Quick Summary
- Because Nikon’s crop-sensor (DX) DSLRs share the exact same F-mount and sensor size, these wide-angle lens recommendations apply equally to the D3000 series, D5000 series, D7000 series, and the D500.
- Nikon AF-P 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6G VR combines a very wide perspective, very good optics, and vibration reduction for steady images at a budget-friendly price.
- Sigma 10-20mm Wide-Angle Zoom offers a super-wide focal length with excellent build quality at a competitive price.
- Tokina atx-i 11-16mm f/2.8 CF Ultra-Wide Zoom provides a fast f/2.8 aperture, making it the best option for low-light and astrophotography.
- Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens creates dramatic, unique perspectives suitable for tight interiors and close action.
If you’ve spent any time on this site, you might have noticed that I’m a big fan of wide-angle lenses. I find myself reaching for them probably more than any other lens category.
I love their immersive quality. They can take the viewer directly inside a place or an action sequence, whether that’s the grand interior of a cathedral, a bustling outdoor market, or the middle of a sporting event. Because they are naturally less susceptible to camera shake, they can often be used in lower light than longer focal lengths. They also feature a naturally deeper depth of field, making them much more forgiving when it comes to nailing focus.
The standard 18-55mm kit lens that comes with most entry-level Nikon DSLRs is a great starting point for most people. But if you want to push your photography further and capture different kinds of shots, you need to look beyond the kit.
If you’re looking to expand your gear bag, below are my practical recommendations for the best wide-angle lenses for Nikon DX DSLRs.
Wide-angle lens strengths & weaknesses
There are certain scenarios where wide-angle lenses absolutely shine:
- Adding drama and scale to a scene
- Providing broad context to a subject (environmental portraits)
- Capturing the grand, whether that’s a man-made interior or a sweeping natural landscape
- Cityscapes and architectural photography
- Real estate photography
- Travel photography
But there are also things that wide-angle lenses are generally not well-suited for:
- Closely-cropped portraits. Because wide lenses distort features near the edges of the frame, they are not good for conventional headshots (as it will make the subject’s nose look disproportionately large). As always in photography, there are exceptions. The portraiture of Platon Antoniou is a great example of using wide-angle distortion creatively.
- Wildlife. It’s rarely possible (or safe) to get close enough to wild animals to fill the frame with a wide-angle lens. You wouldn’t take only a wide-angle lens on safari. (Though, again, there are always exceptions: example 1; example 2).
There are also specific types of wide lenses to consider. For example, an ultra-wide fisheye lens would be a pretty unconventional choice for traditional architectural photography, mainly because of the heavy distortion that bends all the straight lines. For that, a standard wide-angle zoom with aspherical elements is a much better choice.
About these recommendations (camera compatibility)
Before we get to the specific lenses, I want to clarify who this guide is for.
Nikon uses an APS-C cropped sensor for its entry-level and prosumer DSLRs (which they brand as DX). Because the sensor size and the physical lens mount are identical across these models, the lenses recommended below apply equally to all of the following camera families:
- D3000 Series (D3300, D3400, D3500)
- D5000 Series (D5300, D5500, D5600)
- D7000 Series (D7100, D7200, D7500)
- The D500
I am not trying to provide an exhaustive list of every obscure wide-angle lens ever made for the F-mount. Instead, I am focusing on high-quality, modern auto-focus lenses that are readily available to buy today and make logical financial sense to pair with a DX camera body.
Sigma 10-20mm wide-angle zoom
Sigma’s 10-20mm lenses have been very popular for a long time now, and for good reason. They were among the first lenses to bring a super-wide focal length to the market at very competitive pricing. They’re also small, compact, and incredibly well-built.
On a Nikon DX camera, the 10-20mm is the equivalent of a 15-30mm field of view on a full-frame camera. That is a very wide perspective.
Crucially, it features aspherical glass elements. This means you don’t get the heavy “funnel” lens distortion that you get with a similar focal length in a fisheye lens. Your lines stay straight, including horizons. You do get quite a lot of stretching around the far edges, but that’s something you can factor into your framing (and even use to exaggerate leading lines if you wish).
Find them at:
Alternative: Sigma has actually made two 10-20mm lenses for Nikon DX cameras over the years. The newer, slightly improved one has a constant maximum aperture of f/3.5 through the entire zoom range (Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM). There’s also an older and slightly slower f/4-5.6 version (Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX D DC HSM) which has long been discontinued but still turns up on the used market, and is also a fantastic budget option.
Here are some photos I’ve taken with the Sigma 10-20mm on various Nikon DX bodies to give a sense of the kind of immersive perspective you can expect.
Nikon AF-P 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6G VR
This super-wide zoom lens from Nikon is unusually affordable. Like the Sigma 10-20mm, it has aspherical elements to keep architecture straight, but it boasts essentially the same super-wide view.
There are two key features that separate this version from the Sigma above — one is a positive, and one is a negative.
On the negative side, this lens is “slower” in terms of light-gathering. The Sigma has a constant f/3.5 maximum aperture through the zoom range. The Nikon version has a variable maximum aperture of f/4.5-5.6, meaning when you’re fully zoomed out, the aperture is f/4.5, but when you zoom in, the maximum aperture tightens to f/5.6. By itself, that makes this lens less suited to low-light shooting than the Sigma.
However, on the positive side, the Nikon lens features Vibration Reduction (VR). This means you can get an extra 2-3 stops of stabilization without camera shake ruining the photo. Vibration reduction is quite unusual on lenses this wide, and especially at a price point this low. It’s an incredibly useful feature to have, especially for handheld travel photography.
Crucial Note on AF-P Compatibility: Nikon’s new AF-P lenses use a Stepping Motor that is quieter and smoother, which is excellent for shooting video. However, you must check your camera model before buying this lens!
Fully Compatible: D3300, D3400, D3500, D5500, D5600, D7500, D500.
Compatible With Firmware Update: D5300, D7100, D7200.
Incompatible: Older bodies like the D3000, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D5200, and D7000 cannot drive the autofocus motor on this lens.
Find them at:
Alternative: Another excellent first-party option is Nikon’s 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5. It offers slightly more reach on the zoomed-in end, doesn’t have vibration reduction, and is significantly more expensive. But what you’re paying for is superior optics, which translates to sharper images across the frame and far less lens flare when shooting into the sun. Third-party manufacturer Tamron also makes their own version of this lens, which is noticeably cheaper than the Nikon model.
Tokina atx-i 11-16mm f/2.8 CF ultra-wide zoom lens
Tokina isn’t a brand that commands the massive marketing budget of Nikon or Sigma, but this specific lens is legendary among crop-sensor shooters.
It provides an ultra-wide 11-16mm perspective, but its true superpower is its speed. With a constant maximum aperture of f/2.8, this is the absolute best wide-angle lens on this list for shooting astrophotography, the night sky, or low-light events. And with an MSRP of $349, it’s very affordably priced for an f/2.8 piece of glass.
If you’re after a shade more zoom flexibility, there’s also the Tokina atx-i 11-20mm f/2.8 CF (not to be confused with their Cinema version, which is a very different lens at a much higher price point). It’s more expensive, bigger, and heavier, but gives you slightly more framing flexibility.
Check current price and availability at:
Nikon 10.5mm fisheye
A fisheye is a highly specialized kind of wide-angle lens. It combines a super-wide perspective with heavy, intentional lens distortion.
It’s a niche look that is easy to overdo, but it can also be a lot of fun and create some really unique perspectives. We’ve become much more conditioned to the fisheye look in recent years thanks to the widespread use of GoPro action cameras.
Nikon’s 10.5mm fisheye is small, compact, and a prime lens (meaning there’s no zoom, though not all fisheye lenses are primes).
There is a vital caveat to note when using this lens: Because this specific lens does not have its own built-in autofocus motor, the autofocus will only work if your camera body has a focus motor built into the mount. The D7000 series and the D500 have this motor. The D3000 and D5000 series do not. You can still mount and use the lens on a D3500 or D5600, but you will be restricted to manual focus. Fortunately, because the depth of field on a 10.5mm lens is so massive, manual focusing is surprisingly easy.
Fisheye lenses are especially good for:
- Grand interiors
- Extremely close quarters
- Dramatic, stylized distortion
- Close action sports (like skateboarding or BMX)
For a specialty lens that’s relatively fast (f/2.8), the Nikon 10.5mm is reasonably priced. It takes up almost no space in your camera bag.
You can find them at:
Because this is a lens you likely won’t reach for every day, a great way to try it out to see if it fits your style is by renting it. You can find them at LensProtoGo.
I have some more photos I’ve taken with other fisheye lenses here and here.
Terms used with wide-angle lenses
35mm equivalent: The focal length refers to the distance that light rays converge in focus after passing through a lens. The complication with DX cameras is that they use a smaller sensor than a traditional full-frame sensor (which is based on the old 35mm film standard). Because the sensor is smaller, it crops the image, meaning you must multiply the lens focal length by 1.5x to get the “true” field of view. For example, a 10mm lens on a DX camera gives you a view equivalent to 15mm on a full-frame camera.
Aspherical elements: Specialty glass used in the design of higher-end wide-angle lenses that actively works to keep straight lines straight and minimize distortion. Contrast that with a regular fisheye lens, where nearly every line ends up heavily bent.
Chromatic Aberration (Purple Fringing): The extreme corners and edges of the frame are hard for wide-angle lenses to get right. Because of the extreme physics of the curved glass, you can often end up with different light wavelengths getting out of alignment, resulting in a purple or green glow around high-contrast edges. Most image editing apps these days include corrections for chromatic aberration that you can apply with one click.
DSLR vs Z lenses: Nikon SLRs and DSLRs have used the F-mount system to connect lenses for decades. In the past few years, Nikon launched a mirrorless camera system (the Z series) that uses the Z-mount. For any DX DSLR, you want F-mount lenses. While it’s possible to get an adapter to put older F-mount lenses on a new mirrorless Z-mount camera body, the reverse isn’t true (you cannot use a Z-mount lens on a DSLR body).
DX vs FX: Nikon calls its full-frame cameras FX, and its APS-C cropped sensor cameras DX. It is often simpler (and cheaper) to stick with lenses that are specifically designed for DX cameras, which will always have “DX” in the lens name. Other manufacturers use different codes (Sigma uses “DC”). While you absolutely can use full-frame FX lenses on a DX body, they are usually significantly larger, heavier, and more expensive.
