy optic on its hands.
Image quality is far from spectacular: the lens is sharp enough in the centre of the image, but shows soft, smeared corners that only really sharpen up properly when the lens is stopped down to f/8 or f/11 in the middle of the zoom range. Examining the raw files also shows pronounced green and magenta colour fringing due to lateral chromatic aberration, but most Nikon DSLRs from the past decade will correct this in their JPEG processing, and it’s a simple fix in raw development, too. Barrel distortion is very evident at wideangle, and while this can also be fixed quite easily in software, it often has the side effect of persuading you to shoot at a crooked angle, so you might find yourself straightening horizons more often than you’re used to.
On a more positive note, I found the image stabilisation to be pretty effective; I was able to get sharp pictures at shutter speeds as slow as 1/6sec fairly consistently, and even at 1/3sec by taking a few replicates. This is particularly handy for shooting interiors handheld, or cityscapes at dusk; it can also give interesting motion-blur effects to moving water.
‘ This lens is small and light for an ultra-wide zoom’