Nikon AF Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 Lens

I bought my first Nikon F more than 35 years ago and have stayed with the marque ever since. Back then, so-called superwide angle lenses were either a dream or prohibitively expensive and a 24mm was a pretty "wild" optic. As time went on however, true rectilinear (read full-frame, non-fisheye) superwideangle lenses became more available and more affordable. Just before the digital explosion lens manufacturers had developed prime lenses and some zooms in the 14-21mm superwide range and photographers were routinely producing images that took full effect of their capabilities. The Nikon 20mm f2.8 AF (D or not D) is a typical example of that evoloutionary process.
First introduced in 1989 it is the AF equivalent of an older manual focus design. Typical of many early generation AF lenses, the construction is mostly metal and reasonably robust (for AF). Also typical is the short throw required to focus the lens from infinity to it's closeset focus which results in almost instantaneous AF function on my D100 or F100. The addition of the D chip in the newest version is a usless upgrade and should not lead any of you to pay more for it.
For the film shooter it is, in my opinion, a very good but not a great lens and, for many years, was a mainstay in my film travel outfit which was standardized on 62mm filters (20mmf2.8AF, 28-105mmf3.5-4.5AF zoom and 70-210mmf4.0AF zoom) It consistently delivered images that were sharp and contrasty with minimal corner light fall off wide open and reasonable levels of barrel distortion that could be mostly corrected in Photoshop.
Enter digital and the small digital sensor.
All of a sudden, the effective focal lengths of all my lenses have shifted 1.5x
My superwide 20mm has now become a much less exciting 30mm and, while my 70-210mm zoom has become effectivly 105-315mm with an f4.0 max aperture, I'm limited at the wide end to the level of your average point-and-shoot.
So where this lens fits in for the digital shooter I'm not sure I know anymore. Nikon's new 18-200mm digital zoom now cover's the whole range of view that
my three lens travel kit used to cover on film and, at a current street price of arount $800, at about the same cost.
I still have mine and the three lenses of my film travel outfit are still in the closet. Who knows.... someday.

I found this to be a very good wide angle lens, though it is a bit limited by not being zoom, and is, therefore, a lens to be used for specialized projects, which is why I bought it. It does its job well. The purpose I am using it for is aerial photography.