depending on working needs: the HB-96 maintains a sleeker overall size while the HB-97 hood gives the unique advantage of permitting 112mm threaded filters to be attached. You can look at the 14-24mm from outside of the picture angle and still see glass, which means that stray light can hit that glass, too. I feel like this review harped on things that are trivial when it comes to an ultra wide angle zoom.

Except for the non-removable front plastic hood, the lens is mostly made of metal, making it one of the heaviest Nikon wide-angle lenses at 969 grams. That’s been done to death by others, and there are already some very very good technical reviews out there which will cover the finer details. The serial number on the box doesn't have to match, but if it doesn't it means you bought from a shady dealer who took lenses out of boxes and then resold these used lenses as new.

The good news is that modern lenses like this have little problem with stray light, unlike the awful old 15mm f/3. The correct way to use an ultrawide is to jam it into whatever you are photographing, which effectively rubs the viewer's nose in your subject.

The "S" designation has no other purpose than subliminal seduction; Nikon and electronics and automobile and every kind of marketer have been using letters like "S" and "X" in model numbers since the 1940s for this same reason. This means that the 14-24mm is useless on manual focus film cameras, unless you jam a match stick into the automatic diaphragm lever to preset your favorite f/stop. This fast design suits working in low-light conditions when shooting handheld and also offers improved depth of field control.I wish I could combine the two, because although you can’t go wrong with either, they both have their own strengths and weaknesses. And speaking of rivals, we love Canon's lineup but with the arrival of this lens, we think Nikon's Z-mount lineup is now just a little more consistent.