12-24 or 14-24 for museum gallery shoot?

[V8burble]

I may be doing a couple of gallery shoots in the near future and will probably hire one or other of these for them. As the difference in hire cost is only about £20 I'm really left with the decision of which would actually produce the best results on a D200 (with crop sensor of course). I know 'best' is a difficult one to quantify, so I'm open your interpretation here.

 

[puddleduck]

The 14-24 will definately be better optically but IMHO the lens is a bit wasted on a cropped body - the 14-24 strength is the stunning edge to edge sharpeness, even on fullf frame. On DX you are cropping out those corners anyhow.

It also will flare more, which could be a problem if you have lights in the frame.

I'd probably go for the 14-24 anyhow.. as its great wide open, and the extra stop will help.

 

[V8burble]

I guess that was really my thoughts, as I'm effectively cropping away the most impressive aspect of the 14-24. But if the performance across the frame is superior also, then hey why wouldn't I really. Flare is a possible worry I hadn't considered different between the two, can you elaborate?

 

[puddleduck]

Flare is a possible worry I hadn't considered different between the two, can you elaborate?

If you have a spotlight in the frame you could get up to 7 or 8 "ghosts" in the frame, and you can lose contrast. The thing with extreme wide angles is that the hood is necessarily restrained.

 

[V8burble]

Sorry should have been clearer, more a case of why would the flare be worse on the 14-24? I presume because of the larger front glass diameter as it's a f/2.8?