Better to buy the DX @ $200 and sell it if and when he upgrades. You have limited your exposure to risk very cheaply.

I’m no lens designer, but it seems like optically things get exponentially harder to make as you go away from 50mm. So if the 50 is $500 and the 24 is $2000+ then the 35 should be $1000. I’m sure it’ll be more though, what a ripoff…

Though I probably won’t buy it if it another G model lens, I find them more annoying than anything else. That aperture ring, and hands on stuff are what makes operating a camera fast. Instead the newer stuff from Nikon seems to just get in the way. Having gotten used to using F4 with dials and levers for every controls it’s not fun to have to share tiny scroll wheels for several functions crammed into one. It what Minolta was doing in the 90s, they were slow as hell… despite looking great on paper (in theory)

If this lens is produced it’ll cost $2400. Just buy the DX lens and worry about FX when you upgrade in the distant future.

If the 24 f/1.4 is selling ten thousand units a year or better I would see a 35mm f/1.4 to be almost certain to appear in 2012. It takes at least that long for Nikon to get a lens of this type out the door. The field testing takes a year all by itself. If on the other hand sales are less than a thousand a year I should think it highly unlikely Nikon is going to prioritize launching a lens that would gross less than $2 million a year in revenues.

What would interest me more is knowing what Nikon has optimized the lens for. Nikon does not make all its lenses the same, particularly when the pro lenses are concerned. The 85 f/1.4 is designed to provide great bokeh. The 50mm is not, it is designed for a different purpose and the assumption seems to be that if you want ultimate bokeh you choose the 85 and stick your feet somewhere else. But the 35mm is quite a different length from the 85, it might make sense for it to be designed for bokeh. Or Nikon might have had a different use in mind. The one thing that is sure is that it is not likely to be optimized for the same uses as the 50.

At $1.2K the lens will no doubt find a market amongst folk like me who don’t see a lot of point to a mid-range zoom over a clutch of great primes. If it is $2K it will be much less interesting.

At the moment the beat II sells for $1800. Lets say you have the 12-24 and 70-200 in your bag. You could buy the 24-70, or you could buy a 35mm and a 50mm f/1.4 for the same money and have essentially the same capability but a lot faster. Instead of an 84-35 degree zoom you have a choice of 84, 62, 46, 35 degrees.

Zooms are great, but mostly useful at the wide and long end in my view. In the middle I would prefer to have a fast lens and crop if necessary in photoshop.

This is essentially what I do already with my DX lens set. I have the 10-24DX, 35DX and 50AFS lenses. And I am looking to buy a 85 f/1.4 and whatever the replacement for the 80-400 turns out to be. If I ever go to FX format it will be for the 12-24 f/2.8, but a 70-200 would probably come first.

I expect price to be $1700-1800.

35mm f1.4G
50mm f1.4G
85mm f1.4G