Quote Originally Posted by MissionMan View Post
I hadn't really noticed this until I got my 20mm and suddenly found the focal distance from the lens itself is about 10cm from the front of the lens. I think it's a lot more noticeable because of the wide angle of the lens.
I reckon that it's more noticeable because that lens so large, compared to some of their earlier models.

ie. if you look at the specs of the old screw driven 20/2.8 AF-D lens, it's length is only 42.5mm but the 20/1.8 AF-S is 80.5mm in length. That's basically doubled! But more importantly it's 38mm longer.
The AF-D lens has a 25cm MFD, and Nikon's modernisation of the AF-S model has shortened that by 5cm to 20cm now.

But if you used the two lenses at MFD, on the AF-S model, as you said, it's basically 10cm from the front of the lens .. but using the older AF-D lens, the subject to lens distance will be 4cm further away by comparison.

You're still using the same focal length(ie. wide angle), but the size of the lens is what makes it a bit freaky feeling. Take into account that the lens diameter of the AF-S lens is much wider too(77mm filter vs 62mm filter for the AF-D) .. and the subject gets swamped by the much larger sized AF-S lens(compared to similar focusing with the older AF-D len)