Why no fast WA primes?

Canon bought Nikon, and soon will close Nikon, so you will have to shoot Canon. Better sell your gear to me for cheap before it's all discontinued.

:)

Yeah, it's curious, isn't it? I was half expecting the Nikon announcement that includes the new 70-200, revised 18-200, and the new bodies to include a new prime or two... but no. So, I guess Sigma will keep eating Nikon's lunch with their 30/1.4 (which is DX-centric, and thus not really wide, per se, and not useful on an FX or film body). I mean, I like it and use it a lot - I'm just surprised that Nikon hasn't stepped up. Judging from the prices of their recently announced lenses, such a beastie will be spendy indeed if/when it happens.

The market for those sorts of lenses is tiny compared to the market for 18-70mm etc. zooms, and is still very small compared to high quality & versatile f2.8 zooms. Also, as usable ISO gets pushed higher and higher the need for f1.4 will become even more unusual. I am a night shooter and I do see the kind of lens you're talking about as a niche product. Nikon could use a couple of pro level f4 VR zoom lenses much more than a few f1.4 single focal lenses. That's where Canon is clearly ahead.

Kent in SD

It's hard to make low distorsion good performing wide angles as the best of times, making fast lenses is also difficult so making a fast wide is a hard thing to do.

Canon may have very fast wides but their wides really don't have the best reputation, just ask any 5Dmk2 or 1Ds3 user that does critical work. At least now they can use zeiss lenses.

too busy pumpin' out the 18-200.

I'm not going to argue about some affordable (IE less than $2,400!) f/4 VR zooms. But it seems to me that the market for at least one WA fast prime is large enough. It has to be a larger market than say the market for a D3x. And once the less is designed/built, what's to change? A classic will be a classic. Whatever the cost is, it is sure to be passed onto the consumer and at least with a lens the development cost is spread out over the life of the lens. If a 24mm f/1.4 were introduced today- how long would it be before it needed an update? 10-years? More? And if the Canon lens(es) is nothing to write home about, I would think this would motivate the powers to be at Nikon even more: get the lens right and not only do you cover a gap in the present line up you sock it to Canon. It just mystifies me.

I suppose there are two reasons.
o Nikon Marketing believes everyone wants zoom lenses. It is clear that Nikon believes primes with high quality performance (low CSA levels) are unimportant. Nikon's strategy is to offer low-quality wide-angle primes and make even more money when customers must buy NX-2 to reduce CSA flaws in NEF images.
o It is difficult (expensive) to make high-quality, fast wide-angle lenses. Nikon does not believe people will pay to own a quality fast wide-angle lens.
o The increase in ISO performance Nikon's current high-end camera product line means the value of fast glass is reduced. The decrease in DOF is the only remaining benefit when current ISO 800 image quality makes your f 2.8 lens equal to a f 2 lens @ ISO 400 or f 1.4 lens @ ISO 200 with a body like the D200 or DX2.
For these reasons my next wide-angle lens purchase will be a Zeiss ZF 21/2.8 lens.

Well, Nikon had the well liked 35mm f/1.4 Ai-S, which was manual focus, and a 28/2 and 24/2 back when Kodachrome 64 was the fast film. ;-)

They developed the 28/1.4D AF to be a new fast wide angle - this gives excellent results in high contrast night light situations, judging from what I've seen, but it was really expensive at least in Finland. So few could afford it. Then Nikon and Nikon users moved to DX cameras which turned the 28/1.4 into a fast, big, and very expensive normal lens. Think about it: the current 35/1.8 DX costs $200 (that's a reasonable price for a lens of this type) and the 28/1.4 cost more than ten times that. That's just not a recipe for hot sales. So Nikon discontinued the lens and the remaining new stock disappeared almost overnight. Currently Nikon makes FX cameras which would justify the high price of the 28/1.4 but they haven't resumed manufacture. Nikon seem confident enough in their 14-24 and 24-70 lenses and the high ISO performance of their FX cameras that they haven't re-introduced a fast wide angle, though the manual focus versions of the 28mm f/2 and 35mm f/1.4 are easy to find; the latter even new. Nikon still makes the 35mm f/2D which is quite fast, very compact and a reasonable performer though its corners could be better.

Zeiss makes a 35mm f/2 ZF which I have (a flat field lens with remarkably even performance, great contrast and sharpness, a bit too contrasty for my taste) and a 28mm f/2 ZF which I have not used but it's reputed to be very good though not as flat field as the 35mm. You could consider these or the 28/2 Ai-S Nikkor and the 35/1.4 Ai-S Nikkor if you can work with manual focus lenses, or just get the 35 AF if you'd rather not.

The 28mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor 2nd hand prices on E-bay are through the roof, 3000-4000 USD. I wouldn't even consider it at those prices; I would consider a mint or ex one at $1500, but nobody is selling at those prices. I'm quite confident Nikon will eventually re-introduce the fast wide angle; Canon just recently updated their 24mm f/1.4 into a new version with apparently excellent performance judging from images I have seen. They also have a 28/1.8 and 35/1.4, all autofocus. They also introduced a little while ago a 50/1.2 and have a 85/1.2 so the market seems to exist for fast full-frame primes, but Nikon currently has some gaps in this area.

I don't think Nikon intentionally left gaps in their lineup nor should the current situation be interpreted to mean that Nikon doesn't think such a lens is needed. The design of a lens takes several years and my guess is that they started to work on a new version when the D3 became a big success. So maybe in a few years they'll have it on the market. It took them almost two years since the introduction of FX to get a revised 70-200 announced (and presumably available in the fall), and that's one of their biggest sellers; the 28/1.4 or equivalent would certainly have a much lower priority, but not zero.

Canon does have the advantage here. I'm hoping for a 28/2 AF-S that focuses to 0.2 meters -- the Zeiss lenses are good but sometimes it would be useful to have AF. Current AF wideangles are not very tempting; optimized for the AF of 1991 and low cost. Like some zooms and some Zeiss primes show, the bar could be considerable higher.