Favourite Z-mount lenses

I don’t know who cares – other than me – but YOBO, I guess.

In roughly descending order, I suppose, although I didn’t sweat the rankings.

Nikon 800mm f/6.3 VR S (Amazon)- very expensive, and not small… I splurged on this years ago when it came out, in a moment of weakness / “I deserve nice things”. 😅 But I do love it. It’s super sharp, autofocus is very accurate and fast, and it’s enabled me to get some photos that I love and would have totally missed otherwise. Its VR is good but not amazing, so hold technique matters, and the narrow aperture hurts it a bit during the important twilight hours when wildlife is particularly active, but thankfully noise reduction has gotten very effective in recent years and high ISOs are far less of a concern than they used to be.

Nikon 400 f/4.5 VR S (Amazon) – tiny, light, fast, sharp, reliable. I love that I can stick this on my camera for a twenty mile hike and basically not feel it; the camera body (Z9) weighs nearly as much as the lens! Its only “flaw” is that it’s a relatively short focal length, so you have to focus on either large wildlife or get very close – which is not always possible. But – like the fantastic AF-S 300/4E PF – this is just a wonderful lens to have and use.

Nikon 24-120mm f/4 S (Amazon) – surprisingly sharp wide-open across the entire focal range, this is the best “everyday” or “walkabout” lens I’ve ever used. I love that it has significantly more reach than a 24-70 and their ilk, and the f/4 aperture does mean you’re not doing amazing portraits with it most of the time, but it also means I rarely have to worry about depth of field – it’s definitely a ‘no brainer’ lens to have on as a default, ready to go without fuss. f/4 and be there.

Sigma ART 105mm F1.4 DG HSM (Amazon) – for portraits (and also events where you’re some distance back from e.g. speakers on a stage) this lens is wonderful. It’s fairly sharp wide open (not sharp, but good enough that it’s usable when you need the maximum aperture, and if you don’t you can stop it down a bit and it gets very sharp). It is slow to autofocus, and requires use of a mount adapter – and it’s of course a bit of a beast, weight- and size-wise – but it’s all worth it because the results are excellent.

Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S (Amazon) – I don’t love it the way I do others, but it is a nice workhorse lens – it’s pretty sharp wide open, autofocus is fast and reliable, VR is very good… it basically just works. It’s not a focal length range I thought I’d get much use of – since it’s too short for most wildlife – but it actually turns out to be more useful than you might think (more for portraiture and events, but sometimes wildlife – zoos in particular, where distance to subject is unnaturally short).

Not favourite Z-mount lenses

I wouldn’t say these are my least favourite – there’s arguably no truly bad [native] Z-mount lenses, that I’ve experienced – but these lenses have things about them which I don’t love, let’s say.

Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 S II (Amazon) – while it’s slightly sharper than the 24-120mm f/4 S, and goes a stop wider – meaning it should in principle merely be a trade-off against the extra 70-120 reach – I actually find it deeply disappointing even within the 24-70 range. The 24-120mm f/4 S has a much wider focal range and is plenty sharp enough, so it’s a much better option when you have enough light (e.g. daytime, well-lit indoors). The 24-70 f/2.8 S II therefore is relegated to being the nominal low-light option – or where you want a little less depth of field (e.g. portraiture). But the problem is twofold:

• Its aperture is too small for bokehlicious portraiture, especially given it only does short focal lengths. There are many superior options for portraiture, both in aperture and focal length.
• Its autofocus is god-awful. Absolutely worthless. It literally cannot autofocus in low light. It’s infuriating. And that makes it completely useless for the one situation where it should distinguish itself from the plethora of much lighter and cheaper f/4 competitors.

I did not end up returning this lens – but mainly only because I didn’t realise how bad it was until the return window had closed. This is undoubtably my most regretted lens purchase (if it were a “throw-away” price of a few hundred dollars, I’d have no real regrets – but it’s a very expensive lens, so its poor performance is inexcusable).

Nikon 20mm f/1.8 S (Amazon) – there’s nothing really wrong with this lens per se, it’s just that I can rarely find opportunity to use it! It’s very much a niche item for me – basically for doing theatre recording, where it just so happens that 20mm is about the ideal focal length and the wide aperture comes in handy (though not always – deep stages don’t allow wide apertures because depth of field is a problem even at 20mm). If the 24-120 managed those 4 extra mm on the wide end, I’d very likely just use that instead (video noise reduction is pretty spectacular these days, so the f/4 isn’t great but also not a showstopper).

Nikon MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S (Amazon) – it’s just so… meh. It’s not particularly sharp, it’s a decent focal length but a narrow aperture so you can do portraiture with it but it’s uninspiring – and the autofocus is very slow, so you don’t want to do portraiture with it. Its only real use is macro photography, where it fails to stand out against a plethora of 3rd party lenses and other options (like cheap extension tubes or lens reversal kits).

Nikon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S (Amazon) – the only lens that I’ve ever returned. I was so disappointed by this lens – its predecessor, the AF-S 80-400, is one of my favourite lenses of all time. The 80-400 was pretty sharp, autofocus was reliable and quick, its VR was excellent… while the 100-400 improves the autofocus and VR even more – which is astounding given how good the 80-400 was to begin with – it gave up a lot of sharpness to do it. Which is sadly a dealbreaker. I’d rather deal with a little less stable VR system, or slower autofocus, than have to compromise so much on image quality (remember that the viewers of the photo don’t know and don’t care what stabilisation or focus issues you had, but they do see and care if the image is soft).

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