Which matters more? lens speed or focal length?

Question

im looking at buying an ultrawide lens for my nikon d50.

im deciding between the tokina 11-16mm at f2.8 or the tokina 12-24mm f4. ken rockwell's site says the 11-16 is much better optically than the 12-24mm, but im not basing my decision on that (though i might upgrade to a 10mp so the sharpness would help). the 11-16 is also $170 more.

i like night time photography and im wondering if the extra stop is worth sacrificing half the zoom range and $150?

Answer 1

Lens quality is king. The golden rule is always buy the best quality lens you can - a bottom of the range Nikon SLR with a top quality lens will always outperform the top of the range camera with a poor quality lens. Also if you are doing hand-held night time photography the extra stop may make the difference between success and failure. Given you're specifically after a ultra-wide angle lens - I would guess that you will be mainly using the lower focal lengths - I have a canon 10-22mm - 90% of my shots are at 10mm. Based on the info in your question, if this was my choice I would go with the 2.8 every time.

Answer 2

If you're doing this sort of photo (on a tripod)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_pook...

Then I'd stick with the one that is sharper v.s. faster.

But since the f 2.8 one is better according to what you quoted, that would be the one I'd buy.