An oldy but a goody

I recently got hold of an old Nikkor 24mm f2.8 AIS.

Great lens to use for landscape where the ability to use hyperfocal distance focusing is more important than auto focus. It has a proper focus scale, aperture ring and markings enabling this.

Nick, your camera full frame? I was thinking the D700 was. 24mm making a good wide focal length on full frame.
My UWA is 10-22 (or 16-35 on full frame). So if yours is like mine, focusing isn't an issue even on manual as most of the time it can be set to infinity unless someone walks up right in front of you. Since I do a lot of night shooting mine stays in MF more then AF anyway.. The 24mm should make a great addition for you.

yep it's FF Joe so 24m is wide enough

i normally like to get a lot of foreground detail in my landscapes and i find focusing on infinity doesn't give enough sharpness tothe foreground

i read about hyperfocal distance focusing and switched to that.

essentially you focus at a distance determined by your focal length and aperture:

eg at 24mm i like to shoot at f11 to prevent any diffraction and the HFD is just over 5 feet. this ensures everything from around 2.5 feet (half the HFD) to infinity is sharp

old lenses with an aperture scale are great for this, but with modern lenses with no focus markings it can be a bit hit and miss!

My WA lens is the Tokina 11-16, which thankfully has a distance scale.

I shoot using back-button autofocus instead of using the shutter, so when there is adequate light I usually pick something in the foreground, focus on that and recompose. At night, MF of course.

Nice lens, more than wide enough on FF. Can't beat these old skool lenses!!

On my D3s I used the Nikkor N 24-70 f/2.8 and just focused to 1/3 of the way into the frame/scene and shot at f/11 for landscape. Like you focussing to infinity left the foreground detail lacking and that is much more important to have sharp as it is more noticeable when you go pixel peeping!

Happy shooting!