And as I unzip my camera bag… I pull out the newest lens in my arsenal.
Say hi to the Vivitar 19mm f/3.8 wideangle lens. At 19mm of focal length, it’s my most-defined wide-angle camera in my bag. I just got it over the weekend, and paid for it with my share of the winnings at the recent Elbo Room trivia tournament.
I definitely wanted a decent ultra-wide-angle camera lens for my photo bag. It’s really tough to get an wide-angle lens to be an “ultra” without that lens going completely fisheye and bendy. And I already have my Kiev Mir-20H and my Kenko 180 screw-in lenses, so there wasn’t a need in my bag for another fisheye.
My choices for a wideangle at the time were a Nikon UD 20mm manual focus, a Zenitar Russian camera lens, and a 19mm Vivitar f/3.8 lens. The problem with getting the Nikon UD 20mm was that it most of the good early lenses don’t automatically index, and you can’t find the aftermarket AI ring to make it integrate with modern cameras. And I really don’t want another Soviet camera lens in my bag. Too many Soviet cameras in the bag and I might get a visit from the KGB.
So when the Vivitar 19mm lens came along… and I had enough money to purchase it … I snagged it from eBay. A little detective work (actually, I looked at the lens’s serial number) determined that my Vivitar was actually a rebranded Cosina lens. That’s good. Cosina lenses have excellent optics.
I slapped the Vivitar on my Nikon D700 camera body and went out for a shoot.
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Now the way-cool thing about this lens is that when it’s combined with my Nikon D700’s FX sensor, I can get some seriously LARGE pictures with plenty of digital detail. My previous DSLR, my Nikon D70, had a DX crop sensor, which could produce decent detail up to about 8 1/2 x 11.
Granted, my shooting day was kinda dreary and drab. No sunlight, just an overcast blah winter day. And I noticed a couple of dust specs that got on my sensor – guess it’s time to take the D700 over to Alan at CameraWorks for a sensor cleaning. But once I get a decent day to shoot… and if I throw this bad boy into full RAW+FINE.JPG mode… hoo boy…
Chuck The Writer 
Wide and slow. Sort of like me.
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Great pics – I especially like the first one. With a raw wood frame and anti glare glass! 😉
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They say that overcast days are the best for shooting because the light is even with no shadows.
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Don’t know CameraWorks — do they service Nikons, or just do the cleaning? My D70s is getting the dreaded card slot problems, and I’m debating whether to spend money fixing it or just get a used upgrade.
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Carl –
CameraWorks services all cameras, including Nikons. They’ve done great by my old D70 as well as my D700.
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my Nikon D70, had a DX crop sensor, which could produce decent detail up to about 8 1/2 x 11
The bigger issue is that you’d have the field of view of a 30mm lens on the DX. It’s so strange to learn on film and go to a cropped sensor DSLR.
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