Hi--

>You seem to have a lot of experience with varied lenses so I'm
>wondering if you have ever used a Nikkor 16mm or 18mm lens?

Yes - my "SUBJECTIVE Lens Evaluations (Mostly Nikkors)", version
5a, which includes a listing of all Nikon SLR lenses ever made (with a
subjective evaluation of many of them, a general description of Nikkor
lens performance characteristics by lens-type groups, and comments on
particular lenses when the general descriptions plus the subjective
evaluation numbers are not sufficient to describe performance),
can be found at these sites:

-- Jan-jaap Aue: (nice text format)
http://www.phys.rug.nl/mk/people/aue/nikon/david.html
-- Quang-Tuan Luong: (nice text format)
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/35mm/nikon-neuman.html
-- Niklas Nikitin: (nice table format)
http://www.cs.hks.se/~nicke/private/photo/lenstest/david.html
-- Bo-Ming Tong: (plain text format)
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bmtong/nikon/c.html
(Appendix C+, number 13 in table of contents)

>I've suddenly gotten this urge to buy a very wide-angle lens and would
>prefer to stay with Nikkor lenses. I noticed that the camera shops
>list the 16mm (f2.8 AF-D) as being a 'fisheye' lens. Is this just a
>generic description or is the 18mm different in other respects, such as
>distortion compensation?
> rzuch@ix.netcom.com (Rich Zuchowski )

"Fisheye" refers to spherical perspective, in which straight lines are rendered straight in the image only through the center (they curve progressively more as they move away from the center). This is not distortion. The 18mm's approximate (with some linear distortion)
rectangular perspective, in which subject straight lines remain
straight in the image. The advantages of this are obvious, but this
type is very hard on rounded subjects, and the fisheye isn't (assuming
normal viewpoints). I like the 16mm on the TC14A converter - kinda the
best of both. BTW, the 16mm f3.5 Nikkor is the best of the bunch
optically, though the slightly longer (than 18mm) 20mm f2.8 is excellent
(the angle of view is about the same, but the lens is better, and the
price lower). You might want to look up my large post, "On Seeing and
Perspective", where I covered a lot on perspective types. If you can't
find it, I will e-mail you a copy.
David Ruether