Anyway, the more expensive, heavier and larger lens won't result in "wow" images taken with your camera, unless you yourself have what it takes, and you can really (and objectively) say that "this image does not have the wow factor because I used the wrong lens". So in my opinion, self improvement is more important than more expensive lens. I would get a fast prime (and I mean fast like f2 or faster) to practice with it. The Nikon Z 24-70mm f4S is a small and light non-stabilized standard zoom lens with a constant f4.0 focal ratio that’s designed for Nikon’s new Z-mount full-frame cameras. Announced in August 2018 it joins the Z 35mm f1.8S as the first Z-series lenses on the market; the Z 50mm f1.8S will be the third at end of 2018. Nikon’s Z-lenses may be the only models currently available with a native Z-mount but thanks to Nikon’s FTZ adapter, existing F-mount lenses can easily be Typically showing up as blue or purple fringes along the edges of high-contrast subjects, chromatic aberration can be a problem, particularly for cheaper lenses. The Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/4 S is such a high-quality lens that we found it very difficult to find examples of fringing in our shots. The shot below, when examined at 100%, displays some very very light fringing - but it’s unlikely you’d see it at normal printing sizes, particularly if you weren’t actively looking for it. The story is basically the same. I prefer the 24-120mm f/4 S in the center and midframes, while the 24-70mm f/4 S has an advantage in the corners. Both lenses are quite sharp throughout, though, and by f/11, the differences have basically vanished. The texture you're seeing is on the watch face. As with all lenses at macro distances there is no depth-of-field, so the hands are supposed to be out of focus as are half the things on the watch face.

Lateral fringing occurs in the focus plane on both sides of high-contrast edges, usually as cyan and magenta fringing, so the above graph displays two values per lens. If a lens is perfectly corrected, both values would be at 0µ (indicated by the grey horizontal line in the center of the graph). Geometric distortion Red and Blue Window, October 2018, 6:29 P.M. Nikon Z7, Nikon 24-70mm f/4 Z at 37mm, f/4 hand-held at 1/40 at Auto ISO 1,100, Perfectly Clear v3.6. bigger. Now the moment of truth! Which lens is sharper in the shared zoom range from 24mm to 70mm? I’ve heard the Nikon Z 24-120mm f/4 S described as “the same as the Z 24-70mm f/4 S, just with more reach.” Let’s see if that description holds true in terms of sharpness. Here are both lenses at 24mm: The graph below shows light fall-off for each of the three lenses set to 70mm at their widest aperture, when it would be at its most noticeable.Vignetting: Again, we have lens corrections to get out of the way. Even with those turned on, you’ll still see some far corner vignetting wide open, plus even some very mild extreme corner vignetting still present at 24mm and f/8. At longer focal lengths, the vignetting correction is pretty much doing a full job by f/5.6, and certainly by f/8. (Nikon claims "even lighting across the entire frame." Sorry, Nikon, not true.) However, vignetting is a little high at 70mm wide-open, as are both distortion and lateral chromatic aberration, at least without the lens’s built-in profiles applied. (You can expect better results for out-of-camera JPEGs and when using RAW conversion software that takes the profiles into account.) But the basic idea is that the two lenses are about the same price. Which one is the better value? To me, the 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR stands out in this comparison. No, it doesn’t have the nice, constant f/4 maximum aperture. But it is only a bit worse optically, while covering far more focal lengths than the 24-70mm f/4 S. For most genres of photography, it will make a bigger difference to be able to shoot at 200mm than to have a little more corner sharpness wide open! Note that this auto distortion profile also, as a side effect, makes the extreme corners of an image look less vignetted, since you are essentially cropping out the darkest portions. My opinion is that this distortion correction is one of the reasons behind the differing opinions online about whether the 24-70mm f/4 has normal vs high levels of vignetting.

This lens’s transmission is notable for its close-to F-stop values: the 4 T-Stop rating is averaged, so as always, it’s worth looking at our graph to see how that changes through the focal range. Image quality compared to its competitorsEven more importantly – since it’s harder to correct – is that the 24-70mm f/4 has almost nonexistent levels of longitudinal chromatic aberration (color fringing in out-of-focus regions). This can be a major problem in some lenses, harming the quality of bokeh and making defocused lights look strange. The sample photos in the following section demonstrate practically nonexistent longitudinal chromatic aberration. Bokeh Let’s just say it up front: this is an excellent kit lens. Even as little as five years ago we tended to get meh lenses in the camera kits. More recently, the trend has been quite different. The Olympus 12-100mm f/4, the Sony 24-105mm f/4, and a host of others have upped the game in the kit realm. Nikon, too, is now playing at that higher level. These caveats aside, this 24-70 is ultra-ultra sharp, especially wide-open at f/4 where lenses are at their softest. The 24-70mm f/4 S is thoroughly weather-sealed. Nikon’s promotional images in its NIKKOR Z Brochure show six separate rubber rings, covering the front element, rear mount, telescoping barrel, zoom ring, and focus ring. There is also a separate weather seal underneath the A/M switch. In short, all the moving parts on this lens have weather sealing. There is only slight breathing in this 24-70mm. At 70mm the image gets slightly smaller as focused more closely.

The 24-70 is essentially optically perfect, as well as being ultralight. It's the perfect general-purpose mirrorless lens, even if it zooms no longer than 70mm. Using the 24-70 on the z50 gives you a slightly faster lens at the expense of the wider angle of the 16-50, and you won't notice the gain on the long end. You're trading the field of view of a wide angle lens (16 equiv to 24 fov) for a slightly wider than normal (24 equiv to 36 fov), and gaining a slightly longer short tele fov on the long end. And that's at the expense of image stabilization.I happen to have both 24-70mm S lenses, the f4 and f2.8. The f4 is very fine but f2.8 is excellent. However, I am not sure exactly what "WOW" is, but I agree that is probably more the result of lighting and composition, and maybe shallower depth of field. This isn’t usually much of a concern for stills photographers, except that high transmission by definition means that there’s low reflectance and that can often result in low ghosting and flare. The Nikkor Z has exceptional transmission, but the Canon EF zoom has equally good if not very slightly better transmission levels. Variable transmission may be an issue when shooting video, but with the difference being no more than 0.1EV over the whole zoom range, it’s unlikely to be problematic. Both lenses have some significant vignetting – more than I’d like to see, and correcting it may result in some extra noise in the corners of your photos. Here are the charts I measured in the lab: Bridgeport Inn at Night, October 2018, 7:59 P.M. Nikon Z7, Nikon 24-70mm f/4 Z at 24mm, f/4 at 1/25 hand-held at Auto ISO 1,250, Snapseed and Perfectly Clear v3.6. bigger. At 50mm, the story changes a bit. Here, the two lenses are well-matched in center sharpness at 50mm. If anything, the 24-70mm has a slight advantage in that respect. But the 24-70mm f/4 S’s corner sharpness has dipped a bit at this focal length, giving the Z 24-120mm f/4 S a clear advantage at f/4 in the corners. By f/5.6, the differences even out.

To get the same angle-of-view of 70mm focal length you need to crop 1.4x into an image shot at 50mm. This would result in a reduction of resolution from e.g. 45MP to around 23MP or 24MP to 12MP if you use a Z5. Which might still be enough for the intended purpose. As you can see, the lens resolves a lot of detail in the center, even at f/4. Stopping down to f/5.6 helps a little, but you won’t be able to see the difference. Where it does get better as you stop down is in the mid-frame, but the edges of the frame stay about the same. Here is the lens at 35mm: New is that the control ring is programmable. It defaults to Manual Focus, or make it control aperture or exposure compensation if you prefer. To me, the main problem is that it isn’t possible to access the non-corrected RAW file in Lightroom at all (at least through ordinary means). How often have you taken a photo with just a slight error in composition, where you wish you could include just a hair more information on one side of the crop or another? Lightroom users, as well as Nikon Capture NX users, may never realize that the underlying RAW photo actually held that data all along. Even though the distortion looks unsavory in certain cases, I would prefer at least the option to disable corrections, as has been the case with Lightroom and Nikon cameras in the past. Chromatic Aberration Maybe that description from earlier was pretty accurate! The two lenses are pretty evenly-matched in terms of sharpness overall. I’d give the 24-120mm f/4 S higher marks in the center overall. Meanwhile, the 24-70mm f/4 S is better in the corners at the wide focal lengths, while the 24-120mm f/4 S is better in the corners at the long focal lengths.The 24-70mm f/4 S is the kit zoom lens for the initial Z series bodies. Much like Sony did with the original A7 and their 24-70mm f/4, Nikon has targeted a small, travel-friendly kit lens as the one of the initial zooms in their new system.