I previously reviewed this lens. I now have second one and it appears the first was either defective or they vary wildly. Lens #1 came from eBay, due to Nikon's "we're backordered, but don't buy gray" policy. Naturally I wanted a lens with US warranty but Nikon US had none. As usual, they were all over Hong Kong but not one in the USA. So I bought a USA one used/mint condition to get a lens that Nikon would service if necessary. Cosmetically, the lens was flawless but something was amiss so please disregard my previous review.
Lens #2 is quite good or great, depending on what you want it for. The photo I see most often is a field of flowers with the lens tilted. I don't have much interest in tilting a 24mm lens but from what I see, its great for this and image quality should be super.
For architecture, the shifting is a bit of a different story. In theory, its possible to shift this lens 11.5 mm when the camera is oriented vertically. In practice, you can do this if the top of your subject occupies only the top center of the frame. If you are a critical user and your subject fills the entire top of the frame you'll probably find the top corners disappointing. (As with the previous lens, f/13 seemed to be best when shifted although f/11 was very close).
The good news is that if you restrict your shift to about 8-8.5mm the corners clean up, the illumination falloff disappears and things are sharp everywhere. If this sounds bad, it really isn't because previous Nikon PC lenses have a similar limitation where you can physically shift them further than advisable. (When the camera is horizontal you can shift as much as you want).
Mechanically, the lens is sound. Its a little front heavy and movements have to be locked which irks me because this is all due to the tilting business which adds size, weight, cost and complexity. But Canon started this and its tit for tat.
If you have a use for one of these and take the time to test it out I think you'll be pleased. Its hands down better than the Canon 24 TS (version 1) and ridiculously better than the Nikon 28PC. I still have to see if it can beat the Olympus 24 shift but haven't gotten around to it yet.
By the way, with regard to the comments that this is a "very technical" lens that takes practice or tutorials to master, nothing could be further from the truth. You point it at the subject, tilt or shift as neeed, focus, lock the movements down, lock the mirror up and trip the shutter. If you want to make things complicated you can read about Scheimpflug but since you get both visual confirmation and auto exposure, its hard to see how you could make a mistake.
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